Category World News

On Saturday, September 20, 2018, this is how things are going.

Regional security

Officials in Estonia called for talks with NATO over the “unprecedented and brazen intrusion” after three Russian MiG-31 fighters flew into Estonia’s airspace “over the Gulf of Finland” for a total of 12 minutes on Friday.
• Moscow and the Russian Air Force both claimed that as they flew from northwestern Russia to the Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad, their aircraft flew over neutral waters of the Baltic Sea.
• More than 20 Russian drones entered Polish airspace a week prior, prompting immediate condemnation from NATO and other European nations.
• Allison Hart, a spokesperson for NATO, accused Moscow of “reckless behavior” and claimed that the alliance had deployed aircraft to intercept Russian jets.
• The third recent violation of NATO airspace by Russia, according to British Defense Secretary John Healey, was “the third violation of NATO airspace in recent days.”
• The French military ministry responded, saying, “This incursion into Estonia is unprecedented for more than 20 years.”
• Donald Trump, the president of the United States, said he didn’t know about the incident but that he didn’t like it when it occurs. He continued, “could be significant trouble.”

Fighting

• According to an official and the Russian state-run TASS news agency, a 55-year-old man was killed in the village of Amon in the Kursk region and a truck driver in the village of Otradovka in the Belgorod region when Ukrainian forces launched a string of drone attacks on Russia.
• Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov posted a Telegram of more than 100 drones and more than 15 munitions during their 24-hour assault on the Belgorod region.
• Volodymyr Zelenskyy, president of Ukraine, claimed that two people were hurt in a Russian attack in the Dnipro region.
• Additionally, Zelenskyy claimed on X that Russian forces targeted Ukraine’s Donetsk, Kyiv, Sumy, Kharkiv, and Chernihiv regions along with Dnipro, and that they flew close to 90 drones at Ukraine overnight. Zelenskyy said, “Our warriors were able to neutralize most of them.”
• A crew of Ukrainian journalists from Channel Five and their driver were also hurt by a landmine in the Donetsk region on Saturday, according to Ukrinform.
• TASS reports that Russian forces have taken control of the villages of Muravka and Novoivanovka in the Donetsk region of Ukraine.

diplomacy and politics

Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, urged members of the EU to impose new restrictions on Russia’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports. She presented a 19th package of sanctions against Russia.
• Zelenskyy applauded the measures, calling them “an important step that will put pressure on the Russian war machine and have a tangible impact.”
• Trump claimed on Friday that he and Xi Jinping had a conversation about Russia’s war with Ukraine. After the call, Trump said, “I believe he would like to see it ended.” He later addressed reporters in the Oval Office of Xi’s opinion of the conflict.

Trump also introduced a separate “gold card” visa for individuals who have to pay $1 million to expedite their immigration while also signing the proclamation during an event at the Oval Office.

According to administration officials, the H1-B program’s modification would ensure that only those with the most unusual skill sets would be sponsored by employers.

He said, “We need great workers, and this pretty much guarantees that’s going to happen.”

However, such a high-cost will likely transform the H-1B system, which was established in 1990 to promote high-skilled, difficult-to-fill positions in fields like science, technology, engineering, and math.

People with bachelor’s degrees or higher are typically awarded the visas through a lottery system.

In response to Trump’s administration’s wider crackdown on immigration, which Trump has linked to increasing domestic labor, the program has received more scrutiny.

The Trump administration has also attempted to impose stricter regulations on international students studying in the US, including a ban on foreigners from several nations and access to social media accounts.

The government has previously considered eliminating the lottery system in favor of higher-paying employers.

H-1B program supporters claim that it gives Americans the best and brightest jobs, giving them an advantage over foreign competitors.

Critics have long alleged that businesses have abused the program, using it to demand lower wages and impose fewer labor protections.

Any significant change would be the hardest hit to the technology industry.

More than 10,000 H-1B visas were awarded to Amazon this year, making it by far the top recipient. Tata Consultancy, Microsoft, Apple, and Google followed the business.

According to the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, California has the highest number of H-1B workers geographically.

In addition, 71 percent of H-1B visa applicants came from India, which was the country with the highest percentage of applicants last year. Using government data, China ranked second, only slightly behind.

The Department of Justice filed an urgent request on Friday asking the Supreme Court to overturn a federal judge’s decision that Kristi Noem, the country’s top immigration official, lacked the authority to end the immigrant’s Temporary Protected Status (TPS).

The Justice Department argued in its filing to the court that the secretary must permit over 300, 000 Venezuelan nationals to remain in the country despite her justification that even temporarily doing so is “contrary to the national interest.”

The Supreme Court overturned a temporary order from US District Judge Edward Chen in San Francisco in May that had halted TPS while the case was pending in court.

Secretary Noem’s decision was deemed to be in violation of a federal law that regulates the conduct of government agencies by Chen’s final decision on September 5.

The Justice Department told the Supreme Court that “this case is well-known and involves the becoming increasingly well-known and untenable phenomenon of lower courts disregarding this court’s orders on the emergency docket.”

The lower courts and litigants are bound by this court’s rulings. It is unacceptable to disregard those orders, whether they are lengthy or just one sentence, as the lower courts did here.

In recent years, millions of people have fled Venezuela as a result of political repression and a crippling economic crisis, which were exacerbated in part by US sanctions against President Nicolas Maduro’s government.

Former US President Joe Biden’s administration extended TPS to about 600,000 Venezuelans through October 2026 before leaving office.

TPS, which was established by the US Congress in 1990, provides asylum to residents of the US who are facing deportation because of extraordinary circumstances like armed conflict or environmental disasters.