Kenya took its first step into space with the launch Friday of a nano-satellite made at the University of Nairobi. Engineers involved in creating the cube-shaped space capsule described it as Kenya’s joining the space club, although much remains to be done to get the Kenya space program off the ground. VOA’s Daniel Schearf reports from Nairobi.
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Month: May 2018
Auto Repair Shop Jump-starts Ugandan Child Soldiers into New Lives
As a young boy chasing chickens on his parents’ farm in northern Uganda, Louis Lakor dreamed of becoming a teacher. But when he finally set foot in a local primary school, aged seven, it was as an armed killer.
Abducted in a night raid, Lakor was forced to become a child soldier with the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebel group, which terrorized northern Uganda for nearly two decades before being driven out of the country by a military offensive in 2005.
Clutching a gun handed to him by his kidnappers, Lakor was ordered to “shoot everything you see.” He did.
“Otherwise they would have killed me,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation some 20 years later, looking out on the lush countryside near his home village of Awach, about 60 km (37 miles) south of Uganda’s border with South Sudan.
The LRA, which has retreated to a jungle straddling the borders of South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic, was notorious for kidnapping children for use as fighters and sex slaves.
It has massacred more than 100,000 people and displaced 2 million over the past three decades, according to the United Nations (U.N.), and its leader, Joseph Kony, has been indicted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.
A year since a controversial decision by the United States and its African partners to suspend the hunt for Kony, his victims are battling poverty and stigma — while their tormentor remains at large.
Lakor pointed to the school he attacked with a tormented look, amid fields dotted with mud huts. One memory stands out from the four years he spent as a rebel: he was coerced into killing his best friend when he lagged behind on a long march.
But Lakor, now a smartly dressed 27-year-old, is putting the horrors of the bush behind him, and helping other ex-child soldiers learn skills, from vehicle repairs and carpentry to tailoring and hairdressing, to get back on their feet.
“When I train youths here, I tell them my story,” he said, pacing around his noisy workshop where lanky teenagers welded, sawed and hammered. “I tell where I came from – that I’m like them, that I’m still an orphan looking for a way to survive.”
Vengeful
The U.N. estimates about 35,000 children were abducted by the LRA. Uganda offered amnesty to fighters who abandoned LRA ranks and renounced violence, paving the way for ex-child soldiers to start afresh – at least in theory.
But stigma persists, said Sasha Lezhnev, founding director of the Grassroots Reconciliation Group, which runs projects bringing together villagers and former child soldiers.
“One of the LRA’s strategies was to have their soldiers kill people in their own communities so that they wouldn’t be able to go back,” he said.
Lakor escaped from the LRA, aged 11, when his guards were distracted, and returned to his village, where he found his parents were dead, and his relatives and neighbors vengeful.
“I tried to stay in the village but life was so hard,” he said. “There was no money … no food. I was living with my uncle but then he chased me away, saying he cannot keep a rebel with him.”
While the government gives aid to ex-rebels, the chairman of the Amnesty Commission, Justice Peter Onega, said those who were less than 14 years old when they escaped – the legal age of criminal responsibility – did not qualify.
“It’s the families who are supposed to look after them,” he said.
Lakor ended up on the streets of Gulu, the main town in the region, sleeping rough and begging for money.
He had not eaten for two weeks when he was introduced to Peter Owiny Mwa, owner of local business Baka General Motors, who decided to give him a chance, at first employing him as a cleaner, and later training him as a mechanic.
Even then, Lakor could not find work, with prospective employers dismissing him as a “rebel.”
His experience of hunger, hatred and destitution nearly drove him back into the hands of the LRA — this time willingly.
“You just … get your gun, shoot people, rob people — that’s how we used to get money,” he said.
Lakor was stopped by Ugandan soldiers while trying to find the rebels’ base and sent back.
Reconciliation
In 2013, he returned to the workshop and proposed a different strategy to Mwa: to let him train and employ ex-LRA youths, selling what they made to keep the enterprise running.
Today, the workshop – a cluttered open-air courtyard surrounded by dilapidated wooden buildings – assists about 60 boys and girls each year, with little external funding.
Lakor drives a motorcycle-taxi to keep up with the rent.
Ex-LRA youths, some with limbs scarred by machete and gun wounds, sleep two to a single, stained mattress on the floor of a filthy room with peeling paint and no mosquito nets or glass in the windows.
Former child soldier Denis Ochen, 21, said he witnessed LRA prisoners being cooked alive and served up as food.
Another student Godfrey Oloya, 18, was born in LRA captivity and still has a bullet lodged in his arm, a “souvenir” of his escape under gunfire when he was seven.
Back home, his mother could not afford to keep him in class, so he worked in the market with her, selling pancakes and shoes.
“When I finish here, I want to drive a taxi or a lorry,” he said, as budding mechanics trained on the rusting remains of a pea-green Volkswagen Beetle from the 1970s.
While life remains hard, Lakor’s work is producing results.
Trainees have gone on to set up workshops in their villages, enabling them to start new lives, despite years of missed schooling.
For Lakor, his work is also a path to reconciliation – meaning he is once again welcomed in his home village.
One of his former students is Nelson Luwum, the cousin of his murdered best friend. Today, the 19-year-old works in a village car repair shop.
“Now I call him my teacher,” Luwum said of Lakor, “but also a friend.”
Funding for this story was provided by the International Women’s Media Foundation.
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Kenya Court Rejects Plea for Equal Property Rights in Divorce
A Kenyan court on Monday rejected a plea for a change to the laws on how property should be split in divorce cases, a ruling activists said was a blow for women’s rights in the country.
Kenya’s High Court dismissed a 2016 petition from the Federation of Women Lawyers in Kenya (FIDA), an advocacy group that had argued the Marriage Properties Act was unconstitutional because it entitled each partner only to what they contributed.
The constitution states that married couples are entitled to equal rights and the group argued that the law unfairly impacted women, who were more likely to suffer financially from a marriage breakup.
In its ruling, the court said that changing the law would “open the door for a party to get into marriage and walk out of it in the event of divorce with more than they deserve.”
In response, FIDA head Josephine Mong’are said it was a “sad day for Kenyans.”
“Every year millions of women in Kenya still find themselves fighting to hold onto their property after a divorce or the death of their husband,” she said in a statement.
Less than seven percent of title deeds are held by women alone or jointly with men in Kenya, according to a 2014 survey by the United Nations Conference on Trade.
Land is usually passed on to sons, making it hard for women to secure rights except through their husbands. Women and their children are often evicted if the husband dies or they divorce.
Less than two percent of title deeds issued in Kenya since 2013 went to women, according to the Kenya Land Alliance, an advocacy network.
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Exiled Ethiopian Opposition Group Holds Talks With Government
An exiled Ethiopian opposition party from the country’s restive Oromiya region said it had held talks with the government, a tentative step in its aim of returning to the political fold.
The talks on Friday and Saturday followed pledges by Ethiopia’s new prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, to push through democratic reforms in the wake of unrest, mainly in the Oromiya region, that threatened the ruling coalition’s tight hold on Africa’s second most populous nation.
The Oromo Democratic Front (ODF) was formed in 2013 by former members of the secessionist Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) and seeks self-determination for ethnic Oromos, Ethiopia’s largest ethnic group. ODF leaders have been living in exile in Europe and North America since the early 1990s when OLF turned against the ruling coalition and was designated a “terrorist” group by the government.
“A high-level delegation of the government … and a delegation of the Oromo Democratic Front held a fruitful discussion, from May 11-12, 2018, regarding the reforms currently unfolding in Ethiopia,” the group said in a statement.
“Pursuant to its longstanding public position, the ODF reiterated its commitment to deepening and broadening the reforms and democratization process. The government delegation also expressed its enthusiasm to engage all those espousing non-violent means of struggle.”
It did not disclose where the talks were held but said they were the start of a wider engagement between the two sides, and it would soon send an “advance team” to the capital Addis Ababa for formal talks.
Government officials were not immediately available for comment.
The ODF previously held lower level discussions with the government in 2015, but government officials declined to meet party leader Lencho Leta when he traveled to Ethiopia from his home in Norway for the talks.
Oromos make up roughly a third of Ethiopia’s population of 100 million.
Oromiya, which surrounds the capital Addis Ababa, has been plagued by violence since 2015, largely fueled by a sense of political and economic marginalization among its young population.
The ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) has been in power since 1991, when it took over from the Derg military regime. Abiy, who became prime minister in April, has told opposition leaders the country will strengthen a range of political and civil rights, in the latest sign he may be willing to push through reforms announced in the wake of violent
protests.
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WHO: Congo Approves Use of Experimental Ebola Vaccine
Congo has agreed to allow the World Health Organization to use an experimental Ebola vaccine to combat an outbreak announced last week, the WHO director-general said Monday.
The aim is for health officials to start using the vaccine, once it’s shipped, by the end of the week, or next week if there are difficulties, said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
“We have agreement, registration, plus import permit — everything formally agreed already. And as you know that vaccine is safe and efficacious and has been already tested. So I think we can all be prepared,” he said. “All is ready now, to use it.”
The outbreak was announced last week in Bikoro, in Congo’s northwest. Health officials traveled there after Congo’s Equateur provincial health ministry on May 3 alerted them to 17 deaths from a hemorrhagic fever.
As of May 13, Congo has 39 suspected, probable and confirmed cases of Ebola since April, including 19 deaths, WHO reported. Two cases of Ebola have been confirmed.
Congo’s Ministry of Health has requested that WHO send 4,000 doses of the vaccine, said ministry spokeswoman Jessyca Ilunga, who said they should arrive by the end of the week.
“The vaccination campaign starts next week, everything depends on the logistics because the vaccine must be kept at minus 60 degrees Celsius, and we need to assure that the cold chain is assured from Geneva to Bikoro,” she said.
The Ebola vaccination campaign will first target health workers, Ilunga said. Three nurses are among those with suspected cases, and another is among the dead.
The teams on site have already identified more than 350 contacts, who are people who have had contact with the patients, she said.
Mobile laboratories were deployed to Mbandaka and Bikoro on Saturday, she said, adding that results from the first 12 samples tested with that method should be available tomorrow.
This is the ninth Ebola outbreak in Congo since 1976, when the deadly disease was first identified. Congo has a long track record with Ebola, WHO said. The last outbreak that was announced a year ago, was contained and declared over by July 2017.
None of these outbreaks was connected to the massive outbreak in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone that began in 2014 and left more than 11,300 dead.
There is no specific treatment for Ebola, which is spread through the bodily fluids of people exhibiting symptoms.
The new experimental vaccine, developed by the Canadian government and now licensed to the U.S.-based Merck and has been shown to be highly effective against the virus. It was tested in Guinea in 2015.
Though the Congo outbreak is of a different strain, the experimental vaccine is still thought to be safe and effective.
WHO chief Tedros had led a delegation to the affected region on Sunday.
The Bikoro health zone is about 150 kilometers (93 miles) from Mbandaka, the capital of the Equateur province, and 45 kilometers (28 miles) from Ikoko Impenge, where there are other suspected cases.
WHO is working with Congo’s government and other international organizations, including Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders), to strengthen coordination to fight and contain the Ebola outbreak.
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Alert Warns of More Lava and Possible Explosion at Hawaiian Volcano
Residents near Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano faced warnings Monday that more lava-spewing fissures could open near their homes and that the volcano’s summit may be getting ready for an explosion that could scatter ash and debris for miles.
Since Kilauea began erupting May 3, nearly 2,000 people have been ordered to evacuate as 18 giant fissures ripped through the area, including two new ones that opened Sunday with ear-piercing screeches that sent lava and rocks flying.
But the U.S. Geological Survey also has warned that pent-up steam could cause an explosion at the top of the volcano as the pool of lava recedes, launching a 20,000-foot (6,100-meter) plume that could spread debris over 12 miles (19 kilometers).
“More explosive activity generating larger ash clouds remains possible and can occur with no warning,” the USGS said in an alert late Sunday local time.
One of the new fissures to open Sunday, a groove of lava with smoke pouring out both ends, appeared to be about 1,000 feet (300 meters) long and among the largest of those fracturing the side of Kilauea, a 4,000-foot-high (1,200-meters) volcano with a lake of lava at its summit.
Oozing flows of molten rock have destroyed some 37 buildings in the past 10 days, while emissions of sulfur dioxide gas in some areas has turned vegetation brown. No deaths or major injuries have been reported since Kilauea, which has been in a state of nearly constant eruption since 1983, began a series of major explosions early this month.
The volcano is located in the far east of Hawaii’s 4,028-square-mile (10,430-square-km) Big Island, which is home to about 200,000 people.
The USGS warned that fissures could erupt throughout the area, and Civil Defense officials on Sunday ordered people living on Halekamahina Road to evacuate and be on the alert for gas emissions and lava spatter.
In the evacuated Leilani Estates neighborhood of about 1,500 people, explosions could be heard Sunday as steam rose from cracks in the roads. Other fissures continued to billow smoke over homes.
The Hawaii National Guard has warned people in the coastal Lower Puna area to prepare to leave, saying anyone who chooses to stay behind cannot count on being rescued. An evacuation has not been ordered there but might be if a local highway is cut off.
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Deadly Protests in Gaza as U.S. Opens Jerusalem Embassy
[The United States officially moved its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem on Monday, even as at least 41 Palestinians were killed and hundreds wounded in clashes with Israeli forces along the Gaza Strip’s border with the Jewish state. As VOA’s Heather Murdock reports from Gaza, Palestinian protestors rushed the border fence while Israeli forces fired bullets and tear gas.
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Wenders Film Shows ‘Emotional Giant’ Pope Francis
Viewers hoping Wim Wenders’ documentary about Pope Francis will be a critical portrait of the head of the Catholic Church will be disappointed. The German director makes no excuses for the fact this is a work of love for a man he respects.
Wenders, who won the Palme d’Or for “Paris, Texas” in 1984, has made several successful documentaries, including “Buena Vista Social Club” about the Cuban music scene, and “Pina” on dance choreographer Pina Bausch – subjects that, like the pope, are things he has great affection for.
“I didn’t want to make a critical film about him, other people do that really well, television does it all the time,” Wenders told Reuters in Cannes where “Pope Francis – a Man of His Word” had its premiere.
“My documentaries are expressions of love and affection for something that I want to share with the world … Right now I think there is nobody who has more important things to say to us [than] the pope, so I wanted to share that.”
“We are living in an utterly immoral time and our political leaders, powerful leaders, are emotional dwarfs. So I wanted to have this emotional giant talk to us.”
Jorge Mario Bergoglio, born in Argentina in 1936, became pope in 2013 after the unexpected resignation of Pope Benedict.
He chose his papal name after Francis of Assisi, a figure Wenders calls “a revolutionary” for his work with the poor and nature.
“Today Saint Francis would be the first ecologist of the world. Pope Francis took on a heavy duty prog by choosing that name,” Wenders said.
He filmed four two-hour interviews with Francis in which the pope talked directly into camera.
He said a kind of “teleprompter in reverse” allowed him to get that intimate look, by imposing Wenders’ face on a transparent screen with a camera behind it “so by looking into my eyes he sees everybody’s eyes”.
“This man communicates in such an honest direct and spontaneous way … even with the greatest actors you find that very rarely,” Wenders said.
With no prerequisites from the Vatican, Wenders insists his film is more than a promotional video.
“It is not propaganda,” he said.
“It’s not a commission. I was free to do what I wanted to do and this is what I wanted to do. I wanted to give a platform for his work, period.”
The Cannes Film Festival runs to May 19.
your ad hereReports: US Diplomat Involved in Fatal Crash Leaves Pakistan
A U.S. diplomat left Pakistan for Afghanistan Monday, local media reported, after Islamabad had earlier barred him from leaving the country for his role in a fatal road accident.
U.S. defense attache, Joseph Emanuel Hall, on Saturday planned to board an American military aircraft at the air force base near Islamabad but was not permitted to do so and returned to the embassy, security officials confirmed to VOA.
But on Monday he was permitted to leave for Afghanistan, after Pakistani authorities reportedly removed Hall’s name from a so-called “black list” of people not allowed to leave Pakistan due to pending court cases against them.
Pakistani officials were not available immediately to comment on Hall’s exit. A U.S. embassy spokesman declined to comment on the situation.
On April 7, the American defense attache ran a red light in Islamabad, killing a motorcyclist and seriously injuring another person on the bike.
U.S. officials swiftly expressed their “deep sympathy to the family of the deceased and those injured,” and pledged to fully cooperate with local authorities in the investigation.
The family of the deceased Ateeq Baig later approached the capital city’s high court, demanding Hall be brought to justice.
Washington has rejected the Pakistani demand to withdraw Hall’s diplomatic immunity to hold the diplomat accountable for his “criminal” act.
“This level of diplomat, he is not a contractor, has diplomatic immunity. But having said that, immunity does not mean that they can flagrantly flout the host country’s laws with impunity,” Sherry Rehman, leader of the opposition in the Pakistani Senate, told VOA. She has also served as Pakistan’s ambassador to the U.S.
Pakistan placed unspecified travel restrictions on American diplomats and withdrew concessions Islamabad had granted to U.S. missions as part of the “war on terror” partnership.
The restrictions went into effect on Friday the same day Washington announced Pakistani diplomats would be required to seek permission five days in advance before traveling more than 40 kilometers from their posts in the United States.
The Pakistani foreign ministry through a formal letter also informed the U.S. embassy its officials would no longer be entitled to special treatment at the airports and their cargo will have to be scanned like that of other passengers.
American diplomats have also been barred from “installing radio communication at residences and safe houses” without prior government permission. They have also been disallowed from using “tinted glass” on vehicles as well as rented transportation, and installing non-diplomatic license plates on official vehicles.
Pakistan had granted those concessions to the U.S. after Pakistan joined the “war on terrorism” 17 years ago.
Rehman saw the diplomatic dispute as an “unprecedented stalemate” in relations between Pakistan and the U.S.
“They symbolize a downward spiraling in an already tense relationship,” she said. “It puts both embassies and missions under a cloud ofvery unpleasant situation, circumstances and working conditions.”
Rehman called for both Pakistan and the U.S. to apply “some serious crisis management diplomacy” to address what she said was a “precipitous and worrying downturn” in the fragile tension-marred bilateral relations.
Pakistan’s relations with the U.S. have steadily deteriorated since President Donald Trump announced a new South Asia strategy in August that blamed Islamabad for covertly supporting terrorist groups and the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan.
While U.S. financial assistance to Islamabad has significantly declined over the yeas, Trump also suspended military aid until Islamabad takes deceive action against terrorists on its soil.
Pakistan rejects the charges and maintains it is being scapegoated for U.S.-led international security failures in Afghanistan.
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EU Warns Britain of Poor Brexit Progress
The European Union on Monday warned Britain time was running out to seal a Brexit deal this fall and ensure London does not crash out of the bloc next March, adding to pressure on Prime Minister Theresa May.
May’s spokesman, however, said the “focus is on getting this right” rather than meeting a deadline.
The EU’s Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier told 27 ministers of the bloc meeting in Brussels on Monday that “no significant progress” had been made in negotiations with London since March, the Bulgarian chairwoman of the talks said.
Diplomats and officials in Brussels have raised doubts about whether the bloc and London will be able to mark a milestone in the negotiations at the summit of EU leaders on June 28-29.
The current schedule puts progress in June as an important step towards a final Brexit deal in October, which would leave enough time for an elaborate EU ratification process before the Brexit day.
“October is only five months from now and still some key issues related to the withdrawal agreement need to be settled.
In June we need to see substantive progress on Ireland, on governance and all remaining separation issues,” said Deputy Prime Minister Ekaterina Zakharieva of Bulgaria, which holds the EU’s rotating presidency.
‘No clear stance’
German, Austrian and Dutch ministers all echoed the same concern, saying Britain has not made its position clear in detail on parts of the negotiations.
“We are concerned that there is no clear stance, no clear position from the British. The clock is ticking,” German EU Minister Michael Roth told his EU peers.
“We need now to be making substantial progress, but that is not happening. What is worrying us in particular is the Northern Ireland question where we expect a substantial accommodation from the British side.”
At home, May is stuck between a rock and a hard place with staunch Brexit supporters pushing to sever ties with the EU and others advocating keeping close customs cooperation with the bloc to reduce frictions in future trade.
May’s spokesman said London was working on two options for post-Brexit customs cooperation.
Under a customs partnership, Britain could collect tariffs on goods entering the country on the EU’s behalf. Under a second idea, for a streamlined customs arrangement, traders on an approved list would be able to cross borders freely with the aid of automated technology.
Pressure
But the EU has said London must come up with a solution for the Irish border conundrum and highlights that has not happened.
Both sides worry that reinstating a physical border between EU-member Ireland and Britain’s province of Northern Ireland – including to manage customs – could revive violence there.
Other outstanding issues include guarantees for expatriate rights, agreeing on security cooperation and trade rules after Brexit.
With May’s cabinet, her ruling Conservative party and the British split on Brexit, the prime minister has come under increasing pressure at home in recent weeks to make a decision on customs.
The Brexit schedule is tightening, sources said, which helps the EU negotiating strategy to pile pressure on London before the June summit but mostly is due to lack of substantial headway in the talks.
Dutch Foreign Minister Stef Blok said it was too early to discuss an extension of the timeline, but added: “The aim is now to conclude a deal in the time schedule that has been agreed on … I very much hope we will agree but there are no guarantees, unfortunately.”
your ad hereRussian Bank Helps Venezuela Defy US Cryptocurrency Sanctions
Investors looking to buy Venezuela’s new cryptocurrency may want to head to a little-known Moscow bank whose biggest shareholders are President Nicolas Maduro’s socialist government and two state-controlled Russian companies under U.S. sanctions.
Evrofinance Mosnarbank has emerged as the only international financial institution so far willing to defy a U.S. campaign to derail the world’s first state-backed digital currency, called the petro, even before it begins to function.
Early would-be investors who registered with Venezuela’s government and downloaded the petro’s wallet software — available in Spanish, English and Russian — were then invited to buy the cryptocurrency by wiring a minimum of 1,000 euros to a Venezuelan government account at Evrofinance.
The bank’s place in the rollout of the petro is further evidence of Russia’s role in the creation of a cryptocurrency that much of the digital world has shunned but that Maduro hopes will allow Venezuela to circumvent U.S. financial sanctions imposed last year.
At the petro’s launch on Feb. 21, Maduro heaped praise on two Russians in the audience who worked with wealthy, Kremlin-connected businessmen, thanking their previously unknown startups — Zeus Exchange and Aerotrading — for their role developing what he joked would be a kind of “kryptonite” against U.S. economic dominance.
A day later, he dispatched his economy minister to Moscow to brief his Russian finance counterpart.
And in March, the Russian Association of Cryptocurrency and Blockchain awarded the Venezuelan government an award for its role “challenging the de-facto powers of the international financial system.”
‘Fighting a common bully’
Russia’s interest in the petro stems from its own increasingly pariah status in the west, said Claiborne W. Porter, the former head of the U.S. Justice Department’s bank integrity unit. As relations with the U.S. and European Union become more tense, both countries are looking for ways to demonstrate political strength while moving money outside the American financial system.
“Like kids on the playground, Venezuela and Russia think they are fighting a common bully in U.S. sanctions, so they’re going to try and form a united front,” said Porter, who is now the Washington-based head of investigations at consulting firm Navigant.
Russia has provided Venezuela with billions in debt relief over the years and is a major investor in the country’s oil industry. That financial lifeline has become more important since the Trump administration last year banned Americans from lending money to the nearly bankrupt government and now threatens to slap sanctions on the OPEC nation’s oil industry if Maduro goes ahead with presidential elections this month that are widely seen as a sham. In March, Trump signed an executive order banning Americans from any dealings with the petro.
Evrofinance and its executives didn’t return repeated email requests for comment. But after The Associated Press’ inquiries, all references to the bank were removed from the petro’s wallet, leaving prospective buyers with no guidance on how to actually buy it, though it’s still listed for sale in rubles and euros as well as three other widely circulated cryptocurrencies.
Venezuela’s government purchased a 49 percent stake in Evrofinance in 2011, making the bank, which traces its history back a century as a western financial outpost for the Soviet Union, a vehicle for binational trade and investment projects, with almost $800 million in assets.
The rest of the shares are held by two major banks, state-controlled VTB and Gazprombank, which were sanctioned by the U.S. and European nations in 2014 over President Vladimir Putin’s annexation of Crimea.
It’s unclear how many petros the government has sold. Maduro boasted this month that the government had raised $3.3 billion in the pre-sale phase. But so far only a small fraction of the petros appears to have been distributed to buyers, according to the blockchain where the digital currency’s movements can be publicly tracked.
‘Scam’
Experts say that the petro is of little interest to foreigners other than drug traffickers and others active in Venezuela’s burgeoning criminal underworld. Even offshore trading platforms like Bitfinex are refusing to deal in the petro for fear of violating sanctions. Rating website ICOindex.com, which tracks initial coin offerings of cryptocurrencies, called it a “scam.”
“An overwhelming majority of ICOs don’t deliver on what they promise because their promoters are outright scammers or fall short on technical expertise,” said Alejandro Machado, a Venezuelan-born computer scientist who consults for crypto startups. “In the case of the Venezuelan government, both reasons apply.”
One of the two Russians who signed agreements with Maduro to position the petro globally, Denis Druzhkov, had been fined $31,000 and barred for three years by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange for fraudulent trading in futures’ contracts. Zeus Exchange, which Druzhkov created alongside a Kremlin-connected industrialist, said in a statement that it has never had any business ties with the Venezuelan government and that Druzhkov resigned after abusing his authority.
The other, Fedor Bogorodskiy, used to help run the credit card division at a bank controlled by a Russian oligarch. He has lived in Uruguay since 2009, combining telecommunications business with part-time promotion of Russian culture. He told The AP that his company, Aerotrading, whose website consists of a single home page with no company information, immediately ceased all work on the petro after Trump announced his ban.
Despite the pressure, Maduro is showing no signs of slowing down. He’s given government institutions — from ministries to airports — 120 days to start accepting the petro as legal tender in all transactions. He’s also paved the way for the creation of 16 local exchanges where Venezuelans will be able to purchase petros with their fast-depreciating bolivars. Also in the works is a second state-backed cryptocurrency tied to the country’s gold reserves.
But gaining international acceptance remains an uphill battle.
Yuri Pripachkin, president of the Russian blockchain group that honored Venezuela, said that while the Kremlin is keeping a close eye on the petro it hasn’t been involved in its development. Still, he said as long as sanctions are used as a foreign policy tool to punish governments that challenge U.S. policies, the incentives to seek out alternative means of financing will remain. He also dismissed the idea that the petro could be used to fund criminal activity.
“That’s a fairy tale,” said Pripachkin. “The most popular currency for terrorists and criminals the world over is the U.S. dollar, not crypto, and nobody is suggesting we ban dollars. This is just an attempt to stop crypto from expanding.”
your ad hereKenyan Doctors Angered by Move to Hire Cuban Physicians
Kenya’s government is pushing ahead with a plan to hire 100 Cuban doctors despite opposition from a doctors’ union that says the money could be used to employ local physicians instead.
President Uhuru Kenyatta agreed the deal last year and the plan was accelerated after his state visit to Cuba in March.
But Ouma Oluga, secretary-general of Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacists and Dentists Union (KMPDU), told Reuters the decision is unethical because there are enough doctors locally.
“There are 2,000 Kenyan doctors that require employment and 170 specialists… have not been deployed by the Ministry of health,” he said. “We do not understand why a government would be creating employment for another country and not their own.”
The dispute reflects an attempt by the government to resolve the problem of inadequate healthcare provision that many medical professionals say has been left to fester by successive administrations.
Kenya’s doctor-to-patient ratio is one to 16,000, according to official data, far below a recommendation of the U.N. World Health Organization of one to 1,000.
The government says doctors in far-flung hospitals lack specialized skills, forcing patients to pay to travel to the capital Nairobi or abroad for treatment.
Doctors say they are underpaid and lack equipment. In March, four members of staff at Kenya’s largest referral hospital were suspended for starting brain surgery on the wrong patient.
Last year the government granted doctors a pay rise promised in 2013 after a three-month strike. Oluga said KMPDU will not interfere with the government plan of importing doctors.
“If the Kenyan government wants to bring Cuban doctors, that’s up to them,” he said.
The doctors are expected to arrive in June and each county should get at least two. They will work in a country where medical provision is split between central government and 47 county governments.
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US Senate Committee to Vote On Trump CIA Pick Wednesday
The U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee will vote on Wednesday morning on President Donald Trump’s nominee to be the new director of the CIA, Gina Haspel, a committee aide said on Monday.
The vote will take place behind closed doors, as is customary for the intelligence panel.
Haspel was grilled by lawmakers at her confirmation hearing last week over her role in the agency’s past harsh interrogation system, pledging she would never restart the program or follow any morally objectionable order from Trump.
The nominee, who would be the first woman director of the Central Intelligence Agency, is expected to be approved by the committee and confirmed by the full Senate, now that at least two Democrats – Senators Joe Manchin and Joe Donnelly – have said they would join Republicans in supporting her.
Although Republicans John McCain and Rand Paul have announced opposition to Haspel, Trump’s fellow Republicans hold a 51-49-seat majority in the 100-member Senate and Vice President Mike Pence could vote to break a tie.
your ad hereWest Africa Taps Solar Energy Potential
In South Africa, workers will soon begin construction of a new 100 megawatt solar power plant near the town of Pofadder. In Morocco, expansion of a giant solar power plant near the city of Ourzazate will soon increase its capacity to 580 megawatts. Solar energy has been slower to arrive in West Africa, but growth is underway.
West Africa’s largest solar power station was officially opened in November 2017. It’s at Zagtouli, on the outskirts of Burkina Faso’s capital Ouagadougou. It cost $55 million to build; the money came from France and the European Union. Zagtouli now delivers 30 megawatts to the national power grid.
Before Zagtouli, this was West Africa’s largest, at Bokhol, in Senegal. It opened in 2016, cost $30 million to build but the money story here is different.
Charlotte Aubin, founder and director of Greenwish, a renewable energy company, was closely involved. She helped create the first Independent Power Producer, or IPP, with money from Senegalese investors and an international fund backed by three European governments.
“The first project we did was in Senegal and it was a milestone for the continent as well as Greenwish,” said Aubin. “It was the first solar IPP that came out of the ground in Sub-Saharan Africa. It’s now providing electricity to 160,000 people in Senegal at a 40 percent discount to the cost of the grid at the time.”
Forty percent less? How is that possible? Moussa Coulibaly, who runs Air Com, one of Mali’s oldest solar power companies, explains.
It’s the expansion of the technology, Coulibaly told VOA. The more people want a product, the cheaper it gets. Led by investment from the United States and China, the industry has been rapidly scaling up. Production costs have come down as a result. Coulibaly says he has seen the price of a solar panel reduced by more than 500 percent in Mali… in only twelve years. He says today, a solar panel will cost you CFA 50,000 — that’s about $90.
Something else has changed too in the region: the law. Until recently, independent power producers like Air Com and the Greenwish project could not exist. The law simply prohibited it. Senegal lifted the ban on non-state power production in 1998; Mali did it in 2000, while Burkina Faso legalized IPPs only last year.
Senegal now has four solar power stations. Burkina Faso is building two more. South Africa and Morocco have dozens each. And the list is getting longer: Kenya, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Ghana, Mauritania…
At nighttime, an estimated 600 million Africans still use candles and kerosene lamps to light their homes. Many live in the continent’s vast rural zones. How do you get all those millions connected?
Charlotte Aubin has an idea that would use existing structures — telephone towers.
“There are about 240,000 towers that are off-grid or bad grid that could benefit from clean tech solution… but we are also looking at doing more for [the] population.”
Interest in off-grid solar is booming in West Africa. Companies like Air Com in Mali build small local grids, tailor-made for the communities they serve.
Coulibaly says we make an estimate of the electricity needs of a particular village — now and in the future. And then we build an independent local solar-powered grid based on those estimates.
It’s true: solar alone will not be enough to fulfill Africa’s energy needs. But for private power producers and small independent off-grid networks, the future looks bright.
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South Sudan Conflict Mediator Warns Against Wasting Talks
South Sudan should not waste the opportunity of forthcoming peace talks even though an agreement to end its conflict has been violated several times by warring parties, an international mediator said on Monday.
Despite several agreements and ceasefires, fighting has rumbled on in South Sudan with barely any break since civil war erupted at the end of 2013, just two years after independence.
Troops loyal to President Salva Kiir clashed with forces loyal to Riek Machar, then the vice president. Tens of thousands of people have been killed and much of the nation face dire food shortages.
The government and rebel groups signed the latest cease-fire in December in the Ethiopian capital, aiming to revive a pact reached in 2015. But the truce was violated within hours.
The parties will hold a forum in Addis Ababa from May 17-21 to try to jumpstart the peace process. The forum is organized by the regional East Africa group IGAD.
“This country has missed so many opportunities to make durable peace and we should not allow the High level Revitalization Forum to be squandered,” Festus Mogae, the former president of Botswana said in a speech.
Mogae chairs the Joint Monitoring and Evaluation Commission, which was set up to monitor the failed 2015 truce and peace deal implementation. South Sudan has since launched its own national dialogue, while fighting has continued across the country.
He accused the parties of engaging in human rights violations and urged IGAD to take action.
“The parties continue to wage a campaign of defiance and commit human rights abuses with impunity. This is unacceptable and I call on IGAD to make good its promise to hold spoilers accountable,” he said.
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Iran Court Sentences 8 Men to Death Over IS Attack
An Iranian court on Sunday sentenced eight men to death over attacks that killed 18 people at the parliament and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s mausoleum last year, in the first deadly operation by Islamic State in the country.
The sentence, issued by a Revolutionary Court after a seven-session hearing, can be appealed in Iran’s Supreme Court, Musa Ghazanfarabadi, head of Tehran’s Revolutionary Court, told state television.
Ghazanfarabadi said courts will hear claims later filed by families of the victims against the United States and Saudi Arabia, which mainly Shi’ite Muslim Iran accuses of supporting Sunni Muslim militant group Islamic State. Both countries deny that accusation.
Islamic State claimed responsibility for the unprecedented attacks in Iran, in which suicide bombers and gunmen attacked the parliament and Khomeini’s mausoleum in Tehran.
Eighteen other suspects still face charges over the attacks, according to state media.
Iran has said that the five gunmen and suicide bombers who were killed had fought in Syria and Iraq, where Islamic State once held swathes of territory but is now in decline.
your ad hereParis on Edge Again After Knife Attack
Paris is a city on edge once again as France’s capital mourned another victim of fanaticism.
The Chechen-born French citizen who lashed at people with a knife, killing one and wounding four, had been on a terror watch list, but his ability to be able to launch an attack Saturday underlines the scale of the challenge France faces from Islamic militants, French officials say.
More than 2,600 suspected militants are on a watch list but tabs can’t be kept on all of them. “While the security services are excellent at identifying potential jihadists, the terrible lack of human resources means that they can monitor only a tiny tiny fraction of the suspects,” said counterterror analyst Olivier Guitta, who runs GlobalStrat, a London-based risk consultancy.
“The Islamic State attack in Paris’ Opera area is the 12th successful terrorist attack since 2013. It is the second successful one this year. France remains a priority target of the jihadists in Europe,” he added.
The last serious terror attack in France was in March, when a self-proclaimed militant killed a French policeman who’d exchanged himself for a female hostage during a siege in southwest France. The string of attacks since 2013 has left 245 people dead. Saturday’s mayhem was similar in method to a knife attack carried out last year in Marseille, said Loic Travers, a police union official.
Lacking manpower
French intelligence officials say they don’t have the manpower to keep even the 2,600 top-tier militant risks under around-the-clock surveillance. Aside from that watch list, they are also trying to monitor a further 5,000 suspects who have prompted anxiety but are considered less of an immediate danger – they are radicalized but have not as yet shown signs of thinking about violence.
The French aren’t alone in trying to match resources and manpower with threats. Other European intelligence agencies, especially in neighboring Belgium, are also overstretched. After each attack, security chiefs ask themselves what more they can do to prevent terrorism, especially the rudimentary kind of knife-wielding attack that was mounted in the French capital Saturday.
French lawmakers are sympathetic about the complaints from the country’s security services about the lack of resources and how difficult it is to track all of even the most dangerous militants.
Nathalie Goulet, a member of the French Senate foreign and defense committee, has said in the past, “You cannot put a policeman behind each of them. Especially since being reported to be in the process of radicalization does not make you a criminal.”
But Goulet and other lawmakers have expressed worries about the temporary nature of the surveillance and how quickly suspected militants can be dropped off the high-risk list.
She argues the French security services should maintain “a permanent file of people who had a link with terrorist organizations” much as the police do when it comes to sex offenders who are stuck permanently on file.
Information on assailant
Saturday’s suspect, who was shot by French police, wasn’t carrying any identification papers and hasn’t yet been publicly named by authorities, but French media are giving his name as Khamzat Asimov.
French officials say the man had no criminal record, was Chechen born and was naturalized as a French citizen in 2010. They say a friend of the suspect had been detained for questioning in the eastern city of Strasbourg recently.
Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the assault, but it remains unclear whether the assailant was inspired by the terror group or had actual operational links with IS. French intelligence services are now scrambling to establish what ties the man may have had with the group, if any.
It would be the first time an assailant of Chechen origin has carried out a terrorist attack in France, which hosts about 30,000 Chechens. Analysts have highlighted recently Chechen militants as a subgroup that bears watching.
Last year Belgian analyst Pieter Van Ostaeyen said that in his database of Belgian militants who’d gone to fight in Syria, 12 were of Chechen origin, with another 10 of Russia descent.
“It may be small, this ‘Eastern contingent,’ but it is likely underestimated, too,” Van Ostaeyen warned.
IS has actively recruited fighters in Chechnya, sending hundreds to conflicts in Syria and elsewhere. Some of the top IS commanders in Syria and and Iraq were veterans of conflict in Chechnya.
“Most of the ‘Eastern contingent’s’ networks seem to operate in a very covert manner,” Van Ostaeyen noted in a study for the Bellingcat news site. “They do not expose themselves with propaganda … and even its individual members rarely show themselves off on social media.”
your ad hereTrump Honors Own Mom on Mother’s Day
U.S. President Donald Trump paid a Mother’s Day tribute to his mother “and all of the mothers and grandmothers in our lives.”
“My mother was a great person,” Trump said in a video posted Sunday on his Twitter account. “So much of what I’ve done and so much of what I’ve become is because of my mother,” he says in the video. “I miss her a lot.”
Mary MacLeod came to the United States from Scotland and married Fred Trump when they were both young, Trump recalls. She died in 2000 at age 88.
Trump called Mother’s Day “one of the most important days of the year.” Since the earliest days of the republic, he said, America’s strength has come from “the love and courage and devotion of our mother.”
The video doesn’t mention by name first lady Melania Trump, the mother of Trump’s 12-year-old son, Barron. It also makes no mention of his first wife, Ivana Trump, the mother of Donald Jr., Ivanka and Eric, nor does it mention his second wife, Marla Maples, with whom he has daughter Tiffany.
Vice President Mike Pence posted a Mother’s Day message on Twitter, saluting his mother, Nancy Fritsch, and his wife, Karen Pence, whom he called the “the best mom 3 kids could ever have.”
Ivanka Trump on Instagram posted a glamorous photo of her mother, Ivana Trump, skiing. “Happy Mother’s Day to my amazing mother and the best skier I know! Love You,” Ivanka Trump captioned the image.
Donald Trump Jr. also took to social media Sunday. “Happy Mother’s Day to the best mom in the world,” he tweeted to his estranged wife. “Vanessa enjoy your day, you’ve certainly earned it dealing with those 5 munchkins and me.” The couple is preparing to divorce.
The tweet made no mention of his mother, Ivana Trump.
Mother’s Day is an annual holiday in the United States celebrated on the second Sunday in May.
your ad hereIS Video Said to Show Paris Knife Attacker
An Islamic State video shows what it says is the young Chechen-born man accused of Saturday’s deadly terrorist knife attack in downtown Paris.
French police have identified the suspect as Khamzat Azimov, who was a French citizen. He killed one person and wounded four before a police officer shot him dead.
An Islamic State outlet released the video showing a man it says is Azimov, wearing a hood with only his eyes exposed. He is speaking French and pledging allegiance to Islamic State.
IS had already claimed responsibility for the knifings, saying one of its “soldiers” carried them out to avenge France’s participation in the international coalition in Iraq and Syria.
French authorities have taken Azimov’s parents and a close friend into custody for questioning. Azimov was on the government’s watch list of suspected terrorists, but had no criminal record.
Azimov was said to have been born in Chechnya, a Muslim-majority Russian republic, in 1997. He emigrated to France as a teenager, and grew up in Strasbourg.
Chechnya President Ramzan Kadyrov said the Russian republic bears no responsibility for Azimov becoming a killer.
“He was only born in Chechnya and his growing up, the formation of his personality, his views and persuasions occurred in French society,” Kadyrov said.
Azimov carried out Saturday’s attack in a district of Paris known for its fine restaurants and the famed Opera Garnier.
Witnesses say he yelled out “Allahu Akbar,” meaning “God is great” in Arabic, and began stabbing people. Bystanders scrambled into restaurants and under tables for safety.
When Azimov rushed at police, an officer opened fire, killing him — but not before one person was stabbed to death and four others — including a Chinese tourist — were wounded. Doctors say the four survivors are out of danger.
French police are treating this as a terrorist investigation. President Emmanuel Macron tweeted that France “will not yield an inch to the enemies of freedom.”
On Sunday, the White House condemned the attacks, offering thoughts and prayers to the victims and their families, in a statement. “We stand in solidarity with the French people and their government against this vicious act of terrorism, and pledge any assistance needed,” the statement said.
France is no stranger to deadly terrorist attacks claimed by Islamic State. They include the 2015 Charlie Hebdo killings, the murder spree later that year that started in a Paris concert hall, and the 2016 Nice truck attack.
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Burundi Gears Up for Constitutional Referendum
Burundians gathered in churches Sunday to pray for peace as the country prepares for a controversial referendum which could extend the president’s term in office. The Catholic church has said it will fight to protect the democratic gains in the country after its request to postpone referendum vote was denied.
Twenty-eight-year-old Leonard Nijimbere is one hundreds of Burundians who attended a Sunday church service in the country.
“Today in the church we were taught how to love and live with other people in harmony,” he said.
Nijimbere is Catholic.
According to multiple churchgoers no politics was discussed in the church that is in the center of Burundi’s capital Bujumbura.
The Catholic church has come out against President Pierre Nkurunziza government’s plan to change the constitution.
The head of the Conference Catholic Bishops of Burundi Joachim Ntahondereye says they will fight to protect democracy in the country.
“Some how now we are facing a setback,” he said. “There is possibility to work for that democracy in the future. But of course we have to work for that the future might be better, that’s why we are calling on the people to safeguard peace and unity and to engage themselves for a better democracy in the future.”
Burundi will hold countrywide referendum vote on May 17. Some of the issues Burundians will have to choose are whether to extend president Pierre Nkurunziza’s term until 2034.
The current term is five years, but the new amendment would give the president a seven-year mandate. The constitution limits the president to two terms, but it is argued that the change would reset the clock for Nkrunziza to run twice more.
Nijimbere, a student at a local university, says he will vote on that day.
He says “I will vote since I am qualified as a voter. Nothing is going to stop me from voting. When that day comes I know the choice I am going to make.”
Nijimbire lives in the opposition neighborhood which has been campaigning against the constitutional changes.
One registered voter who refused to give his name spoke to VOA about the referendum.
“I will vote for fear of my well being. When I walk in the street and they ask whether I voted I will show them that I have voted but I don’t like to vote,” he said.
The voter spoke of threats and intimidation presented by the ruling party youth wing known as Imbonerakure.
Human rights agencies have accused Imbonerakure of killings, arrests and attacks on opponents in the run up to the Thursday’s vote.
At least 1,200 people have lost their lives since Nkrunziza announced his bid for a third term in office in 2015, and more than 400,000 Burundians have fled the country.
your ad hereRussia in Flurry of Diplomatic Activity Over Iran Deal
In the wake of President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw the United States from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, Russia unleashed a flurry of diplomatic activity aimed at keeping Iran and other remaining signatories committed to the agreement.
But behind Russia’s diplomatic maneuvering, analysts see the Kremlin chasing rewards from transatlantic divisions over the Iran issue while facing risks of deeper entanglement in Middle East affairs.
“Without doubt we will make sure firstly that this does not destroy the JCPOA,” said Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, referring to the Iran nuclear deal’s formal abbreviation following a meeting with German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas in Moscow last week.
“This is our common objective,” assured Lavrov. “We confirmed this.”
Lavrov deployed a top envoy, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov, to Tehran in a move aimed at shoring up continued Iranian compliance with the nuclear deal.
“From the Russian point of view, particular importance will be given to preserving the JCPOA without damaging concrete projects and concrete areas of cooperation that are building between all members of the deal,” said Ryabkov in comments following the meeting.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif will come to Moscow on Monday for further talks.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is also expected to join Russian President Vladimir Putin in Sochi later in the week for additional discussions where Iran is expected to be high on the agenda.
A reliable partner in … Moscow?
Yet in aligning itself with Europe firmly behind preserving the Iran deal, Russian analysts argue Moscow sees unexpected diplomatic openings beyond the nuclear issue.
“This is in some respects a win for Russia,” said Alexey Malashenko, a longtime Middle East watcher and head of the Institute of Dialogue and Civilization in Moscow. “Russia may not have any influence over the U.S. and its decision to leave the Iran deal, but it now has a united position with Europe and the European Union.”
Malashenko notes that Trump’s decision to ignore pleas by traditional allies such as France and Germany to remain in the Iran deal accomplished something Putin has long sought but could not achieve until now: a transatlantic rift.
“Trump listened to Macron and Merkel and showed that he doesn’t care. The Europeans are really offended this time,” said Malashenko.
Writing in the online magazine Republic, foreign policy analyst Vladimir Frolov argued that continued failure to bridge those differences offered Moscow the prospect of something much greater than merely isolating Washington — namely, a tentative path to future sanctions relief.
“If the politics of sanctions fall apart at the seams with the West relative to Iran,” writes Frolov, “then why can’t they differ over Russia, when it’s in solidarity with Europe over keeping the JCPOA?”
Sanctions shrug
Never an enthusiastic backer of sanctions on Iran, Russia nevertheless embraced its role as one of the six signatories to the denuclearization swap for sanctions relief deal brokered with Iran by the U.S., Britain, Germany, France, and China back in 2015.
As Europe now debates its response to threats from Washington that the EU cut off future investments in Tehran or face renewed penalties, Moscow seems determined to show Europe that U.S. sanctions are something to be weathered, says Karine Gevorgyan, an Iran specialist based in Moscow.
Gevorgyan points out that major Russian companies are already under U.S. sanctions over the Kremlin’s actions in Ukraine, alleged interference in the 2016 US presidential elections, and — just last week — what Washington says is Moscow’s support of Syria and other rogue regimes.
“They were already sanctioning Russian military exports. It won’t have an impact,” she says.
A statement by the Foreign Ministry similarly chided the White House for “trivial desire to get even with Russia” and warned that attempts to punish Russia economically would continue to fail.
Whether quasi-state Russian businesses with interests in Iran’s oil, gas, tourism, and railway sectors are ready to risk U.S. penalties or pull up stakes remains an open question.
Israeli factor
Meanwhile, a more immediate pitfall is the escalating proxy war between Iran and Israel in neighboring Syria, where Russia is engaged in an ongoing military alliance with the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad, Turkey, and Iran.
Russia has relished its role in the Syrian conflict as a sign of the Kremlin’s growing role as a player in Middle East politics. Yet the Russian military intervention has also presented challenges to relations with Israel — one of the most vocal opponents of the Iran nuclear deal.
Last week, Israel carried out airstrikes against dozens of Iranian military targets in neighboring Syria, accusing Iran of launching its own missile attack from the area.
Moscow — which values close ties with Israel and yet needs continued Iranian military support in Syria — has called for “restraint from all parties” while faced with the prospect of a wider Middle East conflict.
Yet analyst Alexei Malashenko questions whether Moscow can successfully play the role of mediator given Russia’s traditional approach of “always sitting on two stools.”
In a sign of the diplomatic whiplash that the policy entails, the Kremlin raised eyebrows when a presidential aide indicated Moscow would stall a promise to deliver Russia’s vaunted S-300 surface to air-missile systems to Syria — Iran’s ally — following attendance by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at World World II Victory Day celebrations on Red Square May 9th.
President Putin’s primary spokesman later insisted the decisions were unrelated but the challenges ahead were obvious.
your ad hereWashington Preps for Trump-Kim Summit
With less than a month to go before a scheduled summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Washington is focused on the potential for major progress or pitfalls in the highly anticipated encounter. VOA’s Michael Bowman has this report.
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Trump Vows Action to Ease Job Loss at Chinese Tech Giant
President Donald Trump says he is looking for a way to let a Chinese technology firm “get back into business fast” after U.S. trade ruling severely crippled the company.
“Too many jobs in China lost,” Trump tweeted Sunday, days after ZTE announced it had ceased “major operating activities.”
The U.S. had cut off exports of U.S.-made parts to ZTE — more than 25 percent of the components ZTE needs to build its wireless stations, optical fiber networks and smartphones.
The U.S. cutoff came after ZTE was, in the words of one expert, “caught red-handed” putting the U.S. technology into products and selling those goods to countries under a U.S. trade embargo, including Iran and North Korea.
The U.S. fined ZTE $1.2 billion last year. But the U.S. said last month ZTE lied about punishing the employees believed to be involved in skirting the sanctions, paying them bonuses instead.
The Commerce Department cut off ZTE’s access to U.S. components until 2025, forcing it to shut down operations at its factory in Shenzhen.
Trump has often complained about China stealing U.S. jobs. But he tweeted he is working with Chinese President Xi Jinping to ease the economic fallout at ZTE and ordered the U.S. Commerce Department “to get it done!”
“The president’s tweet underscores the importance of a free, fair, balanced, and mutually beneficial economic trade and investment relationship between the United States and China,” the White House said Sunday. “The administration is in contact with China on this issue, among others, in the bilateral relationship.”
Douglas Jacobson, an attorney who represents suppliers who do business with ZTE, told VOA that Trump’s order to help ZTE is a stunning decision and one bound to make U.S. law enforcement officials unhappy by going over their heads.
“This has caught all of those in the exports and sanctions world certainly by surprise and with some degree of shock and awe,” Jacobson said. “This is unprecedented that the president of the United States would intervene in what really is a law enforcement case.”
But Jacobson said the ZTE matter is not a sign of a general thaw in trade tensions between the U.S. and China, including the recent tit-for-tat tariffs.
Jacobson said he believes Trump may be willing to make a concession on China in exchange for China’s help with North Korea.
Steve Herman, Ken Bredemeier, Ira Mellman and Kenneth Schwartz contributed to this report.
your ad hereCatalonia’s Radical Separatists Clear Way for New Leader
Catalonia’s most uncompromising separatists said Sunday that they won’t block the former leader of a pro-independence group from being elected as the restive Spanish region’s new leader.
The far-left CUP party decided that its four regional parliament members will abstain during an investiture session scheduled for Monday, which should leave another lawmaker, Quim Torra, with more “yes” than “no” votes.
Torra’s election is expected to end the Spanish government’s takeover of running Catalonia’s affairs that started with an illegal declaration of independence by the regional parliament in October.
Separatist parties maintained a slim majority in regional elections in December, but Spanish courts have blocked their previous efforts to elect two separatists in jail awaiting trial and fugitive former regional President Carles Puigdemont.
They have until May 22 to form a new government or new elections will be triggered.
Torra failed to be elected during an initial vote on Saturday, when the CUP’s abstention meant he fell short of winning the absolute majority needed to be elected on a first try. He needs fewer votes to secure the simple majority required to win a second round of balloting set for Monday.
The CUP said that while it “wouldn’t block” Torra’s election, it also won’t necessarily support his government if it does not continue Puigdemont’s open defiance of Spanish authorities and push for secession.
Torra, an outspoken Catalan nationalist, was hand-picked by Puigdemont, who is in Germany awaiting extradition to Spain on charges of rebellion and misuse of public funds in an illegal referendum on independence held last year.
The Catalan separatist movement has caused the worst political and institutional crisis in Spain in decades.
Polls show that the wealthy region’s 7.5 million residents are evenly divided on whether Catalonia should secede from Spain.
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