Swedish prosecutors say U.S. rapper A$AP Rocky should be formally arrested over a fight in downtown Stockholm and should be held for two weeks while police investigate the case.The Swedish Prosecution Authority says the rapper, whose real name is Rakim Mayers, and two of his body guards should be arrested because `”there is a risk that they escape (or) could obstruct justice if freed.”The authority said a third body guard was released late Wednesday and the case against him was dismissed.
Swedish media reported that the rapper was involved in the fight on Sunday before he appeared at a music festival in Sweden. It was not clear who else was involved in the incident.Prosecutors said Thursday a detention hearing would likely be held Friday
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Month: July 2019
Britain Backs Hong Kong Protests as China Slams ‘Foreign Interference’
China has accused Britain of ‘flagrant interference’ after it voiced support for anti-government protestors in Hong Kong. Britain has warned Beijing of serious consequences if it breaches the handover agreement signed between the two countries over the status of the territory. Pro-democracy supporters are urging Britain to do more, claiming it has a legal and moral duty to stand up for the freedom of Hong Kong’s people. Henry Ridgwell reports from London.
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Sudan’s Military Council, Opposition Resume Direct Talks
Sudan’s ruling military council and opposition groups resumed talks Wednesday after a month delay. The talks have raised hopes for a return to stability in Sudan. But the sides have yet to agree which one will hold ultimate power in a proposed transitional government. Sudan’s Transitional Military Council and opposition groups have resumed talks in Khartoum, responding to weeks of prodding from African Union and Ethiopian facilitators.The talks stalled a month ago over a basic question: who will ultimately control the proposed sovereign council that will lead Sudan until elections can be organized?Political analyst Motasim Ahmed thinks agreement is unavoidable, given that an African Union deadline has already past.As the time is so limited, an agreement should be reached, that means there’s a certain plan, a road map set by mediators and they should observe it and achieve it, Moatasim says. He further believes the concessions made by the two sides responding to the mediator’s suggestion to postpone the conflict on the legislative council may make a rapprochement. Sudan has been in turmoil since December, when protests against longtime president Omar al-Bashir erupted in Khartoum.The Transitional Military Council has ruled since soldiers removed Bashir from office on April 11. The leaders of the anti-Bashir protests are demanding that generals transfer power to civilians.The dispute flared into violence last month when security forces attacked the protesters’ camp outside army headquarters in Khartoum and killed dozens of demonstrators.
Protesters Rally Around World to Support Sudan’s Revolution video player.
Embed” />CopyProtesters Rally Around World to Support Sudan’s RevolutionDespite the renewed talks about a transitional government, protesters are skeptical.Anwar al-Habab has doubts about both sides.It’s so obvious that a final agreement will not be reached, because TMC breached the promise, she says. I think Declaration of Freedom and Change Forces also has no plan for the post-talks period. Its required that they should have a plan if they form a civilian government.Sixty-year-old protester Assim Berair believes the military does not want to share power.I expect that talks will fail because TMC is clinging to rule, Berair says. But I hope that TMC will respond to people’s demands being represented by the Declaration of Freedom and Change Forces, he adds.In a message on Wednesday, the U.S. embassy in Sudan noted that protesters continue to demonstrate for a civilian-led government, and said it is time for the TMC and opposition to come to an agreement.
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Australian Student Released in North Korea Says ‘I’m OK’
An Australian student released after a week in detention in North Korea arrived in Tokyo on Thursday after telling reporters he was in “very good” condition, without saying what happened to him.Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced to Parliament that Alek Sigley, 29, had been released following intervention from Swedish diplomats and had been taken to the Australian Embassy in Beijing.Later Thursday, Sigley flew to Tokyo’s Haneda airport to reunite with his Japanese wife. He walked past reporters there without making any comments.Earlier, at Beijing’s airport, he gave a peace sign and said “I’m OK, I’m OK, I’m good. I’m very good,” but did not respond to reporters’ questions about what had happened in Pyongyang.His father, Gary Sigley, a professor of Asian studies at the University of Western Australia, said his son had been treated well in North Korea.It was a much happier outcome than the case of American college student Otto Warmbier, who was imprisoned in North Korea and convicted of attempting to steal a propaganda poster. Warmbier died shortly after being sent back home to the U.S. in a vegetative state in June 2017.Sigley’s friend and fellow student of North Korea, University of Technology Sydney academic Bronwen Dalton, said she had spoken to Sigley’s wife, who was thrilled by his release.”We were jumping up and down and we love Sweden,” Dalton said.”He’s a fine, young, emerging Asian scholar, he is very applied to his studies. I really doubted whether he did actually anything wrong by the regime,” Dalton added.Swedish diplomats had raised concerns about Sigley with North Korean authorities in Pyongyang, where Australia does not have an embassy.”Swedish authorities advised the Australian government that they met with senior officials from the DPRK yesterday and raised the issue of Alek’s disappearance on Australia’s behalf,” Morrison said, using the official acronym for North Korea.”This outcome demonstrates the value of discrete behind-the-scenes work of officials in resolving complex and sensitive consular cases in close partnership with other governments,” Morrison said.In an interview with Swedish public radio, Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom said the country’s special envoy to North Korea, Kent Harstedt, “raised the issue of this case at highest level” in North Korea and the release happened during his visit there.North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency said the Swedish delegation led by Harstedt headed back home on Thursday after a four-day visit. It said the Swedes visited a stamp museum and shoe factory during their stay in North Korea, but made no mention of Sigley.The Pyongyang university student and tour guide had been out of contact with family and friends in Japan and Australia since Tuesday last week. He had been active on social media about his experiences in North Korea and had boasted about the extraordinary freedom he had been allowed as one of the few foreign students living in Pyongyang.Morrison’s announcement was the first confirmation that he had been detained.Morrison said he discussed Sigley’s disappearance with other world leaders attending the Group of 20 summit in Japan last week and accepted offers to find out what happened to him. Morrison dined with President Donald Trump in Osaka but declined to say with whom he discussed Sigley’s disappearance.North Korea has been accused in the past of detaining Westerners and using them as political pawns to gain concessions.Leonid Petrov, an Australian National University expert on North Korea and a friend of Sigley, last week speculated that Sigley had been “deliberately cut off from means of communications” temporarily because Trump was in the region.Petrov said on Thursday that he had not been able to contact Sigley since he had been freed, but still suspected his disappearance was linked to Trump’s meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Sunday.”It was a time of sensitivity in North Korea after the visit of (Chinese President) Xi Jinping and before the visit by Donald Trump,” Petrov said.”I expected this to happen a couple of days earlier, but it was a good thing to see the Swedish government delegation arrive on Monday just after the summit. It was the right time to be there,” Petrov added.
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Prosecutor Seeks Probe of crimes against Rohingya Muslims
The International Criminal Court prosecutor on Thursday filed a request with judges to open a formal investigation of crimes against humanity allegedly committed against Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar.Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said she wants to investigate crimes of deportation, inhumane acts and persecution allegedly committed as Rohingya were driven from Myanmar, which is not a member of the global court, into Bangladesh, an ICC member.The announcement marked a significant step in efforts to deliver justice to victims of one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises of recent years. ICC judges will carefully study the 146-page written request before deciding whether to authorize an investigation.Bensouda said that a preliminary probe established “a reasonable basis to believe that at least 700,000 Rohingya people were deported from Myanmar to Bangladesh through a range of coercive acts, and that great suffering or serious injury has been inflicted on the Rohingya through violating their right to return to their state of origin.”Her written request said that the coercive acts allegedly committed by Myanmar’s armed forces, border guards and police included “killings; rapes and other forms of sexual violence; acts of physical and psychological violence intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health; and the destruction of property including homes, livestock and entire villages.”Last year, the court ruled that it has jurisdiction over alleged deportation of Rohingya to Bangladesh because part of the crimes allegedly happened in Bangladesh.Myanmar’s military has been accused of widespread rights violations leading about 700,000 Rohingya to flee the country since August 2017. Bensouda said she wants her investigation to date back to October 2016.The long-simmering Rohingya crisis exploded in August 2017 when Myanmar’s military launched what it called a clearance campaign in Rakhine in response to an attack by a Rohingya insurgent group. The campaign led to the mass Rohingya exodus to Bangladesh and to accusations that security forces committed mass rapes and killings and burned thousands of homes.The International Criminal Court is a court of last resort that takes on cases when national authorities are unable or unwilling to prosecute alleged atrocities.Bensouda said that potential cases arising from her investigation should be admissible under ICC rules due to “the gravity of the acts committed … and the absence of relevant national investigations or prosecutions in Myanmar” or other countries.
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Migrants Say Libya Militias Conscripted Them to Clean Arms
Migrants who survived the deadly airstrike on a Libyan detention center said Thursday they had been conscripted by a local militia to work in an adjacent weapons workshop.The decision to store weapons at the facility in Tajoura, to the east of Tripoli, may have made it a target for the self-styled Libyan National Army, which is at war with an array of militias allied with a weak, U.N.-recognized government in the capital.
The Tripoli government has blamed Wednesday’s pre-dawn strike, which killed at least 44 migrants and wounded more than 130, on the LNA and its foreign backers. The LNA, led by Field Marshal Khalifa Hifter, says it targeted a nearby militia position but denies striking the hangar where the migrants were being held.Hifter, whose forces control much of eastern and southern Libya, has received aid from Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Russia.The U.N. and aid groups have meanwhile blamed the tragedy in part on the European Union’s policy of partnering with Libyan militias to prevent migrants from crossing the Mediterranean Sea to seek a better life in Europe. Critics of the policy say it leaves migrants at the mercy of brutal traffickers or confined in detention facilities near the front lines that often lack adequate food and water .
The dangers facing desperate migrants were highlighted further Thursday as the U.N.’s migration agency reported that a boat carrying 86 migrants from Libya sank in the Mediterranean Sea overnight and only three people were confirmed as survivors.
The International Organization for Migration said 82 were missing from the shipwreck late Wednesday off the Tunisian city of Zarzis. Earlier this week, another boat from Libya made it to the Tunisian port of Sfax with 65 people on board.
Around 6,000 migrants, most from elsewhere in Africa, are being held in Libya’s detention centers after being intercepted by the EU-funded coast guard. In Tajoura, hundreds of migrants are held in several hangars next to what appears to be a weapon cache.Two migrants told The Associated Press that for months they were sent day and night to the workshop inside the detention center.We clean the anti-aircraft guns. I saw a large amount of rockets and missiles too,'' said a young migrant who has been held at Tajoura for nearly two years.Another migrant recounted a nearly two-year odyssey in which he fled war in his native country and was passed from one trafficker to another until he reached the Libyan coast. He boarded a boat that was intercepted by the coast guard, which later transferred him to Tajoura, where he was wounded in Wednesday's airstrike.I fled from the war to come to this hell of Libya,” he said. My days are dark.''The migrants requested that their names and nationalities not be published, fearing reprisal.Many of those who died in the attack were crushed under debris as they slept. Pictures shared by the migrants show the hangar reduced to a pile of rubble littered with body parts. More than 48 hours after the strike, relief workers were still pulling bodies from the rubble while the wounded lay on bloody mattresses in a courtyard, receiving medical aid.The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Aid said Thursday that it received reports of guards firing on the migrants as they tried to flee after the airstrikes. A migrant told the AP it was not clear if the guards fired at the migrants or in the air.Despite the international outrage following the airstrike, aid groups said there are no plans to evacuate the migrants and that nowhere in Tripoli is safe.We are not aware of plans to relocate the migrants that remain in Tajoura,” said Safa Mshli, a International Organization for Migration spokeswoman. “Migrants intercepted or rescued at sea should not be returned to Libya, where they will face the same inhumane conditions.”
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New Saudi Ambassadors Take up Posts in Washington and London
Saudi Arabia’s new ambassadors to the United States and the United Kingdom have taken up their posts after several months’ vacancy amid tensions with Western allies over the Yemen war and the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.Princess Reema bint Bandar bin Sultan, the Gulf kingdom’s first female ambassador, presented her credentials in Washington while her brother, Prince Khalid bin Bandar bin Sultan, did so in London, state news agency SPA reported on Thursday.They arrive at a fraught period in both bilateral relationships, with heightened criticism of Riyadh’s human rights record and calls to freeze arms sales amid a four-year-old war in Yemen where the Saudi-led coalition is fighting the Iran-aligned Houthis.Princess Reema was named in February to replace Prince Khalid bin Salman, who was heavily criticized for denying that Khashoggi had been killed last October inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul before the authorities ultimately acknowledged the murder of the Washington Post columnist.The former ambassador, a brother of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, is now deputy defense minister in Riyadh. The CIA and some Western countries believe the crown prince ordered Khashoggi’s murder, which Saudi officials deny.The new ambassadors, both in their 40s, are the children of a former long-time envoy to the United States. Princess Reema lived in Washington with him for many years and studied at George Washington University.She has no previous diplomatic experience, having worked in the private sector before joining the kingdom’s General Sports Authority where she championed women’s participation in sports and focused on increasing women’s empowerment.She becomes ambassador as deeply conservative Saudi Arabia is opening up and granting women more freedom, though also cracking down on dissent including the detention of around a dozen women activists, most of whom had campaigned for the right to drive, which was granted last year. Some campaigners say they have been subjected to torture.Her brother Prince Khalid was previously ambassador to Germany, whose relationship with Riyadh has been strained in recent years by a moratorium on German arms exports and criticism of the kingdom’s “adventurism” in the Middle East.
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Hot Weather in Greek Capital Shuts Down Acropolis
Greece’s most famous archaeological site, the Acropolis in Athens, has shut down to visitors for four hours because of hot weather in the capital.The antiquities authority said the Acropolis would remain closed to visitors from 1 p.m.-5 p.m. on Thursday if temperatures in Athens rose above 36 C (96.8 F), with a real feel of about 40 C (104 F). Hot weather was also forecast for Friday, and authorities said the Acropolis would also shut for four hours that day if those temperatures were reached.The hilltop UNESCO World Heritage site, which includes the 2,500-year-old Parthenon, is Greece’s most popular tourist attraction, with 3.15 million visitors last year.
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Migrants Say Libya Militias Conscripted Them to Clean Arms
Migrants who survived the deadly airstrike on a Libyan detention center say they had been conscripted by a local militia to work in an adjacent weapons workshop.
Two migrants told The Associated Press on Thursday that for months they were sent day and night to a workshop inside the Tajoura detention center, which housed hundreds of African migrants.
A young migrant who has been held for nearly two years at Tajoura says “we clean the anti-aircraft guns. I saw a large amount of rockets and missiles too.”
The migrants spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.
Libya’s warring parties are trading accusations for Wednesday’s strike, which killed at least 44 migrants.
Aid agencies say even after the strikes, there is no plan for evacuating the facility.
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Record Number of Americans Travel for Independence Day
A record-breaking number of Americans, close to 50 million, are expected to travel on Independence Day this year, which is 4% more than the same time last year. While many travelers fly to their destination, most are driving even if they have to cover a long distance. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports Americans are willing to spend hours in the car and drive hundreds of kilometers to visit family or reach a getaway destination.
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Courts Seek Clarity After US Justice Department Changes Course on Census Question
U.S. federal courts and states that challenged the Trump administration’s decision to include a citizenship question on the country’s 2020 census are asking for clarity after the Departments of Justice and Commerce suddenly reversed what had been an acceptance of finalizing the questionnaire without inquiring about citizenship status.The Supreme Court has ruled that the government’s reasoning for including the citizenship question did not meet standards for a clear explanation of why it should be asked during the count of people in the United States that takes place every 10 years.The matter seemed further settled Tuesday when the DOJ and Commerce Department made public statements and comments in legal cases that the process of printing the census was going forward without a citizenship question in order to meet deadlines for carrying out the count on time.The News Reports about the Department of Commerce dropping its quest to put the Citizenship Question on the Census is incorrect or, to state it differently, FAKE! We are absolutely moving forward, as we must, because of the importance of the answer to this question.— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) FILE – U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross speaks at the 11th Trade Winds Business Forum and Mission hosted by the U.S. Department of Commerce, in New Delhi, India, May 7, 2019.So far, rulings have focused on the administrative process and whether Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross acted reasonably in pursuing his agencies goals. An examination of equal protection challenges would bring into the case whether the administration sought to suppress the count of minorities in the census.Trump’s Democratic opponents have claimed that including the citizenship question is a Republican ploy to scare immigrants into not participating in the census out of fear that immigration officials might target them for deportation when they determine that they are in the country illegally. An undercount in Democrat-leaning areas with large immigrant and Latino populations could reduce congressional representation for such states and cut federal aid.The attorneys general of California and New York have asked federal courts in those states to hold conferences Friday so that the Justice Department can make its positions clear after what has happened in the Maryland District Court and with the changing statements from the Trump administration.What’s going onIn the conference call with the Maryland court Wednesday, Justice Department special counsel Joshua Gardner admitted that they were still sorting out how to respond to Trump’s statements.“The tweet this morning was the first I had heard of the president’s position on this issue, just like the plaintiffs and your honor,” Gardner said. “I do not have a deeper understanding of what that means at this juncture, other than what the president has tweeted. But, obviously, as you can imagine, I am doing my absolute best to figure out what’s going on.”However, Gardner added that the Census Bureau has not stopped its current process of printing the census without a citizenship question, as the government continues to weigh what options it may have.The Census Bureau had previously set a target date of early July to begin printing the questionnaire in order to have it prepared for delivery to the American public by the April 1 deadline.The census is important because it determines how many seats in the House of Representatives each state is allotted and how $800 billion in federal aid is disbursed.After the Supreme Court heard arguments on the citizenship question but before it ruled, documents emerged from the files of a deceased Republican election districting expert showing that the citizenship question was aimed at helping Republicans gain an electoral edge over Democrats.FILE – Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., counters arguments by Republicans on the House Rules Committee as they vote to authorize contempt cases, June 10, 2019.Congressional hearing Rep. Jamie Raskin, the chairman of the Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties at the House Oversight Committee announced Wednesday afternoon that the director of the U.S. Census Bureau, Steven Dillingham, will testify at a hearing July 24 on the status of planning and preparations for the 2020 Census.“It is time for the Census Bureau to move beyond all the outside political agendas and distractions and devote its full attention to preparing for the 2020 Census,” Raskin, the Maryland Democrat, said. “This hearing will examine the current status of the Bureau’s readiness for the Census next year — especially in areas where the bureau may be falling behind such as IT, security and public education.”
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Detained Australian Leaves North Korea, Arrives in China
An Australian student released after a week in detention in North Korea described his condition to reporters in Beijing on Thursday as “very good,” without saying what happened.Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced to Parliament that Alek Sigley, 29, had been released hours earlier following intervention from Swedish diplomats Wednesday, and had been taken to the Australian Embassy in Beijing.Sigley looked relaxed and gave a peace sign when he arrived at Beijing airport. He did not respond to reporters’ questions about what had happened in Pyongyang.“I’m OK, I’m OK, I’m good. I’m very good,” Sigley said. Asked how he was feeling, Sigley replied: “Great.”His father, Gary Sigley, a professor of Asian studies at University of Western Australia, said his son would soon be reunited with his Japanese wife, Yuka Morinaga, in Tokyo.“He’s fine. He’s in very good spirits. He’s been treated well,” the father told reporters in his hometown of Perth.Australian student Alek Sigley, 29, who was detained in North Korea, arrives at Beijing international airport in Beijing, July 4, 2019.Jumping up and downSigley’s friend and fellow student of North Korea, University of Technology Sydney academic Bronwyn Dalton, said she had recently spoken to Sigley’s wife, who was thrilled by the news.“We were jumping up and down and we love Sweden,” Dalton said.“He’s a fine, young, emerging Asian scholar, he is very applied to his studies. I really doubted whether he did actually anything wrong by the regime,” Dalton added.Swedish diplomats had raised concerns about Sigley with North Korean authorities in Pyongyang, where Australia does not have an embassy.“Alek is safe and well. Swedish authorities advised the Australian government that they met with senior officials from the DPRK yesterday and raised the issue of Alek’s disappearance on Australia’s behalf,” Morrison said, using the official acronym for North Korea.Morrison thanked Swedish authorities for “their invaluable assistance in securing Alek’s prompt release.”“This outcome demonstrates the value of discrete behind-the-scenes work of officials in resolving complex and sensitive consular cases in close partnership with other governments,” Morrison said.Special Envoy of the Swedish government Kent Harstedt and his party meet with North Korea’s Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho during a courtesy call, in this undated photo released July 4, 2019.In an interview with Swedish public radio Thursday, Sweden’s Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom said she had been in contact with Australia and Sweden’s special envoy to North Korea, Kent Harstedt. She said Sweden had “raised the issue of this case at highest level” in North Korea and the release happened during Harstedt’s visit to Pyongyang.“Happy for the release of Australian citizen Alek Sigley today! Sweden has done its utmost to work for Mr Sigley under our bilateral agreement with Australia. Relieved that the situation was resolved,” Wallstrom tweeted.The Pyongyang university student and tour guide had been out of contact with family and friends in Japan and Australia since last Tuesday. He had been active in social media about his experiences in North Korea and had boasted about the extraordinary freedom he had been allowed as one of the few foreign students living in Pyongyang.Morrison’s announcement was the first confirmation that he had been detained.Morrison said he discussed Sigley’s disappearance with other world leaders attending the Group of 20 summit in Japan last week and accepted offers to find out what happened to him. Morrison had dined with President Donald Trump in Osaka but declined to say with whom he had discussed Sigley’s disappearance.North Korea has been accused in the past of detaining Westerners and using them as political pawns to gain concessions. Australia advises people to reconsider their need to travel to North Korea and warns that foreigners have been subject to arbitrary arrests and long detentions.Leonid Petrov, an Australian National University expert on North Korea and friend of Sigley, last week speculated that Sigley had been “deliberately cut off from means of communications” temporarily because Trump was in the region.Petrov said Thursday that he had not been able to contact Sigley since he had been freed, but still suspected his disappearance was linked to Trump meeting North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Sunday.“It was a time of sensitivity in North Korea after the visit of (Chinese President Xi Jinping) and before the visit by Donald Trump,” Petrov said.“I expected this to happen a couple of days earlier, but it was a good thing to see the Swedish government delegation arrive on Monday just after the summit. It was the right time to be there, “ Petrov added.
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Tornado Kills 6 in Northeast China as More ‘Extreme’ Weather Strikes
A tornado swept through the northeastern Chinese province of Liaoning Wednesday, killing six and injuring 190, the state broadcaster said, amid a series of “extreme” weather events that government forecasters have linked to climate change.The tornado damaged nearly 3,600 homes and affected more than 9,900 residents in Kaiyuan, a city of around a half-million people, according to China Central Television.Footage posted by CCTV on its official Weibo account shows dozens of flattened buildings in an economic development zone in Kaiyuan.A tornado in northeast China has reportedly killed six people and injured at least 190. https://t.co/IWsCJ57j49pic.twitter.com/F6HovboTwH— ABC News (@ABC) July 4, 2019China’s Global Times newspaper said that tornadoes were rarely seen in the area.The country’s weather bureau Tuesday said climate change could cause more extreme weather events, following floods, drought and extreme high temperatures in some regions this year.It said rainfall had broken records in some areas and that as many as 40 weather stations had this year registered their hottest temperatures ever.The northern Chinese province of Hebei issued an extreme heat “red alert” Thursday, with temperatures set to soar beyond 40 Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) in its major cities and putting the area’s corn crop at risk, the local government said.The government of Hebei said on its official website that the cities of Baoding, Shijiazhuang, Hengshui, Cangzhou, Xingtai and Handan were all expected to see temperatures above 40C Thursday.The local weather bureau also warned that the extreme heat and drought in the province were likely to affect its corn crop.Hebei, which surrounds the capital Beijing, is among China’s biggest producers of the grain.Rainfall in the province has declined 23.9% compared to the average in the second quarter of 2019, the local Hebei Daily reported.Cities in Hebei have been deploying sprinklers mounted on trucks to try to keep temperatures down, putting further pressure on water supplies.The heat wave that has swept across northern China, including the capital Beijing, is expected to last until next week, the Hebei Daily said, citing the local weather bureau.In a joint statement with France and the United Nations released Saturday, China promised to show the “highest possible ambition” when it comes to fighting global warming, with higher targets to cut carbon emissions expected next year.
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Trump Hints at US Currency Manipulation
President Donald Trump is suggesting the United States start manipulating its currency to match the “big currency manipulation game” he accuses China and Europe of playing.“We should match or continue being the dummies who sit back and politely watch as other countries continue to play their games as they have for many years!” Trump tweeted Wednesday.Countries that manipulate currency sell their own currency and buy foreign money, intending to artificially drive down the value of their own money. The intention is to make their exports cheaper and more competitive on the world market, giving their products an unfair advantage.Trump constantly accused China of such action during his 2016 presidential campaign.But since Trump took office, the Treasury Department has found that no country can be labeled a currency manipulator. Eight countries are on the manipulator watch list, including China, Germany, Ireland and Italy.
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Putin to Meet Pope in Shadow of Ukraine Crisis
Russian President Vladimir Putin will hold talks with Pope Francis on Thursday, a day before Ukraine’s Catholic leaders meet at the Vatican to discuss the crisis in their country, and amid speculation that the visit could be a prelude to the first trip by a pope to Russia.Putin, who has met Francis twice before, is due to arrive at the Vatican in the early afternoon at the start of a lightning visit to Italy that will also include talks with Italian leaders.Ukraine, which remains a difficult issue in relations between the Vatican and Russia, is expected to be a main topic of discussions in the official papal library in the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace.When they last met in 2015, the pope urged Putin to make a “sincere and great effort” to achieve peace in Ukraine and help bring an end to fighting between Ukrainian government forces and pro-Russian separatist rebels in the East.On Friday, leaders of Ukraine’s Catholic Church and Vatican officials begin two days of meetings to discuss various problems in their country, a former Soviet republic.Church’s independenceUkraine’s religious world was made tense last year when the country’s Orthodox Church, which for centuries effectively had been under control of the Russian Orthodox Church, declared its independence and set up a national church.Russia opposes the Ukrainian Orthodox Church having autocephalous, or self-governing, status, saying the move had more political than religious motives.Putin has aligned himself closely with the Russian Orthodox Church and has accused the government in Kyiv of flagrantly meddling in the life of Orthodoxy in Ukraine.Thursday’s meeting between the pope and Putin will be their first since Francis and Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill met in 2016, a landmark step in healing the 1,000-year-old rift between the Western and Eastern branches of Christianity.Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, and Boris Yeltsin, the first president of post-Soviet Russia, had invited the late Pope John Paul to visit.Friction stood in wayBut a trip was not possible because of tensions between the Vatican and the Russian Orthodox Church, the largest and most influential in world Orthodoxy, with 165 million of the world’s 250 million Orthodox Christians.Apart from his meeting three years ago with Kirill, which was the first in history between a Roman Catholic pope and a Russian Orthodox patriarch, Francis has made a number of visits to countries with predominantly Orthodox populations.The latest were to Romania and to Bulgaria and North Macedonia earlier this year.From the Vatican, Putin will meet with Italy’s prime minister and president and attend a conference on Italian-Russian dialogue at the foreign ministry.
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Government Sends Migrant Girls to New Florida Facility
The Trump administration is sending migrant girls who have crossed the U.S.-Mexico border to a new Florida facility run by a nonprofit organization under a government grant.The teenage girls arriving in Lake Worth, Fla., will receive classroom education and mental health and legal services until they are reunited with relatives in the U.S., said Annette Scheckler, spokeswoman for the organization, the Virginia-based U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants. Facility near Mar-a-Lago resortUp to 141 girls can be housed in a building in apartment-style units with two or four beds each, Sheckler said. About 50 teens now in need of housing are currently staying in an unused section of a nursing home complex.The facility, which sits just south of West Palm Beach and only 9 miles (14 kilometers) away from President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, opened amid scathing criticism from lawmakers and migrant advocates about poor conditions at migrant facilities in Texas and the treatment of teenagers at a detention center in Homestead, Fla. Their arrival also began mere weeks after local leaders in Florida reacted with alarm to a U.S. Border Patrol notification that 1,000 migrants could be sent on a weekly basis to Palm Beach and Broward counties. Trump eventually denied the reports, saying there were “no plans to send migrants to northern or Coastal Border facilities.”Most girls are from central AmericaThe girls come mostly from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. After crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, they are first taken into custody by U.S. Border Patrol agents, and then transferred to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which funds the facility.“It’s a temporary foster care-type situation,” Sheckler told The Associated Press. “Our first concern is to keep the girls safe and secure.”Health and Human Services has awarded a $13.4 million grant to the nonprofit “to provide for the care and placement” of unaccompanied migrant minors until September 2021, government spending records show. HHS has 168 facilities in 23 statesHHS has a network of about 168 facilities in 23 states, including two smaller shelters in South Florida and the detention center in Homestead. Sheckler said the organization connects the teens to an attorney to work on their claims for asylum or other immigration relief. The facility’s bathrooms have towels, soap, toothbrushes and other hygiene products, according to Sheckler, who said she wanted to calm any fears that conditions at the new shelter might mirror those of facilities along the border that have been so heavily criticized.
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EU’s Eastern Bloc Left Out in Top Jobs Deal
Eastern European states ended up empty-handed in the EU top jobs bonanza after they expended all their political capital in successfully blocking Dutch Socialist Frans Timmermans from becoming president of the executive European Commission.As a vice president of the outgoing Commission, Timmermans annoyed the nationalist governments in Poland and Hungary for spearheading EU criticism of their record on the rule of law and democratic freedoms. He is now likely to stay on as a vice president in the next Commission, which takes over Nov. 1.But no candidate from the ex-communist east will now head up any key EU institutions over the next five years following marathon negotiations that have highlighted the bloc’s growing divisions.German nominatedGerman conservative Ursula von der Leyen has been nominated to lead the Commission, France’s Christine Lagarde will head the European Central Bank, Belgium’s Charles Michel will replace Poland’s Donald Tusk as chairman of EU summits and Spanish Socialist Joseph Borrell will become the bloc’s top diplomat.In the acrimonious three-day summit, which ended Tuesday, the easterners not only wasted a chance to boost their institutional clout. They also upset wealthier western European states, which had grown impatient with them for refusing to cooperate on migration, climate change and other issues.“The V4 have dug their heels in and managed to block Timmermans because of his willingness to stand up for EU law,” one EU official said, referring to the so-called Visegrad group comprising Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. “They’ve been obstructionist, gotten their way and feel emboldened while having a questionable commitment to European values.”Another diplomat said von der Leyen, an ally of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, was unlikely to prove a pushover on democratic standards. The European Parliament must still approve her nomination.“Yes they blocked Timmermans, but they ended up with nothing much else aside from supporting von der Leyen, and she has no reason to be soft on the rule of law,” the diplomat said.Several easterners, including Slovakia’s Maros Sefcovic and Bulgaria’s Kristalina Georgieva, currently head of the World Bank, had been tipped for one of the top EU jobs, but the region’s governments failed to unite around any one candidate.On Wednesday, the fifth and final EU job up for grabs, the president of the European Parliament, went to Italy’s David Sassoli.East vs WestThe Visegrad 4 have become increasingly at odds with the EU, refusing to help host refugees reaching Europe and striking down more ambitious climate goals, citing their economic unpreparedness.Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who declared the blocking of Timmermans an “important success,” stands accused of flirting with authoritarianism.Both Orban and Poland’s ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party have tightened controls on their courts and judges, media and academics, as well as non-governmental groups.Despite alarm in Western Europe and among rights groups that their moves violate democratic principles, they remain popular at home thanks to generous social spending programs and their tough line on migrants.Without prominent representation in Brussels now, the risk is that the eastern states may drift further away from western European nations, which are net payers into the EU budget and which increasingly resent helping to subsidize governments that then attack and undermine liberal values.However, the easterners seemed broadly happy with von der Leyen’s surprise nomination. She won praise in Poland and elsewhere as German defense minister for strongly criticizing Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine and her support for a bigger NATO presence in the region.“I had a chance to speak with Ms. von der Leyen and I think she is a good choice,” said Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki.
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Film Depicts Uighur Diaspora’s Struggle to Keep Identity
Walking across the streets of London on a sunny morning, Aziz Isa Elkun is holding his little daughter’s hand and talking to her about what it is like to be a bird.At first, it may seem like an ordinary scene of a father chatting with his daughter as he takes her to school, but the conversation soon alters to show how it feels for thousands of Uighurs who are unable to “fly freely” and return to their homeland of Xinjiang in northwestern China.”Look, my daughter, look at the birds,” the filmmaker tells his daughter in “An Unanswered Telephone Call,” a short film based on his life story. “They fly freely above the trees; they don’t know borders. At the moment, if I become a bird right now, I would fly straight off to my homeland.”FilmThe next scene of the film takes the audience deeper into the nostalgic feeling accompanying most Uighurs abroad, as they long to know the whereabouts of their loved ones stranded in China’s Xinjiang province.Elkun meets Lucie, a French woman from Nice, who is also taking her daughter to school, while at the same time exuberantly face-chatting via phone with her mom on her 80th birthday. “How lucky you are to be able to speak to your mother through a video call. I’m jealous,” Elkun tells Lucie.Aziz Isa Elkun’s mother talks to him by telephone in Xinjiang, China, in “An Unanswered Telephone Call.” (Courtesy Aziz Isa Elkun)In an interview with VOA, Elkun said his father died in October 2017. He is not sure whether his 76-year-old mother is still alive because she stopped taking calls from him in early 2018.”After I heard my father’s health was deteriorating, I applied for a visa on humanitarian grounds at the Chinese Embassy in London, but my visa application was refused,” he told VOA. He last heard from his mother in January 2018 when she told him Chinese police had ordered her not to answer international calls or she would “face consequences.””I was shocked, frustrated and very sad. I waited for a week and called my mother again, but the phone was unanswered,” Elkun said of the incident that inspired the title of his film. Elkun moved to the United Kingdom in 2001 as a political refugee and is now a naturalized British citizen, living with his wife and two children in London. He works as a researcher and writer for the University of London, while at the same time remaining an active advocate for the Uighur ethnic minority.He said he hopes the film, which made its debut in Washington last month, will help educate people about the Uighurs’ plight in Xinjiang autonomous region amid the severe crackdown they face from the Chinese Communist Party.”I just simply wanted to make a voice through making this film and publicizing it,” Elkun told VOA, adding, “So many people don’t know what Uighurs are facing at the moment. Uighurs in diaspora struggle to gain information about family, and many have not been able to speak to their relatives in China for years.”A young Aziz Isa Elkun and his mother ride in a cart in Xinjiang, China, in “An Unanswered Telephone Call.” (Courtesy Aziz Isa Elkun)Uighur issue Xinjiang, in northwest China, is home to nearly 22 million people and has the greatest concentration of Muslims in China. There are an estimated 13 million Uighurs and other Turkic Muslim minorities in the region.The Chinese government has faced growing international criticism in recent years for the detention of what is reported to be more than a million Uighurs and other Muslims in the so-called re-education camps.Chinese officials say the camps are vocational training centers and that their measures are necessary to combat “the three forces of evil” of “terrorism, religious extremism and separatism” in the region.Ethnic cleansing The crackdown, however, is seen by many experts and rights groups as systematic ethnic cleansing.Rebecca Clothey, director of global studies at Drexel University in Philadelphia and a researcher on Uighurs, said Chinese officials have cut off local Uighurs in Xinjiang from outside contact to try to hide government actions in the region.She said the censorship has a serious psychological impact on those of the minority who have fled home.”People at home, I mean in the Uighur region, are afraid to talk to people outside because they are worried about getting accused of talking to ‘terrorists,'” Clothey told VOA.Aziz Isa Elkun’s mother sits in front of her house in Xinjiang, China, April 2019, in this scene from the film “An Unanswered Telephone Call” (Courtesy Aziz Isa Elkun)New surveillance measuresA recent Human Rights Watch report found China’s government has imposed a surveillance system to monitor popular communication applications such as WhatsApp, Viber, Telegram, as well as virtual private networks (VPNs). It said the new system also closely followed people’s relationships, traveling with someone who is on a police watch list or has obtained a new phone number.Through the country’s Strike Hard Campaign, watch groups say, authorities have also collected biometrics, including DNA samples, fingerprints, iris scans and blood types of all residents in the region ages 12 to 65.Despite the heavy-handed campaign, Elkun told VOA he was optimistic that his people would preserve their Turkic identity. He said his film could teach Uighurs growing up abroad to remember Xinjiang, called “East Turkistan” by Uighurs.At the end of the film, Elkun’s daughter tells him she explained to her teacher and classmates that she was from “East Turkistan, and it’s a country that doesn’t have independence.”My clever girl, your daddy is proud of you,” the filmmaker responds. “You know that your daddy can’t live without his past. It is his identity; it is his everything. East Turkistan is an occupied country that belongs to your father, and his children and grandchildren.”
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Deadly Libya Bombing May Be War Crime
The bombing in Libya’s capital that killed at least 44 people, with some reports saying as many as 55, and injured more than 130 on Tuesday night may amount to a war crime, according to a United Nations envoy in Tripoli.Outside the suburban Tripoli detention center early Wednesday, survivors watched investigators pick through the rubble after a long night outside with barely any food and water.”We just want peace,” said one Somali woman, taking cover under a tree as investigators searched for bodies well into the afternoon. “We went from Somalia to Yemen, then to Sudan and then came here. This is just like Somalia.”At the morgue in the Libyan capital, bodies were wrapped and prepared for forensic examination while injured people in the hospital were treated, some barely conscious.Bags with bodies of migrants who died after an air strike hit a detention center for mainly African migrants in Tajoura are seen in Tripoli Central Hospital, Libya, July 3, 2019.Survivors said the attack occurred about 11:30 p.m. Tuesday and that they had regularly heard drones hovering over the detention compound in recent weeks.”At the beginning we heard faraway clashes, then we heard this strong bomb,” said Saddam, an 18-year-old from Sudan who has been detained for a year after being caught attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea to Europe.
“We were banging on the doors and the security people came and let us out and we saw the building on fire,” he said.WarTripoli officials attribute the attack to the forces loyal to Khalifa Haftar, a strongman who leads the military in eastern Libya.
Haftar’s forces have been locked in battle for three months with the forces loyal to the internationally backed government in Tripoli. They are fighting for control of the city and the future of the Libyan government.The war has now killed about 700 people and displaced 94,000. Last week, after Tripoli forces captured a strategic town, Haftar’s forces threatened retaliation. Amnesty International says its research indicates there is a weapons storehouse near the destroyed detention center.”This deadly attack which struck a detention center where at least 600 refugees and migrants were trapped in detention with no means of escape, and whose location was known to all warring parties, must be independently investigated as a war crime,” Magdalena Mughrabi, deputy Middle East and North Africa director at Amnesty International, said in a statement Wednesday.Debris covers the ground and an emergency vehicle after an airstrike at a detention center in Tajoura, east of Tripoli in Libya, July 3, 2019. An airstrike hit the detention center for migrants, killing several.The organization blamed the attackers for potentially deliberately targeting civilians. Amnesty also pointed to those who housed the detainees near what could be a military target, and also increasingly restrictive European migration policies that endanger refugees determined to flee to safety at any cost. Amnesty called the policies “callous.”The United States strongly condemned the “abhorrent” attack on the facility in Tajoura and called for peace.”This tragic and needless loss of life, which impacted one of the most vulnerable populations, underscores the urgent need for all Libyan parties to de-escalate fighting in Tripoli and return to the political process, which is the only viable path to lasting peace and stability in Libya,” said State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus in a statement.Still movingOutside the blasted-out detention center, some survivors said they had been displaced several times by war, violence and poverty before coming to Libya in the hopes of crossing the sea to Europe. A migrant carries his belongings at a detention center for mainly African migrants, that was hit by an airstrike in the Tajoura suburb of Tripoli, Libya, July 3, 2019.Libya has long been on a common if often deadly route from the Middle East and Africa to Europe. Nearly 600 people have died in the Mediterranean Sea attempting to cross to Europe this year alone.
“They were from Africa, Asia and Arab countries — Bangladesh, Morocco, Egypt, Syria, Cameroon, Nigeria, Niger,” said Tripoli Police Lt. Col. Nouradine Greetly, who heads the detention center.
Aid workers say detainees have the option to return to their home countries or apply for asylum in Libya, but many remain in detention centers, determined to continue their journey to Europe.
“I have to go to Europe,” said Saddam, still hoping for the chance to catch another smuggler’s boat, a year after he was first detained. “There is nothing for me here.”
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N. Korea: US ‘Hell-Bent on Hostile Acts’ Despite Wanting to Talk
North Korea’s mission to the United Nations accused the United States on Wednesday of being “more and more hell-bent on hostile acts” against Pyongyang, despite President Donald Trump’s desire for talks between the two countries. In a statement, the mission said it was responding to a U.S. accusation that Pyongyang had breached a cap on refined petroleum imports, as well as to a letter that it said was sent on June 29 by the United States, France, Germany and Britain to all U.N. member states urging them to implement sanctions against North Korea. “What can’t be overlooked is the fact that this joint letter game was carried out by the permanent mission of the United States to the U.N. under instruction of the State Department, on the very same day when President Trump proposed for the summit meeting,” the statement said. Trump became the first sitting U.S. president to set foot in North Korea on Sunday when he met leader Kim Jong Un in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) between the two Koreas. The pair agreed to resume stalled talks aimed at getting Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons program. The North Korean U.N. mission said the June 29 letter to U.N. member states “speaks to the reality that the United States is practically more and more hell-bent on the hostile acts against the DPRK, though talking about the DPRK-U.S. dialog.” North Korea is formally known as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). FILE – Members of the U.N. Security Council vote to tighten sanctions on North Korea at U.N. headquarters in New York, March 7, 2013.The U.N. Security Council has unanimously boosted sanctions on North Korea since 2006 in a bid to choke funding for Pyongyang’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs, banning exports including coal, iron, lead, textiles and seafood, and capping imports of crude oil and refined petroleum products. ‘Obsessed with sanctions’ The United States, backed by dozens of allies, told a council sanctions committee last month that North Korea had breached an annual U.N. cap of 500,000 barrels imposed in December 2017, mainly through transfers between ships at sea. Washington wanted the 15-member North Korea sanctions committee to demand an immediate halt to deliveries of refined petroleum to North Korea. However, Pyongyang allies Russia and China delayed the move. The letter from the United States, Germany, Britain and France cited by North Korea’s U.N. mission — and viewed by Reuters — was actually dated June 27. It urges all U.N. member states to comply with Security Council sanctions requiring the repatriation of all North Korean workers by Dec. 22, 2019. “It is quite ridiculous” for the United States to continue to be “obsessed” with sanctions and its pressure campaign against the DPRK, “considering sanctions as a panacea for all problems,” the North Korean U.N. mission said Wednesday. Following Sunday’s meeting between Kim and Trump, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that a new round of denuclearization talks would most likely happen “sometime in July … probably in the next two or three weeks,” and that North Korea’s negotiators would be Foreign Ministry diplomats. The United States and other Security Council members have said there must be strict enforcement of sanctions until Pyongyang acts, while Russia and China have suggested the council discuss easing the measures. “All U.N. member states will have to keep vigilance against deliberate attempts by the United States to undermine the peaceful atmosphere that has been created on the Korean Peninsula in no easy way,” the North Korean statement said.
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NY Official Asks Judge for Clarity on Citizenship Question
New York state’s attorney general asked a judge Wednesday to help resolve conflicting accounts by President Donald Trump and his administration as to whether they still want a citizenship question added to the 2020 census.Attorney General Letitia James asked U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman for a hearing over the statements after the U.S. Supreme Court last week decided the question can’t immediately be added.James cited a Wednesday Trump tweet in which the president said news reports saying the Department of Commerce was dropping its quest to add the citizenship question were “FAKE!”She also cited a statement by the commerce secretary saying the Census Bureau was printing the questionnaires without the question.In a court order, the judge said the Justice Department lawyers who defended the case before him last year must respond to James’ request for court intervention later Wednesday and include “a statement of Defendants’ position and intentions.”Furman and two other judges in California and Maryland have concluded that the question was improperly added to the census last year by the Commerce Department without adequate consideration.The administration had said the question was being added to aid in enforcement of the Voting Rights Act, which protects minority voters’ access to the ballot box.
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US, China Could Resume Formal Trade Talks in Days
Formal trade talks between the United States and China are poised to resume days from now, a senior White House official told VOA on Wednesday. “Those talks will continue in earnest this coming week, actually,” said Larry Kudlow, National Economic Council director. Asked by VOA if the discussions would be face to face, Kudlow replied in the affirmative, noting they would be led by U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin with their respective staffs and trade principals.
“We will be very involved now,” added Kudlow.
Asked if the Americans would travel to China or the Chinese would be visiting the U.S., Kudlow said, “I don’t know yet.”
U.S. President Donald Trump, following a lengthy Friday meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Osaka on the sidelines of the G-20 leaders’ summit, said that telephone discussions between trade officials of the two countries had already resumed and relations with Beijing were “right back on track.”
The truce in the U.S.-China yearlong trade war meant Trump would not impose tariffs of up to 25 percent on an additional $300 billion worth of Chinese goods.
Xi, at the start of the meeting with Trump in Japan, said that “cooperation and dialogue are better than friction and confrontation.”
FILE – President Donald Trump shakes hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping during a meeting on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan, June 29, 2019.The Chinese leader, however, failed to win relief from existing sanctions on $250 billion in goods — which it countered by placing punitive tariffs on $110 billion in American products.
“We will not lift tariffs during the talks,” Kudlow cautioned Wednesday.
Referring to concessions made by the United States to China on telecommunications giant Huawei, Kudlow characterized the adjustment as one of having “slightly opened up the general merchandise applications for export licenses — not national security.”
The U.S. Commerce Department announced Tuesday that as long as Huawei remained on the entity list, reviews of export licenses would “continue under the highest national security scrutiny,” which is “the presumption of denial.”
Kudlow said the Trump administration hoped Beijing would keep its side of the bargain by purchasing “a good many American imports — agriculture, agricultural services, maybe industrial, maybe energy.”
The National Economic Council director reiterated that China’s “unfair and frequently unlawful trading practices cannot be tolerated.”
He specifically noted theft of intellectual property, technology transfers and cyberspace hacking.
“It’s been a very unbalanced relationship,” Kudlow said.
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Ben Gurion Incident Exposes West’s Vulnerability to GPS Disruption
This story originated in VOA’s Ukrainian service.
A spate of GPS disruptions at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport has confirmed what several prominent tech analysts have long feared: that Western nations, and the U.S. in particular, are unusually vulnerable to foreign meddling with location-based technology.
Most location-based software programs, such as the U.S.’s Global Positioning System (GPS), the European Union’s Galileo, China’s BeiDou and Russia’s Glonass, depend on the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), the vast network of international satellites orbiting the Earth.
The technology plays an integral part in our everyday lives, affecting such things as personal phone use, car navigation, international shipping, air travel, power grids, financial markets, and law enforcement and emergency response services. It’s also vital to military operations.
So it is no surprise that authorities were alarmed last week when several aircraft flying near Ben Gurion reported disruption to their satellite navigation systems. Officials said they thought the disruptions were caused by signals emanating from Syria, where Russian forces are involved in that nation’s long-running civil war.
FILE – A U.S. soldier in Kuwait holds a GPS navigation device.Russian diplomats ridiculed the claim, but it was not the first time their country has been singled out. A report issued in March by the Washington-based Center for Advanced Defense Studies (C4ADS) charged that Russia has been hacking non-Russian navigation systems on an extraordinary scale.
Since February 2016, C4ADS analysts reported, Russian intelligence had meddled with GPS equipment aboard 1,311 civilian ships. The report said 9,883 hacking incidents were reported or detected by maritime vessels or aircraft in 2017, with most of the incidents involving planes and ships near the Black Sea, Russia and Syria.
Beyond pinpointing geographic coordinates, GNSS is also used for precision timing, a feature that can also be hacked and manipulated. Various cybersecurity and automotive trade journals reported in March that an unknown entity hacked the GPS systems in a range of high-end cars featured at the annual Geneva Motor Show, programming the cars to report a location of Buckingham, England, in the year 2036.
How it works
GPS spoofing is an attack in which a radio transmitter located near the target is used to send out false GPS signals. Using tools that are cheap and easily accessible online, the attacker can transmit inaccurate coordinates or no data at all.
Russia has been known to protectively scramble radio signal devices near sensitive state facilities or along routes traveled by VIPs. For example, multiple ships reported phony geographic coordinates in the Kerch Strait on the day that Russian President Vladimir Putin drove a truck across a newly completed bridge to Russian-annexed Crimea.
But some analysts say the scale of recent disruptions indicates that Russia is taking its coordinates-spoofing game to another level, methodically calculating the damage it can inflict on unprotected systems in case of conflict. FILE – A Ukrainian sailor, right, is escorted by a Russian FSB officer to a courtroom in Simferopol, Crimea, Nov. 27, 2018. Russians captured Ukrainian seamen and their vessels two days earlier as they were about to transit the Kerch Strait.”A ship that has falsified information navigating through the Kerch Strait, for instance, would be at a much greater risk of colliding with another ship or of potentially violating some sort of territorial water regime,” said Thomas Ewing, C4ADS chief analyst, referring to a Nov. 25 incident in which Russia seized three Ukrainian navy vessels near the Kerch Strait and detained their crews.
Ewing also said evidence of spoofed coordinates had been recorded by U.S. forces in Syria, suggesting that Russia may be hacking satellite networks as part of its electronic warfare campaigns. There have also been reports of Russian spoofing of GPS signals during the Russian military training exercise Zapad in 2017 and NATO’s Trident Juncture in 2018.
“Our report details a number of Russian assets that are designed to interfere with GNSS as part of a general electronic warfare capability,” Ewing told VOA.
Some analysts have questioned why Russian intelligence would meddle with commercial airliners servicing Tel Aviv, the most populous city in a country with which the Kremlin seeks friendly relations.
Others, however, say formal attribution to a malign state actor is beside the point.
“The basic danger is that when your positioning, navigation or timing information is falsified, you could make a decision based on information that doesn’t correspond to reality,” said Ewing, explaining that spoofed coordinates could easily spark an international dispute.
Dana Goward, president of the U.S. Resilient Navigation and Timing Foundation, said the U.S. remains particularly vulnerable.
Because American engineers designed GPS to be used by everyone, its signal characteristics are routinely published and easily accessible. That makes them easier to imitate than signals relayed by mainly ground-based positioning systems in China and Russia.
America’s ‘gift to the world’
“I think that European countries and the United States are especially vulnerable because Russia, China, Saudi Arabia and South Korea have alternate navigation systems that transmit from the ground,” Goward told VOA’s Ukrainian service. He said those systems “have very high power and are very difficult to disrupt. So those countries are not nearly as dependent upon satellite navigation as Europe and the United States.”
Asked about the erroneous coordinates reported by vessels in the Kerch Strait and along the Syrian coast, Goward said he thought Russia was using the vulnerabilities of the technology to demonstrate its power.
FILE – A GPS station is seen in the Inyo Mountains of California. (S. Lawrence/UNAVCO)”America likes to think of GPS as its gift to the world,” he said. “But by doing this, Russia is saying to the whole world that ‘we can take that away from you with a flip of a switch, so America’s gift is not so great.’ So they’re certainly using it as an instrument of strategic state power as well.”
To protect itself, Goward said, the United States should increase its protection of GPS frequencies, use only high-quality receivers that can resist jamming and spoofing, and augment the GPSS with a ground-based system that would be harder to disrupt.
The incident in Ben Gurion again attracted attention to the need to create a fully functional backup system for GPS, Goward said. “It is fortunate that aviation has a terrestrial electronic navigation system it can rely upon when GPS is not available,” Goward said. He praised the 2001 U.S. Department of Transportation decision not to give up the terrestrial system completely in favor of the GPS-based one.
U.S. policy has called for maintaining an effective backup system since 2004, but experts say its full implementation is still in the works both in the United States and Europe.
According to the Military Times newspaper, the U.S. Army’s 2nd Cavalry Regiment in Germany will field test jam-resistant positioning, navigation and timing gear in September, including a Selective Availability Anti-Spoofing Module in some vehicles.
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Britain Summons Chinese Ambassador Over Hong Kong Row
Britain has summoned the Chinese ambassador after he said that relations between Beijing and London had been “damaged” by Britain’s backing of pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong.Ambassador Liu Xiaoming warned Britain not to interfere in what he called China’s “internal affairs.” Earlier, British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt offered his strong backing for the demonstrations in Hong Kong, which was a British territory until the handover of power to China in 1997.”The UK signed an internationally binding legal agreement in 1984 that enshrines the ‘one country, two systems rule,’ enshrines the basic freedoms of the people of Hong Kong and we stand four square behind that agreement, four square behind the people of Hong Kong. And there will be serious consequences if that internationally binding legal agreement were not to be honored,” Hunt said Tuesday.Conservative party leadership contender Jeremy Hunt speaks during a party leadership gathering in Belfast, Northern Ireland, July 2, 2019.The United States and its allies have also voiced grave concern over the direction of Chinese rule in Hong Kong.Pro-democracy supporters are urging Britain to do more, claiming it has a legal and moral duty to stand up for the freedom of Hong Kong’s people.The Union Jack flag has been a prominent symbol amid weeks of pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong. Violent protests marked the 22nd anniversary of handover to Chinese rule Monday, as demonstrators stormed the parliament building.Protesters take part in a rally on July 1, 2019, in Hong Kong.The protests were triggered by an attempt to force through an extradition bill allowing Hong Kong suspects to be prosecuted in mainland China. Critics say the law could be used to send political dissidents to China for prosecution.Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Geng Shuang condemned Britain’s intervention Wednesday.”The U.K. placing itself as the protector [of Hong Kong] at every turn is a purely self-constructed delusion. I would like to ask Mr. Hunt, during the British colonial era in Hong Kong, was there any democracy to speak of? Hong Kongers didn’t even have the right to protest.”Beyond Sino-British relations, there are wider implications for Beijing, says Professor Steve Tsang of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies.”The key issue here really is not about our [Britain’s] obligations to Hong Kong,” Tsang said. “It’s also about how China deals with international agreements.”In this June 12, 2019, file photo, a protester waving the Union Jack joins other protesters using umbrellas to shield themselves outside the Legislative Council in Hong Kong.The 1997 handover was widely seen as the final curtain call on the British Empire. The British governor of Hong Kong at the time, Chris Patten, wants London to do more.”We should have a sense of honor about Hong Kong and we should have a specific sense of our obligations to the individual citizens of Hong Kong. And that means speaking up about what’s been happening,” Patten said in a recent interview.However, Britain’s options are limited because of the political chaos over its departure from the European Union, argues Tsang.”China is a rising power and is potentially the second superpower. The UK is getting into a stage of uncertainty about its future. So we are not in a particularly strong position compared to China in trying to resolve any disputes we may have with China at the moment.”Beijing insisted Wednesday any foreign efforts to interfere in Hong Kong are, in its words, destined to be “futile.”
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