Nigerian technologist Chinenye Udeh wants to ensure schoolgirls learn Information and Communications Technology (ICT) for summer. Udeh says she is trying to boost gender parity in technology in Africa’s most populous nation, where less than 20 percent of women are involved in the industry.Girls between the ages of five and 17 chatter at a tech-based facility in the city center, where they converge to learn skills that include coding, animation and robotics for one month this summer.The program, known as the Smart Girls Tech Camp, was conceived by Nigerian female technologist Chinenye Udeh.She says she’s tackling gender inequality in Nigeria’s tech sector with this project.”What we’re trying to do is, how can we get these girls abreast? How can we let them know that it’s important that they get involved in technology, no matter how little? The knowledge is very important in their daily lives, businesses and careers, moving forward,” Udeh said.Nigeria’s bureau of statistics says women occupy only about 20 percent of the technology sector.The smart girls tech program hopes to improve that. The program targets 1,000 young girls every year and prepares them for a future in technology.Tech expert and instructor Onyedinma Onyekachi says progress has being made so far.”From where we met them and where they are now is not the same, and we discovered it’s as a result of psyche. There was a notion that girls don’t like tech, but we discovered that girls actually are enthusiastic about tech, it’s just the approach, just the way technology is being introduced to them,” Onyekachi said.For young girls, like aspiring animator Damilola Ojo, technology could be their entry to a booming market dominated by men.”When I was younger, I was very interested in cartoons and the way they were made. So when I searched up, usually on YouTube, I saw that it involved ICT, and so I became more and more interested,” Ojo said.Ten-year-old Ruby Dike, who is more interested in robotics, says it could have several applications.”Let’s say I’m able to program a robot to help in the house, or I’m able to program a robot that can control global warming …,” Dike said.Nigeria’s ICT industry is among the largest in Africa, and it keeps growing rapidly. It has evolved into a multi-billion-dollar industry within the last decade.However, it is characterized by low female representation like many other sectors. People like Udeh are breaking the norms with tech programs for young girls.Although it could take a while before this translates into substantial female representation in the industry, it is making an impact on the girls.
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Month: August 2019
Iran’s Zarif Says US Can’t Build Gulf Coalition as Allies ‘Ashamed’
The United States is unable to build a naval coalition to escort tankers in the Gulf because its allies are too “ashamed” to join it, Iran’s foreign minister said Monday.”Today the United States in alone in the world and cannot create a coalition. Countries that are its friends are too ashamed of being in a coalition with them,” Mohammad Javad Zarif told a news conference in Tehran.”They brought this situation upon themselves, with lawbreaking, by creating tensions and crises.”Iran and the United States have been locked in a battle of nerves since May 2018 when President Donald Trump withdrew the US from a landmark 2015 deal placing limits on Iran’s nuclear program and began reimposing sanctions.Tensions soared after the Trump administration stepped up a US campaign of “maximum pressure” against Iran, with drones downed and tankers mysteriously attacked in Gulf waters.In response, the United States has been seeking to form a coalition whose mission — dubbed Operation Sentinel — it says is to guarantee freedom of navigation in the strategic Gulf waters.However, it has been struggling to build such a coalition, with European countries reticent and believed to be concerned about being dragged into a possible conflict.Asked on Monday about reports that he had been invited to meet Trump in the White House, Zarif said he had turned it down despite the threat of sanctions against him.”I was told in New York I would be sanctioned in two week unless I accepted that offer, which fortunately I did not,” said the Iranian minister.The New Yorker magazine reported on Friday that Senator Rand Paul met Zarif in the US on July 15 and had Trump’s blessing when he extended an invitation to the Iranian minister to go to the White House.The United States imposed sanctions against Zarif on Wednesday, targeting any assets he has in America and squeezing his ability to function as a globe-trotting diplomat.
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After Mass Shootings, Americans Ask ‘Why?’
Americans are coping with the aftermath of three mass shootings in a week that killed nine in Dayton, Ohio on Sunday, 20 in El Paso, Texas, Saturday, and three in Gilroy, California on July 28th. In each incident, there were multiple injuries, some of them critical. Mike O’Sullivan reports, people are asking what motivated the killers and what can be done stop the violence.
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US Mass Shootings Stoke Issues of White Supremacism and Gun Control
A pair of mass shootings in Texas and Ohio over the Saturday and Sunday have dragged two of the most divisive issues in American politics — the rise of violent white supremacism and gun control — to the forefront of public conversation as politicians across the ideological spectrum are preparing for what is expected to be an extremely contentious 2020 election campaign.The two shootings, which left 29 people dead and at least 53 more wounded, combine to create a clear political crisis for the Trump administration and its allies in Congress.The first shooting, in El Paso, Texas, occurred early Saturday and was carried out by a 21-year-old white man who is believed to have published an explicitly racist manifesto that echoed U.S. President Donald Trump’s frequent charge that Hispanic immigrants from Mexico and Central America constitute an “invasion” of the United States. After he surrendered, he told police that he had set out to kill as many “Mexicans” as he could. He murdered 20 people and wounded another 27.The second, in Dayton, Ohio, was committed after 1 a.m. Sunday by a 24-year-old white man toting a legally-purchased military-style semi-automatic rifle equipped with two 100-round drum magazines that helped him kill or injure three dozen people in less than 30 seconds. President Trump and Republican lawmakers have been adamantly resistant to the kind of regulations promoted by Democrats that would make it impossible for a private citizen to amass such firepower.The murders in the Texas border city of El Paso come at a time when violence related to white supremacist ideologies is demonstrably on the rise. In July, Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Christopher Wray told Congress that the “majority of the domestic terrorism cases we’ve investigated are motivated by some version of what you might call white supremacist violence.”A man leaves flowers near the scene of a mass shooting at a shopping complex, Aug. 4, 2019, in El Paso, Texas.A killer’s manifestoIn 2018, domestic terrorists killed at least 50 people in the U.S., according to the Anti-Defamation League Center on Extremism, which tracks such murders. Every one of the killers had an identifiable connection to a right-wing political movement, the center said.In what is believed to be his manifesto, the El Paso killer made it clear that his antipathy toward Hispanics pre-dated Trump’s rise to power in the 2016 election, but the similarity of some of his language to the president’s rhetoric in his campaign rallies was unmistakable.Like Trump, the killer described immigrants as “invaders.” At recent political events, Trump has called for minority members of Congress to “go back” to the places they came from. In his manifesto, the killer said that “patriotic Americans” should give immigrants the “right incentive” to return to their home countries.Most notably, perhaps, is that while railing against illegal immigrants during a re-election rally in May, the president asked the crowd “How do you stop these people?” When one supporter shouted “Shoot them!” Trump laughed as the crowd roared its approval.On Sunday, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney made multiple TV appearances to defend the president from a chorus of accusations — most notably from Democratic presidential candidates — that Trump’s rhetoric fans the flames of violent white supremacism.“This was a sick person. The person in Dayton was a sick person,” Mulvaney said in an appearance on ABC News. “No politician is to blame for that. The person who was responsible here are the people who pulled the trigger. We need to figure out how to kind of create less of those kinds of people as a society and not trying to figure out who gets blamed going into the next election.”Mulvaney was then pressed on Trump’s seeming reluctance to identify white supremacism as a significant concern. After a gunman spouting white supremacist rhetoric murdered dozens of Muslims in New Zealand earlier this year, Trump was asked if he views the ideology as a global threat. He responded: “I don’t really. I think it’s a small group of people that have very, very serious problems.”“I don’t think it’s at all fair to sit here and say that he doesn’t think that white nationalism is bad for the nation,” Mulvaney said. “These are sick people. You cannot be a white supremacist and be normal in the head.”Mick Mulvaney, as Acting White House Chief of StaffBut Democrats, particularly presidential candidates, were having none of it.Speaking on Meet the Press on Sunday morning, New Jersey Sen. Corey Booker described Trump as “particularly responsible” for the uptick in violence by white supremacists. “In my faith, you have this idea that you reap what you sow, and he is sowing seeds of hatred in this country, this harvest of hate violence that we are seeing right now lies at his feet,” Booker said.“There is a complicity in the president’s hatred that undermines the goodness and decency of Americans,” Booker added.Julián Castro, the former mayor of San Antonio and the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the Obama administration, said on Sunday that Trump was not directly responsible for the shooting in El Paso. However, he said that the president’s rhetoric toward immigrants had contributed to a surge in white nationalism in the U.S.Beto O’Rourke, the former Texas congressman who calls El Paso home, may have been the most forceful in tying Trump to the killings there. Appearing on CNN, he responded in the affirmative when asked if he believes the president is a white supremacist. “The things that he has said both as a candidate and then as the president of the United States? This cannot be open for debate,” he said.“We have a problem with white nationalist terrorism in the United States of America today,” O’Rourke added. “These are white men motivated by the kind of fear that this president traffics in.””Hate has no place in this country”For his part, Trump himself made little in the way of public statements Sunday. Returning to the White House from one of his golf resorts in the afternoon, the president made brief comments to the media. “Hate has no place in our country and we’re going to take care of it,” he said.As the day went on, and more information came to light about the killings in Dayton, Democrats – already calling for Republicans to relent on passage of gun control measures in Congress — only got louder in their calls for limiting access to firearms.Their complaints were directed, sometimes explicitly and sometimes indirectly, at Republican lawmakers who have actively resisted efforts to tighten access to firearms. Most recently, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has blocked votes on a popular bill to expand mandatory background checks on people looking to purchase firearms and a more controversial proposal that would ban the sorts of weapons used in the El Paso and Dayton attacks.On Twitter, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren urged Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to “bring the Senate back from recess to vote on legislation to address the gun violence epidemic.”We must treat this like the public health crisis that it is. @SenMajLdr: Bring the Senate back from recess to vote on legislation to address the gun violence epidemic.— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) August 4, 2019South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg tied the two events together, saying, “America is under attack from homegrown white nationalist terrorism…And we have to talk and act about two things in this country. First of all, we are the only country in the world with more guns than we have people. We can respect the Second Amendment and not allow it to be a death sentence for thousands of Americans, and two, white nationalism is evil.”
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General Strike Underway in Hong Kong, Leader Refuses to Resign
A general strike has paralyzed Hong Kong Monday, preventing people from getting to work and forcing cancellation of more than 200 flights.Speaking to reporters the city’s embattled leader, Beijing-backed Carrie Lam, said protesters were pushing the city to the verge of an “extremely dangerous situation.”Lam again rejected repeated calls from protesters for her resignation and said the government is determined to maintaining law and order.She also said that the government will not satisfy another key demand put forward by protesters to release those who have been arrested during protests of recent weeks. Lam also charged the protests were putting Hong Kong on a path of no return and had hurt the city’s economy.Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam, center, reacts during a press conference in Hong Kong, July 22, 2019.Hong Kong marchers staged sometimes violent protests on multiple fronts Sunday night, introducing their latest tactic to evade riot police and tear gas as the demonstrations against a controversial extradition bill entered their ninth consecutive week. Scrambling from the New Territories to Hong Kong island and then back across the harbor to northern Kowloon, the protesters demonstrated their hallmark levels of organization and decentralized decision-making over social media. In a now familiar formula, scores of protesters would arrive at a location and build barricades where they would remain until riot police arrived. A minority would stay behind and face tear gas as scores escaped through the public transit network to a new location. The Chinese-controlled financial hub is facing its worst political crisis since its handover to China in 1997, which began with protests against an extradition bill, already suspended, that would have allowed people to be sent to mainland China for trial and have since evolved into calls for greater democracy.
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Shooting Victims Include a Mom who Died Protecting Her Baby
In the border town of El Paso, Texas, a shooter opened fire and left 20 people dead and more than two dozen injured. Hours later in Dayton, Ohio, a shooter killed 9 people and injured at least 27 others.Here are some of their stories:Jordan Anchondo: ‘Gave her life’ for her babyJordan Anchondo was among those killed in El Paso, Anchondo’s sister said, and she apparently died while protecting her 2-month-old son from the hail of bullets.Leta Jamrowski of El Paso spoke to The Associated Press as she paced a waiting room at the University Medical Center of El Paso, where her 2-month-old nephew was being treated for broken bones – the result of his mother’s fall.”From the baby’s injuries, they said that more than likely my sister was trying to shield him,” she said. “So when she got shot she was holding him and she fell on him, so that’s why he broke some of his bones. So he pretty much lived because she gave her life.”Jordan, a mother of three, and Andre Anchondo had dropped off her 5-year old daughter at cheerleading practice before going to shop for school supplies on Saturday at a Walmart in El Paso. They never returned. –Andre Anchondo: Had turned his life aroundAndre Anchondo, husband of Jordan Anchondo who was killed in El Paso, recently turned his life around after struggles with drug dependence and run-ins with the law, a friend recalled. The friend, Koteiba “Koti” Azzam, made calls on Sunday to learn the whereabouts of his friend, who remained unaccounted for. Bodies of victims were still in the Walmart on Sunday. “I love the guy,” Azzam said in a phone interview from San Marcos, Texas, where he attends Texas State University. “He had the character and the charisma.”Azzam said Anchondo had started a business in El Paso, building things from granite and stone, and made it successful through hard work. He also was on the verge of completing a home for his family. Now, his wife is dead and he himself might not have survived.”It makes you question your faith almost,” said Azzam, who is Muslim. “But God didn’t have a part in it. The hands of man altered my friends’ life in a drastic way.” —Nicholas Cumer: Had helped cancer patientsA graduate student at a university in Pennsylvania who was interning with a Dayton facility for people battling cancer was among those killed in the Ohio city early Sunday.Nicholas Cumer was a graduate student in the master of cancer care program at Saint Francis University. “Nicholas was dedicated to caring for others,” university President Malachi Van Tassell said in a statement. The university, in Loretto, Pennsylvania, is the oldest Franciscan institution of higher learning in the United States.The family released the following statement through a relative: “We are heartbroken by the loss of our Nicholas in this senseless act on August 4. As our family grieves, we ask for privacy at this time. Thank you.”Cumer had been in Dayton as part of his internship program with the Maple Tree Cancer Alliance, which strives to improve the quality of life for individuals battling cancer through exercise, nutrition, and faith. Maple Tree Cancer Alliance offered Cumer a full-time position just days before he was killed, the organization said on its website. It described Cumer as hard-working, dedicated and one week away from completing his internship.”He was well liked and respected by everyone on our team, and we all will miss him very much,” the organization said.Van Tassell said a Mass in Cumer’s memory will be arranged on campus this week. —Lois Oglesby: A nursing student who wanted to care for childrenLois Oglesby, 27, was in nursing school and looked forward to a career that would make the most of her love for children, her cousin said. She was also the mother of a newborn and had an older daughter.Derasha Merrett told the Dayton Daily News that she was up feeding her own newborn when a friend called her at 3 a.m. Sunday to tell her, through sobs, that Oglesby had died in the Dayton shooting.”She was a wonderful mother, a wonderful person,” Merrett said. “I have cried so much, I can’t cry anymore.”Merrett said she and her cousin grew up in the same church, were on the same drill team and that Oglesby worked at her children’s day care center.”We all grew up in this little town, Merrett said. “We’re all family.” —Jessica Coca Garcia and Memo Garcia: Fundraising for kids’ sports teamJessica Coca Garcia and Memo Garcia were at the Walmart in El Paso to raise funds for a youth sports team one of their children played on when a gunman opened fire, wounding them, a relative said.Norma Coca told Wichita, Kansas-television station KWCH that her daughter and son-in-law were near the front doors of the Walmart when they were shot.Coca, who lives in Salina, Kansas, said her daughter, Jessica Coca Garcia, was shot three times in the leg. She said her son-in-law, Memo Garcia, was shot twice in the leg and once in the back. She said her daughter was in stable condition and her son-in-law was in critical condition.Jessica Coca Garcia’s father, Don Coca, said they have family in the El Paso area who were able to be with the couple. Don Coca says: “She was just crying … I told her that our prayers are there and we’re on our way.”The couple’s 5-year-old son and 11-year-old daughter were also at the Walmart and were not shot. — Mario De Alba: A wounded fatherMario de Alba, 45, had come to El Paso with his family from Mexico to go shopping.Described by his sister Cristina de Alba as an “excellent father” and as a “decent, hardworking person,” he was in serious condition Sunday after being shot in the back, the bullet exiting via his diaphragm.His wife, Olivia Mariscal, and 10-year-old daughter Erika both appear to be recovering after also being wounded, de Alba said from the El Paso hospital where her brother is being treated.The family lives in Chihuahua, Mexico — a four-hour drive south of El Paso — and was buying school supplies in the Texas city. El Paso is a popular shopping destination for people who live in northern Mexico.Mario de Alba’s Facebook page shows him as a devoted father to Erika.In one picture, taken in a living room, Erika cups her hand in the shape of a heart in front of an entertainment center. 0n the shelves behind her are the words FAMILY and PEACE in bold letters. —Mexican government identifies five citizens killed in El PasoMexico’s Foreign Ministry identified five citizens who were killed in the shooting Saturday in a shopping complex in El Paso. The ministry did not provide ages for them. They are: _ Sara Esther Regalado of Cuidad Juarez. _ Adolfo Cerros Hernandez of Aguascalientes. _ Jorge Calvillo Garcia of Torreon. _ Elsa Mendoza de la Mora of Yepomera. _ Gloria Irma Marquez of Juarez.
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Sudan Protesters Sign Power-Sharing Deal With Military
Updated Aug 4, 21:50PM
KHARTOUM — Sudan’s ruling generals and protest leaders signed a hard-won constitutional declaration Sunday, paving the way for a transition to civilian rule after more than seven months of demonstrations and violence.Under the agreement, signed at a ceremony in the capital Khartoum, a joint civilian-military ruling body will oversee the formation of a civilian government and parliament to govern for a three-year transition period.The declaration was the result of fraught negotiations between the leaders of mass protests, which erupted last December against the three-decade rule of president Omar al-Bashir, and the generals who ousted him in April.It builds on a July 17 power-sharing deal between the two sides.Protest movement leader Ahmed Rabie and the deputy head of the ruling military council General Mohamed Hamdan Daglo signed the declaration at a ceremony attended by African Union and Ethiopian mediators.”We turned a tough page of Sudan’s history by signing this agreement,” Daglo, who flashed a victory sign after making a short speech, told reporters.The signing was met by applause in the hall as representatives from both sides shook hands.Members of the protest umbrella group, the Alliance for Freedom and Change, broke into tears as they exchanged hugs.Crowds of jubilant Sudanese gathered outside the hall, chanting “blood for blood, our government is civilian” and “revolution, revolution”.Sudanese celebrate following a signing ceremony in the capital Khartoum, Sudan, Aug. 4, 2019.In the Bahari district of north Khartoum, dozens were chanting “this country is ours and the government is civilian”, as drivers honked their horns in celebration.In the city of Omdurman, hundreds were clapping, chanting and dancing to drum beats.A formal signing with foreign dignitaries in attendance is to take place on August 17, another protest leader, Monzer Abu al-Maali, told AFP.On the same day, Bashir is due to go on trial on corruption charges.The next day, the generals and protest leaders are to announce the composition of the new transitional civilian-majority ruling council, Abu al-Maali said.”The prime minister will be named on August 20 and cabinet members on August 28,” he said, adding that the sovereign council and cabinet would meet for the first time on September 1.’Martyrs’ blood not wasted’The talks had been repeatedly interrupted by deadly violence against demonstrators who have kept up rallies to press for civilian rule.Talks were suspended for weeks after men in military uniform broke up a long-running protest camp outside army headquarters in Khartoum on June 3, killing at least 127 people, according to doctors close to the protest movement.The movement has laid most of the blame on the powerful Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group, commanded by Daglo.FILE – People wave national flags as they demonstrate against the killing of protesters, who were shot dead when security forces broke up a rally in Khartoum, Sudan, Aug. 1, 2019.Protest leaders say the accord calls for an investigation into protest-related violence which, according to protest-linked doctors, has cost more than 250 lives since December.Under Sunday’s deal, RSF paramilitaries are to be integrated into the army’s chain of command.Omar Hussein, a protester waving the Sudanese flag outside the negotiations hall, was overjoyed by the signing.”Now we can tell the martyrs that their blood was not wasted,” he said.Ibtisam al-Sanhouri, a legal affairs negotiator for the protest movement, said the constitutional declaration clears the way for a parliamentary system with a civilian prime minister.She said the protest movement would have 201 of 300 seats in parliament and the premier, to be confirmed by the new sovereign council.The document touches on a peace deal agreed with three armed groups last month in Addis Ababa, protest leader Babiker Faisal said.These groups had spent years fighting Bashir’s government forces in the states of Darfur, Blue Nile and South Kordofan.”A comprehensive peace conference is planned to take place within six months of the transitional period,” he added.But the rebel groups of the Sudan Revolutionary Front rejected the declaration saying in a statement late Sunday “it puts obstacles to the implementation of any peace deal”, without clarifying.’Quantum leap’Sudan’s Arab neighbors hailed the long-awaited deal.Egypt said it was “a significant step on the right track”, while the Saudi foreign ministry welcomed it as “a quantum leap that will transition Sudan to stability and security”.In the United Arab Emirates, minister of state for foreign affairs Anwar Gargash said Sudan’s transition to civilian rule “turns the page” on Bashir and his Islamist allies.On Sunday, Ethiopian mediator Mahmoud Drir told reporters the deal would see Sudan removed from the United States’ blacklist as a state sponsor of terrorism.The country has been on the State Department’s list since 1993 over its alleged support of Islamist militants, a designation that has damaged the country’s economy and severely impeded foreign investment.
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France, Germany Condemn Russia Protest Crackdown
France and Germany on Sunday condemned a Russian police crackdown on a banned opposition rally that saw hundreds detained, with Paris criticizing an “excessive use of force” after a second weekend of protests over the exclusion of opposition candidates from local Moscow polls next month.Berlin said the police action on Saturday “violated” Russia’s international obligations and undermines the right to fair elections in the country.The arrests on Saturday were “out of all proportion to the peaceful nature of the protests against the exclusion of independent candidates” from city elections in Moscow, the German government said.Crowds had walked along the capital’s central boulevard in a protest “stroll” over the refusal by officials to let opposition candidates run in September polls for city parliament seats — a local issue that has turned into a political crisis.Police say 1,500 people took part in the demonstration.AFP observed dozens of arrests along the route, as police formed human chains and grabbed people indiscriminately.Sobol detained againAn ally of detained opposition leader Alexei Navalny, Lyubov Sobol, who is currently three weeks into a hunger strike after being barred from taking part in the election, was dragged from a taxi and detained as she set off for the rally.FILE – Russian opposition candidate and lawyer at the Foundation for Fighting Corruption Lyubov Sobol, center, and others stand in front of a police line during a protest in Moscow, Russia, July 14, 2019.Hours later she was taken to court where she was fined 300,000 rubles ($4,600) for a gathering on July 15, and held for further questioning over the protest last weekend, her team said.A French foreign ministry spokesman said in a statement that Paris “insists on freedom of expression in all its forms, including that of demonstrating peacefully and taking part in free and transparent elections.”France “calls on Russia to immediately free the people incarcerated in recent days and to conform to its commitments as a member of the OSCE and the Council of Europe,” the statement said.Berlin condemned “the repeated interference in the guaranteed right to peaceful assembly and freedom of expression” which “violates Russia’s international obligations and strongly questions the right to free and fair elections”.Sunday’s statements from Berlin and Paris follow an appeal last Monday calling on Moscow to release 1,400 other protesters detained after a similar demonstration on July 27.FILE – A handout image made available on the official website of Russia’s opposition leader Alexei Navalny (Navalny.com) July 29, 2019, shows him sitting on a hospital bed in Moscow.Navalny criminal probeAccording to the independent protest monitor OVD-Info, some 828 people were detained during the latest rally on Saturday in Moscow.Authorities also upped the pressure on Navalny, a top Kremlin critic, by launching a criminal probe into his anti-graft group on Saturday.Navalny was rushed from his cell to hospital last weekend in an incident his personal doctor said could be poisoning with an unknown chemical substance.A state toxicology lab said no traces were found.President Vladimir Putin has yet to comment on the situation in Moscow.
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Two Mass Shootings Renew Focus on Gun Violence in US
After two mass shootings in a span of 13 hours, there have now been more than 250 such events this year in which at least four people were shot or killed, besides the shooter. Officials in Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso, Texas, report 29 fatalities and at least 50 injured from shootings this weekend in those cities. Republican and Democrat politicians shared their reactions to the massacres. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi has more.
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Erdogan: Turkey Readying Offensive in Kurdish Area in Northern Syria
Turkey will carry out a military operation in a Kurdish-controlled area east of the Euphrates in northern Syria, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Sunday, its third offensive to dislodge Kurdish militia fighters close to its border.
Turkey had in the past warned of carrying out military operations east of the river, but put them on hold after agreeing with the United States to create a safe zone inside Syria’s northeastern border with Turkey that would be cleared of the Kurdish YPG militia.
But Ankara has accused Washington of stalling progress on setting up the safe zone and has demanded it sever its relations
with the YPG. The group was Washington’s main ally on the ground in Syria during the battle against Islamic State, but Turkey sees it as a terrorist organization.
Erdogan said both Russia and the United States have been told of the planned operation, but did not say when it would
begin. It would mark the third Turkish incursion into Syria in as many years.
“We entered Afrin, Jarablus, and Al-Bab. Now we will enter the east of the Euphrates,” Erdogan said on Sunday during a highway-opening ceremony.
Asked about Erdogan’s comments, a U.S. official told Reuters: “Bilateral discussions with Turkey continue on the possibility of a safe zone with U.S. and Turkish forces that addresses Turkey’s legitimate security concerns in northern Syria.”
Overnight, three Turkish-backed Syrian rebel fighters were killed during clashes with the YPG, state-owned Anadolu Agency reported on Sunday. It said the YPG tried to infiltrate the front lines in Syria’s al-Bab area, where Turkey carved out a de facto buffer zone in its 2016 “Euphrates Shield” offensive.
Clashes such as these are frequent in the area, but casualties tend to be rare.
On Thursday, the Kurdish-led administration running north and east Syria issued a statement objecting to Turkish threats to attack the area.
“These threats pose a danger on the area and on a peaceful solution in Syria, and any Turkish aggression on the area will open the way for the return of Daesh (Islamic State), and that aggression will also contribute to the widening of the circle of Turkish occupation in Syria,” the statement said.
It called on the international community to take a stance that stops Turkey from carrying out its threats.
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Trump Remained Out of Sight for Hours After Mass Shootings
Updated Aug. 4, 7:00PM
BRIDGEWATER, NEW JERSEY — As the nation reeled from two mass shootings in less than a day, President Donald Trump spent the first hours after the tragedies out of sight at his New Jersey golf course, sending out tweets of support awkwardly mixed in with those promoting a celebrity fight and attacking his political foes.Americans did not get a glimpse of the president in the immediate aftermath of a shooting in El Paso, Texas, that killed at least 20 people and, hours later, one in Dayton, Ohio, that claimed at least nine lives. Not until Trump and the first lady prepared to fly back to Washington in the late afternoon Sunday did he appear before cameras.“Hate has no place in our country, and we’re going to take care of it,” Trump declared before boarding Air Force One.While connecting “hate” and mental illness to the shootings, Trump made no direct mention of gun laws, a factor brought up by Democratic officials and those seeking their party’s nomination to challenge Trump’s reelection next year. He also ignored questions about the anti-immigration language in a manifesto written by the El Paso shooter that mirrors some of his own.Trump tried to assure Americans he was dealing with the problem and defended his administration in light of criticism following the latest in a string of mass shootings.“We have done much more than most administrations,” he said, without elaboration. “We have done actually a lot. But perhaps more has to be done.”Flowers adorn a makeshift memorial near the scene of a mass shooting at a shopping complex in El Paso, Texas, Aug. 4, 2019.Never seemingly comfortable consoling a nation in grief, Trump will be carefully watched for his response to the attacks, again inviting comparison to his predecessors who have tried to heal the country in moments of national trauma.Investigators focused on whether the El Paso attack was a hate crime after the emergence of a racist, anti-immigrant screed that was posted online shortly beforehand. Detectives sought to determine if it was written by the man who was arrested.In recent weeks, the president has issued racist tweets about four women of color who serve in Congress, and in rallies has spoken of an “invasion” at the southern border. His reelection strategy so far has placed racial animus at the forefront in an effort that his aides say is designed to activate his base of conservative voters, an approach not seen by an American president in the modern era.Trump has also been widely criticized for offering a false equivalency when discussing racial violence, notably when he said there were “good people on both sides” after a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that resulted in the death of an anti-racism demonstrator.The shootings will likely complicate that strategy, and Democrats who are campaigning to deny Trump a second term were quick to lay blame at the president’s feet.Relatives of victims of the Walmart mass shooting wait for information from authorities at the reunification center in El Paso, Texas, Aug. 4, 2019.“You reap what you sow, and he is sowing seeds of hate in this country. This harvest of hate violence we’re seeing right now lies at his feet,” Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “He is responsible.”White House aides said the president has been receiving updates about both shootings.“The FBI, local and state law enforcement are working together in El Paso and in Dayton, Ohio,” Trump tweeted Sunday morning. “God bless the people of El Paso Texas. God bless the people of Dayton, Ohio.”His first tweet after the El Paso shooting on Saturday hit similar notes, with Trump calling it “terrible” and promising the full support of the federal government. But just 14 minutes later, he tweeted again, a discordant post wishing UFC fighter Colby Covington, a Trump supporter, good luck in his fight that evening. That was soon followed up with a pair of retweets of African American supporters offering testimonials to Trump’s policies helping black voters, though the president polls very poorly with blacks.Trump’s two elder sons attended the UFC fight, while social media photos show that Trump stopped by a wedding at his Bedminster club on Saturday night.Shoes are piled in the rear of Ned Peppers Bar at the scene after a mass shooting in Dayton, Ohio, Aug. 4, 2019.The motive for the Dayton shooting, which happened in a popular nightlife district, was not immediately known. But Democrats pointed to the El Paso attack and blamed Trump for his incendiary rhetoric about immigrants that they say fosters an atmosphere of hate and violence.Federal officials said they were treating the El Paso attack as a domestic terrorism case.Trump’s language about immigrants, and his hardline policies, loomed over the El Paso shooting.He has described groups of immigrants as “infestations,” declared in his campaign kickoff that many of those coming from Mexico were “rapists,” deemed a caravan of Hispanic migrants as invaders and wondered why the United States accepted so many immigrants from “s—hole countries” like Haiti, El Salvador and African nations. Critics also point to his campaign proposal to ban all Muslims from entering the United States, his suggestion that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States and his administration’s efforts to curtail asylum and separate immigrant children from their parents at the border.The president has also repeatedly been denounced for being slow to criticize acts of violence carried out by white nationalists, or deem them acts of domestic terrorism, most notably when he declared there were good people on “both sides” of the 2017 deadly clash in Charlottesville. The number of hate groups has surged to record highs under Trump’s presidency, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.Mourners gather at a vigil following a nearby mass shooting in Dayton, Ohio, Aug. 4, 2019.“He is encouraging this. He doesn’t just tolerate it; he encourages it. Folks are responding to this. It doesn’t just offend us, it encourages the kind of violence that we’re seeing, including in my home town of El Paso yesterday,” former Rep. Beto O’Rourke, a 2020 Democratic contender, said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “He is an open, avowed racist and is encouraging more racism in this country. And this is incredibly dangerous for the United States of America right now.”Other Democratic candidates also slammed Trump’s lack of response.“We must come together to reject this dangerous and growing culture of bigotry espoused by Trump and his allies,” tweeted Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. “Instead of wasting money putting children in cages, we must seriously address the scourge of violent bigotry and domestic terrorism.”And Pete Buttigieg said Trump is “condoning and encouraging white nationalism.”“It is very clear that this kind of hate is being legitimized from on high,” Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, said in an interview on CNN.Trump ordered flags to be lowered in remembrance of both shootings.Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney defended the president’s response, saying Trump was “a combination of saddened by this and he’s angry about it.” Mulvaney told ABC’s “This Week” that Trump’s first call was “to the attorney general to find out what we could do to prevent this type of thing from happening.”The American flag flies at half-staff at the White House in Washington, Aug. 4, 2019, to honor those killed in two mass shootings, one in Dayton, Ohio, and one in El Paso, Texas.“These are sick people,” he said. “And we need to figure out what we can do to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”Mulvaney focused on the challenges of mental illness and largely dodged the notion of supporting widespread gun control measures, though he pointed out the administration banned bump stocks, which help turn semi-automatic weapons into even more lethal automatic ones. Trump, who has enjoyed deep support from the National Rifle Association gun lobbying group, has stayed away from most gun control measures, including after being personally lobbied by survivors of last year’s school shooting in Parkland, Florida.The top Democrat in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, urged Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to call an emergency session to put a House-passed bill on universal background checks up for debate and a vote “immediately.”White House officials said there were no immediate plans for Trump to address the nation. Trump said Sunday he would be giving a statement on the situation Monday morning.Other presidents have used the aftermath of a national tragedy to reassure citizens, including when George W. Bush visited a mosque less than a week after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to stand up for Muslims in the United States and when Obama spoke emotionally after mass shootings at the Sandy Hook school in Newtown, Connecticut, and a Charleston, South Carolina, church.Trump has struggled to convey such empathy and support, and drew widespread criticism when he tossed paper towels like basketballs to hurricane victims in Puerto Rico. He has also, at times, seemed to welcome violence toward immigrants. At a May rally in Panama City Beach, Florida, Trump bemoaned legal protections for migrants and asked rhetorically, “How do you stop these people?”“Shoot them!” cried one audience member.Trump chuckled and said, “Only in the Panhandle you can get away with that statement.”
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New US Defense Chief Slams China on 1st Asian Visit
Secretary of Defense Mark Esper has slammed China’s “destabilizing” actions in the Indo-Pacific region during his first trip to the region.Speaking to reporters in Sydney with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and their Australian counterparts, Esper said the United States is “firmly against a disturbing pattern of aggressive behavior, destabilizing behavior from China.”Esper and Pompeo pointed to Beijing’s militarization of islands in the South China Sea and accused it of promoting the state-sponsored theft of other nation’s intellectual property, and “predatory economics.”The last was an apparent reference to so-called “debt traps” like a 2017 arrangement that gave China control of a port in Sri Lanka. After failing to keep up with its debt payments to China, Sri Lanka handed over the port and 15,000 acres of land to the Chinese government for 99 years.China has arguably undertaken the largest transfer of intellectual property in human history, according to Bradley Bowman, the senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.Bowman told VOA that intellectual property stolen by Beijing has been used to modernize Chinese weapons which, in the event of a future military conflict, would be used to kill Americans and their allies.“The United States will not stand by idly while any one nation attempts to reshape the region to its favor at the expense of others,” Esper said.U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, left, listens as Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne makes a point during a press conference following annual bilateral talks in Sydney, Australia, Aug. 4, 2019.Pompeo said Sunday the United States was not asking nations to “choose” between the U.S. and China.However, allies in the region have grown increasingly worried amid increasing economic and military tensions between China and the United States.Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne praised the strong “mateship” between the United States and Australia, but added that China is also a vitally important partner for her country.“It’s in no one’s interest for the Indo-Pacific to become more competitive or adversarial in character,” she said.Southeast Asian nations grappled with the prospect of choosing sides in June during the annual Shangri-la Dialogue defense forum in Singapore. The question loomed so large that Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong warned of smaller countries being “forced” to take sides.
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Two US Mass Shootings Leave 29 Dead, Dozens Injured
In 13 hours of carnage in the United States, two shooters in separate incidents killed 29 people and injured dozens, leaving authorities searching for motives behind the mayhem.A gunman wearing body armor and carrying extra magazines of ammunition was shot to death by police less than a minute after he opened fire early Sunday in a popular nightlife area in the Midwest city of Dayton, Ohio, killing nine people and injuring at least 27, four of them seriously.Law enforcement officers work the scene of a shooting at a shopping mall in El Paso, Texas, Aug. 3, 2019.Police said they believe there was only one shooter in the incident, but have yet to suggest a motive. News accounts identified the shooter as 24-year-old Connor Betts, who identifies himself on social media as a psychology student at a community college in the Dayton area.Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley said the quick response by police “saved literally hundreds of lives” in the crowded Oregon district of the city filled with bars, restaurants and theaters.Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley speaks during a news conference regarding a mass shooting earlier in the morning, Aug. 4, 2019, in Dayton, Ohio.She said the gunman was carrying a .223-caliber semi-automatic weapon, the same-sized weapon a gunman employed in the one of the most horrific mass shootings in the U.S. in recent years, the assault in which 20 school children and six adults were killed in Newtown, Connecticut in 2012.The Ohio bloodshed occurred about 13 hours after police in the U.S.-Mexican border city of El Paso, Texas, say a gunman opened fired at a Walmart store, killing at least 20 people and wounding 26 — an attack authorities say they are investigating as a possible hate crime targeting Hispanics.The El Paso and Dayton incidents are the nation’s 21st and 22nd mass killing incidents this year, according to a database compiled by the Associated Press, USA Today and Northeastern University. The archive defines a mass killing as four or more people shot dead, excluding the gunman, at one location. A separate database counts more than 250 incidents this year in which four or more people have been killed or wounded.The latest incidents occurred a week after a gunman killed three at a food festival in California and followed the killing of 58 at a country music festival in 2017 in California, 49 at an Orlando, Fla., night club in 2016 and 25 at a Texas church in 2017.Bodies are removed from at the scene of a mass shooting, Aug. 4, 2019, in Dayton, Ohio.U.S. authorities occasionally try to figure out ways to stop the slaughter of innocents in a country where gun ownership is enshrined as a constitutional right. Some lawmakers have attempted to curb gun ownership or stiffen the regulations surrounding gun sales, but have generally been rebuffed by other lawmakers opposed to new restrictions.After the Dayton attack, Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown said he was angered that state and national lawmakers won’t approve more gun controls, saying politicians’ “thoughts and prayers are not enough” of a response to mass killings.U.S. President Donald Trump said Sunday on Twitter, “The FBI, local and state law enforcement are working together in El Paso and in Dayton, Ohio. Information is rapidly being accumulated in Dayton. Much has already be learned in El Paso. Law enforcement was very rapid in both instances. Updates will be given throughout the day!”The FBI, local and state law enforcement are working together in El Paso and in Dayton, Ohio. Information is rapidly being accumulated in Dayton. Much has already be learned in El Paso. Law enforcement was very rapid in both instances. Updates will be given throughout the day!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) Sgt. Robert Gomez of the El Paso, Texas, police briefs reporters on a shooting that occurred at a Walmart near Cielo Vista Mall in El Paso, Aug. 3, 2019.The suspect was identified by police as Patrick Crusius, who lived in the Dallas area, hundreds of kilometers away from El Paso.The post appeared online about an hour before the shooting and included language that complained about the “Hispanic invasion” of Texas. The author of the manifesto wrote that he expected to be killed during the attack.The writer of the manifesto denied that he was a white supremacist, but decried “race mixing” in the United States, calling instead for territorial enclaves separated by race. The first sentence of the document expressed support for the man accused of killing 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in March, after he had posted his own conspiracy theory that non-white migrants were replacing whites.Congressman Joaquin Castro of Texas said in a statement that in El Paso, “This vile act of terrorism against Hispanic Americans was inspired by divisive racial and ethnic rhetoric and enabled by weapons of war. The language in the shooter’s manifesto is consistent with President Donald Trump’s description of Hispanic immigrants as ‘invaders.'”Cielo Vista Mall. El Paso, TexasCastro, chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, said, “Today’s shooting is a stark reminder of the dangers of such rhetoric.”Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said three Mexicans were killed in the shooting and six Mexicans were wounded.
Trump said Saturday that he and first lady Melania Trump “send our heartfelt thoughts and prayers to the great people of Texas.”He also tweeted: “Today’s shooting in El Paso, Texas was not only tragic, it was an act of cowardice. I know that I stand with everyone in this Country to condemn today’s hateful act. There are no reasons or excuses that will ever justify killing innocent people.”
Police began receiving calls about 10:39 a.m. local time with multiple reports of a shooting at Walmart and the nearby Cielo Vista Mall complex on the east side of the city.Shoppers exit with their hands up after a mass shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Aug. 3, 2019.
Sgt. Robert Gomez, a spokesman with the El Paso Police Department, said most of the shootings occurred at the Walmart, where there were more than 1,000 shoppers and 100 employees. Many families were taking advantage of a sales-tax holiday to shop for back-to-school supplies, officials said.
“This is unprecedented in El Paso,” Gomez said of the mass shooting.
Gomez said an assault-style rifle was used in the shooting.El Paso, a city of about 680,000 people in western Texas, shares the border with Juarez, Mexico.
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Nuon Chea, Ideologue of Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge, Dies at 93
Nuon Chea, the chief ideologue of the communist Khmer Rouge regime that destroyed a generation of Cambodians, died Sunday, the country’s U.N.-assisted genocide tribunal said. He was 93.Nuon Chea was known as Brother No. 2, the right-hand man of Pol Pot, the leader of the regime that ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. The group’s fanatical efforts to realize a utopian society led to the death of some 1.7 million people — more than a quarter of the country’s population at the time — from starvation, disease, overwork and executions.
Researchers believe Nuon Chea was responsible for the extremist policies of the Khmer Rouge and was directly involved in its purges and executions.
He was serving life in prison after convictions by the U.N.-backed tribunal on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.
But Nuon Chea never admitted his guilt.
At the long-awaited Khmer Rouge trials, he told a court that he and his comrades were not bad people,'' denying responsibility for any deaths.a strategic path and tactics” that the party adopted at a clandestine congress at the Phnom Penh railway station in September 1960.
For decades after the fall of the Khmer Rouge, Nuon Chea lived quietly with his family in a wooden house in Pailin, a former guerrilla stronghold near the border with Thailand.
"I wasn't a war criminal," he said in a 2004 interview with The Associated Press. "I admit that there was a mistake. But I had my ideology. I wanted to free my country. I wanted people to have well-being."
He was arrested in 2007 to face trial along with other surviving but ailing top Khmer Rouge leaders, and charged with crimes against humanity, genocide, religious persecution, homicide and torture.
Three decades after his accused crimes, Nuon Chea took the stand as an old man with white hair and sunken cheeks. Frail from a variety of health problems — including high blood pressure, heart problems and cataracts — he peered over eyeglasses as he defiantly defended the regime he served.
"I don't want the next generation to misunderstand history. I don't want them to believe the Khmer Rouge are bad people, are criminals," Nuon Chea testified in 2011 at the age of 85. "Nothing is true about that."
During his testimony, he insisted that the regime was not responsible for any atrocities and reiterated long-standing Khmer Rouge claims that mass graves found after the Khmer Rouge were ousted from power held the bodies of people killed by Vietnamese troops.
"These war crimes and crimes against humanity were not committed by the Cambodian people," Nuon Chea said. "It was the Vietnamese who killed Cambodians."
Vietnam, a onetime communist ally of the Khmer Rouge, suffered several bloody attacks from them and finally struck back in late 1978, chasing the Khmer Rouge from power in early 1979 and installing a client regime of former members of the Khmer Rouge who had split with the group. One of them was Cambodia's current prime minister, Hun Sen.
Nuon Chea's fellow defendants also denied any wrongdoing: Khieu Samphan, the regime's former head of state, who also told the court he bore no responsibility for atrocities, and Ieng Sary, the regime's former foreign minister. Ieng Sary died before the trials concluded, but Khieu Samphan and Nuon Chea were found guilty in the tribunal's final verdicts in November 2018.
At one point before his arrest, Nuon Chea told journalists that he had become an adherent of Buddhism — an irony for the man who served a regime that abolished religion and turned Buddhist monasteries into sites for torture and execution.
Nuon Chea was born on July 7, 1926, to a wealthy Sino-Cambodian family in Battambang province in northwestern Cambodia. He studied law at Thammasat University in Thailand.
In an interview with government agents a year after his surrender in 1998, Nuon Chea said he joined the communist movement in Thailand in 1950. Other sources say he became a communist in 1948 and returned to Cambodia a year later.
That was a time when communist and nationalist groups, struggling to oust French colonialists, were gaining strength in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam.
Nuon Chea said in that interview that he and Saloth Sar, Pol Pot's real name, played key roles in building up a homegrown movement free from the dominance of Vietnam, which was to become the Khmer Rouge's arch-enemy.
In its early stages, that movement was largely in disarray, facing constant threats from authorities and having neither a clear strategy nor adequate resources, according to Nuon Chea.
Nuon Chea said he and Pol Pot worked together in mapping out
“Marxism-Leninism was the goal of the party, which had to be built from the countryside up. Rural areas were the basis for cities to rely on and ignite” the revolution, Nuon Chea said.
After coming to power in 1975 following a brutal war, the Khmer Rouge evicted people from cities and turned the country into a vast labor camp.
For a movement known for paranoia and secrecy, Nuon Chea was as shadowy as Pol Pot, or even more so, according to historians.
“Except for Nuon Chea, Pol Pot was the least accessible Cambodian leader since World War II,” David Chandler, an American scholar on Cambodia, wrote in “Brother Number One,” a biography of Pol Pot.
Researchers say he was the chief ideologue responsible for devising the Khmer Rouge’s most brutal policies, notably at Tuol Sleng — or S-21 — prison, which is now a genocide museum in Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital. Some 16,000 men, women and children passed through the prison’s gate before being tortured and executed.
Youk Chhang, director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia, which researches Khmer Rouge crimes, said strong evidence links Nuon Chea to the killings. He said the 800,000 documents about the country’s holocaust his center has gathered include many that incriminate Nuon Chea.
“He was born like all of us, but he was driven by power and he later committed crimes against his own people,” Youk Chhang said Sunday.
After being ousted from power in 1979, the Khmer Rouge waged guerrilla warfare for another two decades before disintegrating. Pol Pot died in the jungle in 1998, and on Christmas Eve that year, Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan surrendered.
Prime Minister Hun Sen welcomed the duo at his home and gave them and family members a beach holiday, providing sports utility vehicles and security escorts.
When asked at the time who was to blame for the massacres under his regime, Nuon Chea told a news conference, “Let’s consider that an old issue.”
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Latest Hong Kong Protests End with Tear Gas, Rock Throwing
Hong Kong protests devolved into violence for a second consecutive night Sunday, with police firing tear gas to disperse demonstrators who threw rocks and bricks at a police station.The weekend marches have continued for the past two months to protest what they see as Beijing’s growing control over the officially autonomous Chinese territory. In an ominous warning Sunday, a major Chinese news outlet warned that Beijing will not let the protests continue.As with previous marches, Sunday’s protests began peacefully with demonstrators singing and playing musical instruments as large crowds filled the streets. But as evening fell, smaller groups marched on a police station and the Liaison Office, the local headquarters of the mainland government.Hundreds of masked demonstrators blocked streets in a district in Hong Kong’s New Territories and hurled rocks and bricks at a police station, smashing windows. Police responded with tear gas to drive back the crowd. A separate group of protesters was turned back from the Liaison Office.A day earlier, protesters marched across Mong Kok and Sham Shui Po on Hong Kong’s Kowloon peninsula before converging in Tsim Sha Tsui, a waterfront shopping district popular with tourists from China, where they briefly barricaded a cross-harbor tunnel.Riot police arrive to disperse protesters at Causeway Bay during the anti-extradition bill protest in Hong Kong, Aug. 4, 2019.China’s warningChina’s central Xinhua news agency published the sharpest warning yet that a crackdown could be imminent. Blaming the violence on “ugly forces,” the commentary said the Beijing government “will not sit idly by and let this situation continue.”Sunday’s protest are the latest in nearly nine weeks of demonstrations against the government, which earlier this summer tried and failed to push a bill through its semi-democratic legislature that would have allowed criminals to be extradited to mainland China.The bill unleashed unprecedented anger and mistrust with the Hong Kong government, however, which many believe is heavily influenced by Beijing. That’s despite the fact the former British colony has been promised autonomy until 2047.Even after it was suspended, discontent persists with the government’s heavy handed use of riot police to respond to protests, and its failure to meet any protester demands — including formally withdrawing the bill.Many protesters on Saturday chanted slogans calling for a general strike on Monday, which organizers say will involve 23,000 people.Protesters carry a U.S. flag as they march through the Mong Kok neighborhood during a demonstration in Hong Kong, Aug. 3, 2019.Elsewhere at Saturday’s march, half a dozen protesters carried American flags in a bid to draw the attention of the U.S. Congress, which they want to pass the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act. The bipartisan legislation “reaffirms U.S. commitment to democracy, human rights, and the rule of law at a time when those freedoms and Hong Kong’s autonomy are being eroded,” according to a press release.The act would see the U.S. annually review its special trade treaty with Hong Kong, depending on the status of human rights in the semi-autonomous Chinese city. It also would enable the U.S. to impose sanctions on Hong Kong officials.
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Pope Prays for Victims of 3 US Mass Shootings in a Week
Pope Francis is offering prayers for the dead and the injured in three U.S. mass shootings this week.Francis told a crowd gathered in St. Peter’s Square for the weekly Angelus blessing Sunday that “I am spiritually close to the victims of the episodes of violence that have bloodied Texas, California and Ohio, in the United States, striking defenseless people.”He appealed to the faithful “to join my prayer for the people who lost their lives, the injured and their family members.”Nine people in Ohio have been killed in the second mass shooting in the United States in less than 24 hours, following the shooting deaths of 20 people Saturday at a Texas shopping area. Just days before, on July 28, a gunman killed three people at a food festival in California.
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Was Polish Scandal a Russian Test for US Election Tampering?
High-ranking Polish politicians used a side door to get to the VIP section of Sowa & Przyjaciele, a posh Warsaw restaurant. Sealed off from other patrons, government ministers and lawmakers felt free to speak their minds while enjoying continental cuisine and wine at taxpayers’ expense.But the privacy was an illusion, the special dining room a trap.For about a year, waiters secretly recorded public officials at Sowa & Przyjaciele and another restaurant, Amber Room. When a newsmagazine published transcripts from some of the recordings, it spawned a scandal dubbed “Waitergate” that helped topple a pro-European Union government.Russian involvementSuspicions that Russia and the nationalist political party that won Poland’s 2015 election were behind the illegal eavesdropping persisted even after a Polish multimillionaire was convicted as the mastermind. With the country’s next election coming up this fall, a Polish journalist and the jailed tycoon have provided fresh fuel for claims that Waitergate was a prelude to Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.Grzegorz Rzeczkowski, a respected investigative reporter for the Polityka newsmagazine, argues in a new book that Russian intelligence services carried out the restaurant buggings on behalf of the Kremlin. He also presents evidence to allege that Polish intelligence figures conspired to use the recordings to bring the right-wing Law and Justice party, or PIS, to power.In his book, titled “In a Foreign Alphabet: How People of the Kremlin and PIS Played with the Eavesdropping,” Rzeczkowski maintains that, just as with the U.S. election meddling that special counsel Robert Mueller called “sweeping and systematic,” Russia’s goal with Waitergate was to weaken the West.”It was to open the road to power for the anti-Western, anti-liberal, anti-democratic opposition of the time,” Rzeczkowski told a Polish parliamentary panel last month. “Russia had a full, spectacular success.”Grzegorz Rzeczkowski, an investigative reporter for the weekly Polish newsmagazine Polityka, poses with a book he has written about an eavesdropping affair that helped toppled a government, in Warsaw, Poland, June 28, 2019.The panel stemmed from an opposition lawmaker’s push to pressure the government to shed light on the alleged Russian connection. A newspaper subsequently reported that Poland’s counterintelligence service is investigating whether a foreign spy agency played a role.The Russian Foreign Ministry has dismissed claims of Kremlin involvement.”Poland’s political establishment and media community have been working for years to put out a multitude of hoaxes about `Russian machinations,”‘ the ministry said. “We see no need to comment on such absurd allegations.”A wariness that Russia is trying to destabilize democracy in central Europe has permeated politics in Poland and neighboring nations since they ended communism after decades under Moscow’s control. Many have since joined NATO and the EU while more have applied.When the eavesdropping scandal broke five years ago, then-Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk immediately pointed to Russia. His remark would give Rzeczkowski his book title: “I do not know in which alphabet this scenario was written, but I know exactly who could be the beneficiary.”Tusk became president of the European Council several months after the scandal unfolded, a job that involves overseeing the common agenda of the EU’s national leaders. He recently said he was more convinced now of “the Russian track in this whole affair.”The coal tycoon’s arrest in Spain and recent extradition to Poland has added to the intrigue. Polish prosecutors accused Marek Falenta, 43, of recording the politicians to punish the government for trying to block imports of Russian coal. He fled before starting a 2-and-a-half-year prison sentence.FILE – Polish prosecutors accused, May 17, 2016, businessman Marek Falenta of wiretapping of politicians and business people in Warsaw restaurants in 2013 and 2014 to punish the government for trying to block imports of Russian coal.After his capture, Falenta threatened to expose Law and Justice members for allegedly recruiting him in the recording plot if he didn’t receive a presidential pardon, according to letters leaked to Polish newspapers. He told the president, prime minister and the powerful ruling party leader he expected better treatment in return for helping them.Government officials have called the letters an act of desperation from an untrustworthy source. They refused to respond to requests by The Associated Press for comment on the allegations of Russian responsibility for Waitergate.Dozens of politicians had hundreds of hours of conversations illegally recorded at the two restaurants between June 2013 and June 2014. Poland’s government, led at the time by Tusk’s centrist Civic Platform party, had declared a fight against Russian coal imports and was a strong advocate for the Western course that activists were agitating for in Ukraine.The leaked recordings proved deeply embarrassing for Tusk’s government and strained ties with the U.S. They included the foreign minister complaining that Poland’s alliance with the United States “wasn’t worth anything” and put Poland, metaphorically speaking, in the position of performing oral sex.The minister, Radek Sikorski, resigned along with three others four months before the 2015 election.Sikorski noted Sunday that, back in 2014, there were no U.S. troops yet in Poland as there are now and said “I doubted the efficacy of the alliance.” But he says the transcript was manipulated by the magazine Wprost to suggest he called the alliance “bullshit” – when he only used that word to describe limited U.S. participation in a single NATO exercise.Waitergate – a warningNow a European Parliament member, Sikorski criticizes American officials for not taking Waitergate as a warning.”We were a laboratory for what happened in the United States, and the U.S. was too arrogant to take heed,” said Sikorski, who says Russian hacking group Fancy Bear sent him one of the emails that would compromise Democrat Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in 2016. “We saw it coming. It was successfully tested in Poland.”Under the conservative Law and Justice government that came to power in 2015, Russian coal imports have doubled. Signs of democratic backsliding, such as government encroaching on the independence of Poland’s judicial system, have caused tensions with the EU. Warsaw has almost ceased to be an advocate for Ukraine.Central to Rzeczkowski’s theory is the former manager of Sowa & Przyjaciele, who waited on officials in the VIP room. Referred to only as Lukasz N. because of Poland’s privacy law, he previously managed another Warsaw restaurant, Lemongrass, across the street from the U.S. Embassy.Lemongrass was established by the director of the Polish branch of Russian energy giant Lukoil with money from Russian organized crime, according to Rzeczkowski. He says counterintelligence sources told him the restaurant was a front to spy on Americans and when the cover story was blown, two Russians bought the place.Two other businessmen with Kremlin connections opened Sowa & Przyjaciele in 2012 in cooperation with star chef Robert Sowa, the journalist says. The manager, Lukasz N., sent Polish politicians text messages inviting them to sample Sowa’s modern European dishes.FILE – A man walks in front of the now-closed restaurant Sowa & Przyjaciele, June 20, 2014 , where top Polish politicians and business people were secretly and illegally recorded over hundreds of hours in 2013 and 2014, in Warsaw, Poland.Rzeczkowski says other alleged links between Sowa & Przyjaciele and Russians in organized crime suggest that Falenta, the convicted Polish tycoon, did not organize Waitergate but had a supporting role.Polish media reported last year that Falenta had a multi-million dollar debt to a Russian coal company, KTK. A leading Polish police investigator on the recordings case got a top security job at KTK – after a police investigation early on in the probe found no evidence of Russian involvement.Tomasz Piatek, another journalist who investigates links between Polish political figures and Russia, says Rzeczkowski’s evidence is overwhelming, but he thinks fear and denial keep the truth about Waitergate from getting the attention it deserves.”It’s a reason for pride for Poles to say we freed ourselves from Russian domination,” Piatek said. “To admit that Russians are still here and that we are still controlled by them is hard.”
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Sudanese Protesters Sign Power-Sharing Deal With Military
Sudan’s pro-democracy movement signed a power-sharing agreement with the ruling military council on Sunday aimed at paving the way for a transition to civilian rule following the overthrow of President Omar al-Bashir in April.Representatives signed a constitutional document that would establish a joint military and civilian council to rule for a little over three years until elections can be held. The agreement would also establish a Cabinet appointed by the activists, as well as a legislative body.
The military overthrew al-Bashir in April following months of protests against his three-decade-long rule. The protesters remained in the streets, demanding a rapid transition to a civilian authority. They have been locked in tense negotiations with the military for weeks while holding mass protests.
The two sides reached a preliminary agreement last month following international pressure, amid growing concerns the political crisis could ignite civil war.
That document provided for the establishment of a joint civilian-military sovereign council. A military leader would head the 11-member council for the first 21 months, followed by a civilian leader for the next 18. There would also be a Cabinet of technocrats chosen by the protesters, as well as a legislative council, the makeup of which would be decided within three months.
The constitutional document signed Sunday is aimed at clarifying the division of powers and settling other outstanding disputes.
The two sides came under renewed pressure in recent days after security forces opened fire on student protesters in the city of Obeid, leaving six people dead. At least nine troops from the paramilitary Rapid Support forces were arrested over the killings.
In June, security forces violently dispersed the protesters’ main sit-in outside the military headquarters in Khartoum, killing dozens of people and plunging the fragile transition into crisis.
A key point of dispute in the talks had been whether military leaders would be immune from prosecution over the recent violence. It was not immediately clear what protections, if any, would be provided in the agreement singed Sunday.
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China Media to Hong Kong Protesters: Beijing’s Patience Wearing Thin
Thousands of protesters took to Hong Kong’s streets Sunday, a day after violent clashes between anti-government protesters and police, and as China’s official news agency warned Beijing will not let the situation in the Asian financial hub continue.The Chinese-controlled city has been rocked by months of protests against a proposed bill to allow people to be extradited to stand trial in mainland China and a general strike aimed at bringing the city to a halt is planned for Monday.Police said in a statement early Sunday that they had arrested more than 20 people for offenses overnight including unlawful assembly and assault.On Saturday, police fired multiple tear gas rounds in confrontations with black-clad activists in the city’s Kowloon area. On Sunday, thousands of demonstrators marched peacefully in the town of Tseung Kwan O in the New Territories brandishing colorful banners and leaflets.Dressed in black, the protesters cheered as they called for a mass strike across Hong Kong Monday.Henry Tong, wearing a helmet and a first aid vest associated with the anti-extradition bill protests, poses for pictures with his wife, Elaine To, after getting married in Hong Kong, Aug. 4, 2019. The placard reads,”Let’s go for it together.”Government unresponsive“We’re trying to tell the government to (withdraw) the extradition bill and to police to stop the investigations and the violence,” said Gabriel Lee, a 21-year-old technology student.Lee said what made him most angry was that the government was not responding to any of the protesters’ demands or examining the police violence.Protesters Saturday set fires in the streets, outside a police station and in rubbish bins, and blocked the entrance to the Cross-Harbor Tunnel, cutting a major artery linking Hong Kong island and the Kowloon peninsula.Major shops in the popular tourist and commercial area Nathan Road, normally packed on a Saturday, were shuttered including 7-11 convenience stores, jewelry chain Chow Tai Fook and watch brands Rolex and Tudor.Warning from mainlandWhat started as an angry response to the now-suspended extradition bill, has expanded to demands for greater democracy and the resignation of leader Carrie Lam.The protests have become the most serious political crisis in Hong Kong since it returned to Chinese rule 22 years ago after being governed by Britain.Thousands of civil servants joined in the anti-government protests on Friday for the first time since they started in June, defying a warning from authorities to remain politically neutral.The protests mark the biggest popular challenge to Chinese leader Xi Jinping since he took office in 2012.China’s official news agency Xinhua wrote on Sunday that the “central government will not sit idly by and let this situation continue. We firmly believe that Hong Kong will be able to overcome the difficulties and challenges ahead. “Hong Kong has been allowed to retain extensive freedoms, such as an independent judiciary but many residents see the extradition bill as the latest step in a relentless march toward mainland control.Economic tollMonths of demonstrations are taking a growing toll on the city’s economy, as local shoppers and tourists avoid parts of one of the world’s most famous shopping destinations.Matthew Wang, a 22-year-old marketing executive for a multinational corporation, said that the government was “encouraging people to become more radical to affect decision making because they are not addressing any of the demands.”
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Ohio Police: 9 Dead, 16 Hurt in Early Morning Shooting in Dayton
Updated Aug. 4, 5:07 a.m. The Associated Press contributed to this report.Nine people were killed and 16 more were wounded early Sunday morning in Dayton, Ohio, police said. It was the second mass shooting in the U.S. in less than 24 hours.Dayton police said on its Twitter account: “We had officers in the immediate vicinity when this shooting began and were able to respond and put an end to it quickly.”Police say the gunman, whose identity has not been released, is dead. The FBI is assisting in the case, police added.The shooting, which began around 1 a.m. local time, in the Oregon district of the city came just hours after a mass shooting Saturday at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, where 20 people were killed and 26 were wounded. Last Sunday a gunman killed three people and injured 13 at the Gilroy Garlic Festival in California.The Oregon District is a historic neighborhood known for its entertainment in the city of Dayton in the Midwestern U.S. state of Ohio.The tweets from Dayton police early Sunday did not include further details, but described the shooting as “a large scene and investigation.” Miami Valley Hospital spokeswoman Terrea Little said 16 victims have been received at the hospital, but she couldn’t confirm their conditions.Video from the scene near downtown Dayton showed a host of emergency vehicles on a street that had been cordoned off. Kettering Health Network spokeswoman Elizabeth Long said multiple victims from a shooting had been brought to system hospitals, but didn’t have details on how many.
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25 Dead, 55 Rescued After Boats Capsize in Philippines
Rescuers plucked more bodies from rough seas where three ferry boats capsized after being buffeted by fierce wind and waves off two central Philippine provinces, bringing the death toll to 25 with six missing, police said Sunday.Regional police spokesman Joem Javier said the dead were mostly passengers of two ferries that flipped over in sudden gusts of wind and powerful waves Saturday off Guimaras and Iloilo provinces. Fifty-five other passengers and crew were rescued.A third ferry, which was not carrying any passengers, also capsized in the Iloilo Strait but its four crewmen survived, Javier said.Survivors recounted how the sky suddenly turned dark midway on their trip followed by strong wind and rain that battered their ferries.A rescue worker carries a survivor after three ferry boats capsized in bad weather off central Philippines, Aug. 3, 2019.Authorities wondered why a third ferry was allowed to sail about three hours after two other ferries overturned almost at the same time in bad weather.Forecasters have warned of heavy monsoon rains, thunderstorms and rain-triggered landslides amid a tropical depression more than 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) off the country’s eastern coast.Classes and work were suspended in metropolitan Manila Friday and Saturday amid heavy rains and flooding, which caused intense traffic jams in low-lying areas in the capital.About 20 typhoons and storms batter the Philippines each year, making the archipelago that lies on the Pacific typhoon and earthquake belt one of the world’s most disaster-prone countries.
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He Made It! Frenchman Crosses Channel on ‘Flyboard’
A daredevil French inventor succeeded Sunday in his second attempt to cross the English Channel on a jet-powered hoverboard, taking off from the northern French coast amid a crowd of onlookers.Franky Zapata, 40, has to swap out his backpack full of kerosene by landing on a boat about halfway through the expected 20-minute trip toward St. Margaret’s Bay in Dover, on England’s southern coast.Zapata failed to pull off the tricky refueling maneuver during the first attempt on his Flyboard July 25, hitting the platform and tumbling into the waters of the busy shipping lane.He hopes to make the 35-kilometer (22-mile) crossing at an average speed of 140 kilometers an hour (87 mph) and at a height of 15-20 meters (50-65 feet) above the water.This time the refueling boat will be bigger and have a larger landing area, and French navy vessels in the area will again be keeping an eye out in case of trouble.
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African Teens Inspired, Motivated by Basketball Without Borders
For one intense week, 40 boys and 20 girls from 29 African countries were chosen for a highly selective program to train with current and former players from the National Basketball Association (NBA) and Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA). The NBA’s Basketball Without Borders program has been scouting and training girls and boys across the continent for 17 years. Teenage girls who took part say working with women from the continent who played for WNBA teams has motivated them to stay in the game. Iris was scouted by the program from her local team in Gabon. (E. Sarai/VOA)“This experience has been so enriching for us,” Iris, a 16-year-old from Gabon, told VOA. “It’s helped me a lot, I’ve learned new things and it’s renewed my enthusiasm, my desire to keep going and to become someone in the world of basketball.”Iris says she was scouted for the program by organizers who watched her local team play in Gabon. Iris was then asked to produce a video of her playing and was later informed that she’d been accepted to the program.The coaches and mentors are helping these young players through drills and matches, but also serve as role models of what the youngsters can become. One such role model is Astou Ndiaye, originally from Senegal. She played for the Detroit Shock, which won the 2003 WNBA championship.“We have walked the path that they want to walk,” Ndiaye told VOA. “So just being here being able to talk to them, answer their questions and really give them hopefully, the confidence they need to know that if we can do it, they can because there’s a path for them.”Ndiaye has been coaching young women in the Basketball Without Borders program for years, but is particularly encouraged this year because it is only the second time that Senegal has hosted the program in its 17-year history.Ndiaye’s presence and enthusiasm for the program have been particularly inspirational for many young women who hope to follow in her footsteps.Vanessa, a 16-year-old basketball player from Cameroon, says she is looking forward to returning home and sharing what she has learned at Basketball Without Borders. (E. Sarai/VOA)“It’s because of them — they’ve inspired us to play basketball, really,” Vanessa, a 16-old player from Cameroon, told VOA. “And it’s because of them that we really apply ourselves here and say that maybe one day we can replace them, or play with them.”Although only half as many girls as boys are accepted to the program, organizers say that promoting young female players on the continent is just as important to them as working with the boys.“Our primary mission and goal at NBA Africa, when we launched, was to really increase participation in our sport. So you cannot do that by ignoring more than half the population,” Amadou Gallo Fall, NBA Africa’s managing director, told VOA. “So I think over the years, we’ve seen tremendous progress in the women’s game.”The NBA sponsors the Basketball Without Borders program each year to scout and train up and coming basketball players on the continent. (E. Sarai/VOA)Ndiaye agrees that in recent years, the women she coaches will have better opportunities than her generation did.“It’s getting better. If we remember, we were pioneers then,” Ndiaye said.“And the salaries, all the benefits and advantages that the kids are getting now — it’s unbelievable — so it can only get better.”
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Ending Homelessness in Seattle, One Family at a Time
There are an estimated 12,000 homeless people living in Seattle, in the Northwest U.S. state of Washington, according to the U.S. government. Among those homeless, a significant but difficult to quantify number don’t speak English. But one nonprofit is working to serve English learners and end homelessness all at the same time. VOA’s Valdya Baraputri reports.
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