The nation’s largest utility said Friday that its distribution lines have sparked no damaging wildfires since it began repeatedly shutting off power to hundreds of thousands of Northern California customers this fall.But Pacific Gas & Electric is not ruling out that failed transmission equipment may have started a fire in wine country north of San Francisco that damaged or destroyed more than 400 structures.Authorities have not determined what sparked the wildfire in Sonoma County last month, but the utility says it had a problem at a transmission tower near where the fire ignited.It had shut off power to distribution lines to prevent its equipment from igniting wildfires, but left electricity flowing through what it believed were less vulnerable transmission lines. PG&E said in a court filing Friday that it is not aware of similar vulnerable equipment elsewhere.“In 2019, there have been no fatalities and no structures destroyed in any wildfire that may have been caused by PG&E distribution lines,” the company said.That’s in sharp contrast to recent years, despite the potential blame it faces for sparking last month’s damaging wildfire.PG&E acknowledges its equipment caused last year’s Camp Fire that ravaged the Sierra Nevada foothills community of Paradise, destroying nearly 19,000 buildings and killing 85 people.For 2017, PG&E said it could be held potentially liable for 21 wildfires that combined to destroy 8,900 buildings and killed 44 people.The utility has faced scathing criticism for shutting off power to millions of people for days at a time to avoid a repeat of those tragedies.The company declared bankruptcy in January as it faced up to $30 billion in damages from wildfires in 2017 and 2018 that were started by the company’s electrical equipment. Lawyers for wildfire victims and PG&E now are considering whether new claims related to the most recent fire will be included in the bankruptcy case.U.S. District Judge William Alsup, who is overseeing the utility’s felony probation for a deadly natural gas explosion in 2010, required officials to provide more details Friday about the jumper cable that broke moments before last month’s fire was reported.The company said the tower with the detached cable, which is a metal connector between an incoming and outgoing electrical line, was last routinely visually inspected from the ground in July, with a drone in May, and by a contractor crew that climbed the tower in February as part of the utility’s wildfire safety inspection program. They spotted no problems with the jumper cables, the company reported.The judge asked whether the public must now fear that other cables that passed inspection could also still fail.PG&E said is investigating whether similar issues exist elsewhere but is not currently aware of any other jumper cables that are vulnerable.The company said it had inspected about 750,000 distribution and transmission structures in high-risk areas and “repaired or made safe all of the highest-priority conditions” by September, before last month’s fire.That included repairing two “Priority Code ‘A’ conditions relating to jumper cables on transmission structures.” It said it is incorporating lessons learned from the wildfire safety inspection program into its regularly scheduled inspection and maintenance program.
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Month: November 2019
Namibia President Takes Lead in Partial Election Results
Namibia’s President Hage Geingob on Friday looked set to secure a second term with partial results from this week’s general election showing him leading with 56 percent of the vote.The southwestern African country held its sixth presidential and parliamentary elections on Wednesday amid economic woes and growing frustration against the regime.Geingob’s South West Africa People’s (SWAPO) party has been in power since Namibia’s independence from South Africa in 1990, and is widely hailed for its role in the liberation struggle.But the president – who was elected with a sweeping 87 percent majority in 2014 – is predicted to lose a share of votes to a breakaway SWAPO member running as an independent candidate, former dentist Panduleni Itula.The breakaway candidate is particularly popular among youth frustrated by the lack of jobs and too young to remember the SWAPO-led war for independence.Partial results published by the Electoral Commission of Namibia after around 65 percent of the votes were counted showed Geingob leading with 56.08 percent, followed by Itula with 28.49 percent.PDM candidate and second-time runner McHenry Venaani was third with 5.71 percent.SWAPO was also ahead in parliament with 65.34 percent of the vote.The party’s long-standing opponent, the Popular Democratic Movement (PDM), was a distant second at 15.67 percent.Corruption scandalSWAPO looks likely to retain the two-thirds majority in the 76-member parliament it has enjoyed since 1994.But Geingob’s popularity has slipped. His first term was overshadowed by a recession, and his credibility took a hit over a giant fishing scnadal that erupted just before the election.A series of leaked documents alleged that senior government officials awarded horse mackerel quotas to Samherji, one of Iceland’s biggest fishing firms, in exchange for bribes.Fishing is one of Namibia’s key economic sectors, second only to mineral mining.Two ministers resigned but have denied any wrongdoing. They appeared in court Thursday over alleged bribes of $10 million.The saga took another twist on Friday when two South African lawyers representing the former ministers were detained for operating without work permits.Namibia’s chief immigration officer Nehemia Nghishekwa told AFP the lawyers would be brought to court and were likely to spend the night in custody.’Generally peaceful’Around 1.4 million of Namibia’s 2.4 million population were registered to vote. Half were under 37 and around a third born after 1990.The election was “generally peaceful, well organised and conducted in a professional manner,” the Southern African Development Community (SADC) regional bloc said Friday.Commonwealth observers echoed that assessment and said the polls were “carried out in a largely peaceful and orderly manner”.Namibia was the first country in Africa to introduce electronic voting machines in 2014. The machines – opposed by opposition parties fearing the lack of paper could facilitate fraud – were meant to accelerate the voting and counting process.But the voting process was painfully sluggish and had people queueing for hours.”We observed that the processing of voters remains slow, thereby resulting in an arduous polling experience for many voters,” said the head of the Commonwealth Observer Group.SADC recommended better training and “voter education” around the use of these machines.
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Ex-Con Beautifies Chicago Neighborhood
Home foreclosures hit low-income neighborhoods in the United States particularly hard during the 2008 financial crisis, which triggered a severe economic recession. Local groups, government funding, and people determined to bring change now work to rebuild those communities. As VOA’s Arash Arabasadi reports, a convicted killer is a big part of that effort in Chicago’s famed South Side
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Chinese Ambassador Visits Huawei Exec Under House Arrest in Canada
China’s ambassador to Canada on Friday called on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government to “correct its mistake” of detaining Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou last year on a US extradition warrant.Ambassador Cong Peiwu issued the statement after visiting Meng at her mansion in Vancouver, where she is under house arrest pending an extradition trial scheduled to start in January.Cong said that he stressed to Meng that Beijing is “determined to protect the just and legitimate rights and interests of its citizens and enterprises, and will continue to urge the Canadian side to correct its mistake and take measures to solve the issue as soon as possible.””We expect (Meng) to go back to China safe and sound at an early date,” he said.Meng’s arrest last December during a layover at Vancouver’s international airport triggered an escalating diplomatic row between Canada and China.Within days, China detained two Canadians — former diplomat Michael Kovrig and businessman Michael Spavor — in apparent retaliation, and subsequently blocked billions of dollars worth of Canadian canola and meat shipments, before restoring imports of the country’s beef and pork earlier this month.Canada, meanwhile, enlisted the support of allies such as Britain, France, Germany, the United States and NATO to press for the release of its two citizens.When he met his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi at a G20 meeting in Japan last weekend, Canada’s new foreign minister, Francois-Philippe Champagne, called their release an “absolute priority.”But Cong, who was posted to Ottawa in September, told Canadian media that Meng’s release was a “precondition” for improved relations.Canada has previously declared the arrests of Spavor and Kovrig “arbitrary.” Others have gone further, tarring it as “hostage diplomacy.”The pair, held in isolation until June when they were formally charged with allegedly stealing Chinese state secrets and moved to a detention center, have been permitted only one 30-minute consular visit per-month.Describing their harsh detention conditions, The Globe and Mail newspaper, citing unnamed sources, reported that Kovrig’s jailers at one point seized his reading glasses.Since being granted bail soon after her arrest, Meng has been required to wear an electronic monitoring anklet and abide by a curfew, but she is free to roam within Vancouver city limits under the gaze of a security escort.Her father, Huawei founder Ren Zengfei, told CNN that she’s “like a small ant caught between the collision of two giant powers.”He described her spending time in Vancouver enjoying painting and studying, adding that her mother and husband routinely travel to Canada to care for her.
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Somali Refugee Leads US Pediatric Clinic that Gave Her a Healthy Outlook
Anisa Ibrahim was six years old when she came to the United States as a Somali refugee in 1993. The family settled in Seattle, in the northwestern state of Washington, where the girl and her four siblings got health care at the Harborview Medical Center Pediatric Clinic.Now a pediatrician herself, Ibrahim is medical director of the clinic, overseeing a dozen other doctors whose patients, like hers, include many immigrants.When she got the promotion in September, “it felt like everything that I had been working for had come to fruition and my story had really, really come full circle,” Ibrahim, 32, told VOA’s Somali Service in a phone interview. “I really thought back [on] everyone and everything that made this moment possible for me.”Among those Ibrahim credits is the doctor who treated her in childhood, after her family had moved from a Kenyan refugee camp where they’d sought relief from Somalia’s civil war in 1992.She had told her pediatrician, Elinor Graham, that she wanted to follow in that profession. Graham’s response “really stuck with me,” said Ibrahim, repeating the words she’d heard long ago: ” ‘You know, Anisa, I want you to become a pediatrician as well. And when you do, I want you to work here so I can retire.’ “Ibrahim studied at the University of Washington’s School of Medicine, graduating in 2013. She did a residency at Seattle Children’s Hospital and joined Harborview as a general pediatrician in 2016.Along the way, she married and had two daughters. She also encountered doubters.”Going to medical school, going to residencies, there are always people who discourage you … simply because of how you look, simply because of your race, your religion, your nationality,” Ibrahim said. “But, you know, most recently I’ve just been overwhelmed with the amount of support I’ve gotten from everyone.”Communication and trustOne of her backers is Brian Johnston, Harborview’s chief of pediatrics.Along with providing medical skills, Ibrahim — part of a diverse staff — is able to telegraph acceptance to immigrant families that might identify with her, Johnston said. And that can lead to better care.”When there is concordance between a health care provider and a patient in terms of their race, ethnicity or culture, the communication can be improved, the trust is improved and the patient’s adherence to the plan that is formulated is improved,” Johnston said. “So having a diverse workforce among our positions improves our ability to deliver good health care to a diverse population.”At Harborview, Ibrahim, who also serves as president of the Somali Health Board, works closely with immigrants and refugees. In her official bio, she describes herself as “committed to caring for low-income, socially vulnerable populations” with limited English skills.”I can say I know life is tough in a refugee camp,” the doctor told K5 News (KING-TV Seattle) last month. “I know life is tough settling into a new country and not speaking English and not knowing where the grocery store is and being isolated from the rest of your family.”‘Powerful’ role modelNot only does Ibrahim work to improve the health and conditions of children who are in the same position she was, but she also hopes to combat any negative perceptions about newcomers.”We are in a very polarizing time where there is negative rhetoric about immigrants. That’s really being used to dehumanize human beings, to demonize people for wanting what other people would want: safety, an education, a good life for their children,” she said. “It’s really, really important for people to go back to … a humanistic approach and not a political approach because this is not a political issue. It is about giving people opportunities,” said Ibrahim, a U.S. citizen. “So I think [through] my story, I want people to know that every single individual, every single human being, is capable of achieving great things.”Johnston said Ibrahim is, indeed, a source of inspiration.”We are a pediatric clinic that serves a large immigrant population, and for those kids, it’s really powerful to have a role model in a leadership position who looks like them: a woman, a woman of color, a woman who shares their experience in terms of forced migration, being a refugee in a new country,” Johnston said. “I think it sends a message to those kids that this career, even leadership in this career, is open to people of their experience and their background.”Last week in a Twitter post, Ibrahim suggested she’s making a positive impact, as her own pediatrician once did.”Today my 11-year-old patient told me that she wanted to be a doctor and a scientist [to] do research. She then said, ‘You can’t do both, I need to pick.’ Her eyes lit up when I said, ‘No you don’t, you can do both!’ Made my day.”
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Spain: Sunbathers Help Migrants Arriving to Beach by Boat
Sunbathers have assisted two dozen exhausted migrants who arrived by boat to a beach in Spain’s Canary Islands.
The boat landed early Friday at a beach in San Bartolome de Tirajana on the island of Gran Canaria, one of Spain’s seven Canary Islands located off the northwest coast of Africa.
Television images showed bathers giving the migrants water and food and wrapping them in towels.
Emergency services said the Spanish Red Cross later looked after the migrants _ 12 men, eight women and three children _ six of whom were treated at a local hospital. None were reported to be in serious condition.
Private Spanish news agency Europa Press said the North African and sub Saharan migrants had been aboard the boat for several days.
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Over 160 Nations Agree to Speed Landmine Clearing
The 164 signatory countries to the Mine Ban Treaty (MBT) agreed Friday to accelerate the work to achieve the goal of a “mine-free” world in 2025, Norway’s foreign ministry said.”Countries have now agreed that it is necessary to speed up mine clearance over the next five years,” Norway’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Ine Eriksen Soreide said in a statement following a meeting in Oslo.According to Landmine Monitor, an annual report by the Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor, 6,897 people were killed or injured by mines and other explosive remnants of war in 2018 and the report noted that it was the fourth year in a row with “exceptionally high numbers of recorded casualties.”Of those, 3,789 were victims of so-called improvised mines, the highest recorded number to date.Under the Oslo Action Plan, adopted Friday, states undertake to “identify mined areas and put in place national plans for mine clearance.”They also commit to measuring their progress in the final stretch before 2025, the goal set by the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention or Ottawa Treaty in 1997, the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.FILE – Zimbabwean citizens work on a mined beach in Stanley, Falkland Islands (Malvinas), Oct. 11, 2019.The meeting in Oslo this week was the last in a series of five-year meetings to implement the treaty drafted in 1997, which helped to put an end to virtually all mine use by governments, including those that did not sign it.Armed groups are, however, increasingly using improvised anti-personnel mines.According to Landmine Monitor, non-state groups used this type of weapon last year in at least six countries: Afghanistan, India, Burma, Nigeria, Pakistan and Yemen.Since the treaty’s adoption, nearly 58 million mines have been removed by clearing minefields and destroying stockpiles, according to the Norwegian ministry.Efforts to rid the world of these weapons were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997, which was given to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines and U.S. citizen Jody Williams.
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Family of Slain Journalist Presses Malta’s PM to Resign
The family of a journalist who was killed by a car bomb in Malta is urging Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat to resign, after his former chief aide was released from jail in a probe aimed at finding the mastermind of the 2017 murder.
Muscat said Friday that police found no grounds to hold Keith Schembri, his former chief of staff in custody. The family of the slain journalist, Daphne Caruana Galizia, said in a tweet that “we share Malta’s shock and anger” that the ex-aide was released from jail a day earlier.
“This travesty of justice is shaming our country, ripping our society apart, and it is degrading us,” one of Daphne’s sons, Paul Caruana Galizia, said in a tweet. “It cannot continue any longer.”
“We urge the prime minister to step aside and let an unconflicted deputy take over. If the prime minister has the interests of justice and Malta at heart, then he should do so immediately.”
Maltese media were reporting that Muscat’s resignation could be imminent.
Thousands of Maltese on the Mediterranean island nation of some 400,000 people have been turning out nightly outside Muscat’s office calling on the prime minister to step down.
Schembri, who resigned his post when questioned earlier in the week, has denied any wrongdoing related to the death of Daphne Caruana Galizia, who was killed as the car she was driving near her home blew up.
She had written extensively about suspected corruption in political and business circles in the EU nation.
Three men have been arrested for carrying out the bombing. No trial date has been set.
Last week, police took into custody a Maltese hotelier as he tried to flee Malta on his yacht. The jailed businessman, Yorgen Fenech, provided information about Schembri, reportedly in a bid to win immunity.
But Muscat told reporters early Friday that the police commissioner and the attorney general recommended that “there is not sufficient reason to grant a presidential pardon.”
Muscat did not give details about why police came to that conclusion.
“The police commissioner and the attorney general’s detailed recommendation is that there is not sufficient reason to grant a presidential pardon to Yorgen Fenech,” Muscat said. He added that his Cabinet unanimously agreed with that recommendation.
The lack of information frustrated the slain reporter’s family.
Fenech “does not need a presidential pardon for the police to charge Schembri, the family said in the tweet.”
In an unrelated case which added to Muscat’s woes, a Maltese court on Friday ruled that Finance Minister Edward Scicluna be investigated for a deal in which the government privatized three public hospitals.
The court also ruled investigations were in order in the hospital transfer deal of two politicians who resigned ministry posts earlier this week. Chris Cardona and Konrad Mizzi had resigned from their Cabinet positions, in connection with the car bomb probe. New reports have linked the two men to the murder investigation. Cardona and Mizzi have denied wrongdoing in connection with the bombing.
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NATO Seeks to Head Off Budget Row Saying Spending is Rising
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Friday that European allies and Canada are spending even more than previously thought on defense, just days before U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to demand once more that other leaders boost their military budgets.Trump meets with his NATO counterparts in London on Dec. 3-4. The previous two NATO summits were dominated by his allegations that other allies are not pulling their weight. While they do not owe the United States any money, Washington does spend more on defense than all its allies combined.In what appears to be a pre-emptive political strike, Stoltenberg said that European allies and Canada are now projected to increase spending on their national military budgets by around $130 billion between 2016 and 2020. Previously, the figure was forecast to be “more than $100 billion.””The trend is up. Year by year we are increasing, and year by year we are adding billions to our defense spending,” Stoltenberg told reporters in Brussels, where the 29-member trans-Atlantic military alliance has a new billion-dollar headquarters.NATO countries agreed in 2014 to halt the defense spending cuts they introduced after the Cold War and boost their budgets in response to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to unilaterally annex the Crimean Peninsula in Ukraine.The aim was for each ally to be spending at least 2% of their GDP on defense by 2024. Stoltenberg said that Bulgaria has now joined a list of nine member countries that respect that target.It’s the third day in a row that NATO has announced some new budget or defense measure likely to please Trump. On Wednesday, Stoltenberg unveiled a new contract for an upgrade of the alliance’s aging fleet of U.S.-made surveillance planes worth $1 billion.Then on Thursday, he said that Washington will in future pay less into NATO’s common budget for running its headquarters and other operations. That budget is worth about $2 billion. Germany and Washington will from next year each pay 16% — a 6% bonus for the U.S.Germany, often a target of Trump’s ire, is forecast to reach just 1.5% of GDP by 2024 but does intend to move to 2% by around 2031. Indeed, Berlin’s hike in contributions to its national defense budget accounts for around 20% of the $130 billion increase trumpeted by Stoltenberg.French President Emmanuel Macron has said he hopes NATO leaders can move beyond the seemingly endless spending debate next week and focus on important strategic interests, like who the alliance’s adversaries are, how to cope with an unpredictable member like Turkey and improve ties with Russia.
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Australia Confronts Arson as Bushfires Burn
A volunteer firefighter in Australia has been accused of arson following an unprecedented bushfire crisis. Fire chiefs say the alleged arson south of Sydney was the “ultimate betrayal” of emergency crews risking their lives on the front line. They said the accusations could tarnish the reputation of the entire service. Investigators believe the teenage suspect lit the blazes and then later returned as part of his duties as a volunteer firefighter. Dozens of fires continue to burn in the states of Queensland and New South Wales, where more than 50 people have been charged with arson since August. Another 150 suspects are being interviewed by investigators.More than 2 million hectares of land, including vast areas of forest, have been scorched in eastern Australia’s bushfire crisis. Hundreds of homes have been destroyed, and six people have died.The Australian Institute of Criminology has estimated that around half of the nation’s bushfires are either arson or suspected arson.Most offenders are male. Many are children. Some have been the victims of sexual or physical abuse, while much work has been done to explore the motivations of adult firebugs. “Usually they are marginalized, they are confused. It is thought that they have very low intelligence, but I suspect that that is only because we are catching the ones that have low intelligence,” said Paul Reid, a criminologist at Monash University. “They tend to have deep depression, and (are) very socially awkward. They usually have a history of drug use and violence.”Arsonists are responsible for thousands of bushfires in Australia every year and they can face long jail terms if found guilty. Convictions are rare, though, because evidence is often destroyed by the fire and there are few, if any, witnesses.
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South Korean K-pop Stars Sentenced to Prison for Illicit Sexual Relations
A South Korean court sentenced two K-pop stars to prison terms Friday for sexual relations with a woman who was unable to resist.Thirty-year old Jung Joon-young and 29 year old Choi Jong-hoon were convicted of committing “special quasi-raping,” which means multiple people collaborating to have illicit sexual intercourse with a person who was unconscious or unable to resist, the Seoul Central District Court said in a statement.Jung who was sentenced to six years behind bars, was convicted of raping the woman, filming the act, and sharing it with friends in a group chat.
Choi was sentenced to five years in prison for his involvement in the crime.The two singers were also ordered to undergo 80 hours of sex offender treatment programs.South Korea’s lucrative entertainment industry has produced pop songs, TV dramas and films hugely popular in Asia and beyond, but many sexual scandals in recent years have revealed its dark side.
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How Trump Gained the Upper Hand on Criminal Justice Issues in 2020 Campaign
As he prepared to announce his candidacy for president on Sunday, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg took a page from an old political playbook.Appearing in a black church in the city’s Brooklyn borough last week, the multibillionaire media mogul apologized for long pushing a now-defunct policing tactic that had disproportionately targeted African American and Hispanic residents.Known as “stop and frisk,” the controversial policy, imposed between 2003 and 2013, allowed New York City police to stop, temporarily detain, and search anyone suspected of carrying weapons and other contraband. “I was wrong,” Bloomberg declared to the congregation. To those who had been wronged by the policy, he said, “I apologize.” Criminal justice policy recordsBloomberg is the latest Democratic candidate forced to reckon with a criminal justice policy record that critics view as too punitive to minorities.Former Vice President Joe Biden has been criticized for backing a 1994 crime bill that helped trigger a federal prison population explosion, while South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg has faced questions over policing tactics in his hometown.Others, including Senators Cory Booker and Kamala Harris, have had to justify their law enforcement policies as a former mayor of Newark, New Jersey, and a California prosecutor, respectively. That Democrats are under scrutiny over criminal justice issues is unusual. Historically, Democratic presidential candidates ran on platforms of civil rights and criminal justice reform while Republicans campaigned as tough law-and-order candidates, according to criminal justice experts. But as the 2020 campaign enters the crucial primary phase, Democratic candidates are being forced to disavow criminal justice policies they once championed, while Republican President Donald Trump — who hardly discussed criminal justice in 2016 — is touting himself as a leading reform candidate.Trump says he can make that claim because he signed into law a sweeping piece of legislation known as the First Step Act last December. The legislation, which has released or reduced the prison sentences of thousands of inmates convicted of drug offenses, has earned Trump praise from many African Americans. “It’s sort of a switch in what people thought was the standard left-right divide,” said Noah Weinrich of Heritage Action for America, a conservative grassroots organization.So what happened?The short answer is the country has changed. The 1994 Crime Bill now under attack from liberals and African Americans was enacted during the Clinton administration, near the height of a violent crime epidemic in the country when heavy-handed policies enjoyed broad public support.But as crime has steadily declined over the past two decades to historically low levels, support for those measures has eroded and politicians on both sides of the aisle have increasingly embraced overhaul proposals.FILE – President Bill Clinton signs the $30 billion crime bill during a ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington.Behind the 1994 Crime BillBiden helped craft the legislation when he was a U.S. senator and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and now is taking heat for the legislation’s more onerous side effects. “Today, crime and murder rates are at historic lows and American communities are safer than they have been in generations,” said Lauren-Brooke Eisen, acting director of the Justice Program at New York University’s Brennan Center. “That’s significant because that allows the bipartisan conversations about how to best reduce the number of people who have been incarcerated.” To be sure, criminal justice reform is not among the most pressing concerns for voters who care more about issues such as health care, immigration and jobs, according to polling.But public support for measures, such as eliminating mandatory minimum sentencing, has been on an upswing in recent years. That has prompted not only the large field of Democratic candidates but also the Republican president to campaign on criminal justice issues. Today, instead of incarceration, politicians increasingly talk about rehabilitation and redemption.”Now we’re at a point in the country where we’re looking at our criminal justice system and saying maybe sentencing is what we need to think about and how do we best get our nonviolent criminals back into being productive members of society,” veteran Republican strategist David Avella said.Last December, growing bipartisanship for criminal justice reform culminated in the enactment of the First Step Act.FILE – President Donald Trump speaks at the 2019 Prison Reform Summit and First Step Act Celebration in the East Room of the White House in Washington, April 1, 2019.Considered the most sweeping overhaul in a generation, the First Step Act allows for the early release of some nonviolent offenders, while providing inmates with in-prison job training to ease their reintegration into society and reduce recidivism rates. To date, more than 3,000 prisoners have been released and nearly 1,700 others have received sentence reductions under the program.”Last year we brought the whole country together to achieve a truly momentous milestone,” Trump said last month at the historically black Benedict College in South Carolina, where he received an award for signing into law the First Step Act. “They said it couldn’t be done.”Trump was an unlikely champion of the bill. When he first ran for president in 2016, he was seen as an obstacle to reform.While his platform was notably silent on the issue, he consistently pushed for tough-on-crime policies over the decades, advocating lengthy sentences for violent offenders and effusing about New York City’s stop-and-frisk policies. Then, after he was elected in 2016, Trump appointed his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, as a senior White House adviser. Given a broad policy platform, Kushner zeroed in on an issue that he said was very close to his heart: prison reform.FILE – Charles Kushner, left, walks to the U.S. District Courthouse with his lawyers Benjamin Brafman, right, and Alfred C. DeCotiis, center, in Newark, N.J., Aug. 18, 2004.Kushner’s father imprisonedHis father, real estate developer Charles Kushner, spent 14 months in a federal prison in the 2000s for illegal campaign contributions, tax evasion and witness tampering. Jared Kushner later called his father’s incarceration “obviously unjust.””When I had my personal experience, I wish that there was somebody who was in my office in the White House, who cared about this issue as much as I do, and if they’d been focused on it in making a difference, perhaps that would have made an impact on a lot of people who I came to meet and care about,” he told CNN’s Van Jones, a prominent African American advocate of the First Step Act, last year. Kevin Ring, president of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, an advocacy organization that lobbied for the legislation, said Kushner played an indispensable role in championing the bill and that Trump deserves credit for signing it into law.”No one would have thought four years ago or three years ago that President Trump would have signed a law like that,” Ring said. “Everyone would have been skeptical that he would have supported any reform. So because he did it, I see no reason not to celebrate that.”But Democratic candidates were in no mood to celebrate Trump’s action. They have denounced other Trump administration policy decisions that they say have set back years of progress on criminal justice. These include the Justice Department’s recent decision to resume federal executions.”I find it hypocritical of him to tout whatever advances have been made in the First Step Act given his history,” Democratic candidate Harris said at the Bipartisan Justice Center event after Trump received the award. Harris, who had initially opposed the First Step Act for not going far enough to address criminal justice reform before voting for it, has faced criticism for not embracing criminal justice reform when she was San Francisco’s top prosecutor and later California’s attorney general.
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Thousands of Bones Being Cleaned During Restoration of Czech Ossuary
For medieval history buffs, the Czech town of Kutna Hora has two great attractions: St. Barbara’s Church, often called a cathedral because of its grandeur, and the Sedlec Ossuary, located beneath the Cemetery Church of All Saints outside the town. St. Barbara’s is one of the best examples of Gothic architecture in central Europe and is a UNESCO world heritage site. But visitors are more attracted to the ossuary, a chapel containing bones of more than 40,000 people, arranged in decorative patterns. Those decorations are now being dismantled so that the centuries-old bones can be cleaned while the church undergoes a renovation. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports how it is done.
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Surge in New Voters Sparks Talk of UK Election ‘Youthquake’
In a British election dominated by Brexit, young voters who had no say in the country’s decision to leave the European Union could hold the key to victory. That is, if they can be bothered to vote.It has long been a truth in British politics that young people vote in lower numbers than older ones. In the last election in 2017, just more than half of under-35s voted, compared to more than 70% of those older than 60.But that may be changing. According to official figures, 3.85 million people registered to vote between the day the election was called on Oct. 29 and Tuesday’s registration deadline _ two-thirds of them under 35. The number of new registrations is almost a third higher than in 2017.Amy Heley of Vote for your Future, a group working to increase youth participation, says the figure is “really encouraging, and shows that politics has been so high profile recently that it is encouraging more young people to vote.”Moderator Julie Etchingham addresses Conservative leader Boris Johnson and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, left, during a televised debate ahead of the general election in London, Nov. 19, 2019.New voters are unimpressedThat doesn’t mean, however, that young voters like what they see. Many appear unimpressed with the choice between Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservatives, the main opposition Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn and a handful of smaller parties.“I think they’re all unlikeable,” said Callum Nelson, a 21-year-old law student attending a question session with local candidates at his London college. “I’m tempted to exercise my right to spoil my ballot.”About 46 million people are eligible to vote in the Dec. 12 election to fill all 650 seats in the House of Commons, including hundreds of thousands who were too young to take part in the U.K.’s 2016 Brexit referendum. Britain’s voting age is 18, although Labour and other parties, including the centrist Liberal Democrats and environmentalist Greens, want it lowered to 16.The current election campaign is a product of that 2016 vote, in which Britons decided by 52%-48% to leave the European Union after more than four decades of membership.The European Union’s Chief Brexit Negotiator Michel Barnier, right, and Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament’s Brexit steering group coordinator, attend a Brexit meeting at the European Parliament in Brussels, Belgium, Oct. 2, 2019.More than three years on, the country remains an EU member. Johnson pushed for the December election, which is taking place more than two years early, in hopes of winning a majority and breaking Britain’s political impasse over Brexit. He says that if the Conservatives win a majority, he will get Parliament to ratify his Brexit divorce deal and take the U.K. out of the EU by the current Jan. 31 deadline.Labour says it will negotiate a new Brexit deal, then give voters a choice between leaving on those terms and remaining in the bloc. It also has a radical domestic agenda, promising to nationalize key industries and utilities, hike the minimum wage and give free internet access to all.While most opinion polls give Johnson’s Conservatives a substantial lead overall, the surge in new young voters is good news for Labour, which is seeking to defy the odds and win a general election for the first time since 2005.Young voters are more likely than their older compatriots to oppose Brexit, which will end Britons’ right to work and live in 27 other European nations and will have a major — though as yet unknown — economic impact.Other issuesMatt Walsh, a senior lecturer in journalism at the University of Cardiff, said young voters also strongly back abolition of tuition fees and stronger action against climate change, both policies “at the center of the offer that the Labour Party is putting forward to young people.”Labour’s strategy “is to try and grab those missing voters, get them registered and get them to vote and support Labour policies,” he said.Labour is spending more than its main rival on social media ads, churning out a stream of memes and messages on Facebook and Instagram. It is also outspending the Conservatives on Snapchat, whose users tend to be younger than those on the other networks. Twitter has banned all political advertising.Labour also pushed to get young people to register to vote before the Nov. 26 deadline, spreading the message through tweets from celebrity supporters, including grime artist Stormzy. Corbyn posted a link to the government’s voter registration website 26 times on Twitter and 31 times on Facebook in the month before the deadline. Johnson, in contrast, didn’t post the link or the word “register” at all on Twitter, and just once on Facebook.While some analysts are forecasting an electoral “youthquake,” others are cautious. This is a rare winter election, and turnout could suffer if Dec. 12 is a wet, cold day. It’s also difficult to know how much the voters’ decision will be motivated by Brexit and how much by domestic issues.“At this point, I’m kind of sick of Brexit,” said Susie Chilver, a first-year politics student at the University of Bristol, in southwest England. “So, the things that are swaying it for me are things like social housing, and things like health care, more about social issues than foreign policy.”Konstantinos Matakos, senior lecturer in the department of political economy at King’s College London, said there is an assumption that young voters are “leaning more Labour.” But he says their geographical spread, and whether they show up on polling day, will ultimately determine their impact on the outcome.“It’s not a straightforward assumption to say that this surge in the registration rates will undoubtedly benefit Labour in terms of gaining electoral seats,” he said.Some young voters agree that Labour shouldn’t take their support for granted.“People think that students will definitely vote for Labour,” said Molly Jones, a 19-year-old student at London’s Westminster Kingsway College. “But a lot of them who I’ve spoken to, it’s not like that. They will vote for the Liberal Democrats, or the Greens, or even the Conservatives.“All the parties are just a mess at the moment, and all the leaders are terrible,” she said. “It makes it really hard to vote for someone — you just hold your nose and vote.”
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Japan’s Ex-Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone Dies at 101
Former Japanese Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone, a giant of his country’s post-World War II politics who pushed for a more assertive Japan while strengthening military ties with the United States, has died. He was 101.The office of his son, Hirofumi Nakasone, confirmed that Nakasone died Friday at a Tokyo hospital where he was recently treated.As a World War II navy officer, Yasuhiro Nakasone witnessed the depths of his country’s utter defeat and devastation. Four decades later, he presided over Japan in the 1980s at the pinnacle of its economic success.In recent years, he lobbied for revision of the war-renouncing U.S.-drafted constitution, a longtime cause that no postwar leader has achieved to date.FILE – U.S. President Ronald Reagan, left, and Japanese Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone attend their meeting at the Cipriani Hotel, in Venice, June 8, 1987.From US critic to allyNakasone began his political career as a fiery nationalist denouncing the U.S. occupation that lasted from 1945 to 1952, but by the 1980s he was a stalwart ally of America known for his warm relations with President Ronald Reagan.He boosted defense spending, tried to revise Japan’s U.S.-drafted pacifist constitution and drew criticism for his unabashed appeals to patriotism.In the 1950s, he was a driving force behind building nuclear reactors in resource-poor Japan, a move that helped propel Japan’s strong economic growth after World War II but drew renewed scrutiny in the aftermath of the meltdowns at a nuclear plant in Fukushima swamped by a tsunami in 2011.Navy officer to parliamentThe son of a lumber merchant, Nakasone was born May 27, 1918, the last year of World War I. He went to Tokyo Imperial University before entering the Interior Ministry and then the navy, where he rose to the rank of lieutenant commander during World War II.In his last news conference as prime minister, he said his political ambitions were sparked after the war by “the conviction I felt as I gazed bewildered at the burned ruins of Tokyo.”“How can this country be revived into a happy and flourishing state?” he said.He established his nationalist credentials by campaigning for parliament riding a white bicycle bearing the “rising sun,” or the “Hinomaru” national flag, which Japan’s wartime military had used. He won a seat in 1947, becoming the youngest member of parliament at age 28.Nakasone became a leading figure in the Liberal Democratic Party that has dominated postwar politics. During more than a half-century in parliament, he served as defense chief, the top of the powerful Ministry of International Trade and Industry, and secretary-general of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party before becoming prime minister.Nakasone assailed the U.S.-drafted postwar constitution, demanding revision of the document’s war-renouncing Article 9 and urging a military buildup.FILE – Workers are seen in front of storage tanks for radioactive water at the tsunami-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Okuma town, Fukushima prefecture, Japan, Feb. 18, 2019.Nuclear powerHe was a key figure behind crafting and ramming through government funding for nuclear research in 1954, less than a decade after the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing 200,000 people in the last days of the war. In 1955, he helped pass legislation designed to promote nuclear power.“Atomic power used to be a beast, but now it’s cattle,” he told a parliamentary session in 1954.In a 2006 speech marking the 50th anniversary of Japan’s first nuclear institute in Tokaimura, Nakasone said he was intrigued by nuclear power as he tried to figure out why Japan lost the war.“My conclusion was that one of the biggest reasons was (the lack of) science and technology,” he said. “I felt strongly that Japan would end up being a lowly farming nation forever unless we take a bold step to develop science and technology.”After the Fukushima disaster in 2011, there was a public backlash against nuclear energy, but Nakasone said it remained indispensable to maintain Japan’s industrial growth.New kind of leaderAs prime minister from 1982 to 1987, Nakasone broke the mold of the Japanese politician. His outspokenness appealed to voters, and he was praised for putting a human face on Japanese politics.His tongue sometimes got him in trouble. He sparked outrage in 1986 by suggesting Japan was an economic success because it didn’t have minorities with lower intellectual levels.He was the first Japanese prime minister to visit South Korea, a country with bitter memories of its 1910-1945 colonization by Japan. That was his first trip abroad as leader, a break from his predecessors, who made Washington their first stop.Despite that gesture, Nakasone was staunchly committed to Japan’s alliance with the U.S., and his warm friendship with Reagan was known as “Ron-Yasu” diplomacy.His premiership coincided with a period of major trade disputes with the West. Responding to U.S. complaints that Japanese markets were closed, Nakasone initiated packages to reduce tariffs and other import barriers, including a long-term plan to shift Japan’s export-dependent economy to focus more on domestic growth.He also privatized the sprawling Japan National Railways, today’s Japan Railways group, as well as the state telephone and tobacco companies.Controversial movesNakasone’s nationalist legacy includes the first official visit in 1985 by a postwar prime minister to Yasukuni Shrine, which honors the war dead, including Japan’s convicted war criminals. His visit fueled disputes with China and South Korea over World War II history that persist to this day.Nakasone overcame opposition from Japan’s strong pacifist forces to boost defense budgets, and excluded military technology cooperation with the U.S. from Japan’s ban on arms exports.“Japanese cowered under the (postwar U.S.) occupation and occupation policies,” Nakasone said just before stepping down as prime minister in 1987. “It is important to revive from that cowered spirit — that is healthy nationalism.”But Nakasone also said Japan should remain a war-renouncing nation.“We must stick to our commitment as a pacifist nation. We have caused tremendous trouble to our neighboring countries in the past war,” Nakasone said in a 2011 interview with public broadcaster NHK. “Our commitment to peace must be the centerpiece of Japan’s domestic and diplomatic policies.”Both nationalist and wrestling with the same issues — stronger military, constitutional revision and trade friction with the U.S. — Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has been compared to Nakasone by some Japanese media and analysts. But the Japan that Abe leads today is no longer at its peak and China is now a rival to the U.S., and Abe is seen more hawkish toward Beijing’s aspirations.Elder statesmanIn later life, Nakasone became one of Japan’s leading elder statesmen. He promoted his longtime dream of revising the U.S.-drafted constitution and pronouncing his views on national and international affairs. He had attended an annual May rally campaigning for a constitutional revision until he skipped one just before turning 100, when he had a hand injury and couldn’t use his cane to rise from his wheelchair.He retired from parliament in 2003, at age 85, when he was pushed to retire from parliament after then-Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi urged him to step aside in upcoming elections to make way for a younger lawmaker.Nakasone complied, but he accused Koizumi of discrimination and lack of respect for his elders. He publicly read a haiku poem. In his 100th birthday message, Nakasone said that he was not done yet, and that same haiku still best described his spirit:Even after dusk,
Cicada persists in song,
While it still has life.Nakasone is survived by his son Hirofumi, a parliamentarian, two daughters, and three grandchildren.
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US Impeachment Process Explained
Donald Trump faces a process that could end with his removal as President of the United States. Impeachment hearings underway now in the House of Representatives are just the start of what is prescribed by the U.S. Constitution. In today’s installment of American Impeachment, VOA’s Steve Redisch has an overview of what is taking place.
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Concerns Grow in Nigeria About Nation’s Bride Price Custom
The widespread African tradition of giving cash and gifts to a bride’s family before marriage, known as a “bride price,” critics say degrades women by putting a monetary value on a wife. A recent case in Nigeria ended in suicide, underscoring the financial pressure. But, supporters of the bride price tradition uphold it as a cherished cultural and religious symbol of marriage.Saadatu Ahmed Manga is having a dye called lalle, or henna, painted on her body because she’s about to get married. The bride and her friends are getting ready.She says they went to the hairdresser, and now they are doing lalle. For every wedding, the bride does lalle. Lalle is a dye made of plants. It’s painted on the body in patterns that resemble flowers or shapes.It’s part of the wedding custom in northern Nigeria, which is largely influenced by Islam.Marriage customBut the most important marriage custom is the bride price, a payment of cash that the fiancé gives to the bride’s family to show how serious he is about the marriage.Manga’s fiancé will make a cash payment to her family.In Islam, the bride price has to be paid before the wedding, she says. Bride price started since the days of the prophet, Muhammed, may peace be upon him, and we continue it, she says.But more Nigerians are condemning the bride price custom as a degrading practice that requires payment for marriage and places a monetary value on women.Women are largely left out of determining the bride price, which is negotiated between the male relatives of the bride and groom.Defenders and criticsYet, many Nigerians defend the tradition.One man says, dowry is something God has made compulsory.Another says, it is not selling her. It is not degrading. It is increasing her honor.Critical voices can be heard across Africa, including those of scholars, women’s rights activists and artists.In October, Nigerian media outlets reported the death of a 17-year-old girl in northern Nigeria who set herself on fire because her boyfriend could not afford the bride price. The dowry was 17,000 naira. That’s less than $50 in U.S. dollars.Marriage and relationship counselor Fiyabina Penuel says the tragedy could have been avoided. She says the pride price custom is being abused.“Initially, this issue of dowry and bride price was more like a pleasantry being exchanged between the husband-to-be and the in-laws-to-be. When it all started, in most cultures it was little things that everyone can afford. But as time goes on it became so big that most people cannot be able to afford it. So it’s like business and using it to put people in classes,” Penuel said. A symbol of loveBut African literature scholar, Dr. Agatha Ukata, blames radical feminist ideology for the rising criticism of bride price. She also says the tradition is misunderstood by the Western world.“The Western world, they have this cultural shock because it is not in their culture to have bride price and so that’s why they look at bride price and they’re imagining, ‘Why do you have to buy a woman?’ The concept of bride price, on its own, it’s not buying somebody. It is just a symbol of love,” Ukata said.When it’s finally time for Saadatu’s wedding. She walks among a lively crowd, her face covered by a heavy veil. Once seated, the groom’s family members drop money in a box and then ask her to lift the veil so they can see her.When it’s all done, the crowd burst into applause. She waves the bride price in the air to show it has been paid.Now, she can confidently call herself a wife.
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Botswana Drought Makes Wasteland of Harvests, Livestock
Southern Africa is experiencing one of the worst droughts in years, with more than 40 million people expected to face food insecurity because of livestock and crop losses. Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia and Zimbabwe have declared it an emergency.In semi-arid Botswana, the farmers are reeling after the worst drought in a decade wiped out entire harvests and left the land littered with dead livestock.Two thirds of the crops planted last season failed, while Ngamiland, a rich beef producing region, has recorded nearly 40,000 cattle deaths.Rancher Casper Matsheka says there was no food or water, so his animals starved to death.“The goats died, as well as the cattle, as you can see the carcasses all over. We were really affected. If only the government could subsidize the prices of feed and vaccines for the livestock during such times,” he said.Cattle and hippos wallow in mud in one of the channels of the wildlife-rich Okavango Delta near Nxaraga village in the outskirt of Maun, Sept. 28, 2019. Botswana government declared this a drought year because of no rainfall throughout the country.Nor has the drought sparred wildlife.National parks authorities have resorted to feeding starving hippos while hundreds of elephants have died.Environmental nongovernment organization, Kalahari Conservation Society’s Neil Fitt says competition for food and water has increased the risk of human-wildlife conflict.“The livestock are now putting pressure on the wildlife areas, so the wildlife are also getting pressure on their areas, and that is where the conflict zone is,” he said. “Why I am bringing this up? The… interconnected with the drought is this wildlife-human conflict.”In Botswana, where drought is frequent, President Mokgweetsi Masisi said the government plans to stop calling it an emergency and instead make drought relief part of the national budget.“Government has taken a decision to develop a Drought Management Strategy, which would classify drought as a permanent feature in our budget plans, rather than an emergency,” he said. “The strategy will be completed before the end of the financial year.”Acting director of Meteorological Services Radithupa Radithupa says a robust strategy is needed to deal with the recurring droughts.“We are looking at climate change as an impact now, we are seeing the impact now in terms of heating, the dry spells and the excessive rains. Therefore, we really need to adapt as a nation,” Radithupa said.Meanwhile, a forecast for rain has raised hopes among farmers and ranchers for recovery and that this season of severe drought won’t be a total loss.
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NATO at 70: Internal Tensions, External Threats as Leaders Set to Gather
NATO leaders are preparing to gather in London for a two-day meeting Tuesday to mark the 70th anniversary of the establishment of the alliance, but growing tensions among members could overshadow the celebrations.The war in Syria and the ongoing Russian threat will serve as the backdrop to the summit. Fellow NATO members the United States and Turkey came close to confrontation in northern Syria last month, rattling the alliance.”The position of Turkey in the North Atlantic alliance is a difficult one,” said Jonathan Eyal of the Royal United Services Institute in London in an interview with VOA this week.”Turkey’s decision to become involved in military operations in the Middle East against the wishes of most of its allies, including the United States, [and] Turkey’s decision to buy Russian military equipment … [are] riling with many countries in Europe.”NATO members say it’s better to have Turkey inside than outside the alliance.”NATO is about European security, it’s not about coordinating policies in the Middle East,” Eyal said.Where American troops once kept the peace, Russian forces now patrol northern Syria. The U.S. withdrawal has fueled concerns over America’s commitment to NATO. French President Emmanuel Macron recently called the alliance “brain dead” and urged Europe to create its own security architecture. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, left, is welcomed by French President Emmanuel Macron at the Elysee Palace in Paris, Nov. 28, 2019.The comments elicited a sharp rebuke from NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg this week.”European unity cannot replace transatlantic unity. We need both. And we have to also understand that, especially after Brexit, the EU cannot defend Europe,” Stoltenberg told reporters.Europe still sees Russia as the biggest threat following its 2014 forceful annexation of Crimea and ongoing campaigns of espionage, cyberwarfare and disinformation.European concerns over the U.S. commitment to Article 5 of the NATO treaty, on collective defense, are not borne out by facts on the ground, Eyal said.”The reality is the Pentagon’s spending in Europe is increasing, the number of U.S. troops is increasing.”The deployment of U.S. troops in Europe is seen differently in Moscow.”Some of the Eastern European nations are trying to get American boots on the ground despite the fact that Article 5 should cover their security, which suggests that they trust the United States more than they trust NATO,” Andrey Kortunov of the Russian Council on International Affairs in Moscow told VOA in a recent interview.U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly demanded that European NATO members “share the burden.” Germany on Wednesday pledged to meet the NATO defense spending target of 2% of GDP, but only by the 2030s.”The U.S. president should be credited with actually banging the table hard enough for the United States to be heard,” Eya said, “This is, and it’s important sometimes to repeat the cliché, the most successful alliance in modern history.”NATO will hope that is cause for celebration as leaders gather for its 70th anniversary.
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Aftershocks Rattle Albania, Leaving Residents on Edge
Residents remained on edge Thursday in the earthquake-stricken areas of Albania, as aftershocks continued to rattle the area.Thursday afternoon, another 5.0-magnitude quake was registered near the city of Thumane just hours after authorities called off search-and-rescue operations in the area after recovering the bodies of the last people who had been reported missing.The 6.4-magnitude temblor that struck Tuesday caused the most devastation in Thumane, where 23 people were killed, including seven from one family.“God let us keep two (members of the family) but took seven from us,” survivor Sul Cara told VOA. “Now we are focused on paying our respects to the dead, as honor and tradition demands of us. We will try our best to show strength as we send off seven loved ones to burial. This is a heavy tragedy to bear, but at the same time we have found strength in the outpouring of support, not just from this town but from the whole country.”Albanians sit at a makeshift camp in Durres, Nov. 28, 2019, after an earthquake shook Albania.The death toll rose to 47 as search operations continued in other locations, but rescuers are increasingly pessimistic survivors will be found.Residents in many neighborhoods remain in tents or have chosen to move in with relatives in other towns, as authorities warn that buildings remain unsafe.Dangerous aftershocksAlbanians should heed the warnings, Stanford University geophysics professor Ross Stein told VOA’s Albanian Service.Stein said that the days, even months after a major earthquake, aftershocks are a very serious threat.“The risk of another large shock today is much higher than it was a few days ago before the 6.4 struck. The likelihood of a large aftershock is much higher than the likelihood of the same shock had there not been a main shock at all,” he said.Stein, who has extensively studied seismic activity in the Balkans, said Tuesday’s earthquake was not a surprise from a geological point of view. He said Albania is “the most seismically active part of the Balkan region,” which has exhibited historically “larger and more frequent earthquakes even than Italy.”The seismic activity is the reason for Albania’s natural beauty, he said.“The reason why Albania is so beautiful is because it has this wonderful hill-valley topography and that is produced because the region is being compressed to the east and west. Think of a carpet and you’re a pushing a carpet across the floor and you’re producing folds,” Stein said.A rescue dog searches for survivors in a collapsed building in Durres, Nov. 28, 2019, after an earthquake shook Albania.Quake preparationBut despite the area’s history of earthquakes, scientists can’t predict where and when the next one will strike.The only possible thing people can do, he said, is have a good preparation strategy.He said there is a need to prioritize earthquake protections, “and the region around Tirana and along the coast of Albania have the highest hazard and indicate to us, in a broad sense, this is where we need to focus our attention.”Thursday marked Albania’s 107th independence anniversary. President Ilir Meta called on his countrymen to use the moment “to help heal the wounds caused by the earthquake.”
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Lao Villagers, Facing Eviction for Dam, Are Leery of Government Promises
On a remote bend of the Mekong River in northern Laos, where its muddy waters make a hard right turn through steep verdant hills, the 330-odd residents of Houaygno village are bracing for an imminent exodus.Vietnam’s state-owned PetroVietnam Power has chosen the site for the $3 billion, 1,460-megawat Luang Prabang hydropower dam; construction is set to start next year. Its sprawling catchment will flood 23 villages in whole or in part — home to 10,000 people in all — and locals have been told to start packing.They say government and company officials have promised to compensate them in full, but trust is scarce.”We don’t really trust them because we heard about the dams they built before, that people were supposed to get support but they didn’t get it,” said a Houaygno rice farmer over a lunch of noodle soup and curdled cow’s blood on the porch of his cinderblock home facing the river.Workers operate a drill to test the bedrock for construction of the Luang Prabang dam near Houaygno village. (Zsombor Peter/VOA)On the shore, a work crew was driving a drill into the ground by the rusty rattle of an old diesel generator to test the bedrock for the heavy columns that will anchor the coming dam.VOA visited two of the villages to be flooded by the project, Houaygno and Khokkham, earlier this month and spoke with about a dozen residents. Some harbored hopes of a better life wherever the government saw fit to move them. Most feared harder times ahead. Few had much faith that authorities would hold to their pledge — or the law — to make them whole for their losses.Their names have been withheld to protect them from government reprisal.”I heard about someone at the Xayaburi dam, that they were supposed to get help but didn’t,” said the farmer.The Xayaburi, downstream from Houaygno, was the first hydropower dam Laos approved on the mainstream Mekong, in 2010. On July 31 the Luang Prabang became the fifth. Four more are in the pipeline, all part of the government’s breakneck bid to turn Laos into “Asia’s battery” — most of the electricity the dams will generate is destined for the country’s neighbors, which are also footing most of the construction costs.A man steers his boat on the Mekong River near Houaygno village, Nov. 4, 2019. (Zsombor Peter/VOA)The Mekong River Commission (MRC), an intergovernmental body for the countries that share the waterway south of China, warns of “serious and irreversible environmental, social and economic damage” if all the projects proceed, including a drastic drop in vital fish stocks. Rights groups are urging Laos to reverse course to avert disaster for the millions of people who live off the river downstream.Rights groups also complain that the communities to be hit hardest by the dams are being largely left out of the public consultations and may be shortchanged on compensation. As an MRC member, the Lao government has to submit each mainstream hydropower project it approves to a six-month consultation process to gather feedback before work begins.Girls walk home from school in Khokkham village, Laos, Nov. 4, 2019. (Zsombor Peter/VOA)Affected communities have reason to worry.Villagers evicted for another dam in northern Laos on a tributary of the Mekong, the Nam Khan, told VOA recently that authorities had promised to pay out allowances for two years but stopped after one, and that their homes were replaced but not their farms.Residents of Houaygno and Khokkham said officials have promised to build them new houses, compensate them for their farms and pay out allowances for three years but failed to mention any figures.Some in Khokkham are at least glad that the resettlement site picked out for them is near a busy road, the better for hawking their harvest.”The area is near the main road, so maybe it will be good for business, good for my family,” said a local farmer.But even he questioned the government’s commitment.”It would be good if the government gives us money for three years, but maybe it will only be for one,” he said.A local woman who raises goats and pigs for market said officials came through her village about a year ago to measure their homes and properties to calculate their compensation.”The government says it will find more land for me, but it probably won’t be enough, so I will have to find more,” she fretted. “I don’t want to move, but I have to because the government says so.”A boy rides his bicycle through Houaygno village, northern Laos, Nov. 4, 2019. (Zsombor Peter/VOA)In Houaygno, officials showed villagers a video of the “beautiful” new homes they promised to build them, said another woman. But she was more concerned with what their new farms would be like.”That will determine whether or not we can survive,” she said. “In my heart I don’t want to move because I don’t know if the place the government puts us will be any good.”One man said he visited the new site and that there would not be enough arable land to go around for all of them.”There is no land to farm,” said another woman, who also knows the site.”They will put us on top of the hill, but we don’t want that. We want to be near the water; it’s the way we live,” she said.The woman said the allowances they have been promised for the next three years include 25 kg of rice per month for every adult and 15 kg for children.”But I don’t trust them,” she said. “When the dam is finished, they can just go away.”Chansaveng Boungnong, the Energy and Mines Ministry’s director general for energy policy and planning, would not speak with VOA and referred all questions to the project developer. PetroVietnam Power did not reply to requests for comment.
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Hong Kong Gears Up for Weekend Protests
Hong Kong braced for a fresh round of protests over the weekend as police said they would withdraw from a university on Friday that has been the site of some of the worst clashes between protesters and security forces in nearly six months of unrest.The protests, announced by demonstrators on social media,
are planned from Friday, through the weekend and into next week.
A big test of support for the movement is expected on December 8
with a rally planned by Civil Human Rights Front, the group that
organized million-strong marches in June. Relative calmThe Asian financial hub has seen a week of relative calm since local elections on Sunday delivered an overwhelming victory to pro-democracy candidates. Anti-government protests have rocked the former British colony since June, at times forcing businesses, government, schools and even the international airport to close. Hong Kong Polytechnic UniversityHundreds of police officers entered the ruined campus of Polytechnic University on Thursday to collect evidence, removing dangerous items including thousands of petrol bombs, arrows and chemicals that had been strewn around the site.Chow Yat-ming, a senior police officer, said Thursday night that the police would be able to finish their investigations by Friday. All officers would leave the site thereafter, enabling people to freely enter and exit the campus. Polytechnic University, located on Kowloon peninsula, was turned into a battleground in mid-November, when protesters barricaded themselves in and clashed with riot police in a hail of petrol bombs, water cannon and tear gas. About 1,100 people were arrested last week, some while trying to escape. Police said they found more than 3,000 Molotov cocktails and hundreds of bottles of corrosive liquids on the campus.It was unclear whether any protesters remained at the university on Friday, but police have said arrests are not a priority and anyone found would first be given medical treatment. Chinese meddling seenDemonstrators in Hong Kong are angry at what they see as
Chinese meddling in the freedoms promised to the former British
colony when it returned to Chinese rule in 1997.China denies interfering and says it is committed to the “one country, two systems” formula put in place at that time and has blamed foreign forces for fomenting unrest.China warned the United States on Thursday that it would take “firm countermeasures” in response to U.S. legislation backing
anti-government protesters in Hong Kong, and said attempts to interfere in the Chinese-ruled city were doomed to fail.
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Rebuilding Paradise, but Not Returning
It has been a year since what is now known as the Camp Fire destroyed approximately 90% of the northern California town of Paradise and killed 85 people. The fire that started on November 8, 2018, and burned down more than 14,000 homes was one of the worst wildfires in the past 100 years in the United States. Some survivors still do not want to return. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee spoke to a couple of longtime residents to ask them why.
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Germany to Tighten Laws Against Anti-Semitic Crimes
Germany intends to strengthen its laws against anti-Semitic crimes as part of the government’s response to a deadly attack in the eastern part of the country. Justice Minister Christine Lambrecht told parliament Thursday of her planned amendment to the country’s current law that would make anti-Semitism an aggravating factor for hate crimes in the nation’s criminal code.Currently, discrimination against particular groups is considered an aggravating factor, but the law does not specifically refer to Jews. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) defines hate crimes or “bias crimes” as those “motivated by intolerance towards certain groups in society.” “We have to send a clear signal against anti-Semitism,” Lambrecht told lawmakers.
A proposed change to the law would need to be approved by parliament, where the government holds a majority of seats. Halle attackThe change is part of the government’s strategy to tackle anti-Semitism in the country following a deadly October attack in Halle, Germany. A gunman opened fire on a kebab shop after failing to storm a synagogue on the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur. The shooter killed a customer in the shop and a passerby. FILE – An apparent explosives cache is seen in a bag inside the vehicle used by a gunman in an attack on a synagogue in Halle, Germany, Oct. 9, 2019, in this still image taken from the gunman’s helmet camera video stream.The shooter confessed to German police that he was motivated by right-wing extremism and anti-Semitism. Other elements of the plan are stricter gun control measures and requirements for social media companies to report hate speech to authorities. The police plan to establish a new department that would collect the reported content and the internet addresses of the posters. The attack was part of a greater trend of crimes against Jews in the country.
Anti-Semitic offenses rose by almost 10 percent in Germany last year, with violent attacks going up more than 60 percent, according to preliminary police data released in February. Police recorded 1,646 violations motivated by hatred against Jews, the highest level in a decade. Perceived rise in anti-SemitismIn addition to rising hate crimes, studies show a perceived increase in anti-Semitism in German society. After the Halle attack, a survey sponsored by public broadcaster ARD showed 59% of voting-age Germans believed that anti-Semitism was spreading in their communities. More than a quarter of Germans hold anti-Semitic beliefs, according to a study by the World Jewish Congress. “I am ashamed that Jews in Germany no longer feel safe and that so many are even thinking of leaving the country,” said Lambrecht.
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