The United States is ready for a fight with North Korea over the country’s nuclear program, though top officials at the Pentagon say they are hopeful such a confrontation can be avoided.Pyongyang set an end-of-year deadline for Washington to offer new concessions in talks aimed at getting North Korea to abandon its nuclear program.North Korean officials have also warned they will send the U.S. a “Christmas gift” if concessions are not forthcoming.But U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper rebuffed Pyongyang’s saber rattling Friday, warning the U.S. is prepared to fight and win “if need be.””We think that a political solution is the best way forward to denuclearize the peninsula,” Esper told reporters during an end-of-year news conference at the Pentagon.Defense Secretary Mark Esper, left, standing with Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley, speaks during a news conference at the Pentagon in Washington, Dec. 20, 2019.”I remain hopeful that we could again get the process started again and remain on the diplomatic path,” he added.The top-ranking U.S. military officer likewise warned that U.S. forces would not be caught unaware by any potential North Korean activity.”Korea is one of those places in the world where we always maintain very high levels of readiness,” said Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, adding that the alliance between the U.S., South Korea and Japan is “rock solid.”Nuclear talks between the U.S. and North Korea first broke down in February, when U.S. President Donald Trump walked away from a summit in Hanoi with North Korean leader Kim Jung Un.More recently, North Korean officials have boycotted some planned high-level discussions.Additionally, North Korea has conducted 13 rounds of missile tests since May. And U.S. military officials are expecting Pyongyang’s “Christmas gift” will be yet another test.”I would expect some type of long-range ballistic missile,” General Charles Brown, the air component commander for U.S. forces in the Indo-Pacific, told reporters in Washington earlier this week.”You can listen to the rhetoric,” he said. “There is activity that the North Koreans have actually admitted to, to match up with the rhetoric.”Bill Gallo contributed to this report.
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Month: December 2019
Dadaab Refugees Call for Better, More Standard Support
Somali and South Sudanese refugees in living in Kenya’s sprawling Dadaab refugee camp say they need greater freedom of movement and more consistent support from donors if they are to establish new lives.Speaking at the Global Refugees Forum this week in Geneva, the refugees talked about their uncertain future and the absence of opportunities in Kenya.
Mohamed Ahmed Abdisalam has been living in Dadaab since January 2009 when he fled Somalia. He says the refugees in Dadaab lack the freedoms needed to find employment or set up businesses.“We are living in an open prison,” Abdisalam said. “We don’t have legal papers to move around and seek jobs. We need mental freedom, and to travel without fear.””Refugees are just like any other people, any other human being. They have rights to education, they have rights to shelter, they have rights to scholarships, and they have rights to waters and everything,” says another Somali-born Dadaab resident, Aden Mohamed Hussein.Many Dadaab residents would like to leave but are stymied by lack of financial support and the still unstable situations in their home countries.FILE – Somali refugees walk along a dirt road in northern Kenya’s Dadaab refugee camp, Dec. 19, 2017.Over 80,000 Somalis have returned to Somalia since the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees started a voluntary repatriation program in 2014, but it’s believed many of them returned to Dadaab.“People are coming back because they are not getting support, they are not even getting all of the small money promised to them,” said Deqa Jeylani Mohamed, a Somali who has been living in Dadaab since 2007.An U.N. official who worked with the returnees told VOA Somali that each refugee who returns voluntarily is supposed to receive $200, plus payment of school fees for the children for six months after they arrive home.He said some families move around Somalia and in the process lose their benefits.But officials say the main reason driving the people back to Dadaab is continued violence in some parts of Somalia. Al-Shabab continues to carry out terrorist attacks, and clan conflicts makes other areas unsafe.Muhumed Abdulkadir Aydarus, who was living in Ifo, one of the Dadaab refugee camps, says the refugees who stayed behind are not receiving the necessary services.He says there are not enough funds for sanitary and roads in refugee camps like Dadaab.“A house collapsed on a family, they have not received help,” he said. “Look at the roads in Dadaab – they look filthy; the humanitarian agencies could not afford to spend money on sanitation.”FILE – In this Tuesday, Dec. 19, 2017 file photo, U.N. refugee chief Filippo Grandi, center-right, visits a hospital as he tours Dadaab refugee camp, hosting over 230,000 inhabitants, in northern Kenya.James Awuok, a refugee from South Sudan, says Dadaab refugees need durable solutions.”We need assistance, and up to now the assistance that we are getting (is) to sustain our life in Dadaab. But we need also durable solutions that can help the refugees. There are so many vulnerable children who have been long living in the camp. There are also orphans … widows and widowers in the camp, and up to date there is no any assistance that they have got. They are still suffering more than the dignified manner.”Mangar Makuach arrived in Kenya from South Sudan in 2002 when he was just 12 years old. He says refugees from South Sudan have lots of challenges that have not been overcome. Most vulnerable of all are the widows and the children separated from their families, he says.They have been helped by just communities who are living here, but there is no standard help that has taken place,” he said.He says it’s the right time that refugees raise their voice at a time when world leaders and donors are meeting in Geneva.“It’s better for us to be given durable solutions, for instance if peace comes in South Sudan, well and good, we can go sort our lives there; if there is no peace, what do we do? We need help,” he says.“We are not talking about energetic people like us, but we have so many people underground, those are the people that are the backbone of the communities, and if these people are brought up and given adequate chances these people will excel.”
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Hundreds of Thousands Go Hungry as Food Shortages Grip Drought-Stricken Lesotho
The United Nations is urgently appealing for $34 million to provide life-saving support over the next four months for more than one-quarter of a million people in Lesotho who are suffering from severe food shortages. The mostly rural population of the small, landlocked country bordered by South Africa is almost entirely dependent on agriculture for its income. When the rains stop, so do the crops.The country is in the grips of a severe drought. The United Nations reports half a million people, one quarter of Lesotho’s population, is facing hunger. It says this year’s poor harvest is putting many lives at risk, with some 71,000 people just one step away from famine. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs spokesperson Jens Laerke said the UN appeal aims to help half of the affected population survive this critical period.”The relief plan and the flash appeal include food and cash assistance, ensuring clean water in priority locations such as health facilities and schools; vaccinations to prevent disease outbreaks or spread of diseases; rehabilitation of water points and preparing for the next planting season; and nutritional interventions for malnourished children, pregnant women, and people living with HIV,” he said.Laerke also noted that Lesotho has the second highest HIV prevalence rate in the world at 25.6 percent. Ministry of Health data show an increase in cases of severe acute malnutrition. The Ministry said children under age five, expectant and lactating mothers, people living with HIV and those infected with tuberculosis are particularly vulnerable to malnutrition.As the drought worsens, Laerke told VOA the number of people migrating in search of work is expected to increase.”One particular concern with those movements are that it makes, particularly women and children—girls in particular—very vulnerable to sexual exploitation and abuse,” he said. “That is, of course, in and of itself deplorable and made even worse when the HIV prevalence rates are as high as I just mentioned.”Laerke said the flash appeal includes money for protection programs to try to prevent women and girls from putting their lives and well-being at risk.
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UK Lawmakers OK Johnson’s Brexit Bill, Pave Way to Exit EU
British lawmakers gave preliminary approval Friday to Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Brexit bill, clearing the way for the U.K. to leave the European Union next month.The House of Commons voted 358-234 for the Withdrawal Agreement Bill.It will receive more scrutiny and possible amendment next month, and also has to be approved by Parliament’s upper chamber, the House of Lords. But Johnson’s commanding Conservative majority in Parliament means it is almost certain to become law in January. Britain will then leave the EU on Jan. 31.Johnson said Friday that passing the bill would end the “acrimony and anguish” that has consumed the country since it voted in 2016 to leave the EU. Opponents argue that leaving the EU will only trigger more uncertainty over Britain’s future trade relations with the bloc.Friday’s vote was a moment of triumph for Johnson, who won a commanding parliamentary majority in last week’s general election on a promise to end more than three years of political gridlock and lead Britain out of the European Union on Jan. 31.Lawmakers await the result of the vote on The European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill in the House of Commons in London, Dec. 20, 2019.’Move forward together’The U.K.’s departure will open a new phase of Brexit, as Britain and the EU race to strike new relationships for trade, security and host of other areas by the end of 2020.Johnson, however, painted Friday’s vote as a moment of closure. Opening debate on the bill he said, optimistically, that after Jan. 31, “Brexit will be done, it will be over.””The sorry story of the last 3 1/2 years will be at an end and we will be able to move forward together,” he said.”This is a time when we move on and discard the old labels of ‘leave’ and ‘remain,'” Johnson added. “Now is the time to act together as one reinvigorated nation.”Britain voted narrowly to leave the EU in a 2016 referendum. But previous attempts by Johnson and his predecessor, Theresa May, to pass a Brexit deal through the U.K. Parliament foundered as lawmakers objected to sections of the agreement and demanded a bigger say in the process. Johnson’s election victory finally gives him the power to get his way.”The election has produced a result: We will leave the EU at the end of January,” acknowledged pro-EU Liberal Democrat legislator Wera Hobhouse. “The battle to stop Brexit is over.”Johnson: No more delaysThe bill commits Britain to leaving the EU on Jan. 31 and to concluding trade talks with the bloc by the end of 2020. Trade experts and EU officials say striking a free trade deal within 11 months will be a struggle, but Johnson insists he won’t agree to any more delays, The Brexit bill has been amended to bar ministers from agreeing to extend the transition period with the EU.That has set off alarm bells among businesses, who fear that means the country will face a “no-deal” Brexit at the start of 2021. Economists say that would disrupt trade with the EU — Britain’s biggest trading partner — and plunge the U.K. into recession.Johnson said Friday he was confident of striking a “deep, special and democratically accountable partnership with those nations we are proud to call our closest friends” by the Brexit deadline.He said extending the transition period would just prolong Brexit “acrimony and anguish … a torture that came to resemble Lucy snatching away Charlie Brown’s football.”For all Johnson’s talk of “getting Brexit done” on Jan. 31, details of Britain’s negotiating stance — and even who will lead the trade talks — remain unknown.FILE – Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson, center right, and opposition Labour Party Leader Jeremy Corbyn walk through the Commons Members Lobby, during the state opening of Parliament, in London, Dec. 19, 2019.Changes to Brexit bill Armed with his 80-seat majority in the 650-seat House of Commons, Johnson has stripped out parts of the Brexit bill that gave lawmakers a role in negotiating a future trade deal with the EU and required ministers to provide regular updates to Parliament. The clauses were added earlier in the year in an attempt to win opposition lawmakers’ support for the Brexit bill — backing that Johnson no longer needs.A promise that workers’ rights will not be eroded after Brexit has also been removed from the bill, although the Conservative government says it will enshrine employment rights in separate legislation.Opposition Labour Party lawmaker Hilary Benn said Johnson’s bill was “a gamble with our nation’s economy.””If he fails, the cliff-edge of a no-deal Brexit becomes in just 12 months’ time,” he said.Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said his 203 lawmakers would oppose the Brexit bill because of “the reckless direction in which the government and the prime minister are determined to take our country.””There is a better and fairer way for this country to leave the European Union,” he said.Even without opposition votes, the bill is expected to complete its passage through Parliament in January, in time for Britain to leave the 28-nation bloc on Jan. 31.The divorce deal also needs to be ratified by the European Parliament. European Parliament vice president Pedro Silva Pereira said officials expect that to happen by Jan. 29.Very little will change immediately after Brexit. Britain will remain an EU member in all but name during the 11-month transition period that ends in December 2020.
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Myanmar-Rohingya Talks Yield No Progress on Repatriation, Refugees Say
Two days of meetings between a team of Myanmar government representatives and Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh camps have not yielded progress on repatriation, several participants say.Myanmar’s government and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) sent delegations to meetings Wednesday and Thursday in southeastern Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar district. But the representatives offered no new incentive for Rohingyas to return to their homes in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, said Mohammad Zubair, a central member of the Arakan Rohingya Society for Peace and Human Rights, an advocacy group.Speaking separately at the first Global Refugee Forum in Geneva on Wednesday, Myanmar diplomat Ei Ei Tin offered a more optimistic view of the issue. She said her government is “ready to receive the returnees and confident that, with the concerted efforts of all stakeholders and cooperation of the international community, we can start repatriation process in the near future and practical and sustainable solution can also be achieved.”Zubair, who lives in Lambashia camp within the sprawling Kutupalong megacamp in Cox’s Bazar, represented the rights group at a meeting with the visiting delegation Wednesday in Kutupalong.FILE – Rohingya refugees attend a ceremony to mark the second anniversary of the exodus at the Kutupalong refugee camp in Ukhia, August 25, 2019.Zubair said the Myanmar delegates reiterated their government’s refusal to recognize the name Rohingya for the predominantly Muslim ethnic group. According to Zubair, the Myanmar delegation said the government is considering relabeling Rohingyas as Rakhine Muslim instead of the government’s current designation as Bengali.Zubair said camp representatives argued that some individuals have official documents issued by the former British colonial government and by Myanmar’s own education ministry — identifying them as Rohingyas. The Myanmar delegation contended that the ministry does not speak for the Naypyitaw government.According to Zubair, the Myanmar delegation also said that as a sovereign country, Myanmar would not permit U.N. forces to protect the Rohingya returnees but would see to their safety with its own troops.Chan Aye, an official with Myanmar’s foreign ministry who led the government delegation, also spoke about safety and security for returnees, VOA’s Burmese Service reported. He said the military is fighting Arakan Army insurgents but not Muslim civilians, and maintained there is currently no mass displacement of Muslims in northern Rakhine state.FILE – Rohingya refugees cross a stream to reach their temporary shelters at No Man’s Land between the Bangladesh-Myanmar border, at Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, Sept. 9, 2017.Reports by human rights groups and a U.N. fact-finding mission previously have alleged that in August 2017, the Myanmar military led a bloody crackdown on Rohingya communities that was conducted with “genocidal intent.” The U.S. says about 745,000 Rohingya have taken refuge at camps in neighboring Bangladesh and others have fled elsewhere.Myanmar has said its military was legitimately responding to security threats. In an address last week at the International Criminal Court of Justice, where Myanmar faces charges of genocide, its civilian leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, said Myanmar troops might have used “disproportionate force” that led to the deaths of some civilians. She said any troops accused in those cases should be tried by Myanmar military courts.Myanmar and ASEAN delegates on Wednesday also visited Balukhali camp, where refugee leaders raised concerns about citizenship, fundamental rights and a requirement for a national verification card to re-enter the country, a refugee named Islam told the Burmese Service.Delegates also met Thursday afternoon with Hindu Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazar.This story originated in VOA’s Bangla Service. The Burmese Service also contributed.
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Diplomats: Europeans to Toughen Iran Stance But Shy Away From Sanctions
European parties to the Iran nuclear deal are likely to trigger a dispute resolution process in January to force Tehran to rollback violations, but would stop short of rushing to restore U.N. sanctions that would kill off the accord, diplomats said.Iran has criticized Britain, France and Germany for failing to salvage the 2015 pact by shielding Tehran’s economy from U.S. sanctions, reimposed since last year when Washington exited the agreement between Iran and six major powers.The deal’s objective was to extend the time Iran would need to accumulate enough fissile material for an atom bomb, if it sought one — something sometimes referred to as “breakout time” — to about a year from 2-3 months. The Europeans are alarmed Tehran’s latest moves will start eating into that time.Washington wants to force Iran to negotiate a broader deal that includes its nuclear activities, ballistic missile program and regional influence.In reaction to Washington’s “maximum pressure”, Iran, a longtime U.S. foe, has gradually reduced its commitments under the deal, including resuming enriching uranium at its underground Fordow plant and rapidly accelerating enrichment with advanced centrifuge machines also banned by the deal.On Jan. 6 Iran will further distance itself from compliance with the deal, according to Iranian officials, to amplify its warnings about the dire consequences of renewing U.N. sanctions.Six European and Western diplomats said the so-called E3 of Britain, France and Germany had agreed in principle to begin the process, although they would still wait to see how significant Iran’s latest steps were before taking a final decision.”Launching the process aims to resolve the problematic issues and save the deal,” said a European diplomatic source.”It’s not automatic that U.N sanctions will follow. If we decided to do that (reimpose U.N. sanctions) it would mean that we have decided to put the final nail in the coffin.”Under the terms of the 2015 deal, if any party believes another is not upholding their commitments they can refer the issue to a Joint Commission comprising Iran, Russia, China, the three European powers, and the European Union.They then have 15 days to resolve their differences, but can choose to extend the period by consensus between all the parties.However, if it is not extended the process escalates and can ultimately lead to the reimposition of sanctions that were in place under previous U.N. resolutions – known as a “snapback” — unless the U.N. Security Council decided otherwise.Diplomats said that unless Iran’s upcoming violations crossed an unacceptable threshold, the Europeans would focus on extending the process rather than pushing towards sanctions. It is unclear what the breaking point for the European powers is.US snapback? “This is not a step we want to take but Iran’s actions are leaving us little option other than to respond within the parameters of the agreement,” Britain’s envoy to the U.N. Karen Pierce said.”Should we be forced down the path of triggering the DRM (mechanism) we would do so in order to find a diplomatic way forward with the aim of protecting the agreement.”Three diplomats said the E3, in particular France, were lobbying Russia and China to get them on board to show unity between the five, even though Moscow and Beijing oppose launching the process for now.A senior Iranian official involved in nuclear talks said Iran had been informed the E3 wanted to launch the mechanism.”If they do it, Iran will act accordingly. If they want to save this deal, they have to keep their promises, otherwise Iran will take further steps,” he said, adding that the Europeans were being bullied by the United States.The Europeans could also back down should Iran not act in January. They are hoping the first transaction as part of a humanitarian trade channel they have been working on for more than a year could be a small carrot to convince Tehran to reassess its position.Coinciding with the European move, the U.S. State Department issued a legal reasoning seen by Reuters that concluded that the United States can trigger the “snapback” provisions of the nuclear deal despite having pulled out of the agreement, a stance that could increase pressure on the Europeans to do so.”There isn’t a direct link between the two (the European move and the U.S. legal reasoning), but we have always made it clear we want the Europeans to return to sanctions,” a U.S. official said. “That continues to be the case.”
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Boeing’s Starliner Capsule Launches on 1st Space Flight
Boeing’s new Starliner capsule rocketed toward the International Space Station on its first test flight Friday, a crucial dress rehearsal for next year’s inaugural launch with astronauts.The Starliner carried Christmas treats and presents for the six space station residents, hundreds of tree seeds similar to those that flew to the moon on Apollo 14, the original air travel ID card belonging to Boeing’s founder and a mannequin named Rosie in the commander’s seat.The test dummy — named after the bicep-flexing riveter of World War II — wore a red polka dot hair bandanna just like the original Rosie and Boeing’s custom royal blue spacesuit.”She’s pretty tough. She’s going to take the hit for us,” said NASA’s Mike Fincke, one of three astronauts who will fly on the next Starliner and, as test pilots, take the hit for future crews.As the astronauts watched from nearby control centers, a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket carrying the capsule blasted off just before sunrise from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The rocket was visible for at least five minutes, its white contrail a brilliant contrast against the dark sky. Thousands of spectators jammed the area, eager to witness Starliner’s premiere flight.It was a one-day trip to the orbiting lab, putting the spacecraft on track for a docking Saturday morning.This was Boeing’s chance to catch up with SpaceX, NASA’s other commercial crew provider that completed a similar demonstration last March. SpaceX has one last hurdle — a launch abort test — before carrying two NASA astronauts in its Dragon capsule, possibly by spring.The U.S. needs competition like this, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said Thursday, to drive down launch costs, boost innovation and open space up to more people. “We’re moving into a new era,” he said.The space agency handed over station deliveries to private businesses, first cargo and then crews, in order to focus on getting astronauts back to the moon and on to Mars. Commercial cargo ships took flight in 2012, starting with SpaceX. Crew capsules were more complicated to design and build, and parachute and other technical problems pushed the first launches from 2017 to now next year.It’s been nearly nine years since NASA astronauts have launched from the U.S. The last time was July 8, 2011, when Atlantis — now on display at Kennedy Space Center — made the final space shuttle flight. Since then, NASA astronauts have traveled to and from the space station via Kazakhstan, courtesy of the Russian Space Agency. The Soyuz rides have cost NASA up to $86 million apiece.”We’re back with a vengeance now,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said from Kennedy, where crowds gathered well before dawn.Chris Ferguson commanded that last shuttle mission. Now a test pilot astronaut for Boeing and one of the Starliner’s key developers, he’s assigned to the first Starliner crew with Fincke and NASA astronaut Nicole Mann. A successful Starliner demo could see them launching by summer.”This is an incredibly unique opportunity,” Ferguson said on the eve of launch.Mann juggled a mix of emotions: excitement, pride, stress and amazement.”Really overwhelmed, but in a good way and really the best of ways,” she said.Built to accommodate seven, the white capsule with black and blue trim will typically carry four or five people. It’s 16.5 feet (5 meters) tall with its attached service module and 15 feet (4.5 meters) in diameter. Every Starliner system will be tested during the eight-day mission, from the vibrations and stresses of liftoff to the Dec. 28 touchdown at the Army’s White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. Parachutes and air bags will soften the capsule’s landing. Even the test dummy is packed with sensors.Bridenstine said he’s “very comfortable” with Boeing, despite the prolonged grounding of the company’s 737 Max jets. The spacecraft and aircraft sides of the company are different, he noted. Boeing has long been involved in NASA’s human spacecraft program, from Project Mercury to the shuttle and station programs. Boeing began preliminary work on the Starliner in 2010, a year before Atlantis soared for the last time. In 2014, Boeing and SpaceX made the final cut. Boeing got more than $4 billion to develop and fly the Starliner, while SpaceX got $2.6 billion for a crew-version of its Dragon cargo ship.NASA wants to make sure every reasonable precaution is taken with the capsules, designed to be safer than NASA’s old shuttles.”We’re talking about human spaceflight,” Bridenstine cautioned. “It’s not for the faint of heart. It never has been, and it’s never going to be.”
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Pelosi: Power of Gavel Means Trump is ‘Impeached Forever’
Nancy Pelosi promised as speaker she would “show the power of the gavel.”This year, she laid it out for all to see.The past week alone, the Democratic leader delivered a $1.4 trillion government funding package to stop a shutdown, pushed through the bipartisan U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement, and passed her party’s plan to lower prescription drug costs. In between, she led a congressional delegation to Europe for the 75th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge.And on Wednesday, she impeached the president.As the first year of Pelosi’s second stint as speaker draws to a close — she is the only woman to hold the office, and the first speaker in 60 years to reclaim the gavel after losing it — the California Democrat took stock of whether she fulfilled her campaign trail promise.“Donald Trump thinks so,“ Pelosi told The Associated Press during an interview Thursday at her office in the Capitol.”He just got impeached. He’ll be impeached forever. No matter what the Senate does. He’s impeached forever because he violated our Constitution,” she said.“If I did nothing else, he saw the power of the gavel there,” Pelosi told the AP. “And it wasn’t me, it was all of our members making their own decision.”Not since an earlier era of leaders — like Sam Rayburn, whose name is on a building at the Capitol, or Newt Gingrich, who defined a political movement — has the House speaker wielded such influence.“She has governed with force and authority,” said Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public policy at Princeton.Zelizer said Pelosi has accomplished with Trump what others have not, which is to build a coalition strong enough to hold the president accountable, through impeachment, while also muscling through big bills. This, on top of what she did during her first term in the office.“She is likely to go down in history as one of the most effective Speakers,” he said.Congress often runs toward a big year-end finish as lawmakers try to rack up accomplishments for the elections ahead. Lame-duck sessions, which this year is not, are often particularly robust as members capitalize on the narrow calendar window after the election but before the new Congress forms.Former Speaker Paul Ryan delivered the GOP’s sweeping tax cuts package in December 2017. Former Speaker John Boehner tried to secure the fiscal cliff deal of taxing and spending at the end of 2012, and it was eventually approved at New Year’s.Pelosi’s earlier term as speaker, from 2007-2011, saw Democrats approve the signature achievement of the Obama era, the Affordable Care Act, during Christmas in 2009, though most of the action by that stage in the legislative process had moved in the Senate.She regained the gavel in January of this year, emerging from a contentious internal party election, after sweeping House Democrats to the majority in the 2018 midterm elections.Pelosi’s ability to steer the agenda is shaped in part by her decades in office. She immodestly calls herself a master legislator, but there’s truth in the brag — she brings more legislative experience to her job than those immediate predecessors. Particularly during the start of Obama’s first term, when her party controlled both chambers, she ushered health care, financial reform and other major items to passage in what historians say was the most productive session of Congress since Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society years.Critics contend Pelosi strong-armed bills through the House, resulting in 2010 Democratic midterm election losses that cost the party its majority and her the gavel.Trump said Democrats are on a “suicide march” toward electoral defeat once again with impeachment.“Crazy Nancy Pelosi’s House Democrats have branded themselves with an eternal mark of shame,” Trump told a rally crowd in battleground Michigan on the night he was being impeached.The Republican leader of the Senate, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said Pelosi’s House isn’t accomplishing much because she is wasting time on impeachment.But she notes that it’s McConnell who calls himself the “grim reaper” in his Senate graveyard of House-passed bills he refuses to bring forward for a vote.“The time is not up,” Pelosi said Thursday, a reminder that all those pieces of legislation carry over to 2020, because Congress runs in two-year cycles and this session doesn’t conclude for another year.“As the election approaches, we would not want these to be election issues, we would like them to be accomplished legislation,” she said. “So they either pass the bills or pay a price for not passing bills.”The impeachment vote will be what history remembers most from this week. But passing the trade bill is a major win for both parties. And approving the government funding — Pelosi was negotiating the package in calls with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin during her weekend diplomacy paying tribute to World War II veterans in Europe — counts too. Last year at this time, the government was heading toward what would become the nation’s longest-ever federal shutdown.
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UK Lawmakers Set to Vote on Boris Johnson’s Brexit Bill
British lawmakers are set to hold their first major vote on Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Brexit bill Friday. It is all but certain to be approved by the country’s new Conservative-dominated Parliament.The vote to approve the Withdrawal Agreement Bill in principle will set Britain on course to leave the European Union as scheduled on Jan. 31. That was the key campaign promise of Johnson, who won a commanding parliamentary majority in last week’s U.K. general election.Previous attempts to pass a Brexit deal through the U.K. Parliament foundered as lawmakers objected to sections of the agreement and demanded a bigger say in the process. But Johnson’s victory gives him the power to get his way.The bill commits Britain to leaving the EU on Jan. 31 and to concluding trade talks with the bloc by the end of 2020. Trade experts and EU officials say striking a free trade deal within 11 months will be a struggle, but Johnson insists he won’t agree to any more delays, and the bill has been amended to bar ministers from agreeing to extend the transition period with the EU.That has set off alarm bells among businesses, who fear that means the country will face a “no-deal” Brexit at the start of 2021.Johnson has stripped out parts of the bill which gave lawmakers a role in negotiating a future trade deal with the EU and required ministers to provide regular updates to Parliament. The clauses were added earlier in the year in an attempt to win opposition lawmakers’ support — backing that Johnson no longer needs.A promise that workers’ rights will not be eroded after Brexit has also been removed, though the government says it will enshrine employment rights in separate legislation.The bill is expected to complete its passage through Parliament in January, in time for Britain to leave the 28-nation bloc on Jan. 31.The divorce deal also needs to be ratified by the European Parliament. European Parliament vice president Pedro Silva Pereira said officials expect that to happen by Jan. 29.Very little will change immediately after Brexit. Britain will remain an EU member in all but name during the 11-month transition period that ends in December 2020.
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Vatican Tribunal now Overwhelmed by Clergy Sex Abuse Cases
The Vatican office responsible for processing clergy sex abuse complaints has seen a record 1,000 cases reported from around the world this year, including from countries it had not heard from before — suggesting that the worst may be yet to come in a crisis that has plagued the Catholic Church.Nearly two decades after the Vatican assumed responsibility for reviewing all cases of abuse, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is today overwhelmed, struggling with a skeleton staff that hasn’t grown at pace to meet the four-fold increase in the number of cases arriving in 2019 compared to a decade ago.“I know cloning is against Catholic teaching, but if I could actually clone my officials and have them work three shifts a day or work seven days a week,” they might make the necessary headway, said Monsignor John Kennedy, the head of the congregation’s discipline section, which processes the cases.“We’re effectively seeing a tsunami of cases at the moment, particularly from countries where we never heard from (before),” Kennedy said, referring to allegations of abuse that occurred for the most part years or decades ago. Argentina, Mexico, Chile, Italy and Poland have joined the U.S. among the countries with the most cases arriving at the congregation, known as the CDF.Kennedy spoke to The Associated Press and allowed an AP photographer and video journalists into the CDF’s inner chambers — the first time in the tribunal’s history that visual news media have been given access. Even the Vatican’s most secretive institution now feels the need to show some transparency as the church hierarchy seeks to rebuild trust with rank-and-file Catholics who have grown disillusioned with decades of clergy abuse and cover-up.Pope Francis took a step towards showing greater transparency with his decision this week to abolish the so-called “pontifical secret” that governs the processing of abuse cases to increase cooperation with civil law enforcement.But the CDF’s struggles remain, and are emblematic of the overall dysfunction of the church’s in-house legal system, which relies on bishops and religious superiors, some with no legal experience or qualified canon lawyers on staff, to investigate allegations of sexual abuse that even the most seasoned criminal prosecutors have difficulty parsing. The system itself is built on an inherent conflict of interest, with a bishop asked to weigh the claim of an unknown alleged victim against the word of a priest who he considers a spiritual son.Despite promises of “zero tolerance” and accountability, the adoption of new laws and the creation of expert commissions, the Vatican finds itself still struggling to reckon with the problem of predator priests — a scourge that first erupted publicly in Ireland and Australia in the 1990s, the U.S. in 2002, parts of Europe beginning in 2010 and Latin America last year.“I suppose if I weren’t a priest and if I had a child who were abused, I’d probably stop going to Mass,” said Kennedy, who saw first-hand how the church in his native Ireland lost its credibility over the abuse scandal.“I’d probably stop having anything to do with the church because I’d say, ’Well, if you can’t look after children, well, why should I believe you?”But he said the Vatican was committed to fighting abuse and just needed more time to process the cases. “We’re going to look at it forensically and guarantee that the just outcome will be given,” he said in an interview.“It’s not about winning people back, because faith is something that is very personal,” he added. “But at least we give people the opportunity to say, ‘Well, maybe give the church a second chance to hear the message.’”___Located in a mustard-colored palazzo just inside the Vatican gates, the CDF serves as the central processing center for abuse cases as well as an appeals court for accused priests under the church’s canon law, a parallel legal system to civil law enforcement that dispenses ecclesial justice.In the past, when the CDF was known as the Holy Office or the Sacred Roman and Universal Inquisition, such church punishments involved burnings at the stake for heretics and publishing lists of banned books that the faithful were forbidden to read.Today, CDF justice tends more toward ordering errant priests to prayer, penance and prohibition from celebrating Mass in public. In fact the worst punishment handed down by the church’s canon law, even for serial child rapists, is essentially being fired, or dismissed from the clerical state.While priests sometimes consider defrockings to be equivalent to a death sentence, such seemingly minor sanctions for such heinous crimes have long outraged victims, whose lives are forever scarred by their abuse. But recourse to church justice is sometimes all the victims have, given the statutes of limitations for pursuing criminal charges or civil litigation have often long since passed by the time a survivor comes to terms with the trauma and decides to report the abuse to authorities — usually to prevent further harm.’’I wanted to make sure that this priest does not have access to any children,” said Paul Peloquin, a Catholic clinical psychologist and abuse survivor who reported his abuser to the archdiocese of Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1990.By then, church authorities had known for decades that the Rev. Earl Bierman groped young boys, and they had sent him off for therapy. But his bishops kept putting him back in ministry, where he is believed to have abused upwards of 70 children. A Kentucky jury convicted him in 1993 and sentenced him to 20 years in prison, where he died in 2005.Peloquin, however, never received a reply to his initial complaint to his bishop.“It just made me angry,” said Peloquin, who now counsels victims from a faith-based perspective that emphasizes forgiveness in healing. “It seemed like they would have called me up right away and said, ‘Let’s hear about what you’ve got to say.’”Because of cases like his, where the bishop ignored the victim, protected the pedophile and placed the church’s reputation above all else, the CDF under then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in 2001 persuaded Pope John Paul II to centralize the process.The aim was to crack down on abusers and provide bishops and religious superiors with needed guidance to punish the priests rather than move them around from parish to parish, where they could abuse again. At no time has the Vatican ever mandated superiors report abusers to police, though it has insisted they cooperate with civil reporting laws.The 2001 revision calls for bishops and religious superiors who receive an allegation to conduct a preliminary investigation, which in the U.S. is often done with the help of a lay review board.If the bishop finds the claim has a semblance of truth, he sends the documentation to the CDF which tells the bishop how to proceed: via a full-blown canonical trial, a more expedited “administrative” procedure, or something else, including having the CDF itself take over the investigation.Over the ensuing months and years, the bishop continues the investigation in consultation with the CDF. Eventually the bishop reaches a verdict and a sanction, up to and including dismissal from the clerical state, or laicization.If the priest accepts the penalty, the case ends there. If he appeals, the case comes to the CDF for a final decision.From 2004 to 2014 — roughly the years of Benedict’s papacy with a year on each bookend — some 848 priests were defrocked around the world and another 2,572 were sanctioned to lesser penalties, according to Vatican statistics.The Vatican hasn’t published updated statistics since then, but Benedict’s get-tough defrocking approach has seemingly gone unmatched by Francis. The Jesuit pope appears more swayed by arguments that the church and society are better served if abusers remain in the priesthood, albeit out of active ministry with young people, so they are at least under surveillance by their superiors and not able to have access to children in other jobsThe appeals are decided in an ivory damask-walled conference room on the first floor of the Palazzo Sant’Uffizio, the CDF headquarters a stones’ throw from St. Peter’s Square.The room is dominated by a massive wooden crucifix on the wall that faces St. Peter’s Basilica, and, in each corner of the room, a closed-circuit TV camera peering down on CDF staff.The cameras record the debates on DVDs for the CDF’s own archives and in case the pope ever wants to see what transpired.It is wretched work, reading through case files filled with text messages of priests grooming their victims, psychological evaluations of pedophiles, and heart-numbing letters from men and women who were violated as children and are finally coming to terms with their traumas.“There are times when I am pouring over cases that I want to get up and scream, that I want to pack up my things and leave the office and not come back,” Kennedy told Catholic journalists in the U.S. earlier this year.Nearly 20 years after the CDF assumed responsibility for the cases, it has processed 6,000 abuse cases, and at one point Francis lamented that it had a backlog of 2,000. But the CDF now must cope with the globalization of the scandal that in 2001 seemed to be largely confined to the English-speaking world.Today, the CDF counts just 17 officials, with occasional help from other CDF staff, plus the superiors. Kennedy said he was planning to bring in a Brazilian, Polish and bilingual American canonist to help offset the expected departures of current CDF staff and to process cases from countries that are only now having a reckoning with abuse.But there are still countries the CDF has never heard from — a scenario that suggests “either that they’re all saints or we don’t know about them yet,” Kennedy told AP.The implication is that victims are still cowed, and bishops are still covering up cases. A new Vatican law mandates all abuse and cover-up be reported to church officials, but there is no automatic penalty if anyone fails to do so.Not even in the U.S., which has the most stringent reporting mechanisms in place, is there any way to ensure that bishops are forwarding allegations to the CDF as required.“There has never been independent review of diocesan compliance with that law,” said the Rev. James Connell, a canon lawyer who represents abuse survivors.___Walk into the Pontifical Gregorian University library, climb up the spiral staircase to the legal stacks and you’ll find volume after volume of “Decisiones Seu Sententiae” — the Latin-language legal decisions from one of the Holy See’s main tribunals, the Roman Rota.The tomes contain hundreds of decrees of petitions to nullify Catholic marriages from around the world — the Vatican-stamped paperwork Catholics need to remarry in the church after divorcing.But there is no such jurisprudence published for the Vatican’s other main tribunal, the CDF. None of those rulings are ever published. And that is because until this past week, abuse cases were covered by the highest form of confidentiality in the church, the so-called “pontifical secret.”St. John Paul II decreed that abuse cases would be kept under such tight secrecy in 2001, and defenders argued it was the best way to protect the privacy of the victim, the reputation of the accused and the integrity of the process.Critics said the pontifical secret was used to keep the scandal hidden, prevent police from acquiring internal documentation and silence victims. The U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child issued a scathing denunciation of the secrecy in 2014, and victims long complained how it retraumatized them:Many were held to secrecy for decades by their abusers, only to have the church re-traumatize them by imposing secrecy on them when they finally found the courage to report the crime.In announcing the abolition of the highest confidentiality in abuse cases, the Vatican said the reform would facilitate cooperation with civil law enforcement, since bishops would no longer be able to hide behind the pontifical secret to withhold documents.The argument was striking, given that it amounted to an explicit admission that bishops had used the pontifical secret as an excuse to refuse cooperation when prosecutors, police or civil authorities demanded internal paperwork.In more academic terms, the lack of published CDF jurisprudence means no bishop or religious superior has case law to refer to when he receives a new allegation that one of his priests has raped a child: He can’t read up on how the Vatican or his brother bishops have handled a similar set of facts in the past, since none of the cases are published.No seminarian studying canon law can cite case studies in preparing his thesis about how the Catholic Church has responded to the abuse scandal. No academic, journalist, victim or ordinary Catholic has any real idea how the Catholic Church has adjudicated these cases in any systematic way.The Rev. D.G. Astigueta, a Jesuit canonist at the Gregorian, has said such institutional secrecy surrounding abuse case harms the development and practice of the church’s own law.“Canonical science doesn’t only grow and develop from a reflection by experts or the production of new laws, but also by jurisprudence, the way of interpreting the law by judges and lawyers,” he told a 2017 conference.He called for greater transparency by the CDF so that today’s canon lawyers, especially those studying in Rome, could have easy access to case files and thus have “teaching based not just on theory but practice.”He is not alone. For the past several years, Vatican-affiliated universities in Rome have hosted conferences on seeking a new equilibrium between the need to protect the integrity of the investigation while looking out in particular for the needs of the victims.Three of the official speakers at Francis’ big sex abuse summit in February called for a reform of the pontifical secret, and the Vatican’s leading sex crimes investigator, Archbishop Charles Scicluna, was the primary driver behind the reform.In another change to church law this year, Francis decreed that victims cannot be silenced, and have the right to learn the outcomes of their cases. But they are still largely kept out of the process, after making an initial complaint.“They are that person who has been harmed. And it would seem to be natural justice that they should know what is being done what is being said in their absence,” said Marie Collins, an Irish survivor who quit Francis’ child protection commission in frustration in part over what she said was the CDF’s intransigence and obsession with secrecy.And the length of time the cases take benefits no one, she added.The CDF is due to soon publish a step-by-step guidebook for bishops and religious superiors to refer to so they can process cases, and two researchers are currently hard at work in Kennedy’s office, entering case details into a database so the CDF can generate a statistical analysis of the cases it has processed over the past two decades.Kennedy said he needs more funding to complete the project, and said more transparency could be possible down the line.“I think eventually we will get to the point of publishing jurisprudence, like the way the Roman Rota does,” he said. The aim would be to redact names and revealing details, but show “the broad parameters of what it is that we do.”
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Rights Group Calls New Law in Ethiopia a Threat to Freedom of Expression
A new law being considered in Ethiopia is being called a threat to free speech and online expression.Ethiopia’s “Hate Speech and Disinformation Prevention and Suppression Proclamation” is in a draft stage, but if approved, it would criminalize online, broadcast or print speech that promotes hatred, said the London-based rights group Human Rights Watch in a press statement Friday. It defines this as anything inciting “hatred, discrimination or attack against a person or an identifiable group, based on ethnicity, religion, race, gender or disability.” It also outlaws “dissemination of disinformation” or falsehoods, the statement added.The law has been approved by the prime minister’s Cabinet but must still be approved by parliament.
But critics believe this law could be used to silence critical voices or political opponents. This, they say, was the case with an anti-terrorism law passed in 2009 which was used to “These kinds of laws including, in the past, the anti-terrorism law, has been used to illegally stifle opposition,” said Befeqadu Hailu, the executive director of the Center for Advancement of Rights and Democracy (CARD), speaking to VOA Amharic. “So there is a concern that there hasn’t been enough discussion over these laws.” Supporters of the law believe it is necessary, particularly to stop people from inflaming ethnic hatred.
Ethiopia has endured a tumultuous year of ethnic tension. In June, an Army general from the Amhara ethnic group led a Human Rights Watch agrees that the threat of ethnic violence is real, but says a law like this is not the answer.“The Ethiopian government is under increasing pressure to respond to rising communal violence that has at times been exacerbated by speeches and statements shared online,” said Laetitia Bader, senior Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch. “But an ill-construed law that opens the door for law enforcement officials to violate rights to free expression is no solution.”The use of hate speech laws around the world shows that authorities have often abused them for political purposes, Human Rights Watch said.
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Democratic Presidential Contenders Clash in Latest Debate
The Democratic presidential candidates held their liveliest debate yet Thursday in Los Angeles, California. Seven contenders were on the debate stage and clashed over the economy, health care, climate change, campaign finance reform and who best can defeat President Donald Trump next year. VOA National correspondent Jim Malone has more from Washington
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US Watching North Korea for ‘Christmas Gift’ Missile Launch
The U.S. is closely watching North Korea for signs of a possible missile launch or nuclear test in the coming days that officials are referring to as a “Christmas surprise.”A significant launch or test would mean the end of North Korea’s self-imposed moratorium and raise tensions in the region. It would also be a major blow to one of the Trump administration’s major foreign policy initiatives: the drive to get North Korea back to negotiations to eliminate its nuclear weapons and missiles.Earlier this month, the North conducted what U.S. officials say was an engine test. North Korea described it as “crucial” and experts believe that it may have involved an engine for a space launch vehicle or long-range missile. Officials worry that it could be a prelude to the possible launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile in the coming days or weeks.Any test involving an ICBM would have the most serious impact on the diplomatic effort because it would be considered a move by North Korea to acquire the ability to strike the United States, or, even worse, to show they already have it.“North Korea has been advancing. It has been building new capabilities,” said Anthony Wier, a former State Department official who tracks nuclear disarmament for the Friends Committee on National Legislation. “As long as that continues, they gain new capabilities to try new missiles to threaten us and our allies in new ways,”The North Koreans warned of a possible “Christmas gift” in early December, saying the Trump administration was running out of time to salvage nuclear negotiations, and it was up to the U.S. to choose what “Christmas gift” it gets from the North.Victor Cha, a Korea expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said a review of the possible launch sites in North Korea show that they are a “basically ready to go.” He said the expected launch could be a test of a sea-based ballistic missile or a solid-fuel rocket.Using solid fuel allows North Korea to more quickly fuel up a rocket, providing less lead time for the U.S. or others to prepare for a launch. Sea-based launches are also more difficult to locate and would give less warning or time for the U.S. to react.Either one, he said, “would be a new type of problem that the U.S. would have to deal with.”Defense Secretary Mark Esper told reporters earlier this week that the U.S. has heard all the talk of a possible upcoming test around Christmas.“I’ve been watching the Korean Peninsula for a quarter-century now. I’m familiar with their tactics, with their bluster,” he said. “We need to get serious and sit down and have discussions about a political agreement that denuclearizes the peninsula. That is the best way forward and arguably the only way forward if we’re going to do something constructive.”Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun, the special U.S. envoy for North Korea, has also warned of a possible launch.“We are fully aware of the strong potential for North Korea to conduct a major provocation in the days ahead,” he said. “To say the least, such an action will be most unhelpful in achieving lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula.”At a meeting in Singapore in June 2018, Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un issued a joint statement that said the North “commits to work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”But negotiations stalled this year after the U.S. rejected North Korean demands for broad sanctions relief in exchange for a partial surrender of the North’s nuclear capabilities at Kim’s second summit with Trump last February.Since then, Pyongyang’s testing and rhetoric has escalated.Since the Singapore summit, Cha said, Pyongyang has done more testing and grown their missile capabilities. “By most metrics, the Trump policy is not succeeding,” he said.According to the U.S. military, North Korea has launched more than 20 missiles this year. They’ve included new types of missiles as well as a submarine-launched ballistic missile, in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions.“The Trump administration and President Trump himself deserves some credit for allowing diplomacy,” Wier said. “That’s a good thing. Now is the time to empower real diplomacy.”North Korea conducted a torrent of missile tests in 2017. It flew two new intermediate-range missiles over Japan and threatened to fire those weapons toward the U.S. territory of Guam. It also tested three developmental ICBMs, including the Hwasong-15 that demonstrated potential range to reach deep into the U.S. mainland.Those ICBM tests, however, showed no clear sign that the North had perfected the technology needed to ensure that a warhead could survive the harsh conditions of atmospheric re-entry. According to experts at 38 North, a website specializing in North Korea studies, all of the 2017 launches were on highly lofted trajectories and the missiles’ reentry vehicles were not subjected to the thermal and mechanical stresses that would be created by a full-range flight.Experts said North Korea needed additional flight tests to determine the reliability and accuracy of its ICBMs and establish a capable re-entry protection system.Those 2017 tests triggered a sharp U.S. reaction. Trump said he would bring “fire and fury” on North Korea and exchanged threats of total destruction with Kim, touching off fears of war on the Korean Peninsula. Kim subsequently suspended ICBM and nuclear tests, allowing Trump to brag about that as a foreign policy win. The North has not performed any known tests of ICBMs since the Hwasong-15 launch in November 2017.Esper said the U.S. has a team on the Korean peninsula now that has reached out to the North and is asking for meetings. At the same time, he said the U.S. military remains at a high level of readiness.Esper has visited Korea twice this year since being sworn in as defense chief. A key discussion point has been the reduction in U.S. military exercises with South Korea — a move by the Trump administration to appease North Korea and woo them to the negotiating table for denuclearization talks.The U.S. has about 28,000 troops in South Korea.
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US Will `Curb Malign Iranian Behavior’ if it Doesn’t Stop
The United States renewed its offer to engage in talks with Iran on Thursday but warned it will do everything in its power “to curb malign Iranian behavior” if Tehran continues to destabilize the Middle East.The U.S. ambassador at the United Nations, Kelly Craft, said the Trump administration also “rejects Iran’s use of nuclear brinkmanship to normalize its destabilizing behavior.”She commented at a U.N. Security Council meeting on implementation of a resolution endorsing the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and key world powers.Iranian Ambassador Majid Takht Ravanchi called the U.S. offer of unconditional talks “disingenuous.” The U.S. wants to enter dialogue from a position of strength from maintaining sanctions and maximum pressure, “and not based on equal footing,” he said.“Iran does not negotiate under the threat of a sword,” Ravanchi said.He said U.S. implementation of the council’s 2015 resolution endorsing the international Iran nuclear deal “will pave the way for a genuine dialogue to start.”Ravanchi said that in negotiations on the nuclear deal, Iran rejected attempts to include its legitimate defense capabilities and its role in the region. He said that “under no circumstances will Iran compromise on its security.”After the meeting, a live camera at the United Nations filmed Craft come up to Ravanchi, a rare, direct diplomatic interaction between the two countries. Craft tried to shake hands with Ravanchi and his colleague, though both men bowed and folded their hands as if in a prayer to acknowledge her and avoid shaking her hand.Tensions have been incredibly high between the nations since President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from Tehran’s nuclear deal in May 2018. For the administration of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, the withdrawal and reimposed sanctions have been devastating for the country’s long-ailing economy. Rouhani also faces ever-increasing criticism from hard-liners and any interaction with the U.S. could further fuel that.Alireza Miryousefi, a spokesman at Iran’s U.N. mission, described the interaction as “merely” a short conversation about young children affected by epidermolysis bullosa, a genetic skin disorder.“It is not out of the ordinary for U.N. diplomats accredited to the U.N. to run into each other, or to have brief encounters, at HQ,” Miryousefi wrote on Twitter.However, in past years, Iranian officials have tried to avoid direct interactions with their U.S. counterparts.The U.N. political chief, Rosemary DiCarlo, told the Security Council that tensions in the region “have worryingly escalated” during 2019.“We witnessed attacks against oil tankers, strikes against a civilian airport, and a highly sophisticated and synchronized attack against oil facilities in Saudi Arabia,” she said. “Combined with acrimonious rhetoric, these developments have dangerously brought the region closer to a serious confrontation.”DiCarlo warned that “such an eventuality would be devastating and must be prevented at all costs.”The meeting followed U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ recent report saying the United Nations has not been able to independently corroborate that cruise missiles and drones used in attacks earlier this year on an airport and oil facilities in Saudi Arabia “are of Iranian origin” — or were transferred from Iran “in a manner inconsistent” with the 2015 U.N. resolution.DiCarlo reiterated that finding, saying the U.N. is still collecting and analyzing additional information on the drones and cruise missiles.For example, she said, “we have recently received confirmation that some of the cruise missile components were, in fact, not made by the identified manufacturers but could have been copies.”The United States, Britain, France Germany and Israel have blamed Iran for the attacks, but Iran and Russia insist Tehran was not responsible.Craft, the U.S. ambassador, told the council that “there is simply no other plausible explanation.”She said only Iran could have carried out a complex attacks like the ones on Saudi Aramco oil facilities in Abqaiq and Khurais on Sept. 14, which Yemen’s Houthi Shiite rebels claimed responsibility for.The weapons used didn’t have the range to come from Houthi territory and the drones had “numerous characteristics in common with Iranian designs,” Craft said.She said the damage at the oil facilities “shows that the attack came from the north, not from the south, as you would expect if the Houthis were responsible.”What this means, Kraft said, is that Iran “attacked a sovereign nation from its territory” which should be condemned by all nations.British Ambassador Karen Pierce stressed the importance for the Europeans of preserving the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, which she called “fundamental to regional and international peace and security.” She added that it is essential diplomatic efforts continue.Pierce expressed regret at Iran’s recent steps reducing its nuclear commitments and worry at indications that Tehran is illegally transferring conventional arms, missiles and missile technology in the region.“We call on Iran to cease such activities, which only deepen mistrust and increase regional tensions,” she said.But Russia’s ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, told the council the “so-called evidence provided about culpability of Iran is not persuasive and it is not corroborated in the secretary-general’s report.” He added that the report “is plagued by a chronic lack of evidence.”Nebenzia called the 2015 agreement between Iran and the U.S., Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany “the crowning achievement of multilateralism.”“We cannot allow political pressure, economic asphyxiation and military blackmail to prevail,” he said. “The end goal needs to be the establishment of a genuinely inclusive security architecture which reflects the legitimate concerns of all countries in the region.”
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Democratic Debates: Comments by Each Candidate
The sixth Democratic presidential candidate debates took place Thursday in Los Angeles. Here are some comments from each of the seven candidates:Former Vice President Joe Biden, in a discussion about foreign policy regarding issues such as Hong Kong and China, said, “We should be going to the U.N. immediately and seek sanctions against [China]. … We have to be firm. We don’t have to go to war [for Hong Kong]. But we have to make it clear this is as far as you go, China.”Mayor Pete Buttigieg, in responding to a comment about Trump’s leadership abroad, said, “When the American president refers to unfavorable press coverage as the product of the enemy of the people, democracy around the world gets weak. Freedom of the press, not just here at home, but around the world, gets weaker. It’s one more reminder of what is at stake, not just here at home, but for world history.”Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., speaks during a Democratic presidential primary debate, Dec. 19, 2019, in Los Angeles.Senator Amy Klobuchar, in stopping a quarrel between Buttigieg and Elizabeth Warren over fundraising, said, “I did not come here to listen to this argument. I came here to make a case for progress. … So what is making a case for progress about? That is what unites us up here instead of what divides us, which is campaign finance reform. That means passing a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United. It means making the first bill we pass when I am president will be H.R. 1, which is the ethics reform passed in the House, which is currently sitting on (Senate Majority Leader) Mitch McConnell’s desk with 400 bills.”Senator Bernie Sanders, in answering a question about climate change, said, “The issue now is whether we save the planet for our children and our grandchildren. … Just maybe, instead of spending $1.8 trillion a year globally on weapons of destruction, maybe an American president, i.e. Bernie Sanders, can lead the world, instead of spending money to kill each other, maybe we pool our resources and fight our common enemy, which is climate change.”Tom Steyer, a billionaire hedge fund manager and environmentalist, when asked about the impeachment of President Trump and a likely trial in the Republican-controlled Senate, said, “If we want Republican senators to do the right thing, we need their constituents to see the truth on TV and tell them, get rid of this guy or we’ll get rid of you.”Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., speaks as South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg listens during a Democratic presidential primary debate, Dec. 19, 2019, in Los Angeles.Senator Elizabeth Warren, in a heated exchange with Buttigieg over campaign financing and wealthy donors, said, “We made the decision many years ago that rich people in smoke-filled rooms would not pick the next president of the United States. … I do not sell access to my time. I don’t spend time with millionaires and billionaires. I don’t meet behind closed doors with big dollar donors,” referring to a Buttigieg fundraiser held in a wine cave in Napa Valley, California.Entrepreneur Andrew Yang, in response to the fact he is the only person of color at the debate, said, “It is both an honor and disappointment to be the lone candidate of color on the stage tonight. … And the question is why am I the lone candidate of color on this stage? Fewer than 5% of Americans donate to political campaigns. You know what you need to donate to political campaigns? Disposable income. The way we fix it, the way we fix this is we take Martin Luther King’s message of a guaranteed minimum income.”
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Australian Leader Curtails Holiday as Firefighters Killed in Huge Blazes
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison issued a rare public apology as he cut short a Hawaiian vacation on Friday after two volunteer firefighters were killed battling blazes that are ravaging much of the country’s east coast.Australia has been fighting wildfires in the east for weeks, with blazes destroying more than 700 homes and nearly 3 million acres (1.2 million hectares) of bushland.The death of the two firefighters overnight when their fire truck was struck by a falling tree as it travelled through the front line of a fire brought the death toll since the start of October to eight.”This is an absolutely devastating event in what has already been an incredibly difficult day and fire season,” the New South Wales (NSW) state Rural Fire Service said in a statement.FILE – Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, left, chats with farmer David Gooding on his drought-affected property near Dalby, Queensland, Australia, Sept. 27, 2019.Shortly after the pair’s deaths were announced, Morrison issued a statement saying he would return as soon as possible from a family holiday in Hawaii, a trip that has drawn sharp criticism in recent days as the wildfires crisis deepened.Morrison’s conservative Liberal-National coalition government has been under sustained pressure to defend its climate change policies as it has downplayed links to the unprecedented early arrival and severity of this year’s bushfire season.”I deeply regret any offense caused to any of the many Australians affected by the terrible bushfires by my taking leave with family at this time,” Morrison said in the statement.Morrison later told 2GB radio that the trip had been planned as a surprise to his young daughters to replace leave originally scheduled for January that he had cancelled because of official trips to Japan and India.Hundreds of protesters had gathered outside his Sydney residence on Thursday. One protestor, wearing an Hawaiian shirt, carried a sign reading, “ScoMo, where the bloody hell are you?” referencing the leader’s nickname and a well-known international advertisement for Tourism Australia.Australia is one of the world’s largest carbon emitters per capita because of its reliance on coal-fired power plants. It has pledged to cut carbon emissions by 26% from 2005 levels by 2030, but critics accuse Morrison of paying lip service to that commitment.In June, the government approved the construction of a new coal mine in Queensland state by India’s Adani Enterprises that is expected to produce 8 million to 10 million tonnes of thermal coal a year.As Morrison was apologizing on radio on Friday morning, opposition Labor Party leader Anthony Albanese was serving breakfast to firefighters near the front line of a fire in rural Bilpin.The RFS named the dead volunteer firefighters as Andrew O’Dwyer, 36, and Geoffrey Keaton, 32 – both fathers to 19-month- old children. Three other firefighters were injured in the truck crash.Earlier on Thursday, two male firefighters were airlifted to hospital with burns to their faces, arms and legs, while a female colleague was taken by ambulance to hospital after they were engulfed by flames.The fires have resulted in days of heavy pollution in Sydney, pushing air quality to unprecedented hazardous levels and resulting in viral images of heavy smoke haze over the usually sparkling harbour and landmarks like the Opera House.The fires are being spurred this week, by record temperatures across the country which led New South Wales, the most populous state with 7 million people, to declare a seven-day state of emergency.Thursday’s declaration gave firefighters broad powers to control government resources, force evacuations, close roads and shut down utilities.Temperatures eased on Friday but were expected to return to near-record highs on Saturday, which firefighters fear will stoke some of the around 100 fires burning across the state.Days out from Christmas, a time when many Australians head to the coast for the holidays, NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian urged people to reconsider travel plans.”What is most important for us is that everyone is safe and if that means changing your plans for Christmas, we ask you do to that,” Berejiklian told reporters in Sydney.
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Malawian Migrant Workers Returned from South Africa Get Training
BLANTYRE — There are an estimated 100,000 Malawian migrant workers in South Africa, driven there by low incomes at home and the prospect of better jobs abroad. But a European Union-sponsored project is trying to reduce the number of Malawians leaving the country, and encourage migrants to return, by offering job training for self-employment.After years of struggling to feed his family, tailor Jeffrey Phanga went to South Africa in 2012 in search of better pay. But, like many Malawian migrant workers, his five-year stay in Johannesburg did not go as well as he’d hoped.”For the first three years, my working pattern was on and off; I couldn’t find a proper job. Things did not work as expected,” he said.In 2016, Phanga’s employers at a state high school found out he was undocumented and fired him, along with six other illegal Malawians working as cleaners.Jeffrey Phanga inspects the work of his trainees at his tailoring school in Malawi. (Lameck Masina/VOA)Instead of struggling for work in South Africa, he returned home and started his own business, thanks to a project run by the International Organization for Migration.”The target is 500 Malawi nationals to be received back home,” said Nana-Ama Gyapomaah Oppon, projects officer for IOM. “At the moment we have received 436, and we have been able to assist 241 with their livelihood projects.”The European Union-funded project helps migrant workers stranded in South Africa return home and get job training in poultry farming and other trades.The project helped Phanga open a tailoring shop in Blantyre, where he also trains others like him.”I don’t have plans to migrate, that’s why I am making sure to find a means to earn a living (here),” said trainee Henry M’Baya. “This is because the owner of the place has been there (in South Africa), so he tells as us about the good and bad of going abroad.”Katenes Seyani, who benefitted from the European Union-sponsored project offering job training for self-employment in Malawi, feeds her broilers.Xenophobic attacks this year in South Africa spurred some Malawians to return home, but an estimated 100,000 or more are still working in the country.Despite steady economic growth, Malawi remains one of the world’s poorest countries, with about 80 percent of people limited to working on farms.”You know there is a problem of unemployment. It’s everywhere,” said Hudson Mankhwala, chief director in the Malawi Ministry of Homeland Security. “But, back in Malawi, we still have a lot of youth, even graduates from colleges, they can’t get jobs.”While the IOM project is helping to expand the range of jobs, Malawi officials say they are also founding community, technical, and training colleges.Their success will be measured by the number of Malawians who stay in the country or return home to make a living.
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UN Human Rights Expert: Seoul Sent Wrong Message to Pyongyang
Seoul sent the wrong message to Pyongyang by declining to co-sponsor a resolution that the U.N. General Assembly passed on human rights violations of North Korea, said a U.N. human rights expert.Tomas Quintana, U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in North Korea, said, “It [sends] a message that implies that human rights, the importance of respecting and protecting human rights of the people in North Korea, is something that comes second” to Seoul’s effort to build a relationship with Pyongyang.He continued, “It’s not the best message to North Korea because North Korea might feel that [it] can always use human rights as a leverage for negotiations, and that’s something I don’t believe that can be done.” The U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution condemning North Korea’s “long-standing and ongoing systematic, widespread, and gross violation of human rights” by consensus without a vote Wednesday.North Korean Ambassador to the United Nations Kim Song speaks during a news conference in New York, Oct 7, 2019.North Korea’s U.N. Ambassador Kim Song rejected the resolution. He told the General Assembly that the resolution has “nothing to do with the genuine promotion and protection of human rights as it is an impure product of political plots by hostile forces that seeks to tarnish the dignity and image of the DPRK and overthrow our social system.”The DPRK stands for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, an official English name for North Korea.The resolution was sponsored by 60 countries including the U.S. This year, South Korea declined to co-sponsor it for the first time since 2008, when it started the sponsorship of an annual resolution calling out North Korea on its human rights violations.Seoul made the decision to turn down co-sponsoring it in November when a draft resolution was being prepared.International human rights groups as well as 76 nongovernmental groups, coalitions and individuals from 22 countries, including Quintana, sent a joint letter to South Korean President Moon Jae-in, urging him to stand up for human rights in North Korea.
Human rights experts said they have not received any responses so far from the Moon government.”We’re being ignored,” said Greg Scarlatoiu, executive director of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK). “We’re getting the cold shoulder. This is coming from a president who used to be introduced as a human rights lawyer. This is beyond embarrassing and beyond incomprehensible.”Moon began his political career as a human rights and civil rights lawyer. FILE – People watch a television news screen showing U.S. President Donald Trump, South Korean Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un meeting at the truce village of Panmunjom in the DMZ, at a railway station in Seoul, June 30, 2019.Phil Robertson, deputy director of the Asia Division for Human Rights Watch, thinks Moon is trying to appease North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in his attempt to continue diplomacy with Pyongyang.”I think that Moon Jae-in is so afraid of somehow offending Kim Jong Un,” said Robertson. “He’s bending over backwards to do anything he can to try to get Kim Jong Un to come back to the table.”Inter-Korean dialogue that began in 2018 has been stalled as Pyongyang refused to engage with Seoul after its talks with Washington broke down in February at the Hanoi summit.
Back in August, North Korea said it was “senseless” to think inter-Korean talks would resume when it was expressing its displeasure of joint military drills South Korea held with the U.S.FILE – Amphibious assault vehicles of the South Korean Marine Corps fire smoke bombs during a U.S.-South Korea joint landing operation drill as a part of the two countries’ annual military training in Pohang, South Korea, April 2, 2017.Robertson thinks South Korea should play a leading role in demanding North Korea respect human rights of its people with a long-term goal of unification in mind.”Ultimately, South Korea and North Korea will come together,” said Robertson. “And any human rights issues in North Korea will have to be addressed. By trying to run and hide from human rights, I think that Moon Jae-in is doing a disservice not only to South Koreans but also to North Korans as well.”Robertson said the resolution adopted by the U.N. General Assembly sends an important reminder to the world that North Korea is a human rights abuser.The resolution “offers important moral clarity and also political support for the ongoing effort to pressure North Korea to improve human rights,” said Robertson. “It shows that the international community is not prepared to acquiesce to the denials and to the fabrication by the government in Pyongyang about their human rights situation.”According to Scarlatoiu, the North Korean regime has been repressing its people through the denial of basic freedoms such as speech and religion, as well as through the intentional use of torture and execution in order to stay in power.”This is the only way they know how to run their system,” said Scarlatoiu. “The regime stays in power through a deliberate policy of human rights denial.”Robertson said, however, information getting into North Korea has helped empower people to realize their government is denying rights that are available outside the country.”When information comes in from overseas, that provides new ideas,” said Robertson. “It provides new perspectives. These are the sort of things that the government of North Korea fears, and this is why they’ve tried to crack down on anybody trying to bring in information into North Korea from outside sources.”He continued, “When we talk about trying to change the situation in North Korea, really what has changed so far is that no one believes [the government’s] propaganda anymore that the Kim family are gods on Earth and that the Juche idea [of self-sufficiency] is the best idea in the world.”Three dynasties of the Kim family, starting with the current leader’s grandfather, Kim Il Sung, founder of North Korea, and his father Kim Jong Il, the second leader, have ruled North Korea with totalitarianism since the early 1950s.Lee Yeon-cheol contributed to this report.
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Malawian Migrant Workers Returned from South Africa Get Training
Malawian migrant workers in South Africa are estimated at 100,000 or more, driven there by low incomes at home and the prospect of better jobs abroad. A European Union-sponsored project is trying to reduce the number of Malawians leaving the country — and encouraging migrants to return — by offering job training for self-employment. Lameck Masina reports from Blantyre.
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Putin Weighs In on Trump Impeachment, Hints at Staying in Power
Russian President Vladimir Putin held his annual press conference with journalists on Thursday — a more than four-hour freewheeling event highlighted by swipes at the push to impeach President Donald Trump and suggestions that an adjustment to Russia’s constitution could extend to Putin’s hold on power when his current term ends in 2024. The annual press conference, now in its 15th year, long ago morphed into an exercise that paints Putin as the indispensable leader of the nation. The Russian leader was as comfortable reeling off the wages of doctors in far-flung Russian regions as he was discussing key global events. This year’s event came a day after congressional Democrats voted to impeach President Donald Trump — the third time in U.S. history an American leader was formally sanctioned by Congress.There was intense interest in what Putin might say about a process that has put allegations of Russian election interference — and unproven conspiracies of meddling by neighboring Ukraine in U.S. politics — under the microscope in Washington. Yet when prompted, Putin appeared to echo White House talking points, arguing the impeachment process was a sham launched by Democrats for “completely fabricated reasons.””This is nothing but a continuation of an internal political struggle, with the party that lost the election, the Democratic Party, trying to reach its goal by different means,” Putin said. The Democrats tried to overturn the 2016 U.S. election results with an investigation into Russian meddling, he added. Having failed at that, “it’s now Ukraine’s turn,” the Russian leader said. Addressing another key issue in U.S.-Russian relations, Putin reiterated his calls for the immediate extension of New START, the sole remaining agreement limiting nuclear weapons, and the subject of recent negotiations between Moscow and Washington earlier this month. People watch a broadcast of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s annual end-of-year news conference, in a library in Kaliningrad, Russia, Dec. 19, 2019.”We are ready until the end of the year to extend the existing agreement, the New START treaty,” said Putin. “But thus far, there has been no answer to any of our suggestions. And without a New START treaty, there is nothing to curb an arms race. And that, in my opinion, is bad.”Bread and butterOn the domestic front, Putin faced questions ranging from concerns over climate change in Russia’s North, long-simmering anger over the disposal of trash from Russia’s major urban centers, breakdowns in health care, declining salaries and demographics, as well as criticism over laws that do little to protect Russian women from domestic violence, among other issues. The government was aware of the problems, argued Putin, while acknowledging that more work was needed. The press conference is a rare occasion — some would argue a once-in-a-lifetime lottery — for Russian journalists to inform Putin of issues that he seemingly would fix if he was aware of them.What were his plans to tackle lower doctor wages in the Urals? The prohibitively expensive flights from the Far East? Blatant police corruption and abuse? What would he do to protect Russian athletes smeared by doping scandals? With domestic problems piling up, a Bulgarian journalist launched into a prayer for the Russian leader. It was met with scattered applause. Ukraine impassePutin also assessed recent talks aimed at ending the five-year war between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian government forces in east Ukraine’s Donbass region that has killed over 13,000 people.FILE – Members of the Donbass self-defense battalion attend a ceremony to swear an oath to be included in a reserve battalion of the National Guard of Ukraine near Kyiv, June 23, 2014.The Russian leader acknowledged some progress with newly elected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, but he still blamed Kyiv for failing to engage in direct talks with rebels under the stalled Minsk peace accords negotiated with European powers. “Direct dialogue on Donbass is needed,” said Putin. “You can’t solve the problem by force.”Yet the Russian leader again refused to concede — despite well-documented evidence — that Russian mercenaries and army regulars had played a role in the uprising.”There are few Germans and French fighting there,” said Putin, noting their numbers weren’t significant enough to alter the battle terrain.Beyond Putin?But the domestic headline of the day was Putin’s hint — seemingly out of the blue — that an adjustment to constitutional term limits may be needed to keep qualified politicians in office. “One thing that could be changed about these terms is removing the clause on successive terms,” he said, when asked about increasing political competition in Russia by the state RIA-Novosti News Service. “Your humble servant served two terms consecutively, then left his post, but with the constitutional right to return to the post of president again, because these two terms were not successive,” added Putin. “Some of our political analysts and public figures are troubled by this. Well, maybe it could be removed.”The comment was widely interpreted as a key signal of Putin’s possible intentions when his current term ends in 2024 after nearly a quarter-century in power. A deadly attackDespite the event’s tradition as the key year-end news event in Russia, Putin’s performance was later upstaged by a deadly armed assault on the main building of the Federal Security Services (FSB), the former KGB headquarters in downtown Moscow where Putin briefly headed operations in the late 1990s.The attack coincided with celebrations marking Russia’s intelligence services, commonly known by Russians as Chekist’s Day. Putin, himself a career KGB officer in the Soviet Union, was celebrating Chekist’s Day at the Kremlin when the attack occurred. According to the FSB, one agent was killed and five others wounded after an armed gunman opened fire inside the compound. Witness video from the scene showed pedestrians fleeing the scene as shots rang out. The Interfax news agency quoted FSB sources as saying the shooter was later “neutralized.” An investigation into the motive and timing of the attack was under way.
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Private Sector Joins Clean Energy Drive for Africa’s Refugees
In northern Ethiopia, tens of thousands of mostly Eritrean refugees are getting connected to families back home, partly thanks to last year’s peace deal between Addis Ababa and Asmara, but also to clean energy.
A Spanish alliance that includes three power companies is linking refugee camps in Shire, near the border with Eritrea, to the country’s energy grid, which largely relies on hydropower. The next step is equipping refugee households with solar energy.
Private Sector Joins Clean Energy Drive for Africa’s Refugees video player.
Embed” />Copy Link”It’s a catalyst,” said Javier Mazorra, partnership coordinator for the group, Alianza Shire. “You need energy for health, you need energy for education, you need energy for protection, especially for women.”
Humanitarians hope what is happening in Shire will someday become the new normal, amounting to a game changer for refugees, 90% of whom have limited access to electricity, according to the United Nations. Indeed, energy access counted among key issues addressed this week at a global refugee forum in Geneva, with Africa considered a top priority. Climate action special adviser Andrew Harper of UNHCR, which has launched a sustainable energy strategy for its refugee camps. (Lisa Bryant/VOA)”The current situation in Africa is pretty poor, pathetic,” said Andrew Harper, climate action special adviser for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, which co-hosted the meeting.
Often refugees have a single energy solution, “which is going to surrounding forests, woodland, and cutting it down,” Harper said.
Greening Africa’s energy
The refugee agency has launched a four-year strategy to transition to clean energy in all of its camps, although Harper offered no fixed deadline or price tag for doing so. A UNHCR-sponsored report out this week also found renewable energy to be a cost-effective and reliable energy source for refugees.
For Africa in particular, the stakes are high — inside and outside refugee settings. Along with Asia, it has among the world’s highest rates of reliance on charcoal and firewood. Adding in charcoal exports, that has translated into massive deforestation in parts of the continent.
Firewood- and charcoal-based energy also carry myriad other problems, posing health risks from smoky fires and security threats for women collecting charcoal, and heightening tensions between refugees and host communities who also rely on the fast-thinning trees.
Many of these problems can be seen in East Africa, home to some of the continent’s largest refugee communities. Kathleen Callaghy of NGO Clean Cooking Alliance believes the private sector should partner with humanitarian efforts in bringing clean energy to refugees. (Lisa Bryant/VOA)”There are some energy solutions,” said Kathleen Callaghy, senior humanitarian program associate for Clean Cooking Alliance, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit. “But the funding, the political will and the capacity of organizations in the humanitarian community is not enough to sustain or expand these projects over time.”
In drought-prone Ethiopia, the government launched a massive reforestation initiative that saw more than 350 million trees planted countrywide in a single day.
Unsustainable energy practices persist for the nearly 1 million refugees Ethiopia hosts, said Fisseha Meseret Kindie, humanitarian assistance director at the country’s aid agency. Fisseha Meseret Kindie, of Ethopia’s refugee agency, says the country needs support to develop clean energy for the refugees it hosts. (Lisa Bryant/VOA)”The energy challenge is one of the prominent challenges we have,” he said, adding host communities are facing the fallout.
Convincing private sector
Transitioning to green energy in Africa will mean tapping a private sector that may be wary of investing in refugees and a continent deemed risky.
“Quite honestly, there’s very little in it for them right now,” Callagh, of the Clean Cooking Alliance, said, suggesting alliances with humanitarian agencies as the way forward.
But for Mazorra, of Alianza Shire, the payback is more than financial.
“There are a lot of incentives,” he said, including learning to operate in risky settings. “When you are struggling with really poor resource situations, innovation is key. And there are some innovations that could go back to Spain.”
Harper, of UNHCR, believes there’s another, broader case to be made.
“We’re basically saying the market for energy in Africa is not just 6, 7 million refugees,” he said. “It’s 1.2 billion people. We’ve got to look at it as much more part of the rural electrification process across the continent.”
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EU Court: Catalan Separatist Leader Jailed by Spain Had Immunity
A jailed Catalan separatist leader was entitled to immunity as a member of the European Parliament, the EU’s highest court ruled on Thursday.Oriol Junqueras was sentenced to 13 years in prison in October for his role in a 2017 Catalan independence referendum that was deemed illegal by Spanish courts. He was elected an MEP while in prison awaiting the verdict and has not been able to take up his seat.The EU court ruled anyone elected to the European Parliament “enjoys immunities” to travel and take part in parliamentary sessions and an MEP cannot be subject to detention or legal proceedings because of views expressed or votes cast.The immunity does not, however, apply to an MEP who has committed an offense. The Spanish Supreme Court, which had referred the case to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), must now decide how to comply with the verdict.Junqueras’ lawyer Andreu Van den Eynde told reporters the ruling should push Spain’s Supreme Court to overturn his client’s conviction and grant his immediate release from jail.”I believe that, one way or another, the State Attorney must accept we are right,” he said at a news conference outside the prison where Junqueras is being held.The ruling could jeopardize efforts by Spain’s Socialists to court Junqueras’ Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC) party, whose support they need to form a government and break a political deadlock after two inconclusive elections this year.ERC’s parliamentary spokesperson Marta Vilalta said the party would not return to negotiations until the Socialists and the state attorney react to the verdict.”What they do and say is very important to show that indeed they are abandoning … the path of repression and are seriously embracing the political path,” she said.The acting government said the state attorney would analyze the ruling and present findings in the coming days and that it wanted “a new phase of dialog, negotiations and agreement” on Catalonia.The EU court did not examine Junqueras’ criminal case and sentencing. The ruling only responds to the Supreme Court’s questions on the impact of Junqueras being elected as a European lawmaker, a CJEU source said.If Spanish authorities had wanted to prevent Junqueras from traveling to the European Parliament, they would have had to request the Parliament waive his immunity, the ruling said.Other Catalan leadersTwo other Catalan politicians won European Parliament seats in May but fears of returning to Spain, where they face arrest warrants, prevented them from collecting their MEP credentials. Carles Puigdemont and Antoni Comin are both living in self-imposed exile in Belgium.”Today European justice did more to resolve the (Catalan) conflict than two years of repression by Spanish governments and the shameful silence of the European institutions,” Puigdemont said at a news conference in Brussels.He described Spain’s continuing imprisonment of Junqueras after today’s ruling as a “kidnapping.”Separately, a Barcelona court ruled the pro-independence president of Catalonia’s regional government, Quim Torra, should be barred from holding public office for 18 months after he refused to remove symbols of support for jailed separatists from public buildings during April’s election campaign. Torra said he would appeal.
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Philippines Approves GMO Rice to Fight Malnutrition
A breed of rice genetically engineered to combat vitamin A deficiency has received approval from regulators in the Philippines.Supporters say “Golden Rice” could remedy a condition that kills up to 250,000 children each year worldwide and blinds twice that number, according to the World Health Organization.It’s the first genetically modified organism (GMO) designed to fight a public health issue to get a green light from food safety officials in the developing world.Golden Rice has faced vigorous opposition from GMO opponents throughout its development, citing safety concerns and other issues. Protesters destroyed test fields in the Philippines in 2013.The Philippine Department of Agriculture Bureau of Plant Industry announced Wednesday that Golden Rice is as safe as conventional rice. Regulators in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand have also cleared the grain of safety issues.After 20 years of development, “it feels absolutely tremendous” to reach this stage, said Adrian Dubock, Executive Secretary of the Golden Rice Humanitarian Board, the nonprofit working to take the crop from the lab to the field.Two added genes turn rice golden, one from maize and one from a soil bacterium. Under their direction, rice grains produce beta carotene, the vitamin A precursor that makes carrots and sweet potatoes orange. A third bacterial gene serves as a traceable marker.In the Philippines, vitamin A deficiency among children has increased from 15.2% in 2008 to 20.4% in 2013, despite a national supplement program, according to the Philippines-based International Rice Research Institute, which is developing the crop.Golden Rice could provide up to half of a young child’s daily needs, IRRI says.FILE – Different varieties of rice are seen for sale at a food market in Paranaque, Metro Manila, Philippines, Aug. 31, 2018.Controversial cropBiotech boosters have presented Golden Rice as one of the best examples of what biotechnology can do, producing plants and animals that benefit humanity faster than conventional breeding can.Opponents have said the crops raise unknown risks, though the scientific consensus is that GMO varieties on the market today are safe, including Golden Rice.GMO critics are also wary that the for-profit corporations that have developed GMOs will have undue influence over the seed supply.Agricultural biotech company Syngenta previously owned key patents for Golden Rice but has donated them to the Golden Rice Humanitarian Board. Dubock said Golden Rice strains are for use only by public and nonprofit crop breeding programs and would not cost farmers any more than conventional rice.Dietary solutionCritics say the considerable time, effort and money spent on developing Golden Rice would have been better spent pursuing efforts to diversify the diets of the people who suffer from malnutrition.”There are very limited funds available for development in third-world countries. It really matters which route you choose to go, where you choose to put your funds,” said Bill Freese, science policy analyst at the Center for Food Safety.Programs that get more fruits and vegetables into the diets of low-income people would help alleviate several chronic ailments, not just vitamin A deficiency, he noted.Dubock agrees that “a diversified diet is the best solution,” he said. But he added that Golden Rice is a tool that works with how people are already eating.It’s not clear when Philippine farmers will be able to grow Golden Rice. Regulators still have to certify that the crop won’t cause problems in farmers’ fields. IRRI says it will submit its application early next year.
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Private Sector Joins Clean Energy Drive for Africa’s Refugees
Countries and companies attending a refugee forum in Geneva this week pledged to boost support for refugees’ access to clean energy, among other goals. Findings show renewables offer multiple benefits, including reducing some of the root causes of displacement. For VOA, Lisa Bryant reports on what this means for Africa, which hosts roughly one-quarter of the world’s refugees.
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