Southeast Asia has been a major winner in the U.S.-China trade war. The region has seen a wave of new factories, as manufacturers move out of China to avoid U.S. tariffs. But Southeast Asia’s biggest economy, Indonesia, has struggled to attract new investment. That’s in part because of the country’s sprawling bureaucracy, as VOA’s Bill Gallo explains.
…
Month: January 2020
Benin Opposition Radio Sacks Staff After License Pulled
A radio station in Benin belonging to an exiled opponent of President Patrice Talon has sacked all its staff after authorities stopped it from broadcasting, employees said Wednesday.Soleil FM, owned by France-based businessman Sebastien Avajon, has been off the air since the country’s communication watchdog told it to halt its programming in December “until further notice.”Journalist Virgile Ahouanse confirmed the staff had been let go and attacked the decision to pull the license as a “radical step that disregarded the public’s right to information.”The latest moves have sparked fresh concerns about freedom of the press in the West African country as Talon faces accusations of stifling dissent and forcing his rivals to go abroad. Rights group Amnesty International this week described a “climate of censorship and fear” among the Benin media and warned that a law targeting misinformation online was being used to harass the media. Seventeen journalists, bloggers and opposition activists have been investigated under the legislation in recent years, Amnesty said.Reporter Ignace Sossou was jailed in December for 18 months over an internet post critical of the government.Former French colony Benin has typically been seen as among West Africa’s most stable democracies. But it has been facing a political crisis since controversial parliamentary elections in April sparked mass protests.Talon, a former business magnate who came to power in 2016, has been accused of using a string of legal cases to rid himself of opponents.Multimillionaire Ajavon, who came in third in the presidential election, was in 2018 sentenced in absentia to 20 years in prison for trafficking cocaine.
…
Spain Coast Pounded by Storm Gloria Ahead of Tourist Season
A violent storm on the eastern and southern coasts of Spain has killed at least 10 people after causing severe infrastructural damage.According to weather authorities, the storm named Gloria has lasted for five days, accompanied by heavy winds, snow and hail, which has drowned people and caused them to be hit with loose debris.The storm also has caused power outages in more than 10,000 homes and the destruction of bridges, railway lines, and entire beaches. Due to the possibility of severe damage to river banks, 600 residents were evacuated Wednesday from their homes in northeastern Spain.In order to prepare for the upcoming tourist season, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said he will address both short- and medium-term needs of the damaged areas in an emergency meeting on Friday.The prime minister said climate change may have had an impact. “Public administrations have to reflect on how to shift gears and focus our economic resources and public policies … on a new element, and that is climate change,” said Sanchez.The storm is continuing to spread across Spain, France and Portugal.
…
France Unveils Pension Reforms, Setting Up Part 2 in Battle With Unions
After weeks of crippling transportation strikes, France’s government will formally unveil controversial pension reform legislation Friday, which will test its ability to overcome powerful union dissent and overhaul an indebted retirement system that is one of Europe’s most generous. The pension reforms arguably are the most central and problematic of President Emmanuel Macron’s broader campaign promises to make the country more economically sustainable and business friendly. But it remains unclear whether he will succeed where previous governments have failed — and angry voters may sanction the 42-year-old leader and his young Republic on the Move party in upcoming elections. “The government thought it would have the reforms without a problem. That’s not what happened,” said Jean Grosset, director of the Observatory of Social Dialogue at Paris, the research group at the Jean Jaures Foundation. He predicts the government’s success in pushing through meaningful reforms will come at a cost. ‘Beginning of the end’But sociologist Guy Groux said the government had emerged as the clear winner in a standoff that ultimately split unions and mobilized only a small fraction of the workforce. “I think this is the beginning of the end” of the strikes, Groux said, adding the government “has come out very well” despite some concessions. Hardline syndicates plan to counter the draft bill with a “black Friday” marked by massive street protests and metro shutdowns, echoing some of the worst days of a transportation strike that began in early December and is the longest in the country’s history. “Friday is the day or never,” said Philippe Martinez, head of the hardline General Confederation of Labor, or CGT union, which wants the legislation scrapped. This graffiti in a French suburb calls on President Emmanuel Macron to resign. (Lisa Bryant/VOA)Petering out? This week has seen highway, port and plant blockages, but the broader protest movement appears to be petering out. Public transportation was mostly back to normal Monday. And while polls show most French still oppose Macron’s pension reforms, the numbers of those backing continued strike action are dwindling. “I think this country needs the reform,” said salesman Pierre Maerten, whose chocolate shop has lost significant business because of the strikes. “People are getting older, life expectancy is longer. Pension reforms are absolutely necessary.” Still, the pension protests add to months of separate yellow vest demonstrations that have together cost the economy billions and laid bare intense, if disparate, sentiments of anger and injustice. Lawyers are worried about paying more into a broader public pension pot; dancers and opera singers passionately defend their special retirement scheme that dates to the 17th century. Workers ‘created this wealth’“We’re not spoiled. We workers are the ones who created this wealth,” said Makan Dambele, 52, an airline mechanic and CGT unionist. “We want to benefit from the fruits of our labor.” The government already has made some key concessions to its plan to reconcile myriad separate pension plans into a single, point-based system. For now, it has retreated from earlier goals to increase the retirement age to receive full benefits from 62 to 64 — still among the lowest in Europe. It hopes Parliament will pass final legislation by summer. “I don’t think the government has won,” said Grosset, of the Jean Jaures Foundation. “It communicated badly. It didn’t respond to workers’ legitimate questions. It needed big protests to change its positions.” Grosset predicts the government could see worker anger spill into March municipal elections and possibly 2022 presidential ones. Far-right leader Marine Le Pen already has announced a new run for president, setting the stage for another possible runoff against Macron. The two politicians are currently neck and neck in the polls. But sociologist Groux believes Macron would have lost key center-right votes had he not pushed through the reforms. “If Macron backtracks in the faceoff with the unions, then he’ll lose these voters and he’ll be outdistanced by Le Pen,” he said. French union members gather at a recent pension strike. The sign reads, “The force of French workers is striking.” (Lisa Bryant/VOA)Unions spotlighted While the pension strikes have translated into a major headache for many commuters, they are far from the national gridlock of two decades ago. The 1995 protests paralyzed transportation and forced the then-conservative government to backtrack on reforms, handing unions a significant victory. But today, union power is diminished and unity is splintering. Two moderate syndicates, including France’s largest, CFDT, are in compromise talks with Macron’s government and support key parts of the reform package. Hardliners, starting with the CGT, are staging sabotage and wildcat actions, insisting on nothing less than full repeal. Forecasts for protestsStill, they are making headlines in ways they never did over months of yellow vest protests, which largely sidelined them. Grosset believes French syndicates will continue to be relevant going forward, although they need to modernize. “At their height, the yellow vests mobilized 240,000 people,” he said. “Once the unions mobilize in a big way, they get 1 [million], 2 million people out.” Sociologist Groux is less certain. The unions failed to get many private sector employees behind the pension protests, he said, and ultimately mobilized only a small fraction of France’s overall workforce. “The mobilization was very weak,” he said, adding, “Some union leaders believe their base and the workers haven’t changed since the 1960s. We’re a long way from there.”
…
WHO: Deadly Virus Not Yet Global Emergency
The World Health Organization said Thursday the deadly virus that prompted the Chinese government to lock down nearly 20 million people in three cities has not developed into a worldwide health emergency.”This is an emergency in China, but it has not yet become a global health emergency,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said after a two-day emergency meeting in Geneva.The U.N. health agency’s decision came after it received details from independent experts who spent two days assessing information about the spread of the new coronavirus.WHO considers an international emergency an “extraordinary event” that puts other countries at risk and one that requires a coordinated global response.The Chinese government isolated three cities Thursday, an unprecedented move to contain the virus, which has spread to several other countries.Authorities first banned planes and trains from leaving the city of Wuhan, where the coronavirus is believed to have originated. Toll roads were closed, and ferry, subway and bus services were also suspended.Similar measures were taken hours later in the nearby cities of Huanggang and Ezhou.The cities were put on lockdown on the eve of the Lunar New Year, when millions of Chinese traditionally travel. The government also canceled holiday events in Beijing that usually attract large crowds.Past mistakesThe virus has killed at least 17 people, all in and around Wuhan, and infected nearly 600 others.Wuhan authorities have demanded that all residents wear masks in public and urged government and private sector employees to wear them in the workplace, according to the Xinhua news agency, which cited a government official.Paramilitary police stand guard at an entrance to the closed Hankou Railway Station in Wuhan in central China’s Hubei Province, Jan. 23, 2020.China’s efforts to contain the virus are apparently aimed at avoiding mistakes in its handling of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreak that spread from China to more than a dozen countries in 2002-03 and killed about 800 people.Even after SARS had spread worldwide, China housed patients in hotels and transported them in ambulances to hide the actual number of cases and to avoid WHO experts.Global spreadFifteen medical workers are among those who have been infected by the new virus, which has spread from Wuhan to Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong province, as well as Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Taiwan and the United States.The U.S. announced its first case Tuesday in the northwestern state of Washington. Health officials there said a man who returned to Seattle from Wuhan last week was hospitalized in good condition with pneumonia.A man stands in front of a screen showing that multiple departure flights have been cancelled after the city was locked down following the outbreak of a new coronavirus, at an airport in Wuhan, Hubei province, China, Jan. 23, 2020.U.S. President Donald Trump assured reporters during a press conference Wednesday in Davos, Switzerland, that U.S. officials “have a plan” to deal with the new outbreak, praising experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as “terrific, very great professionals, and we’re in great shape.”Chinese health experts say they know little about the new strain, dubbed 2019-nCoV. They suspect the outbreak started in a Wuhan seafood market, which also sold other animals such as poultry, bats, marmots and wild game meat. China’s National Health Commission announced Monday the virus, which causes a type of pneumonia, can be transmitted person to person and not just from animals to people. Airports around the world have begun screening travelers from Wuhan for the virus. Health experts are especially concerned about the chance of a pandemic as millions of Chinese citizens plan to travel across the country and overseas for the Lunar New Year holiday that starts Saturday. A coronavirus is one of a large family of viruses that can cause illnesses ranging from the common cold to the deadly SARS.
…
Portraits of Obamas to Begin 5-City US Tour in Chicago
The official portraits of former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama from the National Portrait Gallery will begin a five-city national tour in Chicago in June 2021. The Art Institute of Chicago will host the portraits from June 18, 2021, to August 15, 2021, the gallery announced Thursday. Kehinde Wiley’s portrait of Barack Obama and Amy Sherald’s portrait of Michelle Obama were unveiled in February 2018. Wiley and Sherald are the first African American artists chosen to paint the gallery’s official president and first lady portraits. FILE – Former first lady Michelle Obama and artist Amy Sherald unveil Michelle Obama’s official portrait at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, Feb. 12, 2018, in Washington.”Since the unveiling of these two portraits of the Obamas, the Portrait Gallery has experienced a record number of visitors, not only to view these works in person, but to be part of the communal experience of a particular moment in time,” Kim Sajet, director of the Washington gallery, said in a statement. “This tour is an opportunity for audiences in different parts of the country to witness how portraiture can engage people in the beauty of dialogue and shared experience.”Barack Obama’s portrait includes green vines and bright flowers surrounding the 44th president. Chrysanthemums, which are the official flower of Chicago, dot the painting. The background also includes jasmine from Hawaii, where Obama was born, and African blue lilies, which represent the birthplace of Obama’s father, Kenya. After leaving Chicago, the portraits will travel to the Brooklyn Museum in New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston.
…
Malawi High Court Orders Schools to Allow Dreadlocks
A high court in Malawi has ordered public schools to accept students with dreadlocks after an eight-year-old girl was barred from class because of her hair. The Blantyre Girls Primary School in September said the girl would have to cut her hair in line with school policies or else she would not be allowed in class. The court said banning students over their hair was denying them their right to education. Lameck Masina reports from Blantyre.
…
Can the Putin-Erdogan Partnership Last?
The partnership between Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has taken the West by surprise. The two leaders met no less than six times in 2019, underscoring the close relationship they’ve established, one that seems at times built on a mutual interest in riling Turkey’s NATO partners.And this year they already have met twice, with the latest encounter in Berlin at an international conference aimed at resolving the seemingly intractable conflict in Libya, which for centuries was part of the Ottoman Empire, and has been plagued by war and instability since the ouster of autocrat Moammar Gadhafi in 2011.They’ve collaborated, too, on Syria, despite backing opposing sides in the long-running conflict and where, as in Libya, they have positioned themselves as twin arbiters. But is this just a marriage of convenience, a partnership that’s bound eventually to unravel because of conflicting geopolitical ambitions and the difficulty they face controlling their clients, who are not always pliant?German Chancellor Angela Merkel, rear center, leads a conference on Libya at the chancellery in Berlin, Germany, Sunday, Jan. 19, 2020. (Kay Nietfeld/DPA via AP, Pool)The Berlin conference this week on Libya, which has turned partly into a proxy war featuring foreign drones, Turkish troops and Russian mercenaries, and its unfolding aftermath, hint at the challenges the two leaders face in reining in their clients. They’re trying at the same time to balance their own conflicting regional ambitions to maintain their partnership, according to analysts.Turkey has been supporting Libya’s U.N.-recognized government, led by Fayez Serraj, which has been struggling to withstand a months-long assault on the capital, Tripoli, by rebel commander Khalifa Haftar, who among others is backed by Russia. Both Russia and Turkey have much invested in Libya — Russia in terms of reputation, clout and potential oil deals, and Turkey with even more wide-ranging commercial and energy interests, say analysts.The Berlin conference, attended by Western powers, too, produced an agreement to respect the U.N. arms embargo, halt outside military interference, and to push Libya’s warring parties to observe a cease-fire.Libyan commander Khalifa Haftar meets Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis (not pictured) at the Parliament in Athens, Greece, Jan. 17, 2020.But the complex situation on the ground in Libya has only worsened since the conference — pro-Haftar militias have blockaded two large crude oil production plants in Libya, and on Thursday the Libyan capital’s only functioning airport was closed after Haftar’s spokesman threatened to shoot down planes flying over the city, dealing another setback to the peace efforts.“Any military or civilian aircraft, regardless of its affiliation, flying over the capital will be destroyed,” warned spokesman Ahmad al-Mesmari. He claimed the airport was being used for military purposes by Turkish soldiers sent by Ankara.Midweek, the airport came under a barrage of rockets. Press reports also suggest that foreign backers have continued to send weapons to Haftar, suggesting no one has the intention of backing down. Either Russia has been unable to rein Haftar in or has not wanted to him to observe the cease-fire, experts say.Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad speaks during a meeting with heads of local councils, in Damascus, Syria, Feb. 17, 2019.Unruly clients also are a problem for Russia in Syria, where Moscow is challenged by growing Iranian influence and is struggling to dissuade President Bashar al-Assad from launching an assault on the remaining major opposition stronghold in the country in the northwestern province of Idlib, according to Russian analysts Kirill Semenov and Dmitriy Frolovskiy.They note in a commentary for the Middle East Institute, a think tank, that Assad has vowed to “liberate every inch of Syria from foreign troops” and is eager to regain control of Idlib, a move that would endanger the neighboring Turkish enclave in northern Syria and damage Turkish-Russian diplomatic relations. Such a move would upend the efforts by Moscow and Ankara to try to forge a post-war future for Syria that works for both the Turks and Russians, and balances out their interests and influence.”Putin’s recent unexpected visit to Damascus may well have been to personally inform Assad about the necessity of maintaining the cease-fire in Idlib,” one which was agreed upon by Moscow and Ankara, they say.Military vehicles and equipment, parts of the S-400 air defense systems, are unloaded from a Russian transport aircraft, at Murted military airport in Ankara, Turkey, July 12, 2019.So far, Russia and Turkey have been able to compartmentalize flash-points and disagreements that threaten their partnership and have managed to maintain a rapprochement that started after a Turkish Air Force jet shot down a Russian warplane near the Syria–Turkey border in 2015. Turkey’s purchase of a Russian-made S-400 anti-aircraft missile system and cooperation on energy projects is testimony to the partnership.But some analysts say the relationship is weighted with geopolitical conflicts that risk undermining it. “The Turks have been gravitating to the Russians, even as their vision of Syria directly conflicts with that of Putin,” says Jonathan Schanzer of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a Washington-based think tank.“This could be their greatest divergence. But there are others. They are uneasy about Iran’s growing role in the region, which Putin generally backs — so long as it irks the U.S. They hate the Sissi regime in Egypt, which Putin courts. They are at odds with the Israelis, with whom Putin has a solid, working relationship,” he says.Overall, he says the partnership risks collapse because of the grandness of the geopolitical ambitions of the two key players, Putin and Erdoğan, whose long-term aims for their countries are at cross-purposes.Schanzer points to the grandiose Ottoman vision being outlined by one of Erdoğan’s top advisers, retired general Adnan Tanrıverdi, who says Turkey can emerge as an Islamic superpower, wielding authority over 61 Muslim countries with Istanbul as the capital of a new caliphate.“I see a collision course here,” Schanzer says.
…
Explainer Chief Justice
What is the chief justice’s role in presidential impeachment?
…
China Locking Down Cities With 18 Million Inhabitants to Stop Virus
Chinese authorities Thursday moved to lock down three cities with a combined population of more than 18 million in an unprecedented effort to contain the deadly new virus that has sickened hundreds of people and spread to other parts of the world during the busy Lunar New Year travel period.
The open-ended lockdowns are unmatched in size, embracing more people than New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago put together.
The train station and airport in Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak, were shut down, and ferry, subway and bus service was halted. Normally bustling streets, shopping malls, restaurants and other public spaces in the city of 11 million were eerily quiet. Police checked all incoming vehicles but did not close off the roads.
Authorities announced similar measures would take effect Friday in the nearby cities of Huanggang and Ezhou. In Huanggang, theaters, internet cafes and other entertainment centers were also ordered closed.
In the capital, Beijing, officials canceled major events indefinitely, including traditional temple fairs that are a staple of holiday celebrations, in order to “execute epidemic prevention and control.” The Forbidden City, the palace complex in Beijing that is now a museum, announced it will close indefinitely on Saturday.
Seventeen people have died in the outbreak, all of them in and around Wuhan. Close to 600 have been infected, the vast majority of them in Wuhan, and many countries have begun screening travelers from China for symptoms of the virus, which can cause fever, coughing, trouble breathing and pneumonia.
Chinese officials have not said how long the shutdowns will last. While sweeping measures are typical of China’s communist government, large-scale quarantines are rare around the world, even in deadly epidemics, because of concerns about infringing on people’s liberties. And the effectiveness of such measures is unclear.
“To my knowledge, trying to contain a city of 11 million people is new to science,” Gauden Galea, the World Health Organization’s representative in China, said in an interview. “It has not been tried before as a public health measure. We cannot at this stage say it will or it will not work.”
Jonathan Ball, a professor of virology at molecular virology at the University of Nottingham in Britain, said the lockdowns appear to be justified scientifically.
“Until there’s a better understanding of what the situation is, I think it’s not an unreasonable thing to do,” he said. “Anything that limits people’s travels during an outbreak would obviously work.”
But Ball cautioned that any such quarantine should be strictly time-limited. He added: “You have to make sure you communicate effectively about why this is being done. Otherwise you will lose the goodwill of the people.”People queue for receiving treatment at the fever outpatient department at the Wuhan Tongji Hospital in Wuhan, Hubei province, China, Jan. 22, 2020.During the devastating West Africa Ebola outbreak in 2014, Sierra Leone imposed a national three-day quarantine as health teams went door-to-door searching for hidden cases. Frustrated residents complained of food shortages amid deserted streets. Burial teams collecting Ebola corpses and people transporting the sick to Ebola centers were the only ones allowed to move freely.
In China, the illnesses from the newly identified coronavirus first appeared last month in Wuhan, an industrial and transportation hub in central China’s Hubei province. Other cases have been reported in the U.S., Japan, South Korea and Thailand. Singapore, Vietnam and Hong Kong reported their first cases Thursday.
Most of the illnesses outside China involve people who were from Wuhan or had recently traveled there.
Images from Wuhan showed long lines and empty shelves at supermarkets, as residents stocked up for what could be weeks of isolation. That appeared to be an over-reaction, since no restrictions were placed on trucks carrying supplies into the city, although many Chinese have strong memories of shortages in the years before the country’s recent economic boom.
Local authorities in Wuhan demanded all residents wear masks in public places. Police, SWAT teams and paramilitary troops guarded Wuhan’s train station.
Liu Haihan left Wuhan last Friday after visiting her boyfriend there. She said everything was normal then, before human-to-human transmission of the virus was confirmed. But things had changed rapidly.
Her boyfriend “didn’t sleep much yesterday. He disinfected his house and stocked up on instant noodles,” Liu said. “He’s not really going out. If he does, he wears a mask.”
The sharp rise in illnesses comes as millions of Chinese travel for the Lunar New Year, one of the world’s largest annual migrations of people. Chinese are expected to take an estimated 3 billion trips during the 40-day spike in travel.
Analysts predicted cases will continue to multiply, although the jump in numbers is also attributable in part to increased monitoring.
“Even if (cases) are in the thousands, this would not surprise us,” the WHO’s Galea said, adding, however, that the number of those infected is not an indicator of the outbreak’s severity, so long as the mortality rate remains low.
The coronavirus family includes the common cold as well as viruses that cause more serious illnesses, such as the SARS outbreak that spread from China to more than a dozen countries in 2002-03 and killed about 800 people, and Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome, or MERS, which is thought to have originated from camels.
China is keen to avoid repeating mistakes with its handling of SARS. For months, even after the illness had spread around the world, China parked patients in hotels and drove them around in ambulances to conceal the true number of cases and avoid WHO experts.
In the current outbreak, China has been credited with sharing information rapidly, and President Xi Jinping has emphasized that as a priority.
“Party committees, governments and relevant departments at all levels must put people’s lives and health first,” Xi said Monday. “It is necessary to release epidemic information in a timely manner and deepen international cooperation.”A picture released by the Central Hospital of Wuhan shows medical staff attending to patient at the The Central Hospital Of Wuhan Via Weibo in Wuhan, China on an unknown date.Health authorities were taking extraordinary measures to prevent additional person-to-person transmissions, placing those believed infected in plastic tubes and wheeled boxes, with air passed through filters.
The first cases in the Wuhan outbreak were connected to people who worked at or visited a seafood market, which has since been closed for an investigation. Experts suspect that the virus was first transmitted from wild animals but that it may also be mutating. Mutations can make it deadlier or more contagious.
WHO convened its emergency committee of independent experts on Thursday to consider whether the outbreak should be declared a global health emergency, after the group failed to come to a consensus on Wednesday.
The U.N. health agency defines a global emergency as an “extraordinary event” that constitutes a risk to other countries and requires a coordinated international response.
A declaration of a global emergency typically brings greater money and resources, but may also prompt nervous governments to restrict travel to and trade with affected countries. The announcement also imposes more disease-reporting requirements on countries.
Declaring an international emergency can also be politically fraught. Countries typically resist the notion that they have a crisis within their borders and may argue strenuously for other control measures.
…
South Africa Officials on ‘High Alert’ for Coronavirus
South Africa’s health ministry says it is on “high alert” for possible coronavirus patients at the continent’s busiest airport.No cases have been reported in the country as of Thursday, of the swift global outbreak that has killed at least 17 people and infected more than 600, most of them in China.But South African Health Ministry spokesperson Dr. Lwazi Manzi told local media that officials are ready to react, and the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) said it is conducting active surveillance to identify any potential imported cases.Some 21 million travelers came through Johannesburg’s O.R. Tambo International Airport in 2018. It is the only airport in South Africa with direct flights to and from China, where the pneumonia-like virus originated.”We are on high alert for any kind of situation that could pose a threat to an outbreak in this country. We wish to assure the public that so far there have been no cases reported of coronavirus in this country,” she told local radio in a statement.She did not elaborate on the precautions, but the airport has implemented temperature testing and health screening at the airport during previous outbreaks of Ebola, Zika and other viruses.In a statement, the NICD assured South Africans that there is no immediate threat.”There is no evidence of sustained person-to-person transmission,” the statement read. “There are no direct flights from [the city of] Wuhan to South Africa. However, it is possible that individuals could travel to South Africa from Wuhan via other countries.”And, the institute noted, most cases were linked to a seafood, poultry and live wildlife market in Jianghan District, Hubei Province.”This suggests that the novel coronavirus has a possible zoonotic origin,” said the NICD, meaning a virus is transmitted from animals to humans.
…
Oversight Group Says Abuse by Kenyan Police on the Rise
Kenya’s Independent Policing Oversight Authority (IPOA) says police abuse of civilians is getting worse and includes extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances. The IPOA issued a report Wednesday documenting over 3,000 cases of abuse by Kenyan police, mostly in poor slum areas. Seventeen-year-old Stephen Machurusi was buried Thursday in Molo, a town in the Rift Valley region.He was killed in the Kasarani area of Nairobi, during protests over bad roads. Medical examination showed he was shot at close range, and family members are blaming police.”We want justice for our brother,” his sister told VOA after the burial. “That’s why I want to come back to Nairobi to follow up on the story. With people I have, we will get justice am sure of that. We won’t rest until we get justice for our brother.”The abuse of Kenyan civilians by the police is on the rise. According to the Independent Police Oversight Authority, a body mandated to check on the work of the police, 3,200 people reported cases of police abuse in 2019.That is six times the number of people who reported police abuse in 2013.The chairperson of IPOA, Anne Makori, spoke about the findings.”IPOA has noted with a lot of concern that the misuse of firearm and use of excessive force continue to be the biggest challenge facing the national police service,” she said.The report by IPOA comes days after Machurusi and Hemedi Majini, another teenager, were allegedly shot by police. Both incidents took place in Nairobi.The Human Rights Watch global report 2020 said Kenyan authorities use force to disperse protesters, and 21 people were killed with no justification.The New York-based group said Kenyan authorities have failed to hold officers accountable.It said that in June 2019, prosecutors presented 67 cases of police abuse to the courts, but only six resulted in convictions.Otsieno Namwaya is the rights group’s researcher in Kenya. He says police often try to conceal evidence of wrongdoing by officers.”Police are supposed to provide preliminary report and share that report with the inspector general of police, the internal affairs of the police and IPOA and then IPOA pick it up from there,” he said. “But police never do this, they don’t provide information, and they try to destroy evidence as much as possible they go out of their way to intimidate witnesses.”Doreen Muthaura of IPOA agrees witness intimidation has hampered efforts to get convictions.”The challenge is actually witnesses coming forward for purposes of recording statement,” she said. “You know the threshold of some of the cases we are investigating is beyond a reasonable doubt. Therefore if we don’t have witnesses, we don’t have a watertight case, and the prosecution or any action including disciplinary action cannot be taken against those officers.”An official on the police force told VOA it’s not the place of the force to critique the work of IPOA, instead to support it so that it can discharge its duties.
…
High Hopes: US, EU, UK All Aim for Trade Deals This Year
The United States, the European Union and what will soon be post-Brexit Britain have all raised the prospect of concluding trade deals between themselves by the end of this year, setting up an intense few months of negotiations.
High-level representatives said Thursday at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss resort of Davos that it’s possible that those discussions, operating in parallel, could be wrapped up by the end of the year.
That would be some achievement given that most trade deals take years as they get bogged down in minutiae of rules and regulations.
“Never rule out a miracle, of course, but let’s just see how these good intentions roll down the snowy hills of Davos as reality sinks in next week,” analysts at Rabobank International said in a note to investors.
Britain could be a focal point. It leaves the EU on Jan. 31 and will then open parallel trade discussions with both the U.S. and the EU. And the U.S. and the EU have just started their own discussions as President Donald Trump turns his focus away from China following the conclusion of a first round of trade talks with Beijing.
Members of Trump’s Cabinet talked up the prospects of a swift trade deal with Britain and argued that it should be relatively straightforward given how similar the two economies are.
At a press briefing, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said he’s heading to London this weekend to meet with his counterpart, Sajid Javid, particularly about trade.
“It’s an absolute priority of President Trump and we expect to complete that within this year,” Mnuchin said.
Though Javid has said that negotiating a trade deal with the EU will be his “top priority,” discussions with the U.S. will take place at the same time.
Mnuchin said that was “obviously an aggressive timeline.”
U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said a trade deal between the U.S. and Britain shouldn’t be too difficult as the two economies have more in common than they do with the EU.
“Both are very heavily services-oriented and within services, such as financial services there’s already a pretty high degree of integration and coordination, so it should be much easier mechanically,” he said.
Ross also sought to dampen concerns raised in Britain that a future trade deal would mean higher drug prices as U.S. pharmaceutical companies look to gain concessions from Britain’s state-run National Health Service.
“What we think is that drugs should have similar prices wherever they are but I don’t believe we are in any position to tell the U.K. what they should pay for drugs,” he said.
Though the U.S. is hugely important, Britain conducts far more business with the other 27 countries of the EU — that’s why so many businesses want economic relations to be as close as possible.Paolo Gentiloni, the former Italian prime minister who is now the EU’s main economy commissioner, said he welcomes the clarity over Brexit following last month’s convincing election win by Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party.
“Eleven months for a free trade agreement is really very short if we look at other free trade agreements, but the EU is ready to do all in our power to have the best possible relation with the U.K.,” he said. “It’s not easy in 11 months but I think it is still possible.”
How quickly a deal can be reached will depend on what Britain is looking for. Javid has insisted Britain will not stick to EU rules and regulations, which could make a deal harder.
“As we leave there’s bound to be change but we have also been clear that there’s no point in leaving the EU but sticking with all its rules and regulations forever,” he said.
Given that stance, expectations are slim for anything more than a bare-bones trade agreement.
“Hopefully we can minimize the disruption as much as possible,” said Roberto Gualtieri, Italy’s new finance minister.
The final piece of the trade jigsaw relates to the U.S. and the EU, and discussions have begun as Trump turns his gaze to what he considers to be the unfair treatment of American businesses by Brussels.
Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission’s new president, said a deal could be secured “within weeks,” an aspiration that took many close observers by surprise and wasn’t wholly shared by U.S. officials.
She didn’t lay out the scope of any such agreement but she appeared intent on avoiding any tariffs on European carmakers, which Trump has threatened repeatedly in recent days.
Mnuchin said the purpose of tariffs, and the threat of tariffs, “is to get free, fair and reciprocal trade.”
On Wednesday, France agreed to delay its tax on big tech firms like Google and Facebook in exchange for a U.S. promise to hold off its retaliatory tariffs on French cheese and wine. Discussions on an international approach to digital taxes will now take place under the auspices of the Paris-based Organization or Economic Co-operation and Development.
French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said the agreement was a big win for France’s “aggressive” approach.
“If France would not have been the first European country to introduce a national digital taxation, there would not be any discussion at the OECD level anymore,” he said Thursday.
“It would have been buried, to be very clear. So we can be tough. We can be offensive.”
The approach seems to be setting the tone for what are likely to be complicated discussions
…
Julian Assange Extradition Case to be Drawn Out for Months
The complex extradition case designed to determine whether WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will be sent to the U.S. to face espionage charges will take longer than expected.
District Judge Vanessa Baraitser agreed on Thursday to add a three-week session in May in addition to the five-day hearing already set for Feb. 24.
The judge said she was “unlikely to look favorably” on any further requests for delays in the long-awaited confrontation between Assange and U.S. officials.
Assange is being held at Belmarsh Prison in east London while he waits for the hearing. The U.S. has charged him with espionage related to WikiLeaks’ hacking of hundreds of thousands of confidential government documents.
Assange, 48, did not attend the court session in person but briefly confirmed his name and date of birth via videolink.
He claims he is a journalist whose publishing activities have First Amendment protection.
Both sides agreed the extra session in May was necessary because of the many legal issues.
Clair Dobbin, representing the U.S. government, said she needed more time to respond to evidence recently submitted by the WikiLeaks team.
Edward Fitzgerald, Assange’s lawyer, said his team has had trouble getting adequate access to Assange at the high security prison.
“We simply cannot get in as we require to see Mr. Assange and to take his instruction,” he said.
Assange’s supporters gathered inside and outside Westminster Magistrates Court to lobby for his release. His cause has been embraced by many press freedom groups.
…
Deadly Attack Near Abyei Leaves Over 30 Dead
An attack on a village near the Sudan-South Sudan border has killed at least 15 people, according to officials in the disputed Abyei reigon.Daniel Adekera, spokesperson for the United Nations Interim Security Force for Abyei, said UNIFSA counted 15 people dead following the attack on the village of Kolom, about 12 kilometers north of Abyei.”The number we have confirmed by our troops is 15 people dead, 3 children missing, 25 wounded and 19 houses burnt down,” Adekera told VOA’s South Sudan in Focus.Adekera said Wednesday’s attack was likely a reprisal.”From all indications the perpetrators are from the Misseriya tribe because three days ago there was a similar incident in the same place where three Misseriyas were killed, purportedly by the Dinka. So this seems to have been a reprisal attack from the Misseriya tribe,” Adekera told VOA.Kuol Alor Kuol, chief administrator of Abyei, said a group of armed Misseriya men attacked Kolom on Wednesday. He put the casualty totals at 32 dead, including nine children, and 24 wounded.Kuol said he had just returned from Kolom where he said the villagers buried the dead in one mass grave.Misseriya leaders could not be reached for comment.Adekera said the Misseriya and Dinka had been engaged in peaceful, face-to-face meetings ahead of the dry season migration period.”The meetings were arranged to pre-empt escalation… or any incidence of violence, because normally during migration we hold these pre-migration meetings just to prepare them and get them to understand how they want to peaceful. So far meetings have been peaceful. So this has come to us as a surprise,” said Adekera.UNISFA troops are deployed in the area to control the movements of armed actors and to try to contain any potential conflict before it arises.In April, the organization’s peacekeeping chief told the U.N. Security Council that UNIFSA remains essential to the border regions between Sudan and South Sudan and proposed the creation of a civilian unit to support progress toward resolving who owns the disputed, oil-producing territory.Abyei is inhabited by the Arab Misseriya tribe to the north and the Ngok Dinka to the south. Carol Van Dam Falk contributed to this report.
…
Trump’s Rollback of US Water Protections Nears Completion
The Trump administration was expected to announce completion as soon as Thursday of one of its most momentous environmental rollbacks, removing federal protections for millions of miles of the country’s streams, arroyos and wetlands.
The changes, launched by President Donald Trump when he took office, sharply scale back the government’s interpretation of which waterways qualify for protection against pollution and development under the half-century-old Clean Water Act.
A draft version of the rule released earlier would end federal oversight for up to half of the nation’s wetlands and one-fifth of the country’s streams, environmental groups warned. That includes some waterways that have been federally protected for decades under the Clean Water Act.
Trump has portrayed farmers — a highly valued constituency of the Republican Party and one popular with the public — as the main beneficiaries of the rollback. He has claimed farmers gathered around him wept with gratitude when he signed an order for the rollback in February 2017.
The administration says the changes will allow farmers to plow their fields without fear of unintentionally straying over the banks of a federally protected dry creek, bog or ditch.
However, the government’s own figures show it is real estate developers and those in other nonfarm business sectors who take out the most permits for impinging on wetlands and waterways — and stand to reap the biggest regulatory and financial relief.Environmental groups and many former environmental regulators say the change will allow industry and developers to dump more contaminants in waterways or simply fill them in, damaging habitat for wildlife and making it more difficult and expensive for downstream communities to treat drinking water to make it safe.
“This administration’s eliminating clean water protections to protect polluters instead of protecting people,” said Blan Holman, a senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center.The Trump administration has targeted a range of environmental protections for rollbacks. Trump says his aim is to ease regulatory burdens on businesses.
…
3 Chinese Cities on Lockdown in Bid to Contain Deadly Virus
China decided Thursday to lock down three cities that are home to more than 18 million people in an unprecedented effort to try to contain a deadly new viral illness that has sickened hundreds and spread to other cities and countries in the Lunar New Year travel rush.
Police, SWAT teams and paramilitary troops guarded Wuhan’s train station, where metal barriers blocked the entrances at 10 a.m. sharp. Only travelers holding tickets for the last trains were allowed to enter, with those booked for later trains being turned away.
Normally bustling streets, shopping malls, restaurants and other public spaces in the city of 11 million people were eerily quiet. In addition to the train station, airport, ferry, subway and bus services were also halted.
Similar measures will take effect from Friday in the nearby cities of Huanggang and Ezhou. Theaters, internet cafes and other entertainment centers were also ordered closed, further increasing the economic costs of the response to the outbreak.
“To my knowledge, trying to contain a city of 11 million people is new to science,” Gauden Galea, the World Health Organization’s representative in China, told The Associated Press in an interview at the WHO’s Beijing office. “It has not been tried before as a public health measure. We cannot at this stage say it will or it will not work.”
The illnesses from a newly identified coronavirus first appeared last month in Wuhan, an industrial and transportation hub in central China’s Hubei province. The vast majority of mainland China’s 571 cases have been in the city.
Other cases have been reported in the United States, Japan, South Korea and Thailand. One case was confirmed Thursday in Hong Kong after one was earlier confirmed in Macao. Most cases outside China were people from Wuhan or who had recently traveled there.
A total of 17 people have died, all of them in and around Wuhan. Their average age was 73, with the oldest 89 and the youngest 48.
Images obtained from inside Wuhan following the closure showed long lines and empty shelves at supermarkets, as residents stocked up for what could be weeks of relative isolation. That appeared to be an over-reaction, since no restrictions have been placed on trucks carrying supplies into the city, although many Chinese still have strong memories of shortages and privations in the years before the country’s recent economic boom.
Such sweeping measures are typical of China’s authoritarian communist government, although their effectiveness in containing the outbreak remains uncertain.
Local authorities in Wuhan have demanded all residents wear masks in public places and urged government staff to wear them at work and for shopkeepers to post signs for their visitors, Xinhua news agency quoted a government notice as saying.
Xinhua cited the city’s anti-virus task force as saying the measures were taken in an attempt to “effectively cut off the virus spread, resolutely curb the outbreak and guarantee the people’s health and safety.”
Liu Haihan left Wuhan last Friday after visiting her boyfriend there. She said everything was normal then, before human-to-human transmission of the virus was confirmed. But things have changed rapidly.
“(My boyfriend) didn’t sleep much yesterday. He disinfected his house and stocked up on instant noodles,” Liu said. “He’s not really going out. If he does he wears a mask.”
The significant increase in illnesses reported just this week come as millions of Chinese travel for the Lunar New Year, one of the world’s largest annual migrations of people. Chinese are expected to take an estimated 3 billion trips during the 40-day spike in travel.
While state broadcaster CCTV has largely ignored the outbreak to emphasize traditional observances of the festival, reports have filtered in of events such as temple fairs being canceled in cities including Beijing.
Analysts have predicted the reported cases will continue to multiply.
“Even if (the number of cases) are in the thousands, this would not surprise us,” the WHO’s Galea said, adding, however, that the number of cases is not an indicator of the outbreak’s severity, so long as the mortality rate remains low.
The coronavirus family includes the common cold as well as viruses that cause more serious illnesses, such as the SARS outbreak that spread from China to more than a dozen countries in 2002-2003 and killed about 800 people, and Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome, which developed from camels.Passengers wear protective face masks at the departure hall of the high speed train station in Hong Kong, Jan. 23, 2020.China is keen to avoid repeating mistakes with its handling of SARS. For months, even after the illness had spread around the world, China parked patients in hotels and drove them around in ambulances to conceal the true number of cases and avoid WHO experts.
In the current outbreak, China has been credited with sharing information rapidly, and President Xi Jinping has emphasized that as a priority.
“Party committees, governments and relevant departments at all levels must put people’s lives and health first,” Xi said Monday. “It is necessary to release epidemic information in a timely manner and deepen international cooperation.”
Health authorities were taking extraordinary measures to prevent additional person-to-person transmissions, placing those suspected to be infected in plastic tubes and wheeled boxes where air passed through filters.
The first cases in the Wuhan outbreak were connected to people who worked at or visited a seafood market, which has since been closed for an investigation. Experts suspect the virus was first transmitted from wild animals but the virus also may be mutating. Mutations can make it deadlier or more contagious.
WHO plans another meeting of scientific experts Thursday on whether to recommend declaring the outbreak a global health emergency, which it defines as an “extraordinary event” that constitutes a risk to other countries and requires a coordinated international response.
Many countries are screening travelers from China for illness, especially those arriving from Wuhan. North Korea has banned foreign tourists, a step it also took during the SARS outbreak and in recent years due to Ebola. Most foreigners going to North Korea are Chinese or travel there through neighboring China.
…
‘Who is She?’ – US Treasury Chief Takes Swipe at Thunberg
U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin says Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg is in no position to give economic advice until she’s gone to college and come out with an economics degree.
At a press briefing at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss town of Davos, Mnuchin took a swipe at the 17-year-old environmental campaigner for her recommendation that both the public and private sectors should divest from fossil fuels.
When asked how that would affect the U.S. economic model, Mnuchin took a swipe at Thunberg.
“Is she the chief economist? Who is she? I’m confused,” he said. Then following a brief pause, he said it was “a joke.”
“After she goes and studies economics in college, she can come back and explain that to us,” he concluded.
Over the past year, Thunberg has taken issue with many aspects of U.S. policy, not least President Donald Trump’s decision to pull the country out of the Paris accord to limit global warming.
Mnuchin insisted that U.S. policy has been misinterpreted, and that Trump “absolutely believes” in a clean environment.
The U.S., Mnuchin said, has been a leader in reducing carbon emissions. “What the president objects to is the Paris agreement, because he thought it was an unfair agreement for the United States.”
…
UN Court Orders Myanmar to Steps to Protect Rohingya Muslims
The U.N.’s International Court of Justice has ordered Myanmar to “take all measures within its power” to prevent any acts of genocide against the Rohingya Muslims, the ethnic group that was forced to flee their homes amid a bloody military crackdown in 2017.
The court’s ruling Thursday was in response to a complaint filed last November by the West African nation Gambia on behalf of the 57-nation Organization of Islamic Cooperation against Myanmar, accusing it of violating the 1948 Genocide Convention. Rohingyas who fled Myanmar over the past decades live in this decrepit Kutupalong illegal Rohingya refugee colony in Cox’s Bazar district, Bangladesh.More than 700,000 Rohingyas fled across the border into Bangladesh in August 2017 to escape a scorched earth campaign launched by the Myanmar military in response to attacks on security posts by Rohingya militants in northwestern Rakhine state. A U.N. investigation concluded the campaign was carried out “with genocidal intent,” based on interviews with survivors who gave numerous accounts of massacres, extrajudicial killings, gang rapes and the torching of entire villages.
In reading the court’s opinion from its headquarters at The Hague, President Abdulqawi Ahmed Yusuf said the Rohingya remained at a “real and imminent risk” of persecution at the hands of the military.
The court ordered Myanmar to ensure those responsible for the genocide be held responsible; to ensure the military and any allied armed groups not commit acts of genocide, or involve itself in conspiracy to trigger genocide against Rohingya; to preserve all evidence related to the crimes, and to facilitate the repatriation of the Rohingyas back to Rakhine state.
The ICJ also ordered Myanmar to submit a report within four months on what actions it is taking to comply with the court’s decision, and to submit follow up reports every six months after that. FILE – In this photo taken on Dec. 11, 2019, Myanmar’s State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi (C) stands before the UN’s International Court of Justice next to Abubacarr Tambadou (2L), minister of justice of the Gambia.Myanmar’s military was defended during last month’s hearings by Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s de facto leader. Standing before the court in her official role as foreign minister, Aung San Suu Kyi reiterated her government’s claim that the military was targeting Rohingya militants.Writing Thursday in the London-based newspaper The Financial Times, Aung San Suu Kyi said Myanmar would conduct domestic investigations and prosecutions of civilians and military personnel who “may have participated in looting or burning villages.” But she added that an investigation by the Independent Commission of Inquiry found no evidence of genocide.
Aung San Suu Kyi won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 for her pro-democracy stand against Myanmar’s then-ruling military junta, which placed her under house arrest for 15 years until finally freeing her in 2010. But her defense of the military’s actions against the Rohingyas has permanently wrecked her reputation among the international community as an icon of democracy and human rights.
In the cramped refugee camp at Cox’s Bazaar, the Rohingyas began the day with prayers as they awaited the court’s ruling. Hours later, cheers broke out through the camp as news spread of the ruling spread, as the refugees praised Gambia and the rest of the international community for bringing the matter before the court.
The Rohingya were excluded from a 1982 citizenship law that bases full legal status through membership in a government-recognized indigenous group. Myanmar considers the Rohingya illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, effectively rendering the ethnic group stateless.
…
Democrats to Focus on Abuse of Power in 2nd Day of Trump Trial
House Democrats presenting their impeachment case against U.S. President Donald Trump plan to spend Thursday’s trial session focusing on the legal and constitutional ramifications of what they argue was the president’s abuse of his office to solicit a foreign government’s help for his political benefit.“We’ve introduced the case. We’ve gone through the chronology,” Congressman Adam Schiff said as he wrapped up the first day of the trial late Wednesday. “And tomorrow we will apply the facts to the law as it pertains to the president’s abuse of power.”Schiff, a Democrat who leads the House Intelligence Committee, was one of the House managers serving as prosecutors who laid out the framework of the case during the initial eight-hour session. They will have Thursday and another session Friday to make their argument before Trump’s legal team gets its 24-hour allotment, likely starting Saturday.House Democratic impeachment managers, from left, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., and Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo.The Democrats accused Trump of carrying out a “corrupt scheme” in which he pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to publicly announce an investigation into former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, one of Trump’s top challengers in the 2020 election, as well as a debunked theory that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that meddled in the 2016 U.S. election.“There are no serious disputes about the underlying facts,” Schiff said, adding that instead, White House lawyers defending Trump will argue that he cannot be removed from office for abusing the power of the presidency.Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and U.S. President Donald Trump face reporters during a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the 74th session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, Sept. 25, 2019.Jay Sekulow, one of Trump’s lawyers, said after Wednesday’s session that the fact that the impeachment proceedings are even taking place is “ridiculous.”“Are we having an impeachment over a phone call? Or has this been a three-year attempt to take down a president that was duly elected by the American people?” Sekulow told reporters. “And we’re doing this with 10 months to go to a general election. Pretty dangerous for our republic, in my view.”Trump has said throughout the process he did nothing wrong in his discussions with Zelenskiy, frequently describing their conversation as a “perfect call.”“We believe, without question, the president will be acquitted. There is not a doubt,” Sekulow said.U.S. President Donald Trump’s personal attorney Jay Sekulow and White House counsel Pat Cipollone pass through security as they arrive for opening arguments in the impeachment trial of U.S. President Donald Trump at the U.S. Capitol, Jan. 22, 2020.That outcome is widely expected with members of Trump’s Republican Party holding a 53-47 majority in the Senate and impeachment rules requiring two-thirds of the body to vote in favor of removing him from office. Democrats would need to convince 20 Republicans to vote for conviction, as yet none have given any public indication of doing so.Trump eventually released the military aid to Ukraine and Zelenskiy never opened an investigation into the Bidens — proof, Republicans say, that Trump did not engage in a quid pro quo with Ukraine.But Schiff said Trump only released the funds because “he got caught,” because an intelligence whistleblower became concerned over the president’s July 25 telephone call where he asked Zelenskiy for “a favor.”In addition to the charge of abusing his power, the House impeachment articles also say he obstructed Congress by impeding their investigation into the matter.WATCH: Congressional Democrats: Trump ‘Schemed’ to Pressure UkraineSorry, but your player cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline. Embed” />CopyOther House impeachment managers addressed the senators Wednesday, including Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler who talked about Trump’s “smear campaign” against former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch. The diplomat balked at cooperating with efforts to investigate Biden.Congresswoman Val Demings said Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani was no “rogue agent” when he went to Ukraine to dig up dirt on the Bidens. Demings said he was acting directly for Trump. She said former National Security Adviser John Bolton was trying to send the American people a “very powerful message” when he said he did not want to be a part of whatever “drug deal” he said Giuliani was pursuing in Ukraine.Democrats lost in their attempt to amend the rules of the trial presented by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. They wanted to subpoena at the outset of the trial White House, State Department and Defense Department documents and such key witnesses as Bolton and acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney.McConnell ruled that the Senate could only vote on the question of evidence and witnesses after the two sides present their cases and senators have a chance to ask questions of the House managers and Trump lawyers.A Reuters-Ipsos public opinion poll and another Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research released Wednesday both showed about 70 percent support for allowing top Trump administration aides to appear at the trial, with majorities in favor among both people identifying as Democrats and Republicans.
…
Congressional Democrats: Trump ‘Schemed’ to Pressure Ukraine
Congressional Democrats accused President Donald Trump Wednesday of designing “a corrupt scheme” to pressure Ukraine into investigating former Vice President Joe Biden, Trump’s leading 2020 election rival. In the first day of opening arguments before the 100 U.S. senators weighing if Trump should be removed from office, Congressman Adam Schiff said the vote on articles of impeachment would decide America’s standing around the world. VOA’s congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson has more from Capitol Hill.
…
How Does Climate Affect Credit?
The primary impacts of climate change are obvious, from the unprecedented fires in Australia to the melting ice caps in the Arctic. However more observers are starting to consider secondary impacts, and none is less obvious perhaps than the credit worthiness of governments, which is analyzed in a new report from Moody’s, a ratings company.A diverse mix of nations including Vietnam, Suriname, Egypt, and the Bahamas are most vulnerable to a rise in sea levels, according to the report released last week. It said rising seas may cause “lost income, damage to assets, loss of life, health issues, and forced migration,” which could hurt governments’ sovereign ratings.The report was released ahead of this week’s Davos forum, an annual meeting of world business and government officials to discuss the world’s problems. Past themes at Davos include populism and globalization. The theme is climate change at this year’s Alpine forum, where climate activist Greta Thunberg and U.S. President Donald Trump have clashed on the issue’s impact on business. The irony is not lost on observers that officials are getting to the forum by air travel, a key source of climate-changing emissions, in order to discuss climate change. Not often represented at the forum are the vulnerable nations named in the Moody’s report.“Vulnerability to extreme events related to sea level rise can also undermine investment and heighten susceptibility to event risk, by hindering the ability of governments to borrow to rebuild, increasing losses for banks, raising external pressures, and/or amplifying political risk as populations come under stress,” said Anushka Shah, Moody’s vice president and senior analyst, in the report. “While one isolated shock related to sea level rise is unlikely to materially weaken a sovereign’s credit profile, repeated shocks could do.”Her report, with contributions from Caleb Coppersmith and Natasha Brereton-Fukui, explained the link between climate and credit.Major cities that could be submerged amid rising seas include Amsterdam, according to Moody’s.Credit scoreGovernments, like individuals and businesses, have credit scores that affect how much interest they pay to borrow. “Shocks” may come along because of rising seas, such as floods, storm surges, cyclones, and erosion. Governments have to spend money to recover from disasters and build infrastructure, while at the same time losing tax income as companies go out of business or individuals can’t work. With more money going out and less money coming in, governments risk a hit to their credit ratings.The nations highlighted in the report, along with Bahrain, Benin, the Cayman Islands, Fiji, the Maldives, and others, are vulnerable because of a mix of their location by seas and economic and fiscal strength.They are vulnerable in relative terms, but other nations that are vulnerable in terms of absolute population impacts include Bangladesh, China, Indonesia, and India, the report said. It said credit risks based on climate can vary by nation. The Netherlands, for instance, is at risk of having cities submerged under water, while Japan has physical assets at risk, like buildings and cars.Residents walk down a street in Kyoto, Japan, one of the nations with the most physical assets, like buildings, at risk of climate disasters.Climate change views evolveMoody’s noted three government climate strategies are protection, accommodation, and managed retreat. That is, protection like sea walls, accommodating rising waters with higher bridges and other tools, and pushing people to retreat by living inland away from coasts.The report comes as business views on the climate are changing.Whereas emissions used to be considered a part of doing business, companies now say they can’t survive if emissions keep rising.Microsoft said last week it will spend $1 billion to remove carbon from the air, a dramatic break from past corporate efforts to simply buy carbon offsets. Around the same time BlackRock, the world’s biggest money manager, said it would divest from coal and make climate an investment priority.“A big part of the challenge is that as a society we have not committed sufficiently to reduce emissions,” Microsoft president Brad Smith said in announcing the new company policy, adding: “If we don’t curb emissions, and temperatures continue to climb, science tells us that the results will be catastrophic.”He said the company would also support government policies to reduce emissions. The Moody’s report said there’s not much governments can do about past emissions, whether to protect their credit ratings or their populations. It said past emissions have already locked in a sea level rise of 1.6 meters. However emissions reductions could keep that number from getting even higher, it said.
…
Virus-Related Tourism Ban Could Hurt North Korea’s Economy
North Korea has temporarily banned foreign tourists in response to the outbreak of a dangerous new virus in neighboring China. Depending on how long the ban lasts, it could hurt North Korea’s economy, which though heavily sanctioned, has received a boost by a recent influx of Chinese tourists.Starting Wednesday, North Korea closed its borders to foreign tourists, according to Young Pioneer Tours, a China-based company that leads trips to North Korea. On its website, the company says it is not clear how long the suspension will last, but that authorities say they intend to reopen the border as soon as they institute precautionary measures.The pneumonialike respiratory illness, which can be transmitted among humans, originated in the central Chinese city of Wuhan. It has infected more than 500 people, 17 of whom have died. Cases have been reported in countries including South Korea, Japan, the United States, and Thailand.FILE – Foreigners and North Koreans, facing increased safety measures to prevent the possible spread of Ebola, board an Air Koryo flight bound for Beijing in Pyongyang, North Korea, Oct. 28, 2014.Willing to close borderIt is not the first time North Korea has banned visitors in response to international outbreaks of infectious diseases. In 2014, the country shut its borders for four months during the Ebola outbreak, even though the disease never reached Asia. North Korea also restricted some visitors during the SARS epidemic in 2003.“North Korea is probably more willing to shut down exit and entry than any other country,” said Andray Abrahamian, who specializes in North Korea at the George Mason University Korea.But the move may be especially painful this time, Abrahamian said, since tourism is one of the only legal ways for the North Korean government to make money.“(During previous outbreaks) they had a number of legal revenue streams that are now prohibited by sanctions. Tourism was small. Now, tourism is a much bigger industry and their last major nonsanctioned sector. So shutting down the border will have a relatively higher impact,” he said.North Korea has been under United Nations sanctions since 2006, and unilateral U.S. sanctions for even longer, as a result of its nuclear and missile programs.FILE – Tourists from China pose for photos before the Three Charters monument in Pyongyang, April 15, 2019. North Korea will ban foreign tourists to protect itself against a new SARS-like virus that has claimed at least 17 lives in China.Need for tourism money growsAs the sanctions have expanded, North Korea has increasingly relied on the money brought by foreign tourists, almost all of whom come from China.NK News, a North Korea-focused online publication, estimates that around 350,000 mainland Chinese tourists visited North Korea in 2019, providing about $175 million in extra revenue for Pyongyang.North Korea is now in the middle of winter, typically off-peak season for foreign tours. But as the weather gets warmer, it may feel pressure to resume tourism as soon as possible.“There will be a number of stakeholders hoping the Wuhan virus doesn’t spread in the coming weeks as the weather warms up and more tourists are expected,” Abrahamian said.Rowan Beard, North Korea tours manager for Young Pioneer Tours, tells VOA that his company has had to delay some tours, but says the move is understandable given North Korea’s proximity to the outbreak and its apparently limited capacity to deal with the disease.“North Korea is very vulnerable due to its shared border with China, its largest trading partner,” said Kee Park, a faculty member at Harvard Medical School who also specializes in North Korea public health.“They also understand that drastic action is needed to prevent the new virus from entering North Korea since their capacity to diagnose, treat and contain the virus is limited should an outbreak occur inside North Korea,” Park said.Park, who frequently participates in medical exchange trips to North Korea, says humanitarian organizations “should send medical and isolation supplies immediately and the (U.N.) sanctions committee should be proactive and issue a special exemption.”North Korea has not yet reported any cases of the coronavirus. The World Health Organization (WHO) is working with North Korean officials to prevent an outbreak, North Korea state media reported this week, according to NK News.
…
Three Americans Killed in Australia Firefighting Plane Crash
Three people died Thursday when a C-130 Hercules aerial water tanker crashed while battling wildfires in the Snowy Monaro region of Australia’s southern New South Wales state, officials said.New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian confirmed the deaths and crash in comments to reporters as Australia attempts to deal with an unprecedented fire season that has left a large swath of destruction.“The only thing I have from the field reports are that the plane came down, it’s crashed and there was a large fireball associated with that crash,” said Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons.He said all three aboard were U.S. residents.“Unfortunately, all we’ve been able to do is locate the wreckage and the crash site and we have not been able to locate any survivors,” he said.Berejiklian said there were more than 1,700 volunteers and personnel in the field, and five fires were being described at an “emergency warning level.”Firefighters battle the Morton Fire as it consumes a home near Bundanoon, New South Wales, Australia, Jan. 23, 2020.Also Thursday, Canberra Airport closed because of nearby wildfires, and residents south of Australia’s capital were told to seek shelter.The blaze started Wednesday, but strong winds and high temperatures caused conditions in Canberra to deteriorate. A second fire near the airport that started Thursday morning is at the “watch and act” level.
“Arrivals and departures are affected due to aviation firefighting operations,” the airport authority said in a tweet.Another tweet from traffic police said “the fire is moving fast and there are multiple road closures in the area. Please avoid the area. Local roadblocks in place.”Residents in some Canberra suburbs were advised to seek shelter and others to leave immediately.“The defense force is both assisting to a degree and looking to whether that needs to be reinforced,” Defense Minister Angus Campbell told reporters.“I have people who are both involved as persons who need to be moved from areas and office buildings that are potentially in danger, and also those persons who are part of the (Operation) Bushfire Assist effort,” he said.
…