Greece has ordered a three-week nationwide lockdown to help contain a dramatic resurgence of COVID-19 infections. It is the second shutdown this year after a sudden surge in infections this week.Under restrictions taking effect Saturday, retail businesses will be closed, except for supermarkets, pharmacies and banks.Greeks will need state-authorized permits to venture out of their homes at specific times. While primary schools will remain open, high schools and universities will remain closed, operating by way of online learning sessions.In a nationally televised news conference, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said he had no other option than to take aggressive action because the deadly virus was spreading at an alarming rate.It changed dramatically this week, he said. “We saw the contagion rates increasing at a frightening rate in northern Greece, and we saw similar trends emerging.”If these measures were not taken now, he said, then the strain on the health care system would become so great within a few weeks that doctors would have to limit admissions to intensive care units.In the last five days alone, the country has counted 10,000 infections, a fifth of the total number of cases documented since the start of the pandemic here.Greece’s rolling average of daily new cases is just 17 per 100,000 people, compared to 33 in Britain and 68 in France. Mitsotakis warned, though, that Greece had less of a margin to respond.Just out of a 10-year devastating financial crisis, Greece took aggressive action at the start of the pandemic to bolster its anemic health care system, adding much-needed personnel and medical supplies to deal with the health crisis.It managed to keep daily infections down to about a few dozen a day, with a death toll of around 300. Once summer set in and its borders reopened, though, Greeks abandoned all show of social distancing, packing into bars and partying nonstop.The social rebellion was so intense that a movement of deniers mushroomed across the nation, refusing to don masks, let alone acknowledge the existence of the deadly virus.Now Mitsotakis is under fire by politicians across the board, accusing him of mismanaging the health crisis.On Thursday, he seemed apologetic“Perhaps the gravest mistake we made,” he said, “was that we resigned to this sweeping sense of relief that gripped all of us over the summer, that the pandemic was over and that we had been spared.”Government officials anticipate the draconian lockdown will stem the spread of the deadly virus in as soon as a week.Medical experts, though, expect the Greek resurgence to worsen before it will start to recede, and that could well be beyond Christmas and into the new year, when vaccines are anticipated for release.
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Month: November 2020
Vote Count Continues as Trump Files Suits in Battleground States
President Donald Trump’s campaign is intensifying legal actions to challenge the integrity of the ballot-counting process in several battleground states, as Democratic nominee Joe Biden inches closer to securing 270 electoral votes to win the White House. White House correspondent Patsy Widakuswara has the latest.
Producer: Barry Unger
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Trump Campaign Files Another Lawsuit Despite Legal Setbacks
U.S. President Donald Trump’s embattled reelection campaign continued its legal challenges to vote counting Thursday even as it suffered a pair of setbacks in two battleground states key to winning the election.In Nevada, a Democratic-leaning state where former Vice President Joe Biden maintained a slight advantage over Trump in the vote count, the Trump campaign and the state Republican Party announced a lawsuit claiming at least 10,000 nonresidents had illegally voted and that their votes were being counted.“It is unacceptable in this country to have illegal votes counted, and that is what’s happening in the state of Nevada,” Trump’s former acting intelligence chief, Richard Grenell, said at a news conference in Las Vegas.Joe Gloria, the registrar of voters for Clark County, Nevada, dismissed the allegation. “My response is that we’re not aware of any improper ballots that are being processed,” Gloria told reporters during a news conference.The Trump campaign announced on Wednesday that it was filing a lawsuit to temporarily halt vote counting in Pennsylvania — a state vital to the president’s prospects for reelection — until its observers are granted more access to watch vote counting.The suit in Nevada, the campaign’s fourth major legal action since Tuesday’s still-undecided presidential election, came as courts in Georgia and Michigan threw out two Trump lawsuits over ballot handling in those states.In Georgia, the Republicans had accused a local board of elections of allowing invalid mail-in ballots to be mixed in with ballots ready to be counted. But a judge dismissed the suit after a local election official testified that the ballots in question “were timely received.”US President Donald Trump gestures after speaking during election night in the East Room of the White House in Washington on Nov. 3, 2020.In Michigan, a local judge dismissed a Trump campaign request to stop all vote counting until it was given “meaningful access” to ballot processing, such as surveillance videos of drop boxes. The judge’s decision came a day after Biden was declared by news organizations as the winner in the state.Despite the legal defeats in Georgia and Michigan, the Trump campaign scored a minor win in Pennsylvania where an appellate judge ordered that Republican observers be allowed to watch the vote count at a convention hall while keeping a safe distance of 2 meters away.Trump campaign advisers hailed the decision, pledging to press ahead in Pennsylvania as well as several other states the president needs to win a second term in office.”We are going to keep fighting for this election because that is what the American people deserve,” Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien said during a press call.The Biden campaign dismissed the Trump lawsuits as frivolous and meritless.“They’re intended to give the Trump campaign the opportunity to argue that the vote count should stop. It is not going to stop,” said senior Biden campaign adviser Bob Bauer.U.S. presidential election results are rarely contested. But this has been the most litigated election ever, and Trump has said his “biggest risk” is one of losing in court.Disregarding Trump’s call for a halt to vote counting that is chipping away at his leads, election officials in the six undecided states – Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina and Pennsylvania – pushed forward with the vote count, and legal experts said it was highly doubtful that any court would stop the tabulation.“I do not assess that any of them will have the impact of actually stopping the count of votes in such a way as to affect the election in the next few days,” said Jordan Strauss, a former federal prosecutor and now a managing director with Kroll, a risk management consultancy. “There’s a lot of rumor and innuendo, but none of these secretaries of state in those four states have certified the vote yet.”Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline.Download File360p | 7 MB480p | 10 MB540p | 13 MB720p | 31 MB1080p | 55 MBOriginal | 145 MB Embed” />Copy Download AudioOf all the undecided states, Pennsylvania is likely to emerge as a major focus of any postelection litigation. With 20 electoral votes, the state is a must win for Trump’s hopes for reelection.In the lead-up to the election, Republicans unsuccessfully tried to get the Supreme Court to forestall Pennsylvania’s plan to count mail-in ballots that arrive up to three days after Election Day, November 3.But several conservatives on the Supreme Court signaled an openness to reconsider the issue. The Trump campaign on Wednesday asked to join in the lawsuit.However, given the relatively small number of ballots that have arrived since Tuesday in Pennsylvania, the issue could become moot, according to experts.“Whatever number they receive is probably not going to be large enough to make a difference in the count even if they pulled all of those out,” said Sylvia Albert, director of voting and elections with Common Cause, a citizens lobby, noting that only about 500 such ballots have been received.Strauss agreed that there may not be enough late-arriving ballots to move the needle one way or the other.“You have to have a result. You have to have something that makes it worth challenging, if not legally, then practically,” Strauss said.Voting rights advocates monitoring Tuesday’s election and the ongoing vote count say they have not received any reports of systemic problems with the process. Despite the Trump campaign’s complaint about lack of access to the ballot count, challengers appointed by both teams continue to observe the process, they say.“From all the reporting I’m seeing and from all the video footage I’m seeing, counts are being taken as legally required,” Albert said.The vote count may be painstakingly slow in some places, but that’s something election officials had long warned of as millions of Americans turned to voting by mail this year as an alternative to standing in line at polling places amid the coronavirus pandemic, Albert said.“There’s nothing surprising about what’s happening right now,” Albert said. “[Election officials] are simply doing their job and counting the ballots, and that’s it.”
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Fears Rise for Safety of Election Workers in Battleground States
Tensions over the still undecided U.S. presidential election are prompting some state and local officials to increase security for those charged with counting the remaining votes. Supporters of Republican President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden have increasingly focused their attention on states like Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania, where slim margins have made calling the race nearly impossible. And the tensions have grown as allegations of irregularities in the vote-counting process have sparked protests outside buildings where the tally is going on. “I am concerned for the safety of my staff,” said Joe Gloria, registrar of voters in Clark County, Nevada, on November 5, after about 75 people, some wearing Trump T-shirts, chanted “Stop the Steal” and FILE – Supporters of President Donald Trump protest the Nevada vote in front of the Clark County Election Department in Las Vegas, Nov. 4, 2020.There were no reports of violence, but following scares at other locations across the country, Gloria said his office was not taking any chances. “We’re putting measures into place to make sure that we have the security that’s necessary,” he said. “We have law enforcement who are protecting us.” In the neighboring state of Arizona, election officials in Maricopa County announced Thursday they would be setting up a “free speech zone” for protesters with the help of the local sheriff’s office. “It is imperative that we balance the protection and well-being of our election workers and volunteers with the constitutional right of protesters,” the Maricopa County Elections Department said in a statement, adding the changes would allow staff to count votes and leave the building “without the threat of intimidation.” The eyes of the nation are on Maricopa County and it is imperative that we balance the protection and well-being of our election workers and volunteers with the constitutional right of protesters who may wish to demonstrate outside the Elections Department. Read more: Zoned areas for protesters divide the parking lot of the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office, in Phoenix, Nov. 5, 2020.Confrontations between protesters and election officials were also reported November 4 in Detroit, Michigan, when FILE – Election challengers yell as they look through the windows of the central counting board as police were helping to keep additional challengers from entering due to overcrowding, in Detroit, Nov. 4, 2020.Overnight protests November 4 in Portland, Oregon, also turned violent, with police making 10 arrests and seizing multiple firearms as well as ammunition. Back in Michigan, the state’s attorney general complained November 5 on Twitter about harassing phone calls and threats to her staff. NEW: #Michigan Atty General @dananessel asks public to stop making threats to her staff”Please stop making harassing & threatening calls to my staff…Asking them to shove sharpies in uncomfortable places is never appropriate”https://t.co/okewSrH7lR— Jeff Seldin (@jseldin) November 5, 2020″The safety and security of election officials and election workers is paramount,” a spokesperson for the National Association of State Election Directors told VOA in a statement November 5. “Election officials have contingency plans in place,” the spokesperson added. Federal and state officials have been bracing for potential violence for months, anticipating frayed nerves due to a close election combined with the likelihood that results would be delayed because of the high number of mail-in ballots. US States Brace for Possible Violence on Election Day State security and election officials working to get ahead of a combination of factors threatening to spark chaos around the Nov. 3 vote “Election result delays and recounts could result in protests and attempts to occupy election offices,” the New Jersey Department of Homeland Security and Preparedness warned in a threat assessment issued in late September. Law enforcement officials, including officials at the FBI, also expressed concern before the election that U.S. adversaries, such as Russia, Iran and China, could use the days after the November 3 vote to spark “upheaval and discord,” which could lead to violence. “Our preparations for [the 2020 election] take into account the current climate of the country,” an FBI official told VOA at the time.
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Leader of Serbian Orthodox Church Hospitalized With Coronavirus
The 90-year-old leader of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Irinej, was sent to a military hospital in Belgrade this week after testing positive for the coronavirus, according to the church.His hospitalization Wednesday came days after the patriarch led prayers at the funeral of the head of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Montenegro, Bishop Amfilohije, who died of COVID-19.FILE – A nun kisses Bishop Amfilohije during the liturgy and funeral in the main temple in Podgorica, Montenegro, Nov. 1, 2020. The bishop, head of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Montenegro, died after contracting COVID-19.During the funeral at the church in Montenegro, prevention measures were not observed. Mourners did not wear masks. They kissed the body of the bishop as it lay in a coffin and did not keep their distance from one another.A statement from his office said Patriarch Irinej was “without symptoms and is in excellent health.”Serbia and Montenegro have seen a rise in coronavirus cases, and authorities warned the funeral could be a super-spreader event and a public health threat.Many mourners, including a top Montenegro cleric, Bishop Joanikije, reportedly contracted the virus after the funeral. He now suffers from mild pneumonia.Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and Montenegrin Prime Minister-designate Zdravko Krivokapic also attended the funeral of Bishop Amfilohije.Bishop Amfilohije was a powerful cleric who did not observe COVID-19 prevention measures such as wearing masks.
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Kosovo’s Thaci Arrested, Moved to Hague to Face War Crimes Charges
Former Kosovo President Hashim Thaci, a wartime hero turned politician, was arrested and transferred Thursday to the detention center of the Kosovo Tribunal in The Hague, the Netherlands, to face charges of war crimes.Thaci had resigned, effective immediately, earlier in the day after learning that the tribunal confirmed a war crimes indictment against him.Thaci and three other former leaders of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) are accused of overseeing illegal detention facilities where the movement’s opponents were kept in inhumane conditions, tortured and sometimes killed.Thaci has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing. He told a news conference in the Kosovo capital, Pristina, that he felt his resignation was necessary “to protect the integrity of the state.”Thaci arrived at Pristina’s military airport in the afternoon and was flown to The Hague, where he was taken into custody by the Kosovo Specialist Chambers.Instability ahead?The move could bring political instability to Kosovo, a young democracy where the 52-year-old former guerrilla became the first prime minister in 2008 and was elected president in 2016.Prosecutors in July said they held Thaci responsible for the killing of nearly 100 civilians during the 1998-99 war when he was a KLA commander who fought the Serbian police and army.Thaci, a U.S.-backed national hero, embarked on his political career after leading the KLA’s battle against forces under the late Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic.Ties with the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump deepened in September, when Kosovo and Serbia signed an economic relations deal at the White House.The European Union on Thursday welcomed Thaci’s cooperation with the Kosovo Specialist Chambers, where he is expected to come before a pretrial judge in the coming days.The tribunal was set up in 2015 to handle cases relating to the war that led to Kosovo’s independence from Serbia in 2008. The court is governed by Kosovo law but staffed by international judges and prosecutors.FILE – Hashim Thaci, who then was Kosovo’s president, attends a ceremony of security forces, in Pristina, Kosovo, Dec. 13, 2018.Anger in KosovoMany in Kosovo oppose the war crimes court and see the KLA commanders as heroes.”I think a big injustice is being committed here by putting on trial our liberators,” economist Fejzullah Ibrahimi told Reuters at a market in Pristina.NATO bombed Belgrade in 1999 with U.S. support to halt the killings and expulsions of ethnic Albanians from Kosovo by Serb forces.Human rights watchdog Amnesty International said the indictment against Thaci gave hope to thousands of victims of the war “who have waited for more than two decades to find out the truth about the horrific crimes.”In Belgrade, lawmaker Milovan Drecun, chairman of the Serbian parliamentary committee for Kosovo, said the indictment proved that “establishing the truth about war crimes of the KLA and punishing those responsible is an irreversible process.”In July, Thaci met the prosecutors in The Hague to discuss the allegations against him.Another three Kosovo politicians and former KLA members — Rexhep Selimi, a deputy in the Kosovo parliament; Kadri Veseli, president of Thaci’s Kosovo Democratic Party; and veteran Kosovo politician Jakup Krasniqi — were transferred Wednesday and Thursday to The Hague on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, the tribunal said.
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Austrian Envoy Lauds Concern From US Presidential Candidates
U.S. President Donald Trump and Democratic Party challenger Joe Biden clearly had much on their minds just hours before polls opened in Tuesday’s presidential election. Yet both found time to tweet their condolences to the Austrian people for a terror attack that took place more than 7,000 kilometers away in Vienna.After tonight’s horrific terrorist attack in Vienna, Austria, Jill and I are keeping the victims and their families in our prayers. We must all stand united against hate and violence.
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) November 3, 2020Our prayers are with the people of Vienna after yet another vile act of terrorism in Europe. These evil attacks against innocent people must stop. The U.S. stands with Austria, France, and all of Europe in the fight against terrorists, including radical Islamic terrorists.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 3, 2020The messages were noticed and very much appreciated in Austria, Martin Weiss, Vienna’s ambassador in the United States, told VOA in a phone interview.“Because for both of them, this was the last day of their campaigning, in a really important campaign for both of them, and both of them took time to send those messages,” he said.“It’s not a matter of course that they would do that. That was really something actually quite touching.”Weiss, who took up his duties as head of mission at the Austrian embassy in Washington a year ago, found himself juggling multiple chores on November 3, monitoring developments in Vienna, writing thank-you notes to those who had expressed support for Austria, and keeping a close eye on the voting in various states.Austria is in mourning over the innocent lives lost in yesterday’s terror attack. Wreaths have been laid and the flags in front of our Embassy are flying at halfmast. We are shaken yet undeterred. Our model of life is what stand for. We will not budge. Not even an inch. pic.twitter.com/RMOFbqUe50
— Martin Weiss (@martinoweiss) Bullet holes are marked on a door at the crime scene in Vienna, Austria, Nov. 4, 2020.Nevertheless, the ambassador said he is receiving a steady stream of requests for updates on the U.S. balloting.“Just this morning I got a number of calls from media organizations who just tried to understand exactly what’s with 270, what happens in the Senate, when we would get the results in Nevada,” he said with a laugh.“It’s important who sits in the White House, that’s for sure.”For the record, 270 is the number of Electoral College votes, out of a total of 538, that a candidate needs in order to be declared a winner in the U.S. presidential election.Weiss described a diplomat’s role as that of “a neutral observer” who “steers clear of [partisan] politics.” But he expressed understanding for the intense emotions many Americans are going through as the vote count plays out.“We have been in a campaign season, we know how campaigns look, and that’s actually true for the whole world,” he said. “People are very dedicated to their candidates, it’s a time of great emotion, I think that’s only normal.”US Election Interest Runs High at Embassies in Washington US-posted diplomats find ways to observe balloting while respecting pandemic restrictions In the end, he predicted, the election cycle will run its course.“The voting has its place, the arguments about the outcomes have their place, and that maybe legal challenges have their place, that’s all part of the system. I think one should take the time, take a deep breath, let this all play out.”And if legal challenges prolong the suspense for weeks or even longer?“It actually strengthens the trust in the system, that there’s room maybe for legal challenge, maybe the legal challenge even goes to the highest court of the country – but that’s all part of this process,” he said.“Come January 20, there will be a president who will be sworn in, as it always happens on January 20. There’s no doubt about that in my mind.”
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Swedish PM Self-Isolates as Nation Reports Coronavirus Surge
Sweden’s prime minister announced Thursday he has gone into protective self-isolation after a person close to him encountered someone who tested positive for the coronavirus. The country is experiencing an autumn surge of infections. From his Facebook account, Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said that on his doctor’s advice, he and his wife, Ulla, were self-isolating, even though they have no symptoms. He said it was “the only responsible thing to do in this situation.” FILE – Sweden’s Prime Minister Stefan Lofven speaks during a news conference updating on the coronavirus situation, at the government headquarters in Stockholm, Sweden, Nov. 3, 2020.Lofven’s announcement came as Sweden’s Public Health Agency reported a record 4,034 new daily infections and five new deaths, putting Sweden’s total deaths at 6,002. In his post, Lofven said the new infections were clearly going in the wrong direction. Early in the pandemic, as other Nordic nations locked down to fight the virus, Sweden drew international attention by keeping schools, gyms and restaurants open and not requiring people to wear masks. In recent weeks, as infections have risen, the government began implementing limits on the size of social gatherings, patrons in restaurants and on public transportation. They have also encouraged people to work from home if possible. Sweden’s per capita death rate of 0.7 is high compared to Nordic neighbors Norway and Finland, but relatively low next to other nations in Europe.
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MPs Approve State of Emergency After Ethiopia Launches Military Operation in Tigray
Ethiopia’s parliament on Thursday validated a six-month state of emergency in the rebellious northern Tigray region, where the federal government has launched a military campaign despite international pleas for negotiation to avoid a civil war.The state of emergency was announced Wednesday by cabinet ministers, hours after Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed ordered troops into Tigray in response to a deadly attack on a federal military base in the regional capital, Mekele. Abiy’s administration blames the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which controls the regional government, for authorizing the attack.Tigray region, Ethiopia.The Tigray regional government said Thursday that Ethiopian military forces had bombarded locations near Mekele. A reporter for VOA’s Horn of Africa Service said he heard military aircraft passing over the city around 3 p.m. local time.Ethiopia’s federal government has made no comment regarding the reported attack, and VOA has not confirmed any airstrikes in the region.TPLF targetedEarlier Thursday, Ethiopian General Birhanu Jula appeared on state television and said the missions undertaken by the military in Tigray would target forces of the “extreme” TPLF group, not civilians.He accused the TPLF of provoking the conflict. He added the Ethiopian military was scoring victories that showed the end of the battle was near and that would prevent war from spreading to other parts of the country.In a brief national address Wednesday, Abiy spoke of “several martyrs” from Monday’s attack on the federal military base in Mekele and vowed to put down “traitorous forces,” including in the well-armed TPLF.Tigray repeatedly has defied the federal government. In September, it went ahead with elections despite the federal government’s decision to postpone them nationally to curb the spread of the coronavirus.On Thursday, the president of Ethiopia’s Amhara region, Temesgen Tiruneh, said that regional and federal special forces had regained control along the border with Tigray. He also said some TPLF troops had surrendered.Internet and phone service was not working Thursday in Tigray, making it difficult for reporters to determine what was happening there.FILE – In this Sept. 9, 2020, photo, a member of the Tigray special forces casts his vote in a local election in the regional capital, Mekelle, in the Tigray region of Ethiopia.’Protracted’ conflict feared“This war is the worst possible outcome of the tensions that have been brewing,” William Davison, an analyst with International Crisis Group, told the AFP news agency.“Given Tigray’s relatively strong security position, the conflict may well be protracted and disastrous,” Davison said, adding it could send “shock waves” into the wider Horn of Africa region.On Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo appealed for calm.“We are deeply concerned by reports that the Tigray People’s Liberation Front carried out attacks on Ethiopian National Defense Force bases in Ethiopia’s Tigray region,” Pompeo said in a statement posted to social media. “We urge immediate action to restore the peace and de-escalate tensions.”The U.S. Embassy in capital, Addis Ababa, called via Twitter for “an immediate de-escalation … and a measured response by both sides.”Abiy received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 for his efforts to build international cooperation and ease conflict with neighboring Eritrea. The Tigray region borders Eritrea.VOA’s Horn of Africa Service contributed to this report.
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Kenya Launches Human Trials of COVID-19 Vaccine
About forty volunteers, mostly front-line health workers, are participating in COVID-19 vaccine clinical trials in Kenya.The trial phase of the vaccine, developed by the University of Oxford in partnership with the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, is being conducted by the KEMRI-Welcome Trust Research program based in Kilifi.KEMRI’s Dr. Samuel Sang said researchers are trying to determine if the vaccine, known as ChAdOx1 nCoV-19, is safe for Kenyans.“Vaccines which have been found to work and are safe in one population [may not] work across populations,” Sang said. Therefore, he said, there’s a need to to assess whether the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 is safe and works among the Kenyan volunteers.Sang said the vaccine was being tested for both safety and impact.“Our expectation is to assess whether ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 is safe, effective and elicits a good immune response in adults above the age of 18 years,” he said.According to the World Health Organization, there are about 100 COVID-19 vaccines currently under the human trial phase of development.FILE – A volunteer receives an injection at the Chris Hani Baragwanath hospital in Soweto, Johannesburg, South Africa, June 24, 2020, as part of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine trial.Distribution issueBut some analysts say that while vaccine research and development are advancing, the equitable distribution of a COVID-19 vaccine remains a question.A recent study by Duke University’s Global Health Innovation Center argues that high-income countries will have an undue advantage in accessing the vaccines once they’ve been developed.Andrea Taylor, assistant director for programs at the Duke center, said, “Our results need to be understood in the context of limited manufacturing capacity. High- and middle-income countries have already reserved 3.8 billion doses, with options for another 5 billion, before any vaccines are even on the market. So when vaccine candidates do receive approvals, the doses that can be manufactured in the first year or two may already be reserved for high-income countries.”But, Taylor said, that outcome is not set in stone.“Leadership from lower-income countries is changing the conversation,” she said. “For example, the African Union and the Africa CDC are coordinating an Africa-wide approach to pool financing for vaccine procurement and to increase financing within Africa. We’re seeing similar initiatives emerge in Latin America as well. These regional partnerships are really exciting and could strengthen lower-income countries’ leverage and their position on the global market.”Kenya’s Health Ministry said an additional 360 volunteers would be added to the human trial phase once the efficacy and safety of the vaccine had been established over the next year in the first batch of volunteers.
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Cambodia Must End Legal Attacks on Media, Rights Groups Say
The Cambodian government has come under criticism by rights groups over what they describe as a “relentless attack” on press freedom including arrests, repressive laws and the revoking of media licenses.
A statement released Nov. 2 – the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists – and signed by 57 rights groups and communities, called for an end to attacks on the right of free expression and journalists critical of the Cambodian government.
Cambodia-based news organizations have faced a growing number of legal attacks since 2017, when the government dissolved the only opposition party, harassed local nongovernmental groups, and forced the closure of independent media organizations. Since then, reporters have been arrested for their coverage or accused of espionage and incitement.
The statement lists at least 13 journalists who have faced court complaints for their news coverage and the revocation of four media licenses during the coronavirus pandemic for allegedly sharing fake news.
“In the past years, the Cambodian government adopted a series of repressive laws that have enabled a crackdown on independent media and social media and resorted to provisions in the penal code – in particular articles 494 and 495 – to silence critical reporting and its reporters,” read the statement, referring to the criminal code provisions on incitement.
Nop Vy, who runs the local Cambodian Journalists Alliance (CamboJA), said there had been an escalation in attacks, detentions and charges against journalists, especially those who did not promote a pro-government lean in their coverage.
CamboJA and three other organizations released another statement calling for crimes against journalists to end and for the government to investigate long-delayed cases.
The four media associations said that since 1994, at least 15 journalists had been killed in Cambodia and in almost all cases the victims were targeted for their work. Twelve were reporting on sensitive issues such as illegal logging, land grabs or corruption, but that there was not a single conviction in those cases.
“We also observed that the [people] beating or persecuting journalists have never been arrested and brought to stand trial,” said Nop Vy.
While there have been no recent deaths, a growing number of journalists have been arrested on what rights groups say are often questionable charges. Last week, Ros Sokhet, who runs a provincial newspaper, was on trial for Facebook posts about Prime Minister Hun Sen’s succession plans and alleged lack of support for Cambodians struggling to repay debt. The government alleges he was attempting to incite Cambodians to cause “social chaos.”
Sok Oudom, who owns a provincial radio station, went on trial Tuesday for reporting on a contentious land-grab case between local villagers and government officials.
Sovann Rithy, who ran a Facebook-based news outlet, was convicted of incitement in October and given a suspended sentence for reporting on a speech by Prime Minister Hun Sen in which he said the government was unable to assist informal workers affected by the pandemic.Cambodian online journalist Sovann Rithy (Phnom Penh Municipal Police Facebook Page)Government officials later claimed the prime minister was joking when he suggested motorcycle taxi drivers sell their vehicles to buy food.
Phil Robertson, deputy director for Asia at Human Rights Watch, said Cambodia’s transition to a de facto one-party state in 2018, when the ruling Cambodian People’s Party won all parliamentary seats, had only exacerbated the persecution of journalists
“Independent media are very important for questioning government policies, investigating corruption and malfeasance, and demanding transparency and accountability from the government,” he said in an email.
“No wonder then that [Prime Minister] Hun Sen is continuing the pressure to shut down independent media outlets that dare question his word or policies,” he added.
Justice Ministry spokesperson Chin Malin dismissed the critique from rights groups, accusing them of having a “political agenda” when pointing out the government’s flaws.
“These criticisms and attacks have no legal basis at all. It’s purely an accusation,” he said.
In 2017, the Cambodia Daily newspaper shut down after the government pressured it to pay a $6.3 million tax bill. Two reporters from the Cambodia Daily, Aun Pheap and Zsombor Peter, are facing charges for interviewing Cambodians on their political preferences in the run-up to the 2017 commune election. Peter has also reported for Voice of America.
The same year, two former reporters with Radio Free Asia, Uon Chhin and Yeang Sothearin, were arrested and charged with espionage. In 2019, the two were tried in a Phnom Penh court, but rather than deliver a verdict, the judge ordered a reinvestigation of the charges. Two appeals challenging this decision have been shot down by higher courts.
The government alleges the two journalists were sending news reports to Radio Free Asia (RFA) headquarters in Washington, even after the U.S.-based broadcaster ended in-country operations in September 2017. RFA attributed the closure to security reasons and was never ordered by the Cambodian government to end its operation in Cambodia. RFA, like VOA, is part of the United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM).
Yeang Sothearin, one of the two journalists in the case, said the three-year-long ordeal had severely affected his personal and professional life. He experienced increased anxiety over returning to journalism, he said.
“Even every time we post something on Facebook, we are careful with every word we use, fearing that it will upset [someone], they will accuse us again, and they will persecute us even more,” he said.
This story originated in VOA’s Khmer Service.
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US Presidential Election Remains Undecided
The U.S. presidential election remained unsettled Thursday, with Democratic challenger Joe Biden nearing an Electoral College majority and President Donald Trump demanding that the vote count be stopped while Republicans are filing lawsuits alleging vote tabulation irregularities.Biden leads in the Electoral College count 253-214, with a majority of 270 needed to claim the presidency for a new four-year term. But vote counting is still underway in four states that will decide the election — Georgia and Pennsylvania in the eastern part of the country and the adjoining Western states of Arizona and Nevada. Where things standTrump is ahead in Georgia and Pennsylvania and Biden is leading in the other two, with both of their leads indecisive. In the U.S. Electoral College system, the popular vote winner in each state — with two exceptions, Maine and Nebraska — receives all of that state’s electoral votes, which are allocated on the basis of population. If Biden can hold his vote leads in Arizona, with its 11 electors, and Nevada with six, he will reach the 270 Electoral College majority and would become the country’s 46th president at his inauguration in January, no matter the outcome in Georgia and Pennsylvania.Trump needs to hold all the states he is leading in and pick up either Nevada or Arizona, where Biden currently holds the lead.The vote count is close in all four states. In Georgia, with 16 electoral votes at stake, Trump holds a 15,000-vote lead with more than 50,000 ballots yet to be counted.In Pennsylvania, Trump leads by 116,000 votes, but a bigger total remains to be counted. Twenty electoral votes are at stake.Biden now leads by 12,000 votes in Nevada, which has six electors, and by 68,000 in Arizona, which has 11 electors. Many more votes are yet to be counted in both states.Who Declares Winner in US Presidential Election?Founding Fathers created a 4-month process of formally certifying the victor Trump still has a path to victory if he can take back the states where Biden is leading and also capture Georgia and Pennsylvania. The president is also leading in two other states that have not yet been called — Alaska and North Carolina
Biden leads the national popular vote 71.8 million to 68.1 million, but it is the Electoral College that will determine the winner after a contentious, months-long campaign.On Twitter, Trump demanded that the vote count be stopped, but if the vote count were frozen in its late Thursday morning state, Trump would lose, becoming the third U.S. president in the last four decades to lose re-election after a single term.Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, personal attorney to U.S. President Donald Trump, speaks near Eric Trump and his wife Lara Trump during a news conference at Atlantic Aviation PHL private air terminal in Philadelphia, Penn, Nov. 4, 2020.Lawsuits
Lawyers representing Trump and Republicans filed lawsuits alleging vote counting irregularities and demanding that the counting of mail-in ballots be halted in Pennsylvania, where Trump’s lead was dwindling as more mail-in ballots were counted.The vote count across the U.S. has been slowed by the vast number of mail-in ballots — more than 101 million – which were cast before Tuesday’s official Election Day and which are taking longer to count. Many people who voted by mail said they wanted to avoid long lines at polling stations on Tuesday and coming face to face with others amid the country’s unchecked coronavirus pandemic.Biden’s campaign urged voting by mail and the result is that his vote count has swelled in numerous states in the post-election day ballot counting. Trump mostly urged Election Day in-person voting by Republicans, claiming without evidence that mail-in voting would lead to an election rigged against him.Trump lawyers also called for a recount in the Midwestern state of Wisconsin, where Biden was projected as winner of the state’s 10 electors on Wednesday. They contended there were irregularities at some voting stations.This combination of pictures shows Democratic presidential nominee and former Vice President Joe Biden on Oct. 23, 2020 in Wilmington, Delaware, On the right is U.S. President Donald Trump in Gastonia, North Carolina, Oct. 21, 2020.Trump, Biden react to results so far
Trump claimed victory in the early hours of Wednesday, but Biden has stopped short of saying he has won. “I’m not here to declare that we’ve won,” Biden said Wednesday. “But I am here to report that when the count is finished, we believe we will be the winners.”
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In Blue and Red States, Milestone Wins for LGBTQ Candidates
Across the nation, LGBTQ candidates achieved milestone victories in Tuesday’s election, including the first transgender person elected to a state Senate, and the first openly gay Black men to win seats in Congress.
The landmark wins came not in only blue but also red states such as Tennessee, where Republican Eddie Mannis, who is gay, and Democrat Torrey Harris, who identifies as bisexual, won seats in the state House to become the first openly LGBTQ members of that legislature.
According to the LGBTQ Victory Fund, which recruits and supports LGBTQ candidates, that leaves only Alaska, Louisiana and Mississippi as states that have never elected an LGBTQ legislator.
“Torrey and Eddie sent a clear message that LGBTQ candidates can win in a deep red state while being their authentic selves,” said the Victory Fund’s president, former Houston Mayor Annise Parker. “Their presence in the state legislature can dilute the most toxic anti-LGBTQ voices and lead to more inclusive legislation.”
In New York, attorney Mondaire Jones won in a district of New York City suburbs and Ritchie Torres, a member of the New York City Council, won in the Bronx to make history as the first gay Black men elected to the U.S. House. Both are Democrats; Torres identifies as Afro Latino.
The two “will bring unique perspectives based on lived experiences never before represented in the U.S. Congress,” Parker said.
With the addition of Jones and Torres, there will be nine openly LGBTQ members of the House as of January. The seven incumbents all won their races.
In Delaware, Democrat Sarah McBride won her state Senate race with more than 70% of the vote and will become the first openly transgender state senator in the country.
“It is my hope that a young LGBTQ kid here in Delaware or really anywhere in this country can look at the results and know that our democracy is big enough for them, too,” McBride said as her victory was confirmed Tuesday night.
McBride interned at the White House under President Barack Obama and in 2016 became the first openly transgender person to give a speech at a major party convention.
Two other Democrats became the first openly transgender people to win seats in their states’ Houses: Taylor Small in Vermont and Stephanie Byers in Kansas.
Byers, a retired high school band teacher, expressed hope that her victory would encourage other transgender people in conservative Kansas.
“It helps those people who are transgender to reinforce that they are people who matter, they are people who are important and they’re people who can be successful in their lives,” she told The Wichita Eagle.
Before Tuesday’s election, there were four other transgender lawmakers in state legislatures nationwide, according to the Victory Fund.
In Georgia, Democrat Kim Jackson, a lesbian social justice advocate, became the first LGBTQ person to win a seat in the state Senate. Shevrin Jones, a gay former state representative, accomplished that same feat in Florida’s Senate. And in New York, Jabari Brisport, a gay math teacher, became the first openly LGBTQ person of color elected to the legislature.
In Oklahoma, Mauree Turner, a Democrat who is Black, Muslim and identifies as non-binary, won a seat in the state House.
“I have continuously lived a life where folks doubt my voice or the power that I have,” Turner said. “I wouldn’t have gotten far if I’d let something like that debilitate me.”
There also were some notable losses for LGBTQ candidates.
In Texas, Gina Ortiz Jones, a Democratic former Air Force intelligence officer who is lesbian, had been seen as having a strong chance of winning in a sprawling, 800-mile congressional district that runs from San Antonio to El Paso. The seat had been held by Rep. Will Hurd, the House’s only Black Republican, who opted not to seek re-election and endorsed Tony Gonzales, the GOP candidate who prevailed on Tuesday.
And in southwestern Michigan’s 6th District, Jon Hoadley, seeking to become the state’s first openly gay congressman, lost to 17-term GOP Rep. Fred Upton.
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In Europe, Calls Grow Louder for United Front Against ‘Political Islam’
Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz is urging fellow European leaders to form a common front against what some leaders call “political Islam.”
“I expect an end to the misconceived tolerance and for all the nations of Europe to finally realize how dangerous the ideology of political Islam is for our freedom and the European way of life,” Kurz told the German newspaper Die Welt. “The EU must focus much more strongly on the problem of political Islam in the future.”
The idea of forming a common European front against political Islam, first broached by France’s President Emmanuel Macron, is being embraced by other European leaders, including Italy’s foreign minister, who said the European Union should adopt a version of the USA Patriot Act, which gives security agencies greater surveillance powers.
Kurz said he will put the issue of political Islam on the agenda of a scheduled EU summit later this month. He said he had talked with Macron and “many other government leaders so that we can coordinate more closely within the EU.”
The Austrian chancellor’s comments came in the wake of Monday’s shooting rampage in Vienna where a gunman killed four people, the first major terrorist attack on Austrian soil since 1985. A military police officer stands guard near the scene of a terrorist attack in Vienna, Austria, Nov. 4, 2020.Austria’s security services are investigating whether the 20-year-old suspect, an Austrian-North Macedonian dual citizen with a previous terror conviction, had ties to Islamist militants in other countries, including Switzerland, where police arrested two people in connection with the Vienna attack. Swiss Justice Minister Karin Keller-Sutter told a local newspaper that the two were “colleagues” of the attacker, and the three men had met face-to-face recently.
The wave of attacks carried out by Islamist militants in Paris, Nice, Dresden and Vienna over the past few weeks is raising alarm, with European security officials saying they fear more violence.
Islamic State claimed responsibility for Monday’s attack in a statement issued through its Amaq News Agency, along with a video purportedly showing the gunman swearing allegiance to the terror group’s leader.
“The enemy, the Islamist terror, wants to split our society,” Kurz said. “But we will give no space to this hatred. Our enemies are not the members of a religious community. These are terrorists. This is not a fight between Christians and Muslims, or Austrians and migrants, but a fight between civilization and barbarity.”
Some leaders and countries warn that the stances taken by Kurz and Macron will be used by militants and others to paint Europe as anti-Islam.French President Emmanuel Macron visits the scene of a knife attack at Notre Dame church in Nice, France, Oct. 29, 2020.Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been feuding bitterly with Macron over the French president’s recent remarks that Islam is a religion “in crisis.” The French government’s renewal of its support for the right to show caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad has infuriated Ankara. Erdogan has accused Macron of being mentally unstable — an accusation that prompted Paris to recall its ambassador from Turkey.
Macron has repeatedly voiced his support for freedom of expression following the killing of teacher Samuel Paty in a Paris suburb last month. Paty was beheaded by a militant after showing cartoons from the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo to his students in a lesson about free speech.
Erdogan has urged a boycott of French products, as a backlash has mounted against Macron in the Muslim world. Retailers in the Gulf and Jordan have announced boycotts of French products.
France on Thursday condemned what it said were “declarations of violence” by Erdogan and raised the possibility of the EU imposing new sanctions on Ankara.
“There are now declarations of violence, even hatred, which are regularly posted by President Erdogan, which are unacceptable,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told Europe 1 radio.
He added, “There are means of pressure. There is an agenda of possible sanctions.”Tribute flowers are stacked outside the school where slain history teacher Samuel Paty was working, in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, northwest of Paris, France, Oct. 17, 2020.Macron underlined Wednesday he wants to target “Islamist separatism, never Islam,” and said he is not “stigmatizing French Muslims.”
“I will not allow anybody to claim that France or its government is fostering racism against Muslims,” he said in a letter published in Britain’s Financial Times.
Rallies have taken place in Bangladesh, Indonesia and other Muslim countries against Macron. Around 50,000 protesters took part in a demonstration in Bangladesh Monday, with some burning effigies of the French leader. In Jakarta, 2,000 Indonesians protested outside the French embassy, chanting, “No defamation of the Prophet Muhammad.”
Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio said Wednesday that Europe needed to take “measures that can prevent tragedies such as those in Nice and Vienna.” On his Facebook page he added, “In the face of this, Europe and Italy itself cannot continue with just words.”
Di Maio said Europe should implement tighter controls on mosques and take bolder steps to curb illegal immigration.
On Thursday, Italy announced it will step up border checks because of the latest attacks in Europe. Like other European countries, including Britain, authorities in Rome have upgraded their terrorism threat level to high. British security officials say they fear the attacks in Nice and Vienna might encourage other militants.
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No Winner Yet, But Biden’s Lead Grows in US Presidential Election
Americans waited Thursday to see if vote count updates from several states would make clear the winner of the presidential election, a day after wins in two battleground states put former Vice President Joe Biden within reach of victory and President Donald Trump’s campaign launched a series of legal challenges.U.S. news organizations have yet to project winners in six states: Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.Projections on Wednesday put Biden as the winner in Michigan and Wisconsin, two states Trump won in the 2016 election.“I’m not here to declare that we’ve won. But I am here to report that when the count is finished, we believe we will be the winners,” Biden said Wednesday afternoon. Biden could reach the 270 Electoral College vote threshold needed to win the election if he holds onto his leads in Arizona and Nevada.Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline.Download File360p | 9 MB480p | 12 MB540p | 16 MB720p | 31 MB1080p | 62 MBOriginal | 76 MB Embed” />Copy Download AudioIn the U.S. Electoral College system, the popular vote winner in each state — with two exceptions, Maine and Nebraska — receives all of that state’s electoral votes, which are allocated on the basis of population. States do not declare a winner before all votes are counted, but news organizations project winners when they conclude there are not enough uncounted votes remaining to change the outcome. Biden also led in the national popular vote with 71.6 million votes as of Thursday morning, compared to 68.1 million votes cast for Trump, according to Edison Research and The Associated Press. With the heavy early voting, the total 2020 count, by some estimates, could reach a U.S. record of 150 million or more.Who Declares Winner in US Presidential Election?Founding Fathers created a 4-month process of formally certifying the victor Trump pathTrump, however, still has a path to victory if he can take back any one of the states where Biden is leading. The president is leading in other states that have not yet been called: Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina and Alaska. By sweeping these, but not flipping a Biden-leaning state, Trump would end up with 268 Electoral College votes, just short of the total needed to win.In Pennsylvania, more than 1 million mail-in ballots are currently being counted. The Biden campaign said it has been winning 78% of the votes-by-mail in Pennsylvania. The results in that state are not expected until Thursday or Friday.The Biden campaign had urged supporters to vote by mail to stay safe during the coronavirus pandemic, while Trump has, without evidence, denounced mail-in voting as fraudulent and a scam.The Trump campaign said Wednesday it will request a vote recount in Wisconsin, where Biden leads by about 20,000 votes, and has filed a lawsuit seeking to stop the count in Michigan, where Biden is ahead by over 35,000 votes. The president’s surrogates in Pennsylvania, where Trump led at one point by about 389,000 votes, are also mounting legal challenges to stop the counting of mail-in ballots.The Trump campaign also filed a lawsuit in Georgia on Wednesday asking a judge to order state election officials to follow the law in storing and counting absentee ballots, according to The Associated Press.Early Wednesday morning, Trump claimed victory in the election, despite the fact the vote count was ongoing, and made unsubstantiated allegations of electoral fraud. “We’ll be going to the U.S. Supreme Court. We want all voting to stop. We don’t want them to find any ballots at 4 o’clock in the morning and add them to the list,” Trump said. Hans von Spakovsky, a former member of the Federal Election Commission and now with the conservative Heritage Foundation, said he expects legal disputes to contest “the counting of ballots, the rejection of absentee ballots, the extension of time for absentee ballots.”In Pennsylvania, he said, Trump’s team will likely challenge the legality of a state Supreme Court ruling that mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day can be counted if the Post Office delivers them in the days that follow.Partisan divideWhoever wins the presidency could face a divided Congress.Democrats have failed, so far, in their efforts to win control of the Senate, where Republicans currently hold a 53-47 majority.Democrats picked up seats in Colorado and Arizona, but lost a Democratic seat in Alabama, and failed to unseat what were expected to be vulnerable Republican Senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Susan Collins of Maine.Three Senate races remain close, but the outcomes in some states, such as Georgia, which will hold a run-off election in January to choose a senator, will likely not be known for some time.Democrats will retain control of the House of Representatives but did not expand their majority as projected by polls prior to the election.If Trump wins a second term, it is unlikely there “will be much chance of bipartisanship,” as the president has had a contentious relationship with congressional Democrats, said John Aldrich, a professor of politics at Duke University.Biden may be able to reach across the aisle, as he has emphasized in his campaign the need to heal the deep partisan divide in the nation, Aldrich said.“To make progress, we have to stop treating our opponents as enemies. We are not enemies,” Biden said on Wednesday.
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South African Adventurer Sets World Record to Aid Rural Students
Saray Khumalo, the first black African woman to conquer Mt. Everest, appears to have set a Guinness World Record for the most money raised during an eight-hour stationary cycling fundraiser. She will use the money to build digital libraries for rural children whose education has been impacted by COVID.From the highest peak of Mount Everest to a stationary bicycle, South African Saray Khumalo is breaking new records.The first black African woman to summit the world’s tallest mountain in 2019, Khumalo gave herself a new challenge – breaking a Guinness World Record for charity.Through eight hours of stationary cycling, Khumalo raised nearly $44,000 to build digital libraries for South Africa’s rural students whose education suffered when schools closed due to the pandemic.”I think we can’t afford to leave any children behind, if you look at what happened with the lockdown and COVID-19, schools that did not have digital material to support the students were really locked down, students were struggling, and we can’t afford that,” she said.Each digital library will have a mobile tablet computer with curriculum-based applications and teacher training modules.Education aid group “ischoolAfrica” helped fundraise for Khumalo and her team’s attempt on October 25 to break the Guinness World Record.Michelle Lissoos is director of the group.”We work in partnership with the schools, with donors, with sponsors to really change the way we teach and learn, and to look for solutions in a very challenging environment,” said Lissoos.After eight hours of spinning, Khumalo and her team felt confident, said team member Cindy van Wyk.“It was an awesome, awesome day, and around one o’clock, Saray and I knew we had broken the world record… It’s for the children, for the children of this beautiful country,” she said.While falling short of their personal goal to raise about $62,000, Khumalo said she will keep fundraising until they reach the peak of their goal – to build nine digital libraries for South African children.
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China’s Plan to Regulate Internet Lending is Behind Suspension of Ant’s Record IPO, Analysts Say
China has suspended the record-breaking $35 billion stock exchange listing of Ant Group, a spinoff corporation of Chinese e-commerce conglomerate Alibaba, because regulators say changes in the financial tech regulatory environment may cause it to fail to meet listing requirements.As such, analysts said the company’s current valuation target fails to reflect the country’s anticipated tightening of regulations on internet micro-lending. Lu Suiqi, deputy chair of Peking University’s department of finance, said that China’s pending move on internet micro-lending will have a negative impact on Ant Group’s future business model – creating risk that he believes the Shanghai Stock Exchange was trying to flag after last week’s frenzied bidding for the company’s shares.“Once the new regulation [on internet micro-lending] is implemented, its profit model will no longer sustain, which will lead to the downward revision of its valuation. If Ant (Group) were to go public as planned, its share prices may soon experience a free fall as its valuation would likely drop,” Lu told VOA on Wednesday.Rise of AntAnt Group, formerly known as Ant Financial, began with the name Alipay in 2004 – a third-party online payment tool for Alibaba’s e-commerce transactions.As of June, its flagship Alipay remains China’s largest digital payment platform, which serves more than one billion users and 80 million merchants with annual payment volume transactions reaching $17.6 trillion.A QR code of digital payment device Alipay by Ant Group, an affiliate of Alibaba Group Holding, is seen at a grocery shop inside a market, in Beijing, China, Nov. 2, 2020.Ant Group has diversified into internet micro-lending businesses, totaling, as of June, $253 billion in uncollateralized consumer loans, which were charging as high as 15%, and lending $60 billion to small- and micro-sized firms.The company was originally slated to go public on stock markets in Shanghai and Hong Kong on Thursday, issuing more than 3.4 billion new shares, priced at around $10 a share.World’s largest IPOAnt Group’s initial public offering (IPO), the world’s largest, was set to raise $35 billion and boost its market value to more than $310 billion, higher than that of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the country’s largest.Employees work at an office at the headquarters of Ant Group, an affiliate of Alibaba, in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, China, Oct. 29, 2020.Demand for Ant Group’s shares was so strong last week that it had to close its institutional pre-order book ahead of schedule.But on Monday, Jack Ma, founder of Ant Group’s parent firm, Alibaba, which owns 33% of Ant, and two other Ant executives, were summoned for “supervisory interviews” by China’s central bank, securities and foreign exchange regulators.That coincided with the regulators’ move to begin the month-long solicitation of public opinions toward the country’s draft regulation on internet micro-lending in preparation for the implementation of the new policy.Meanwhile, the Shanghai Stock Exchange announced late Tuesday it would postpone the company’s listing plan, saying in a statement that major issues, including changes in the financial technology regulatory environment, may cause Ant Group “to fail to meet the issuance and listing conditions or information disclosure requirements.”A dramatic twistAnt Group then decided to suspend its dual listings, which likely triggered the 7.5 percent drop of Alibaba’s Hong Kong-listed shares on Wednesday, after Alibaba’s New York-listed stocks closed 8.13 percent lower overnight.The regulators’ sudden turnabout also followed Ma’s strongly worded criticism at the Bund Summit of Chinese bankers and regulators in Shanghai in late October, where he criticized peer banks as operating with a pawn shop mentality and called global banking requirements on available cash reserves stated in the Basel Accords outdated. The Basel Accords refer to a framework on regulating the banking industry. They are named after a city in Switzerland.Peking University’s Lu said Ma’s blunt words were probably one reason regulators halted Ant Group’s $35 billion listing plan.But more importantly, Ant Group’s unregulated micro-lending business model puts its banking rivals at an unfair disadvantage, which the professor said China’s regulatory agencies should quickly fix.A cooling off periodLu added that the suspension will provide a cooling off period for investors to fairly assess Ant Group’s valuation if the company reportedly plans to stage a comeback in six months.Oliver Rui, professor of finance and accounting at China Europe International Business School in Shanghai, said he believes Ant Group will restart its IPO at a later date.But he agreed that the company’s over-lending practice is problematic.“Potential risk is, I think it is probably explained by government documents, is its over-leveraging… because Ant Group has only 3 billion [yuan] capital, but they [are] engaged in more than 300 billion [yuan] loans. [That’s] a huge leverage there,” Rui told VOA over the phone. Three-hundred-billion yuan is roughly the equivalent of $45 billion.Rui said there is speculation that Ant Group may be reclassified as a financial-sector stock, instead of a tech stock. If that happens, it will trigger another controversy if Ant Group becomes qualified to list on the Shanghai Stock Exchange’s Sci-Tech Innovation Board, analysts noted.To-be-regulated online lendingChu Haumin, professor of money and banking at National Chengchi University in Taipei, said China’s banking regulator had earlier learned a hard lesson from the country’s failing peer-to-peer (P2P) online lending industry.Therefore, its regulation on internet micro-lending will surely be implemented soon to better manage risks posed by emerging financial tech firms, he said.The Business Insider financial news website reported in August that China’s P2P industry totaled more than $218 billion in outstanding loans at its peak in 2018. The website reported many of the loans later defaulted. As of August, it reported the regulator’s statistics showed that its crackdown had resulted in $115 billion owed to investors in unpaid debt.Chu also said, no matter how risky Ant Group’s business model is, China’s securities regulator should have had factored in these risks before green-lighting its IPO plan.The last-minute decision to call off the IPO plan has tainted the reputation of both the Shanghai and Hong Kong stock exchanges, he said.“China has only developed its capital markets for a period of 20- to 30 years. Obviously, the supremacy of individual will still prevail. Certain personal consideration still affects how the [capital market] system works,” Chu said, adding that he believes Ma’s blunt words have angered the regulators.“I personally think that the last-minute decision to halt [Ant Group’s IPO plan] hurts the reputation of China’s capital markets,” he added.
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No Systemic Problems With US Election Day Proceedings, Foreign Observers Say
Despite the pandemic, the lawsuits and the acrimonious political rhetoric, foreign election observers had good news. They did not find systemic irregularity or wrongdoing by either major party.
Ursula Gacek, who headed a foreign team of observers that arrived in the U.S. in late September to study the conditions leading up to election day, noted there were isolated cases of irregular behavior – what she called “small incidents – personal, human incidents,” a couple of which were described in detail in footnotes to the report. “But nothing,” she said, “that would impact and really fundamentally shake the confidence in the system.”The outcome of the November 3 U.S. presidential election was still up for grabs Wednesday, when the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe election-monitoring team held its day-after news conference in Washington, D.C.
Michael Georg Link, head of the short-term observer mission from the group’s parliamentary assembly, praised the U.S. government, which invited the observer missions, for having “the strength to show that nobody is perfect.”
He added, “Every democracy . . . profits on exchanges of best practice that can help further improve and refine its electoral system where needed.”
The United States was obligated to invite the OSCE to observe its elections. Despite the Eurocentric name, both the United States and Canada, and a handful of Central Asian nations, are participating states in the OSCE, which was formed during the Cold War. OSCE membership comes with the obligation to invite election monitors from the other OSCE states as a means of holding all members to the same standards of transparency.
While Link’s team was in the United States to observe Election Day itself, Gacek’s team that arrived in the U.S. in late September and a number of them will stay on for the next 10 days or so – longer if the vote count is protracted.
A report issued Wednesday by both groups noted that an expansion of early voting and mail-in voting meant to make voting safer during the coronavirus pandemic led to more than 400 lawsuits filed in 44 different states, some of which continued even as the voting took place. That, Gacek said, had the effect of “changing the rules of the game whilst the game was already on.” Election monitors observe as absentee ballots are processed at the central counting board as vote counting in the general election continues, in Detroit, Michigan, Nov. 4, 2020.Beyond the pandemic’s complications, this year’s campaign rhetoric was seen as problematic, particularly from President Donald Trump. Of particular concern, the report said, was “the incumbent president’s use of discriminatory and pejorative statements against individuals on the grounds of their gender and origin.”
It also singled out Trump’s refusals to commit to a peaceful transfer of power, should he lose the election. And it said his expressions of mistrust in voting by mail might serve to weaken public confidence in state institutions.
In his comments to the media Wednesday, Link said pointedly: “Nobody – no politician, no elected official, nobody should limit the people’s right to vote. … Baseless allegations of systematic deficiencies, notably by the incumbent president, including on election night, harm public trust in democratic institutions.”
When asked more than once if this year’s elections offer evidence that American democracy is backsliding, both Link and Gacek demurred.
“We don’t even do a thumbs-up or thumbs-down,” Link said. “What this question implies is a political conclusion. … We don’t draw political conclusions.”
Gacek said the observers don’t even compare one election to another in the same country. The only time previous reports come into play is when they look at whether previous recommendations have been implemented. “That’s the only thing we carry forward,” she said. “But no ranking, no comparative analysis.”Voters stand in line outside a polling station on Election Day, in Mesa, Arizona, Nov. 3, 2020.
In the 18 years that OSCE teams have been coming to observe U.S. elections – starting with midterms in 2002 – Those recommendations include making campaign finance more transparent and restoring voting rights to convicted felons who have completed their prison sentences.
Few of those recommendations, however, seem to have been heeded by election officials – a critique noted in this year’s reporting.
And in that light, all the uncertainty about the validity and logistics of this year’s election might have been worth it – if only because they have drawn unprecedented media attention to the goal the observation teams are trying to accomplish.
“The recommendations are key,” Gacek said when asked about the effect of the media attention. “Some of the recommendations we have made in the past are quite longstanding.
“So, from that respect,” she continued, “the bigger the interest in our work … it’s only to the good of the most important people in this whole process – the people that we’re always rooting for. And that’s the American voter.”
Meanwhile, the vote count continues – and the observer teams’ work is not yet over. Members of the teams will spend the next few weeks studying their data – including a legal expert who will examine those 400 lawsuits – and arrive at this year’s recommendations.
Gacek says the teams will take as long as necessary before releasing the final report. One thing is certain: there will be some recommendations.
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Ignoring COVID-19 Surge, London Revelers Swarm Bars Before Lockdown
People in London packed pubs and bars late Wednesday for one last drink before all of England shutdown for one month in an attempt to halt a surge in COVID-19 infections.
Streets in London’s Soho neighborhood were blocked so pubs could put out tables for outdoor seating, but that appeared to be the only indication the city was in the midst of a pandemic. People sat shoulder to shoulder or stood arm-in-arm, and the only masks in sight were on the policemen standing by to make sure the revelry did not get out of hand.
One man told a reporter the scene felt like a bittersweet New Year’s Eve atmosphere — festive, but with the knowledge it would all be ending.
London and the rest of England began the shutdown at 1:00 am Thursday to combat a surge in new infections that scientists said could, if unchecked, cause more deaths than a first wave that forced a three-month lockdown earlier this year. On Wednesday, the United Kingdom reported 492 deaths from the virus, the most reported since mid-May.
The nation has the biggest official death toll in Europe from COVID-19 and is grappling with more than 20,000 new coronavirus cases a day. Scientists warned the “worst-case” scenario of 80,000 dead could be exceeded without action.
Under the lockdown, all non-essential businesses in England will be closed and people will be asked to work from home if possible until at least December 2nd. Masks and social distancing will be mandatory when venturing out.
The rest of the United Kingdom – Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland – have their own lockdown policies and enacted tougher health restrictions last month.
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Kosovo President Resigns to Face War Crimes Charges
Kosovo President Hashim Thaci has confirmed that he has been indicted for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Thaci told a news conference on Thursday that, because of the indictment, he was following through on a pledge to resign from his position.
Thaci was a commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army (UCK), an ethnic Albanian guerrilla group that fought against Belgrade’s security forces in the 1998-99 war.
A Specialist Prosecutor’s Office (SPO) has accused Thaci and other suspects of being “criminally responsible for nearly 100 murders,” as well as the “enforced disappearance of persons, persecution, and torture.”
The alleged crimes involved “hundreds of known victims of Kosovo Albanian, Serb, Roma, and other ethnicities and include political opponents,” according to the SPO.
Thaci has denied involvement in any war crimes.
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Biden Lead Growing in US Presidential Election
U.S. news organizations on Wednesday projected former Vice President Joe Biden as the winner in the battleground states of Michigan and Wisconsin, putting him almost within reach of victory in the U.S. presidential election.“I’m not here to declare that we’ve won. But I am here to report that when the count is finished, we believe we will be the winners,” Biden said Wednesday afternoon.Biden could reach the 270 Electoral College vote threshold needed to win the election if in addition to Michigan and Wisconsin, he holds on to his leads in Arizona and Nevada. All but Nevada went for Donald Trump in the 2016 election.In the U.S. Electoral College system, the popular vote winner in each state — with two exceptions, Maine and Nebraska — receives all of that state’s electoral votes, which are allocated on the basis of population.States do not declare a winner before all votes are counted, but news organizations project winners when they conclude there are not enough uncounted votes remaining to change the outcome.Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline.Download File360p | 9 MB480p | 12 MB540p | 16 MB720p | 31 MB1080p | 62 MBOriginal | 76 MB Embed” />Copy Download AudioBiden also led in the national popular vote with 70.4 million voters as of Wednesday, compared to 67.1 million votes cast for Trump, according to Edison Research and The Associated Press. With the heavy early voting, the total 2020 count, by some estimates, could reach a U.S. record of 150 million or more.Trump pathTrump, however, still has a path to victory if he can take back any one of the states where Biden is leading. The president is leading in other states that have not yet been called: Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina and Alaska. By sweeping these, but not flipping a Biden-leaning state, Trump would end up with 268 Electoral College votes, just short of the total needed to win.In Pennsylvania, more than 1 million mail-in ballots are currently being counted. The Biden campaign said it has been winning 78% of the votes-by-mail in Pennsylvania. The results in that state are not expected until Thursday or Friday.The Biden campaign had urged supporters to vote by mail to stay safe during the coronavirus pandemic, while Trump has, without evidence, denounced mail-in voting as fraudulent and a scam.The Trump campaign said Wednesday it will request a vote recount in Wisconsin, where Biden leads by about 20,000 votes, and has filed a lawsuit seeking to stop the count in Michigan, where Biden is ahead by over 35,000 votes. The president’s surrogates in Pennsylvania, where Trump led at one point by about 389,000 votes, are also mounting legal challenges to stop the counting of mail-in ballots.The Trump campaign also filed a lawsuit in Georgia on Wednesday asking a judge to order state election officials to follow the law in storing and counting absentee ballots, according to The Associated Press.Early Tuesday morning, Trump claimed victory in the election, despite the fact the vote count was ongoing, and made unsubstantiated allegations of electoral fraud.“We’ll be going to the U.S. Supreme Court. We want all voting to stop. We don’t want them to find any ballots at 4 o’clock in the morning and add them to the list,” Trump said during an early morning briefing Wednesday.Hans von Spakovsky, a former member of the Federal Election Commission and now with the conservative Heritage Foundation, said he expects legal disputes to contest “the counting of ballots, the rejection of absentee ballots, the extension of time for absentee ballots.”In Pennsylvania, he said, Trump’s team will likely challenge the legality of a state Supreme Court ruling that mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day can be counted if the Post Office delivers them in the days that follow.Partisan divideWhoever wins the presidency could face a divided Congress.Democrats have failed, so far, in their efforts to win control of the Senate, where Republicans currently hold a 53-47 majority.Democrats picked up seats in Colorado and Arizona, but lost a Democratic seat in Alabama, and failed to unseat what were expected to be vulnerable Republican Senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Susan Collins of Maine.Three Senate races remain close, but the outcomes in some states, such as Georgia, which will hold a run-off election in January to choose a senator, will likely not be known for some time.Democrats will retain control of the House of Representatives but did not expand their majority as projected by polls prior to the election.If Trump wins a second term, it is unlikely there “will be much chance of bipartisanship,” as the president has had a contentious relationship with congressional Democrats, said John Aldrich, a professor of politics at Duke University.Biden may be able to reach across the aisle, as he has emphasized in his campaign the need to heal the deep partisan divide in the nation, Aldrich said.“To make progress, we have to stop treating our opponents as enemies. We are not enemies,” Biden said on Wednesday.
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Another Night of Uncertainty as Americans Wait for Election Result
A day after voting ended, Americans continued to wait for the final vote tally in the presidential election. All eyes are now on a few battleground states where partial results are close and which may determine victory between Democratic nominee Vice President Joe Biden and incumbent Republican President Donald Trump. White House Correspondent Patsy Widakuswara has the latest.
Producer: Barry Unger
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Albanian IS Repatriation From Syria Will Be Long Journey, Experts Say
The recent repatriation of an Islamic State (IS) woman and four children from the Kurdish-controlled al-Hol camp in northeastern Syria is being applauded as an important step by Albania to deal with its citizens abroad who have been affiliated with the terror group.Some observers say they are expecting a long journey ahead for the country as it addresses the rehabilitation of IS families and their reentry into society.“Although modest in size, this transfer signals Albania’s shift toward a proactive approach for the repatriation of its citizens, especially children and women,” Adrian Shtuni, a Washington-based security and radicalization expert, told VOA.Roughly 13,500 foreign women and children are among about 70,000 IS families held by the Kurdish-led, U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in northeastern Syria, according to a report in April by the Crisis Group. Researchers in Albania say at least 70 members of the group hold Albanian citizenship.Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama said last week that he was in Beirut to bring home from Syria a 41-year-old woman, Floresha Rasha; her three children – Amar, Emel and Hatixhe Rasha; and another minor, Endri Dumani. The five Albanians were evacuated from the al-Hol camp in a process mediated by the Syrian Arab Red Crescent.Mark Ghraib, Albania’s honorary consul in Beirut, said the Albanians had been given medical checkups and provided with proper care. Authorities have not disclosed many details about the health of the evacuees but said Floresha Rasha uses a wheelchair because of “severe injuries” and will need immediate surgery upon her arrival in Tirana.Floresha Rasha will face investigation to determine if she was involved in any terrorist attacks during her seven years in Syria, according to the Albanian Special Anti-Corruption Prosecution. The four children, however, do not have any criminal liability under Albanian law because of their age.FILE – A man, suspected of having collaborated with the Islamic State group, is greeted by family members upon his release from the Kurdish-run Alaya prison in the northeastern Syrian city of Qamishli, on Oct. 15, 2020.Complex operationKurdish authorities repeatedly have called on countries to repatriate their citizens, saying imprisoned IS fighters and their families are a burden on their limited resources.Albanian Interior Minister Sander Lleshaj said in September that the return of the Albanian adults would face legal challenges because “they are considered the losing side of an armed battle.” He said the government was on track, though, to bring home 28 children.The government in Tirana first planned to repatriate dozens of its citizens in August 2019. But Albanian State Minister Elisa Spiropali subsequently announced the process was suspended because of the changing geopolitical situation in Syria following Turkey’s military operations and the partial withdrawal of U.S. troops in October 2019.The halt prompted a protest in September by relatives of the IS children, who said the government had to put more effort into bringing home minors who are citizens.Following the protest, Lleshaj went to Beirut to discuss with his Lebanese counterparts the possible repatriation of children and women from the camps“For children, we are trying to save them from that hell,” Lleshaj told Albania’s national Top Channel in September.Rights groups describe al-Hol camp as “massively” crowded and unsanitary. Doctors Without Borders FILE – Two women, center, reportedly wives of Islamic State group fighters, wait with other women and children at the al-Hol camp in al-Hasakah governorate in northeastern Syria, Feb. 7, 2019.Mironova also added that another motivation for these women who prefer to stay is to raise their children in the camp, which they consider an Islamic land, thinking that their countries do not have Islamic practices.Some may not seek returnSimilarly, Adrian Shtuni says the assumption that all of the Albanian women being held in the camp are eager to return home may not be accurate.“Substantiated media reports that a number of Albanian women went into hiding to evade repatriation point to a less well-understood aspect of the reality in camps,” Shtuni told VOA.“This highlights once more that though repatriation in itself is a complex effort, it is only the beginning of a long-term process of rehabilitation from trauma and violent extremism required to prepare returnees for reentry into mainstream society,” Shtuni added.Rama in the past has said his Cabinet is well-prepared to hold IS adult members accountable, and to prepare for the return of the brainwashed children into society.In a news conference last week, Rama announced his government rehabilitation program for children was being assisted by the children’s relatives and was equipped with the necessary care, psychologists, teachers and doctors.“The progress of these children will be monitored. Work will be done step by step to integrate them into the social structures, based on the opinion that will be given by doctors and psychologists,” Rama added.More than 100 Albanians are reported to have joined the conflicts in Iraq and Syria, alongside other ethnic Albanians from Kosovo and North Macedonia. The U.S. State Department’s 2019 Country Report on Terrorism determined the terrorism threat in Albania came mainly from foreign fighters returning from Iraq and Syria, along with Albanian youth being radicalized to terrorism.VOA’s Albanian Service contributed to this report.
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Malawi Plans Embassy in Jerusalem
Malawi will establish an embassy in Jerusalem, its foreign minister announced during a visit to Israel.The move represents “a bold and significant step,” the minister, Eisenhower Mkaka, said in a video statement Tuesday. It would make Malawi the first African country in decades to open an embassy in Jerusalem, a city considered holy to the Jewish, Christian and Muslim religions.“I look forward to your embassy opening soon, and I’m sure that more African leaders will follow this decision,” Israeli Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi said in appearing with Mkaka, Reuters reported.Malawi is one of few African countries to have maintained continuous diplomatic ties with Israel since the central African country’s independence in 1964, according to The Jerusalem Post. It reports that 16 countries – including Ivory Coast, Kenya and what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo – closed embassies in Jerusalem following the 1973 Middle East War. Those that later reopened embassies did so in the commercial hub of Tel Aviv.U.S. President Donald Trump sparked controversy for recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in late 2017 and shifting the U.S. Embassy there from Tel Aviv the following May. Guatemala soon followed suit, and a handful of other countries have at least publicly contemplated similar moves.US Embassy’s Move in Israel Draws Criticism From Around the World
The U.N. Security Council is set to hold an emergency meeting Tuesday to discuss the situation in Gaza after the deadliest day of violence there between Israel and the Palestinians in five years.U.N.
Malawi’s embassy plans in Jerusalem mark a step by President Lazarus Chakwera, who took office in June, “to establish full diplomatic relations with certain strategic partners,” his communications director, Sean Kampondeni, told VOA in a phone interview.African Union chairperson Moussa Faki Mahamat at the time had denounced the U.S. Embassy move, saying it would “only increase tensions in the region” and further complicate resolving the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He said the African Union shared the Palestinian people’s desire for an independent state, with east Jerusalem as its capital.Kampondeni said that while Chakwera is “very supportive” of a two-state solution, the president also “has made it clear that Malawi will always pursue diplomatic relations on the basis of what is in the best interest of Malawi.”Kampondeni noted that since Malawi’s independence in 1964, the country has maintained diplomatic relations with Israel.“Malawi has had very warm and cordial relations with various nations in the Arab world,” he added, “and President Chakwera continues to advocate for the same in the interest of peace in the region.”Relations between Israel and many Arab and Muslim states have remained hostile for decades because of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which Palestinians want as land for a future state. Until this year, only Egypt and Jordan had made peace with Israel.In October, Sudan’s transitional government – pressured by Washington – reached an agreement with Israel to normalize relations, though the deal did not mention embassies.Malawi’s embassy is expected to open sometime in 2021. Kampondeni said the Malawi and Israeli foreign ministers were discussing when Israel would open an embassy in Malawi’s capital, Lilongwe.Among the central African country’s 20 million residents, 77% are Christian and nearly 14% are Muslim, according to a U.S. State Department report. Jews – along with Hindus, Bahai’s, Rastafarians and Sikhs – account for less than 6%.This report originated in VOA’s English to Africa service.
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