President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has complained about an international conspiracy forming against Turkey, and he says it’s attempting to frustrate his projection of Turkish power and influence abroad.Domestic and foreign critics counter that there isn’t yet a conspiracy, but if one does emerge, it largely will be due to his picking fights with his country’s neighbors, including the European Union and Turkey’s NATO allies. They are exasperated by his threats, whenever he is crossed, to throw open the doors for migrants to once again flock into Europe.Erdogan has in recent months frequently blamed invisible, malevolent foreign enemies for Turkey’s sharply deteriorating economy. For most of this year, foreign investors have shunned the country, and an already weak Turkish lira plunged last month to record lows in value against the dollar and euro. Western critics say Turkish economic woes are the result of his own mishandling of the economy.FILE PHOTO: A merchant counts Turkish lira banknotes at the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul, Turkey, March 29, 2019.Additionally, the Turkish leader and his aides have accused European nations of ganging up to sabotage his geopolitical ambitions, especially in the eastern Mediterranean, where Ankara is locked in an escalating maritime quarrel with Greece and Cyprus that risks getting out of hand over lucrative gas and oil drilling rights.The huge energy potential of the eastern Mediterranean has drawn other powers in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East into the destabilizing standoff. Western Europeans and Turkey’s other regional neighbors say maritime law is on the side of Athens and Cyprus, accusing Ankara of brinkmanship in a deadlock that’s seen opposing warships come close to clashing.“We see ourselves as an inseparable part of Europe,” Erdogan told members of his ruling Justice and Development Party [AKP] in a speech last month. “However, this does not mean that we will bow down to overt attacks to our country and nation, veiled injustices and double standards,” he added.Civilians flee from Idlib toward the north to find safety inside Syria near the border with Turkey, Feb. 15, 2020.In October, as European criticism mounted about Turkish adventurism, including a military intervention into northern Syria aimed at dislodging Syrian Kurds, Erdogan, retorted, “Hey EU, wake up. I say it again: If you try to frame our operation as an invasion, our task is simple — we will open the doors and send 3.6 million migrants to you.”Conspiracy theories have long been a feature of cultural and political life in Turkey, certainly since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. And during his 17-year-long rule, political critics have accused Erdogan of stoking the long-held Turkish fear of being surrounded by foreign powers and beset by shadowy outside forces eager to weaken the country and to prevent it from restoring Ottoman greatness.“In fueling the current disputes in the Eastern Mediterranean, the [Turkish] leadership is using a narrative revolving around themes such as conquest—referring to the 1453 Ottoman conquest of Constantinople, today’s Istanbul—battles and wars, a huge [and undefined] foreign conspiracy, and a return to glory,” Marc Pierini, an analyst at the research group Carnegie Europe, noted in a posted commentary.Erdogan’s frequent complaint about an anti-Turkish foreign conspiracy risks turning into a self-fulfilling prophecy, warn some analysts and Western diplomats.French President Emmanuel Macron greets Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan during a joint news conference at the Elysee Palace in Paris, France, Jan. 5, 2018.From a diplomatic row with NATO ally France over the enforcement of an international arms embargo on Libya, to the deployment of special forces and Ankara-paid mercenaries to the strife-torn North Africa country, from military adventurism in northern Syria and Nagorno-Karabakh, to Turkey’s illegal drilling in Cypriot waters, the Turkish leader is amassing an impressive list of opponents.Ankara seems ever more willing to challenge allies and enemies alike in pursuit of a larger role on the world stage. If Western nations, and Turkey’s near neighbors, start coordinating containment strategies, it will be as a consequence of Erdogan’s aggressive aim to expand, through assertive diplomacy and military means, Turkish influence in the Mediterranean, Aegean and Black Sea, say Western diplomats and analysts.There are increasing signs that Turkey’s NATO partners are tiring with Erdogan’s assertive geopolitical ambitions and irredentist claims against his neighbors. “The totality of Turkey’s policies and actions have now reached a point of dangerous escalation,” according to analysts Heather Conley and Rachel Ellehuus of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a research group in Washington.They noted in a commentary for CSIS that Erdogan’s actions “substantially challenge the coherence of NATO’s collective defense posture in the Mediterranean and weaken its political cohesion.”“To avoid this,” they say, Western allies “should approach the growing instability in the Mediterranean through an integrative policy that seeks to de-escalate tensions and define, with Ankara, common interests by identifying some agreed principles to guide regional behavior.” They add: “If Turkey is unwilling to join such an initiative, greater transatlantic tensions lie ahead.”NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, left, and Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu speak to the media after their talks in Ankara, Turkey, Oct. 5, 2020.Turkey’s wrangling with allies and neighbors have increased since 2015, when Erdogan adopted as policy the so-called Blue Homeland Doctrine, originally drawn up by Turkish Admiral Cem Gurdeniz in 2006. The doctrine outlined an ambitious goal to expand Turkish influence with an aim to improve access to important energy and other economic resources. Its implementation has seen Erdogan resorting to ad hoc arrangements, reversing bilateral understandings, and backsliding on multilateral agreements and Turkish obligations to NATO—creating even greater regional instability, say critics.Despite his complaints about an anti-Turkey international conspiracy, some analysts say Erdogan has been helped by the absence of coordination between Western allies and by their circumspection.They say Western officials have held off imposing further sanctions on Turkey or enforcing sanctions that have already been announced. In July, EU foreign ministers asked the bloc’s diplomatic corps to draw up possible enforcement options for sanctions imposed on Turkey for its gas and oil drilling activities in Cypriot territorial waters and what they see as Ankara’s “gunboat diplomacy” in the eastern Mediterranean.A man reads walks past Cypriot newspaper with a front page carrying a photo montage about Turkey’s actions over Cyprus and international companies exploration for gas in the eastern Mediterranean in capital Nicosia, Cyprus, Feb. 13, 2018.Likewise, the U.S. has held back. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said Turkey’s illegal drilling in Cypriot waters is “unacceptable,” but the Trump administration hasn’t followed up with concrete action and has not yet imposed sanctions for Turkey’s recent purchase of the Russian S-400 missile defense system, an acquisition seen as breaching Ankara’s NATO commitments.Western diplomats and analysts say there are increasing signs, though, that Turkey’s NATO partners are wary of Erdogan’s adventurism and go-it-alone strategy. Impatience is likely to build quickly next year when U.S. President-elect Joe Biden enters the White House.Erdogan clashed often with Donald Trump, but Washington backed off confronting Ankara and opted for backroom deal-making. The two leaders were at least united in antipathy toward the EU. But that won’t be the case next year, and Erdogan is likely to find himself dealing with a less forgiving U.S. leader, according to Western diplomats.FILE – Turkish Finance Minister Berat Albayrak speaks during a conference to ease investor concerns about Turkey’s economic policy, in Istanbul, Turkey, Nov. 8, 2020.Since the U.S. election, Erdogan has shown signs he knows he will need to adjust. Hours after the U.S. election, Erdogan’s son-in-law, Berat Albayrak, resigned as Turkey’s economy minister. Albayrak had a close friendship with Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law.The Turkish president has also since the election vowed to launch a period of economic and legal reforms, saying he will prioritize legislation to strengthen democracy and improve human rights, an announcement widely seen as anticipating the changed circumstances in Washington. Biden has promised to host next year a global Summit for Democracy.
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Month: December 2020
Sweden Closes High Schools Until Early January to Stem COVID-19 Infections
Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven announced Thursday that high schools would switch to distance learning beginning Monday through early January to slow the rate of COVID-19 infections in the country. Lofven made the announcement at a Stockholm news conference alongside Swedish Education Minister Anna Ekstrom. He said he hoped the move would have a “breaking effect” on the rate of COVID-19 infections. He added it was not intended to extend the Christmas break for students and he said he was putting his trust in them that they would continue to study from home. The distance learning will be in effect until January 6.People walk past shops under Christmas decorations during the novel coronavirus pandemic in Stockholm, Dec. 3, 2020.After a lull during summer, Sweden has seen COVID-19 cases surge over the past couple of months, with daily records repeatedly set. Deaths and hospitalizations have also risen sharply. Meanwhile, earlier Thursday, Swedish State Epidemiologist Anders Tegnell told reporters he did not think masks were necessary, just two days after the World Health Organization (WHO) expanded its advice to use masks as part of a comprehensive strategy to combat the spread of COVID-19. Tegnell said that in some situations, masks might be necessary, but that the current situation in Sweden did not require it. He said the evidence for wearing a mask was weak and he believed social distancing was much more important. In its expanded guidelines, the WHO said that where the virus was circulating, people — including children and students age 12 or older — should always wear masks in shops, workplaces and schools that lack adequate ventilation, and when receiving visitors at home in poorly ventilated rooms. On Thursday, Sweden reported 6,485 new COVID-19 cases and 35 new virus-related deaths, bringing the nation’s total COVID-19 fatalities to 7,007.
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Report: US in Talks With Huawei Official on Resolving Criminal Charges
The U.S. Justice Department is discussing a deal with lawyers for Huawei’s finance chief, Meng Wanzhou, that would allow her to return to China from Canada, a person familiar with the matter said.Negotiations between Meng’s lawyers and the Justice Department picked up after the U.S. presidential election, the person said, but it is still unclear what kind of deal can be struck.Meng does not think she did anything wrong and therefore is reluctant to make admissions that she does not think are true, the person said.The source said the talks did not appear to be part of a larger deal with Huawei.The Wall Street Journal first reported on the possible deal.Meng, 48, was arrested in Canada in December 2018 on a warrant from the United States. She is facing charges of bank fraud for allegedly misleading HSBC Holdings Plc about Huawei’s business dealings in Iran, causing the bank to break U.S. sanctions.Justice Department spokesman Marc Raimondi declined to comment. Huawei did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comment. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s office and Canada’s Foreign Ministry had no immediate comment.
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USAGM Told to Investigate Allegations of Wrongdoing at Agency
A federal office set up to protect whistleblowers has ordered the federal agency that oversees Voice of America and other independent news networks to investigate allegations of wrongdoing by its own top officials.The December 2 letters, signed by an attorney in the Office of Special Counsel, said U.S. Agency for Global Media head Michael Pack has been ordered to investigate after the OSC found “substantial likelihood of wrongdoing” based on details in whistleblower complaints.Since Pack’s appointment to the USAGM in June, network heads have been fired or resigned, Pack has stopped approving visa renewals for the agency’s foreign journalists, and his political appointees have conducted internal investigations of reporters and editors.The letters are a further blow to the new CEO after a federal court issued a preliminary injunction prohibiting Pack and his appointees from interfering with editorial decisions or violating journalists’ First Amendment rights.Pack and his appointees were also barred from conducting investigations into news content or journalists, and from making personnel decisions involving individual staff members. The order is a stopgap measure to prevent further actions being taken until a legal complaint that alleges wrongdoing is resolved.FILE – Michael Pack, who then was President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the U.S. Agency for Global Media, is seen at his confirmation hearing, on Capitol Hill, in Washington, Sept. 19, 2019. Pack’s nomination was confirmed June 4, 2020.Pack was confirmed by the Senate as CEO in June with a three-year term. However, after Pack fired several news executives upon his arrival, a spokesperson for the Joe Biden presidential election campaign told VOA that if elected, Biden would fire Pack.Pack failed to appear for a September House of Representatives hearing examining the controversy at USAGM, drawing criticism from both Republican and Democratic lawmakers.Representative Eliot Engel of New York, chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told VOA last month, “I’m confident the Biden administration will appoint a competent leader at USAGM who understands our international broadcasting efforts, respects the law and can reverse the damage Mr. Pack has done during his short tenure.”The OSC told VOA it was unable to comment on or confirm open investigations.In the letters, the OSC said that while it believed the complaints appeared to show likelihood of wrongdoing, the investigation remained open.Heads of federal agencies are required by law to investigate cases in which the OSC believes there appears to be substantial likelihood of wrongdoing.The role that Pack might play in investigating USAGM actions under his watch wasn’t clear.Often the Office of Inspector General is asked to handle the investigation, but agency heads have discretion to use other investigative bodies.
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Federal Lawsuit Alleges Facebook Discriminates Against US Workers
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a lawsuit Thursday saying social media giant Facebook was discriminating against U.S. workers and hiring cheaper foreign workers instead.Many of the temporary workers the DOJ accused Facebook of giving hiring preferences to were foreign workers with H-1B visas.H1-B visas allow U.S. companies to hire foreign workers in “specialty occupations.” Critics say companies, particularly in technology, exploit the visa program to hire foreigners for less money.The DOJ further alleged that Facebook “refused” to consider qualified U.S. workers for over 2,600 open jobs paying an average annual salary of $156,000.The move came after a two-year investigation into Facebook’s hiring practices, The New York Times reported.“Our message to workers is clear: If companies deny employment opportunities by illegally preferring temporary visa holders, the Department of Justice will hold them accountable,” Eric S. Dreiband, assistant attorney general for the civil rights division, told the Times. “Our message to all employers — including those in the technology sector — is clear: You cannot illegally prefer to recruit, consider or hire temporary visa holders over U.S. workers.””Facebook has been cooperating with the DOJ in its review of this issue,” company spokesman Daniel Roberts told Reuters. “And while we dispute the allegations in the complaint, we cannot comment further on pending litigation.”Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, with a personal wealth of about $100 billion, has long advocated for immigrants to work in the tech sector, the Times reported. In 2013, he created Fwd.us, a nonprofit advocating steps to make it easier to hire immigrants for technology jobs, according to the Times.The DOJ case against Facebook is another problem for Silicon Valley, which has come under fire in recent years for antitrust violations, anticompetitive practices, privacy concerns and content that some find offensive.
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Outgoing US Intel Chief Warns China Seeking Global Domination
U.S. President Donald Trump’s top intelligence official is calling out China, describing the government in Beijing as the most pressing threat to freedom and democracy since the Second World War.The warning from Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe is not the first of its kind from top U.S. intelligence or law enforcement officials, who for years have cautioned that China’s expanding economic and military strength presented a growing danger to the United States. But this call to action may be the most dire.FILE – Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe arrives to brief congressional leaders, on Capitol Hill in Washington, July 2, 2020.”Beijing is preparing for an open-ended period of confrontation with the U.S.,” Ratcliffe wrote in an opinion piece published late Thursday by The Wall Street Journal. “Washington should also be prepared.”Ratcliffe, who was sworn in this past May after narrowly winning confirmation in the U.S. Senate, has consistently named China as one of his top intelligence priorities. Trump Loyalist Sworn in as US Director of National Intelligence White House expresses hope former Texas Congressman John Ratcliffe will follow in the footsteps of Richard Grenell, the outgoing ambassador to Germany who as acting DNI side-stepped lawmakers to push ahead with reforms
But in the months leading up to November’s presidential election, he repeatedly clashed with Democratic lawmakers, some of whom criticized him for promoting a “false narrative” by insisting China was a greater threat than Russia. .@SpeakerPelosi@RepAdamSchiff also charge @POTUS administration, @DNI_Ratcliffe of seeking to promote a “false narrative” w/#Russia#China#Iran & #Election2020″Only one country – Russia – is actively undertaking a range of measures to undermine the presidential election”— Jeff Seldin (@jseldin) August 29, 2020
“I don’t mean to minimize Russia,” Ratcliffe told Fox Business News this past August, defending his record. “But the threats that we face from China are significantly greater … anyone who sees intelligence knows that.”Economic, technological, military threatsUntil now, many of the warnings from intelligence and law enforcement officials have focused on China’s efforts to overtake the U.S. economy.According to the FBI, the number of economic espionage cases involving China has risen by about 1,300% over the past decade.As of July, the bureau said it was investigating more than 1,000 cases involving China related to either the actual or attempted theft of U.S. technology.But officials have also grown more wary of Beijing’s military, naming China, along with Russia, as one of the two main threats to the post-World War II international order in the latest U.S National Defense Strategy.FILE – Soldiers of People’s Liberation Army march in formation with a Chinese Communist Party flag during a rehearsal before a military parade marking the 70th founding anniversary of People’s Republic of China, in Beijing, China, Oct. 1, 2019.And where U.S. military officials once saw China as a lesser threat than Russia, they say that is no longer the case.”I definitely see the People’s Liberation Army Air Force as the leader as the adversary,” General Kenneth Wilsbach, the commander of U.S. Pacific Air Forces, told defense reporters last month, pointing to “unprecedented advancements” by Beijing.”Not that the Russians are a pushover, because they have considerable [air power] capability,” Wilsbach said. “I just believe the Chinese have outpaced them.”‘The intelligence is clear’Now, less than two months before President-elect Joe Biden installs his own director of national intelligence, Ratcliffe is hoping to make sure the Trump administration’s warnings about the threat from China do not go unheeded.”The intelligence is clear,” Ratcliffe wrote. “Beijing intends to dominate the U.S. and the rest of the planet economically, militarily and technologically.””There are no moral or ethical boundaries to their pursuit of power,” he added. “China has even conducted human testing on members of the People’s Liberation Army in hope of developing soldiers with biologically enhanced capabilities.”Ratcliffe argues the consequences of China’s refusal to play by any rules even extends to U.S. families. It is estimated the damage from economic espionage and subterfuge is in the hundreds of billions of dollars annually, costing the average U.S. household $4,000 to $6,000 a year.And all the while, Chinese influence operations have expanded, Ratcliffe argues, targeting members of Congress and their aides “with six times the frequency of Russia and 12 times the frequency of Iran.”U.S. counterintelligence officials said Wednesday that China’s agents already have started targeting members of the incoming Biden administration. Chinese officials called the charge “ludicrous.”
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Council of Europe Tells Poland: ‘LGBTI Are People, Not an Ideology’
A leading European human rights organization called out the Polish government Thursday with a memorandum condemning the Eastern European country’s treatment and stigmatization of its LGBTI citizens.In a report, Dunja Mijatovic, the Council of Europe’s commissioner of human rights, criticized Poland’s ruling nationalist Law and Justice party for eroding conditions and treatment of LGBTI people. Mijatovic explicitly addressed President Andrzej Duda for what the report called his endorsement of hate, after Duda called the LGBTI movement an “ideology worse than communism.”FILE – Surrounded by migrants, Dunja Mijatovic, the Council of Europe commissioner for human rights, addresses reporters at the Vucjak refugee camp outside Bihac, northwestern Bosnia, Dec. 3, 2019.”Stigmatization and hate speech carry a real risk of legitimizing violence,” Mijatovic said in the report. “LGBTI are people, not an ideology.”The commissioner cited instances wherein propaganda, hateful rhetoric and social exclusion has been encouraged by Polish authorities, citing the declaration of “LGBTI-free zones” by local authorities in six Polish cities as promoting hate and perpetuating the stigmatization of the community.Reuters reported Thursday that the Polish government released a statement rejecting Mijatovic’s criticisms, saying the institution of marriage as a union between men and women is manifest in the Polish constitution. Previously, Law and Justice party chief Jaroslaw Kaczynski called LGBTI people a “threat to the traditional family.”Mijatovic called for the rejection of Polish laws pending before parliament that she said target LGBTI people.“Public authorities, politicians and opinion leaders in Poland [should] not to engage in hate speech or any discourse denigrating LGBTI people, and … firmly denounce such actions and statements, including when they come from private parties,” she said.The Council of Europe is an international organization founded after World War II to uphold human rights.
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Displaced Nearing 400,000 in Mozambique’s Islamist Insurgency
Aid groups in northern Mozambique say attacks on civilians have displaced close to 400,000 people during three years of Islamist terrorism.Fifty-year-old Matumba Mussa said armed men showed up at his house in the port town of Mocímboa da Praia one October night and demanded he call his relatives. After his three brothers arrived, the men set fire to his house and three others, then took his brothers into the forest, according to Mussa. Three days later, he said, dismembered bodies were found in the forest.Insurgents linked to Islamic State took over Mocímboa da Praia in August – one of a series of brazen attacks this year in Mozambique’s northern Cabo Delgado province. Mussa fled south to the provincial capital’s Metuge refugee camp, becoming one of close to 400,000 people displaced by the violence since 2017. The United Nations World Food Program’s representative in Cabo Delgado, Cristina Graziani, said they are working to assist those in need. “The latest, official count is a bit above 366,000 people displaced in Cabo Delgado, in the province,” she said. “And that has obviously been an increase in the past six months. So, WFP has adjusted its program to try to cater [for] the needs, the emergency food needs, of these people. … Our monthly food ration covers 80% of the basic food needs of a family of five.” As the insurgency and the number of its victims expand, concerns about the displaced are growing. Borges Nhamire of Mozambique’s Center for Public Integrity — which promotes democracy and human rights — said the government needs to do more for displaced civilians in Cabo Delgado. People are fleeing using their own means and the government does not have any logistics in place to evacuate people from conflict zones to safer areas like Pemba, he said. The government is there to receive refugees, he added, but they end up living with host families because there is no place to sleep. FILE – Soldiers from the Mozambican army patrol the streets after security in the area was increased, following a two-day attack from suspected Islamists in October 2017, in Mocimboa da Praia, Mozambique, March 7, 2018.Cabo Delgado’s fast-growing Islamist threat was underscored when local media reported in November the insurgents killed scores of people in a series of brutal attacks. Mozambique’s state media reported militants in Muatide village rounded up more than 50 people, mostly young men, and beheaded them on a football pitch. In April, local media reported militants shot or beheaded 52 young people in Muidumb district after they refused to join their ranks. Mozambican National Defense Minister Jaime Neto told Radio Mozambique last month that they are fighting to eliminate the Islamist threat, adding that people must be patient and trust the security and defense forces. Cabo Delgado has vast oil and gas deposits estimated to be worth $60 billion. Due to the threats from militants, though, development of the natural resource has been slow. The Islamist attacks began in October 2017 when armed men overran police stations in Mocimboa da Praia. The insurgents and military have been fighting for territory ever since, leaving up to 2,000 people dead and hundreds of thousands displaced.
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VP-Elect Harris Picks Tina Flournoy to Be Her Chief of Staff
Vice President-elect Kamala Harris has named Tina Flournoy, a veteran Democratic strategist and aide to the Clintons, as her chief of staff, the transition team announced Thursday.
Flournoy’s appointment as Harris’ top staffer adds to a team of advisers led by Black women. Harris, who is of Jamaican and Indian heritage, is the nation’s first female vice president. Flournoy joins Ashley Etienne as Harris’ communications director and Symone Sanders as her chief spokeswoman.
Flournoy has served as chief of staff for former President Bill Clinton since 2013. That follows a career that took her to top posts at the Democratic National Committee, in the presidential campaigns of former Vice President Al Gore and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and with the American Federation of Teachers.
Bill Clinton called her appointment “great news for our country.”
“Tina Flournoy is incredibly smart, strong, and skillful, with deeply rooted values. She’s done a wonderful job as my chief of staff for nearly 8 years, and I will miss her—but I’m thrilled about VP-elect Harris’ choice,” he tweeted.
Harris also announced Rohini Kosoglu as her domestic policy adviser and Nancy McEldowney as her national security adviser. Kosoglu had served as Harris’ top adviser during the general election campaign. McEldowney is a former ambassador to Bulgaria and has 30 years of service in various diplomatic and foreign affairs jobs.
“Together with the rest of my team, today’s appointees will work to get this virus under control, open our economy responsibly and make sure it lifts up all Americans, and restore and advance our country’s leadership around the world,” Harris said in a statement.
Former colleagues describe Flournoy as a no-nonsense operative who has both policy and political chops. Matt McKenna, who was Bill Clinton’s spokesperson from 2007 to 2015, noted the historic nature of Harris’ candidacy and said Flournoy will skillfully manage competing demands for her time.
“(Harris) represents so many things to so many people, and they’re all going to want some of her time. She needs someone who can honor the historic nature of her candidacy and her victory and her place in the world,” he said.
Harris has regularly joined President-elect Joe Biden and offered remarks at briefings on the economy, the coronavirus and health care since the two won the November election. The transition team has yet to announce whether she’ll focus on any specific issues or initiatives.
Flournoy has never held a position with Harris. But Minyon Moore, another former Clinton aide and close friend of Flournoy’s, is assisting Harris with staffing during the transition. It’s unclear if any of Harris’ former Senate staff or longtime political advisers will join the vice president’s office.
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Greece Slams Turkey for Deadly Migrant Vessel Sinking
Greece has lashed out at Turkey, accusing it of pushing distressed asylum seekers into Greek waters, endangering their lives during risky sea crossings to Europe. Athens says such conduct highlights Turkey’s failure to keep its end of a deal with the European Union to stop illegal migration. There has been no comment from Ankara.
Migration Minister Notis Mitarachi voiced the accusation as crews from Greece’s Hellenic Coast Guard recovered the bodies of two women, one of them 30 years old. They drowned after a dinghy packed with 32 other migrants capsized in high seas along the narrow strait that divides Greece and Turkey.
The surviving migrants, including three toddlers, were Somalis, rescued in freezing waters off the island of Lesbos.
Survivor accounts, according to Mitarachi, suggest that while Turkish authorities responded to a distress signal placed by the Somali migrants, they refused to offer assistance.
Instead, the minister said, the Turkish coast guard pushed the craft into Greek waters, watching it sink – a response Greece says warrants a stiff response from the European Union.
Mitarachi said the notion alone of allowing safe passage to a vessel of this type that fails to meet fundamental safety requirements is inconceivable.
But more importantly, Mitarachi said in a speech to parliament, such conduct violates a key 2016 agreement Turkey signed with the European Union, obligating it to stop illegal migrant inflows, not to facilitate them or imperil the lives of asylum seekers.
Calls placed to the Turkish embassy in Athens were not returned.
It is not the first time such accusations have been leveled against Ankara.
In recent months, both Greece and Turkey have repeatedly accused each other of waging illegal pushbacks of refugees and mistreating them.
Additionally, the United Nations’ refugee agency has called out Greece for allegedly underreporting land and sea arrivals from Turkey – a move believed to provide local authorities a free hand to conduct illegal pushbacks.
Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, migration has dropped drastically.
But officials in Athens say the deadly sinking illustrates just how flawed and fragile the migration deal is, not least, as Europe remains reluctant to get tough with Turkey.
Under the deal, almost all migrants illegally entering Greece are deported to Turkey unless granted political asylum. With relations between the two NATO allies at their lowest point because of an energy standoff in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, all forced returns have been halted since March.
And with refugee camps in Greece already overcrowded, even the drips and dribbles of migrants recorded in recent weeks are creating fresh problems.
Greek government data released Thursday showed just 139 migrants deported to Turkey in the first three months of 2020. That’s just a fraction of the nearly 15,000 who have illegally entered this year…adding to the more than 100,000 stuck in the country for years.
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Third Metallic Monolith Appears, This Time in Southern California
A third metallic monolith has appeared. This time, it’s in California.Like its counterparts in Utah and Romania, no one knows who placed the gleaming object on a hiking trail about halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco.The first monolith was spotted by public safety workers in a remote area of Utah on November 18. Later in the month, another similar structure was found on a hill in northern Romania, in the city of Piatra Neamt.Visitor: Monolith Toppled by Group Who Said ‘Leave No Trace’ Colorado photographer tells KSTU-TV that he saw four men come to remote Utah site Friday night and push over hollow, stainless steel objectBoth have since disappeared. According to the Associated Press, a group of athletes said on social media they broke the Utah monolith into pieces and took it away in a wheelbarrow.The monoliths have evoked images from the sci-fi classic, “2001: A Space Odyssey,” in which a black monolith, seemingly made by aliens, appears throughout the movie and appears to have a role in human evolution. These monoliths, however, are presumably made right here on Earth.Bret Hutchings, who spotted the Utah monolith, said the object appeared to be manmade, calling it “more of an art form than any kind of alien life form.”According to Reuters, some have speculated the monoliths are the work of artist John McCracken, who died in 2011. His son, reportedly told The New York Times in 2002 that his father “would like to leave his artwork in remote places to be discovered later.”
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Ghanaians Prepare to Vote in Election with Familiar Front-Runners
Ghanaians go to the polls Monday with incumbent President Nana Akufo-Addo and former president John Mahama as front-runners. Akufo-Addo’s party has campaigned mainly on his education initiatives, while Mahama’s has focused on job creation and attacking his opponent’s record on corruption. But the familiar faces have also made voter apathy an issue.Ghana’s government this week announced Monday, Dec 7, would be a public holiday – to help get voters to the polls to choose the next president. Despite more than 17 million registered voters and 12 presidential candidates, authorities are battling voter apathy with familiar front-runners from the last two elections. Incumbent President Nana Akufo-Addo of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) is facing off against his predecessor, John Mahama of the opposition National Democratic Congress’ (NDC).Mahama won in the 2012 election and then lost to Akufo-Addo in the 2016 election. Ghana’s Election Rallies Raise Fears of COVID-19 SpreadJournalist Al-Smith says, despite his efforts to raise awareness of COVID-19’s effects, it has been a struggle to get Ghanaians to take the virus seriously, especially as the election has taken center stage Kojo Asante, with the Ghana Center for Democratic Development, says there is fatigue, mainly among the middle classes.”The first few hours is always a good indicator of whether people will eventually go out,” said Asante. “If they see the crowds are behaving and then they get feedback that it is very easy to go and vote and so, then they might eventually still go out, even if they had decided not to.”
Despite the challenge, Asante says their pre-election survey shows Ghanaians are concerned about issues such as improving infrastructure and employment.
The survey pointed to positive responses on the ruling NPP’s handling of COVID-19, power supplies, and education. But the public was less impressed with Akufo-Addo’s record on inflation, inequality, and corruption.
Attacking Akufo-Addo on corruption was a focus of Mahama’s campaign, along with job creation.
But risk consulting group Songhai Advisory’s Kobi Annan says both men have underperformed in office.
“It’s a difficult choice for a lot of people. Neither of them have performed fantastically during their terms of office, and I think it will come down to primarily sentiments around things like education, corruption, job creation. I think job creation and education in particular – those affect more people day-to-day than corruption does,” said Annan.Under Mahama’s presidency, there was an energy crisis, corruption scandals and a currency devaluation. In 2016, the NPP won by about one million votes and with high expectations for Akufo-Addo to stamp out corruption.But in the weeks leading up to this year’s election, the opposition NDC made corruption allegations against Akufo-Addo. Ghana’s anti-corruption special prosecutor resigned just three weeks before the election, alleging political interference. While Akufo-Addo denies any corruption in his administration, analysts say it’s hard to know if the claims will impact the vote. Regardless of the result, or voter turnout, analysts are expecting Ghana’s election to be fair and peaceful – as with the last two elections. Maame Gyekye-Jandoh is head of the University of Ghana’s Political Science Department.”Emotions may run high, but based on these past precedents, these past good precedents, I believe that the election will be peaceful, and the results will be considered credible and legitimate,” said Gyekye-Jandoh.
The University of Ghana published a voter survey that gave the NPP an estimated 11% lead over the NDC with five percent of voters undecided.
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Former French President Giscard D’estaing Dies of COVID
France is mourning the death of its former president Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, as a result of contracting the COVID-19 virus. Giscard led France for seven years, from 1974 to 1981 and many now remember him as a reformer and a champion of European unity.After several hospitalizations over the last few months, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing died on Wednesday at the age of 94 in his chateau – a two hours’ drive from Paris, according to his family. The former head of state left the public stage years ago but the announcement of his death late Wednesday shocked and saddened the nation.At the French Senate, France’s culture minister Roselyne Bachelot paid tribute to Giscard d’Estaing.FILE – Valery Giscard d’Estaing, left, as finance minister and Jacques Chirac as secretary of state to finance leave Elysee Palace, Aug. 9, 1969.The minister said she feels emotional after Giscard d’Estaing’s passing. She paid tribute to his memory as he led many reforms which still impact French society today.Giscard d’Estaing led France for a single seven-year term from 1974-1981, during which the country made great strides in nuclear power, high-speed train travel as well as lowering the voting age to 18. It was also during his time that France legalized abortion. FILE – French former President Valery Giscard d’Estaing speaks to the media in Paris, April 8, 2013.His seven-year mandate transformed France,” President Emmanuel Macron said in a statement.Giscard was also active on the international stage at a crucial time, during the Cold War. In 1976, he visited Washington to meet then-President Gerald Ford and address the U.S. Congress.“Is there a future for freedom in the world we are building for our children?,” he asked.Europe was at the heart of his foreign policy: monetary union and greater cooperation. German Chancellor Angela Merkel paid tribute to former French leader on Thursday, saying “France had a statesman and Germany a friend, and we have all lost a great European,” in a tweet posted by her spokesperson.Deeply involved in the construction of a united Europe, Giscard d’Estaing expressed sadness at the announcement of a Brexit. This is what he said in one of his last interviews, earlier this year, to Associated Press.“In today’s world where you have big structures such as China, the United States of America with the first economy of the world, the European Union is too small. The changes will be big in Britain. It is a very serious problem for them because they must organize their situation, their relationships, their diplomacy, etc. I wish they rejoined (Europe).” Giscard’s family said that according to his wishes, funeral ceremonies would take place in the “strictest intimacy.”
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Relief Agencies Prepare Aid for Ethiopia’s Tigray Region
Relief agencies in Ethiopia are preparing to transport aid to the country’s disputed northern Tigray region, where a month of war may have killed thousands and worsened an existing humanitarian crisis.
The United Nations reached an agreement Wednesday with Ethiopia to provide humanitarian aid to the region, saying the deal would give aid workers access to government-controlled areas of Tigray, where federal troops have been fighting the Tigray regional government.
The pact allows food, medicine and other types of aid to be transported into the area of 6 million people for the first time since the fighting erupted on Nov. 4. Some 600,000 people in the region were already dependent on food aid before the conflict began.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed claimed victory over the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) after federal forces captured Tigray’s capital of Mekelle last weekend.
TPLF leaders, however, have established a presence in mountains surrounding the region as part of an apparent emerging guerrilla strategy.
An aid worker with sources in Tigray told Reuters that fighting continued in areas north, south and west of Mekelle.
Thousands of people are believed to have been killed in the war, which has displaced more than one million people, including 45,000 refugees who fled to neighboring Sudan.
Norwegian Refugee Council Secretary General Jan Egeland, who is visiting refugees this week at Sudan’s Um Rakuba camp, said in a statement Thursday that “Aid convoys are on standby; ready to move into Tigray and support families in need. Supplies are needed immediately as there is an acute shortage of food, medicine and other relief.”
The U.N. has been among a number of organizations calling for access to the region amid the growing humanitarian crisis after foreign workers were forced to evacuate.
Prime Minister Abiy has resisted international calls for de-escalation. Abiy’s government regards the Tigray regional government as illegitimate after months of escalating tensions as he tried to consolidate power under his newly formed Prosperity Party.
The Tigray regional government had dominated Ethiopia’s ruling coalition for more than a quarter-century.
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COVID-19 Numbers Still Too High, German Health Officials Say
The head of Germany’s disease control agency said Thursday that while COVID-19 infection rates have stabilized, they are still too high.
Robert Koch Institute for Infectious Diseases President Lothar Wieler told reporters in Berlin he believes the number of infections has not dropped because German citizens are not taking restrictions on large gatherings seriously enough.
Wieler noted other nations, such as Belgium and France, have brought down their infection rates. He said, “…the reason for this lies in people’s behavior, if they follow the rules or not.”
Wieler said he supports the decision announced Wednesday by German Chancellor Angela Merkel. After meeting with the nation’s 16 regional governors, Merkel said the current COVID-19 restrictions will remain in place until January 10. Merkel said Germany had failed to reach its goal of reducing the rate of infections to 50 cases per 100,000 inhabitants in a week.
The agreement means restaurants, bars and gyms remain closed and limits on personal contacts will remain into the new year, though all sides agreed to ease some restrictions over the Christmas period.
Wieler said large outbreaks are once again being reported in nursing homes, where elderly and frail people are particularly susceptible to the coronavirus.
Almost 480 deaths from COVID-19 were reported in the past day, raising Germany’s total to 17,602.
Wieler appealed to people to respect social distancing and hygiene rules.
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US Bans Cotton Imports from Chinese Company Over Allegations of Human Rights Violations
The Trump administration has imposed a ban on imports of cotton products manufactured by a Chinese state-controlled firm because of its reliance on the forced labor of detained ethnic minorities.The Customs and Border Protection agency issued an order Wednesday ending shipments from the quasi-military Xinjiang Protection and Construction Corps. The order also requires any U.S. company seeking to import cotton products from China to prove they did not come from the XPCC or were included in the supply chain.Xinjiang is a major source of cotton and textiles used by many of the world’s largest and best-known clothing brands. The XPCC produced as much as 30% of China’s cotton in 2015.Ken Cuccinelli, the acting deputy secretary of the Homeland Security Department, which includes the CBP, said in a statement that any apparel attached with a “Made in China” label should be considered “a warning label” as it was made by “slave labor.”Acting CBP head Mark Morgan said “China’s systemic abuse of forced labor in the Xinjiang region should disturb every American business and consumer. Forced labor is a human rights violation that hurts vulnerable workers and introduces unfair competition into global supply chains.”The ban is in reaction to recent studies and news reports documenting how groups of people in Xinjiang, especially the largely Uighur Muslim and Kazakh minorities, have been recruited into programs that assign them to work in factories, cotton farms, textile mills and menial jobs in cities.
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NIH Director: ‘It Is Astounding What’s Been Done’ Regarding COVID-19 Vaccine
VOA contributor Greta Van Susteren interviewed the National Institute of Health Director Frances Collins. Among the issues discussed are the COVID-19 vaccine and its development.Here is a transcript of that interview:Greta Van Susteren: Nice to talk to you, sir.Francis Collins: Nice to talk to you, Greta.Van Susteren: Well, we Americans know what NIH is and we’re very proud of it but what is NIH?Collins: The National Institutes of Health, it’s the largest supporter of biomedical research in the world. Basically, everything that the U.S. is doing in terms of research and academic institutions Institute’s and our own intramural program is funded by the taxpayers through this budget, and I’m the director that’s supposed to make sure it gets spent wisely everything from basic science to clinical trials. Diabetes, rare diseases, cancer, and of course right now, COVID-19, and that’s what we are all about $42 billion a year.Van Susteren: For you the research you do a lot, a lot of research, all research. What does the FDA do the Food & Drug Administration we hear so much about in terms of the vaccine?Collins: So, FDA is a sister agency we’re both in the Department of Health and Human Services. FDA’s job is to be the regulator and it’s to look at some proposed new approach maybe it’s a diagnostic test. Maybe it’s a therapeutic, maybe it’s a vaccine and to get all the data together and look at it and decide if it’s going to be safe and effective, so we generally do the research trying to stimulate this kind of progress to happen and FDA decides whether it’s safe for the public to start to use it in general way.Van Susteren: All right, so we’re waiting breathlessly for these vaccines and some are farther along like Moderna and Pfizer than others, but once it gets the green light from the FDA, who decides who will get it first?Collins: Well, this is a big day for that, basically the CDC has an Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, ACIP, and it’s their job to look at a circumstance where you have a vaccine that FDA has decided is safe and effective at least for emergency use, but there aren’t enough doses for everybody to receive them on day one. So, who gets first in line. That’s a big decision, it will include health care providers because we want them to be safe in their frontline experience and it will include people at high risk, particularly the elderly people with chronic illnesses. And that will get played out over the course of the coming months as more and more doses become available, but of course trying to protect the most vulnerable people first.Van Susteren: I’m old enough to know to remember polio vaccine when it first came out, am is the distance was, how was that distribution decision made? Do you know?Collins: I don’t know the total details — initially there was a big trial to see whether it worked just as we have been doing with COVID-19 with these vaccine trials involving tens of thousands of people. Once it was decided that it was working, then there was an issue about how many doses can be made available and it didn’t happen overnight. In fact, it took quite a long time, a year or two. In this instance, Operation Warp Speed has invested in doing the manufacturing of vaccine doses, even before we know whether it’s one of these six or more than one of these six vaccines is going to work with the expectation that if one of them didn’t, you’d have to throw those doses away happily now we have two that look as if they’re very likely to win FDA approval in the next couple of weeks. And there are others just a little bit behind that may get approved in January, ideally, we may even have multiple different vaccines, each of which have 10s of millions of doses, and we could really start to reach out and get immunization to happen to lots of us, not just the most vulnerable people.Van Susteren: Well, the vaccines, as I understand, talking to experts, is coming, very quickly. What has been the role of the U.S. government to sort of fast track this have gotten rid of some of the red tape or is it provided more funds or what’s the role of the U.S. government?Collins: It is astounding what’s been done here, Greta, because traditionally it takes eight to 10 years to develop a vaccine against a new pathogen, this has been done in less than a year. The U.S. government pulled all of the resources together to make sure that coordination was happening. operation warp speed made it possible also to get rid of some of those long delays that oftentimes vex the process where you go to phase one and then you have to wait many months before you go to phase two, all of those things were synchronized in an unprecedented way, but not by doing any compromising at all on safety these will probably be amongst the most highly tested vaccines ever in terms of their safety and efficacy and the good news is, the first two that are going to get looked at by FDA. In the coming weeks, look extremely good with efficacy over 90% which is better than most of us had dared to hope and safety record that also looks extremely good so we are in a good place to begin to see how we might get COVID-19 behind us but it’s going to take a lot of months to get there for everybody.Van Susteren: I don’t want to hope or expect as we another virus coming down the road, but I assume that it’s inevitable so –has the U.S. learned something new as government learn something like stripped away some of the red tape so that we can look forward in future times and that will take a shorter time to get a vaccine than eight or nine years?Collins: Absolutely. We’ve learned a lot, and we’ve documented all along the way ways that things can be done more efficiently and this. Our accomplishment of having vaccines that are ready to go into individuals in less than a year is certainly going to be the norm in the future and maybe we could even do it a little faster, although it would be pretty hard to go faster than this you just still have to run the trials and wait and see whether the vaccine works and you can only speed that up so much, but I do hope and I’m part of this decision and discussion that’s going on right now that we don’t slip back into complacency. Once we get past COVID-19 because there’s another pandemic out there. I don’t know whether it’s five years from now or 10 years from now or next year, and it probably could be another coronavirus or it might be an influenza virus. And this is just the nature of our world and anybody who thinks over over that look at history, we’re not likely to be.Van Susteren: All right, Moderna, and Pfizer as I understand it, both have something called the sort of a science behind is something called messenger RNA, are they very different vaccines are very similar?Collins: They’re quite similar basically messenger RNA is the part of a nucleic acid that codes for protein. And this is a very clever way to make a vaccine where you basically synthesize that messenger RNA that has the right information in it, inject that into Muscle, Muscle goes, Oh I know what to do with messenger RNA I’ll make a protein. And so it does, and it makes the spike protein, which is the stuff that decorates the coronavirus and those spike proteins, the immune system says oh no you don’t and makes an antibody to them. And it’s very quick. That’s why Pfizer and Moderna are the first two out of the gate because the messenger RNA approach can be started almost immediately upon the time the viruses isolated. So it is a new approach, it looks extremely promising, it is going to be transformational I think for vaccines for all kinds of things because it looks like it’s really worked, and this is the first time it’s been taken all the way through to these Phase Three trials and FDA approval.Van Susteren: One of the issues is gonna be distribution and the Pfizer requires that the vaccine be kept so called which refrigeration incredible refrigeration. What, why is it if they’re so similar the Moderna and the Pfizer one needs to be kept so much colder which is going to inhibit some of its distribution?Collins: Yeah, it’s a great question and all our people puzzled if it’s so similar. Moderna can just be kept in a regular freezer and can even be in a refrigerator for a week and it’ll be fine there too. But the Pfizer one, it’s wrapped in a different kind of envelope, it’s not just the messenger RNA by itself it’s sort of put into an envelope of lipids and the Pfizer liquid envelope is very tense sensitive to warming up, which is why it has to be kept at this minus-94-degrees freezer, which isn’t available a lot of places. Moderna’s envelope is less concerned about temperature issues and so it can be stable in a more forgiving way. Coming along I should say the next set of viruses next set of vaccines bay by Johnson and Johnson, and by AstraZeneca. Those are going to be also much more forgiving as far as the temperature requirements. The so-called cold chain will not be nearly as demanding for those which will be great, especially for places that don’t have a lot of freezer capacity like some of the low- and middle-income countries that are also going to need these vaccines.Van Susteren: Do Astra Zeneca and the Johnson & Johnson have the same messenger RNA approach to a vaccine are they different vaccines?Collins: They’re using a different approach one that has been tried and true and other situations takes a little longer it basically captures the energy of a different virus and adeno virus just as a carrier a delivery truck and uses that also to deliver the coating for this spike protein so it’s making the same kind of response happen in the immune system, but it’s getting it in in a different way. And this is something that’s been done successfully for Ebola so we know this vector system is likely to be safe and effective. The Johnson and Johnson one also is a single dose which will be very much easier to manage whereas Pfizer and Moderna requires two doses one on day one and other one three or four weeks later, it’s a little more complicated to set that up, we’d love it if we had at least one of these that was just one dose and you’re done.Van Susteren: You know I read early on, I’ve been following this virus like everybody else is that there was a possibility or some discussion about six months ago about a bridge vaccine which would be polio or TB, that if you got that vaccine the live vaccine that it would rev up your immune system, essentially, and fight out fight off COVID. Was there ever any sort of thought or did NIH look at that was that just a bridge it’s like health care workers in the short run?Collins: We did look at that, we have a group called active ACTA IV accelerating coronavirus therapeutic interventions and vaccines and they surveyed the entire landscape of opportunities for therapeutics and vaccines and they looked at this, they thought if we had nothing else, there might be a little enhancement of your immune response sort of in a general way by one of these other vaccines, but compared to the specific vaccine that we now see in front of us, the effect would probably not be nearly as powerful so we decided to focus on what really was needed something that would be 95% effective as opposed to a general benefit that might give you a few percentages of improvement but wasn’t really going to change the course of this pandemic in such a big way as what we need right now.Van Susteren: When I get, when I’ve got a tetanus vaccine I’ve since then. Over the years had to get boosters. Do you anticipate that with or can’t you tell now whether if you get this vaccine that at some period, sometime in the future you need a booster.Collins: I wish we knew more about that, because this is a new virus, we really don’t know how durable, your immunity is going to be, we don’t know for people who got the COVID-19 infection naturally, could they get it again if we knew more about that we have some sense about whether the vaccine would last for years and years. It’s going to take some time to tell. it might be that the virus also mutates over time and ultimately new version appears that the vaccine and your natural immunity don’t quite work anymore. So we might have to have not just a booster but a slightly redesigned the vaccine to cover whatever this coronavirus is trying to do to us. Those are all uncertainties in the best of all worlds. This will last a very long time, I’m guessing boosters are probably going to be needed. I just hope they aren’t too frequent tetanus we could live with a 10-year timeline if that’s what it takes, but we just don’t know.Van Susteren: I spoke to Dr. Fauci who works at NIH, several times and very early on and we were talking about vaccines and he said he would be very hopeful with a with a protection of 50, and that he was thrilled with 70. Now we’re reading you know 94,95 ish, is that you know the flu isn’t that good the flu vaccine doesn’t do that well- with this with this new approach messenger RNA can we expect that we’ll relook at like flu vaccines or is it just a completely different category, and that we can sort of up the protection there?Collins: I think it’s not so much the technology for the vaccine. it’s the nature of the actual virus. influenza has this nasty ability to change its coat, every year in a very substantial way. And no matter how clever your vaccine is if the virus is like completely changed its appearance the vaccine won’t give you immunity anymore so I don’t think we’ll be able, through this approach to solve the influence issue there may be other ways to do that by a Universal influenza vaccine. We just seem to be fortunate though that coronavirus is particularly susceptible to the vaccine. I didn’t dare to hope that we’d end up with efficacy over 70%, and to see these first two coming through at 95% is incredibly exciting and provides a great deal of hope that we will be able to get through the next few months and be able to put this in the rearview mirror, but we’ve got a long way to go.Van Susteren: With the influence of changing its code so to speak so often, in looking at the coronavirus with the virus that you saw last February, March is at the same virus you were looking at now or is it likewise trying to change its code.Collins: It’s pretty much the same. It’s an RNA virus, it does change its spelling when it gets copied and there’s lots of bad virus out there that has the chance to change its spelling and we’ve seen two or three instances where there’s a new version that maybe has a little bit of an advantage maybe it’s a bit more infectious and so that new version starts to rise up in its frequency so far nothing that we’re alarmed about in terms of affecting the likelihood that the vaccine is going to work, but we have to watch that closely and again over the course of many years it’s possible, a new a new version might arise that the vaccine doesn’t work very well for and then we’d have to redesign the vaccine.Van Susteren: You know I’m old enough to remember landed on the moon that was such a huge game changer, you know, for the United States, I likewise see this I mean moving so quickly in a vaccine something that is, you know, that is terrorizing the world I mean it really is quite extraordinary isn’t it.Collins: It is, Greta, and you know 2020 has been just a terrible year for so many people with the suffering and death of this terrible pandemic with economic distress it’s caused. And I must say, for science, it has been a challenge like one we’ve really not quite had to deal with before for life science, and it is really wonderful to see the way science has come forward. All of the partners in industry and academia and government, working together in an unprecedented way not worrying too much about who’s going to get the credit to make these things happen at a scale and a timetable that was unimaginable before and I hope that’s being noticed and I hope a lot of young people watching that might have the same reaction they did when we went to the moon saying, That looks like fun. I want to be part of that too because we have a lot more science to do in the future.Van Susteren: Well I guess we could use more help from the people who are watching the science I think it stopped congregating in huge, you know, huge herds of people, because you know this is all hands on deck, sort of, so to speak.Collins: Yeah. And that is something to really keep in mind even though we are seeing this promise of a vaccine that’s going to get us through this, it will be many months before we have enough people in the community immunized that we could stop worrying about transmission. So for the coming months. People need to double down on those careful measures — wearing your mask watching your distance washing your hands those three W’s more important than ever, and nobody should imagine that this is about somebody else and not about them even a young person who imagines that they’re pretty immortal and even if they get this virus, they’re going to be fine and they could be the next super spreader. and if you care about the people around you, your neighbors your parents, your grandparents, then it’s got to be up to you to all of us to take that responsibility seriously. We have holidays coming where the risks are going to go up, if people relax their guard. I’m not going to have Christmas with my family this year first time didn’t have Thanksgiving with my family this year either first time, but it’s the way that we all have to wrap our arms around responsibility for 2020, as a year of, we got to get through this. And we got to get through it together.Van Susteren: And I suspect that NIH is also working on treatments, new therapies to to fight this to the for the person who does get COVID.Collins: We are indeed and that’s an intense part of how I’m spending my time and we’ve made some real progress there. We have the drug remdesivir, which is an antiviral that helps people who are quite sick in the hospital. We have dexamethasone a steroid that also helps people who are the sickest of the sick in the ICU. And we have monoclonal antibodies developed from people who’ve survived COVID-19 basically purifying their antibodies that help them recover and giving them to other people, showing real promises, especially if you give those early to high risk individuals, and we have other trials that are going on right now that may very well yield up other immunosuppressives or antivirals that can add to this compared to where we were back in February and March where we didn’t have much of anything we’ve now got quite a menu of therapeutics and survival has certainly improved for people who get very sick with this but it’s still a very serious disease we’ve lost 275,000 people. And this is a scary few months that we’re looking at with wintertime, and with the vaccine not yet as widely available as it will be by the summer.Van Susteren: you talked about Remdesivir the other antiviral is to reduce the viral load, you get those when you get to the hospital, and you’re very sick. When I get the flu. I call the doctor calls in a prescription for something called Tamiflu and I get a pill and could just go to the drugstore sir I headed off at the past before I get so sick to the hospital is are there efforts being made to make these antivirals, not when you get real sick and end up in hospital but to back it up when you first get sick?Collins: Yes, there are efforts of that sort, so far, none of those antivirals have yet been approved for outpatients. remdesivir is an intravenous drug which makes it not so convenient for people who are not in the hospital, what is approved for outpatients what I mentioned a minute ago. these monoclonal antibodies from Lilly and from regeneron, which while they’re in somewhat limited supply can absolutely greatly help people who are at high risk, just got diagnosed get the monoclonal in the first three days after symptoms, and you can greatly reduce the likelihood that person ends up in the hospital.Van Susteren: Is dexamethasone so the last question I have is dexamethasone, which is the steroid, which is what you get in the hospital and when when you’ve really been when you’ve got a huge problem -would prednisone which is a steroid that is prescribed by pill. Would that be at all helpful in in minimizing the risk of how sick you get or not?Collins: It’s all about timing, Greta, and these steroids are basically keeping your immune system from overreacting and causing more damage than help and that is often what seems to happen with the sickest people in the ICU, who’ve developed really bad lung disease and other systemic problems. At that point the virus is almost gone but the immune system is going crazy. And by dialing it back sort of turning down the thermostat for your immune system you can help people survive. On the other hand, you need your immune system early in the course of a viral infection you want it to be out there cracking down that virus and taking care of it so it’s probably a bad idea to give prednisone or dexamethasone to somebody who’s early in the course save that for the people who are laid in the course and are still really sick, and you may help them.Van Susteren: Because under the theory that your immune system you don’t want to tell your immune system not to work. What you want to do is what, when you get to the point where the virus is gone is you don’t want your immune system to overwork and give you another problem and that’s when the steroid comes in to tell your immune system stop. Right?Collins: Exactly, exactly. And we’re looking at some other immune suppressive that might be even more specific than dexamethasone, which is a pretty broad acting anti-inflammatory drug. Maybe there’s a more subtle directed way to do this that would even be better and that’s under study right now, several trials. Also, one more thing here in that space. We know that those people who are really sick also developed a problem with too many blood clots in the lungs, clots in small vessels. And so using an anticoagulant to actually thin the blood may also help people survive and that’s another big study that’s underway right now it looks pretty promising.Van Susteren: Which is so interesting because older people tend to be on those types of drugs for heart, you know, medication so that they some of them are already on that.Collins: That’s right, they may be somewhat protected ironically against the worst aspects of COVID-19 if they’re already in the blood thinner, but a lot of people aren’t, and those folks may need one if they’re in that very serious circumstance where blood clotting is starting to be part of the problem.Van Susteren: Well, as Dr. Birx told me is you can’t get the virus if you don’t go near it. So, you know, keep your hands clean masks and stay out of groups, you know, that’s, you know, stay away from people.Collins: Absolutely, especially indoors where we know the spread is so easy and unfortunately that means a lot of family gatherings which tend to be indoors with people eating and not wearing masks and I’m fearful that with this holiday season upon us. People will be too careless about that. We are not out of the woods here, we have a very challenging few months ahead, and the best things we can do while cheering for the science and waiting for our turn to get the vaccine is to practice those three W’s absolutely wear your mask, watch your distance wash your hands.Van Susteren: What about surfaces boxes that come to the house, you know people who come into your house and we may not be near, but they touch the surface.Collins: You know, we worried more about that early on, I am there is some possibility of viral spread there, but it does not seem to be a major effect so at my house we stopped wiping off all the boxes that came to the front door. After seeing some of the data that’s probably a very low risk, compared to all of the other things which is basically these droplets, that are being expressed by all of us when we speak. Certainly, when we sing. All of those things where that’s the most likely place to catch this illness.Van Susteren: Doctor thank you very much and thanks to NIH and you know for, you know, I think the world’s very grateful for all the work that all of you do.Collins: Well, it’s a privilege to be able to be the guy trying to manage this effort with such an amazing team of dedicated scientists and we are going to get through this and science is going to be a big reason why.Van Susteren: Thank you, sir.
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Virginia Cousins Launch Jewelry Line to Help Sex Assault Victims
Art therapy can be part of working through past trauma. Maxim Moskalkov tells the story of sexual assault survivors who have turned therapy into a thriving business that also helps other women survivors.
Camera: Andrey Degtyarev
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Hong Kong Publishing Tycoon, Pro-Democracy Activist Arrested
Hong Kong media tycoon and pro-democracy advocate Jimmy Lai has been arrested and charged with fraud.The 73-year-old Lai appeared in a Hong Kong courtroom Thursday along with two other executives of his Next Digital company and was accused of violating terms of the company’s lease of its office space. He was denied bail, and his case has been adjourned until next April.Lai was arrested at his home back in August and charged with suspicion of colluding with a foreign country under the city’s new national security law imposed by China. Hours after his arrest, more than 100 police officers raided the headquarters of Lai’s Next Digital company, which publishes the newspaper Apple Day. The newspaper livestreamed the raid on its website, showing officers roaming the newsroom as they rummaged through reporters’ files, while Lai was led through the newsroom in handcuffs.He was one of at least 10 people were arrested that day, including at least one of Lai’s sons.Lai is already in legal jeopardy for his pro-democracy activism. He was one of 15 activists arrested earlier this year and hit with seven charges, including organizing and participating in unauthorized assemblies and inciting others to take part in an unauthorized assembly.
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Benton-Banai, Co-Founder of American Indian Movement, Dies at 89
Eddie Benton-Banai, who helped found the American Indian Movement partly in response to alleged police brutality against Indigenous people, has died. He was 89.Benton-Banai died Monday at a care center in Hayward, Wisconsin, where he had been staying for months, according to family friend Dorene Day. Day said Benton-Banai had several health issues and had been hospitalized multiple times in recent years.Benton-Banai, who was Anishinaabe Ojibwe, was born and raised on the Lac Courte Oreilles reservation in northern Wisconsin. He made a life of connecting American Indians with their spirituality and promoting sovereignty, and was the grand chief, or spiritual leader, of the Three Fires Midewiwin Lodge. Day said he was someone people looked to for guidance in the religious practice of the Anishinaabe Ojibwe people — and he gave countless babies their traditional names.Benton-Banai’s place in the American Indian Movement, a grassroots group formed in 1968, can be traced to his launch of a cultural program in a Minnesota prison, said co-founder Clyde Bellecourt.’It started because I met Eddie in jail’Bellecourt was in solitary confinement when he heard someone whistling You are My Sunshine, and he looked through a tiny hole in his cell and saw Benton-Banai, a fellow inmate, recognizing him as an Indigenous man.Bellecourt said Benton-Banai approached him about helping incarcerated Indigenous people, and they started the prison’s cultural program to teach American Indians about their history and encourage them to learn a trade or seek higher education. Bellecourt said that Benton-Banai thought they could do the same work in the streets, and the program morphed into the American Indian Movement, an organization that persists today with various chapters.”It started because I met Eddie in jail,” Bellecourt said. “Our whole Indian way of life came back because of him. … My whole life just changed. I started reading books about history of the Ojibwe nation… dreaming about how beautiful it must have been at one time in our history.”One of the group’s first acts was to organize a patrol to monitor allegations of police harassment and brutality against Native Americans in Minneapolis, where it’s based. Its work included job training, efforts to seek better housing and education for Indigenous people, provide legal assistance and question government policies.At times, the American Indian Movement’s tactics were militant. In one of its most well-known actions, the group took over Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota to protest U.S. and tribal governments. The 71-day occupation turned violent, and two people died in a shootout.Akim Reinhardt, a history professor at Towson University in Maryland, said Benton-Banai’s roots in the group often got overshadowed by more powerful personalities in the movement, including Russell Means, Dennis Banks and John Trudell.”It’s a shame, because clearly when we listen to the people who were there, they all mention him,” said Reinhardt, who has written broadly about the movement.International Indian Treaty CouncilLisa Bellanger, executive director of the National American Indian Movement and Benton-Banai’s former assistant, said he was instrumental in the group’s work using treaties to protect the rights of Indigenous people. He was also part of a team that pushed for the American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1978, she said, as government policies stifled or outlawed religious practices. The law safeguarded the rights of American Indians to practice their religion and access sacred sites.Bellanger said Benton-Banai also helped launch the International Indian Treaty Council, which advocates for the rights of Indigenous nations to govern themselves, and for the protection of tradition, culture and sacred land.But in addition to his activism work, Benton-Banai was also a father figure.”We could always go to him with questions,” Bellanger said. “We could run crying to him if we needed to. We had that personal faith and trust and love in him, at a time that was crucial for young girls.”Day said Benton-Banai was raised by his grandparents and grew up speaking Ojibwe.”He had a very solid spiritual foundation to his traditional and Indigenous learning, and that’s what made him, I believe, who he was,” she said.His book, The Mishomis Book, is touted as the first of its kind to offer Anishinaabe families an understanding of spiritual teachings.Benton-Banai also founded a school in St. Paul in 1972, called the Red School House, which — along with its sister school in Minneapolis — fueled a broader movement to provide alternative education for Indigenous children so they could learn while maintaining their spiritual and cultural practices, Day said.Bellecourt said American Indian Movement’s philosophy of using the sovereignty and spirituality of Indigenous people as a strength can be attributed to Benton-Banai’s leadership.”I considered him our holy man,” he said.
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Rafer Johnson, 1960 Olympic Decathlon Champion, Dies at 86
Rafer Johnson, who won the decathlon at the 1960 Rome Olympics and helped subdue Robert F. Kennedy’s assassin in 1968, died Wednesday. He was 86.He died at his home in the Sherman Oaks section of Los Angeles, according to family friend Michael Roth. No cause of death was announced.Johnson was among the world’s greatest athletes from 1955 through his Olympic triumph in 1960, winning a national decathlon championship in 1956 and a silver medal at the Melbourne Olympics that same year.His Olympic career included carrying the U.S. flag at the 1960 Games and lighting the torch at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum to open the 1984 Games. Johnson set world records in the decathlon three different times amid a fierce rivalry with his UCLA teammate C.K. Yang of Taiwan and Vasily Kuznetsov of the former Soviet Union.Johnson won a gold medal at the Pan American Games in 1955 while competing in just his fourth decathlon. At a welcome home meet afterward in Kingsburg, California, he set his first world record, breaking the mark of his childhood hero, two-time Olympic champion Bob Mathias.Devoted to KennedyOn June 5, 1968, Johnson was working on Kennedy’s presidential campaign when the Democratic candidate was shot in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Johnson joined former NFL star Rosey Grier and journalist George Plimpton in apprehending Sirhan Sirhan moments after he shot Kennedy, who died the next day.”I knew he did everything he could to take care of Uncle Bobby at his most vulnerable moment,” Kennedy’s niece, Maria Shriver, said by phone. “His devotion to Uncle Bobby was pure and real. He had protected his friend. Even after Uncle Bobby’s death he stayed close.”Johnson later called the assassination “one of the most devastating moments in my life.”Born Rafer Lewis Johnson on August 18, 1934, in Hillsboro, Texas, he moved to California in 1945 with his family, including his brother Jim, a future NFL Hall of Fame inductee. Although some sources cite Johnson’s birth year as 1935, the family has said that is incorrect.They eventually settled in Kingsburg, near Fresno in the San Joaquin Valley. It was less than 25 miles from Tulare, the hometown of Mathias, who would win the decathlon at the 1948 and 1952 Olympics and prove an early inspiration to Johnson.Johnson was a standout student and played football, basketball, baseball and track and field at Kingsburg Joint Union High. At 6-foot-3 and 200-plus pounds, he looked more like a linebacker than a track and field athlete.FILE – This Sept. 6, 1960, photo shows the top three finishers in the decathlon of the 1960 Rome Summer Olympics at Olympic Stadium in Rome: Rafer Johnson, Yang Chuan and Vasili Kuznetsov.During his junior year of high school, Johnson’s coach took him to Tulare to watch Mathias compete in a decathlon, an experience Johnson later said spurred him to take up the grueling 10-event sport.As a freshman at UCLA, where he received academic and athletic scholarships, Johnson won gold at the 1955 Pan Am Games and set a world record of 7,985 points.After winning the national decathlon championship in 1956, Johnson was the favorite for the Olympics in Melbourne but pulled a stomach muscle and strained a knee while training. He was forced to withdraw from the long jump, for which he had also qualified, but tried to gut out the decathlon.Johnson’s teammate Milt Campbell, a virtual unknown, gave the performance of his life, finishing with 7,937 points to win gold, 350 ahead of Johnson.It was the last time Johnson would ever come in second.Johnson, Yang and Kuznetzov dominated the record books between the 1956 and 1960 Olympics.Kuznetzov, a two-time Olympic bronze medalist whom the Soviets called their “man of steel,” broke Johnson’s world record in May 1958 with 8,016 points.Later that year at a U.S.-Soviet dual meet in Moscow, Johnson beat Kuznetzov by 405 points and reclaimed the world record with 8,302 points. Johnson won over the Soviet audience with his gutsy performance in front of what had been a hostile crowd.A car accident and subsequent back injury kept Johnson out of competition during 1959, but he was healthy again for the Olympics in 1960.Final event dramaYang was his primary competition in Rome. Yang won six of the first nine events, but Johnson led by 66 points going into the 1,500 meters, the decathlon’s final event.Johnson had to finish within 10 seconds of Yang, which was no small feat as Yang was much stronger running at distance than Johnson.Johnson finished just 1.2 seconds and six yards behind Yang to win the gold. Yang earned silver and Kuznetsov took bronze.At UCLA, Johnson played basketball for coach John Wooden, becoming a starter on the 1958-59 team. In 1958, he was elected student body president, the third Black to hold the office in school history.”He stood for what he believed in and he did it in a very classy way with grace and dignity,” Olympic champion swimmer Janet Evans said by phone.Evans last saw Johnson, who attended her 2004 wedding, at a luncheon in his honor in May 2019.”We were all there to fete him and he just didn’t want to be in the spotlight,” she said. “That was one of the things I loved about him. He didn’t want credit.”Johnson retired from competition after the Rome Olympics. He began acting in movies, including appearances in “Wild in the Country” with Elvis Presley, “None But the Brave” with Frank Sinatra and the 1989 James Bond film “License to Kill.” He worked briefly as a TV sportscaster before becoming a vice president at Continental Telephone in 1971.FILE – Rafer Johnson joins thousands at Piedmont Park to support the fight against HIV/AIDS at the 28th annual Atlanta AIDS Walk & 5K Run, Oct. 21, 2018, in Atlanta.In 1984, Johnson lit the Olympic flame for the Los Angeles Games. He took the torch from Gina Hemphill, granddaughter of Olympic great Jesse Owens, who ran it into the Coliseum.”Standing there and looking out, I remember thinking, ‘I wish I had a camera,’ ” Johnson said. “My hair was standing straight up on my arm. Words really seem inadequate.”Throughout his life, Johnson was widely known for his humanitarian efforts.He served on the organizing committee of the first Special Olympics in Chicago in 1968, working with founder Eunice Kennedy Shriver. Johnson founded California Special Olympics the following year at a time when positive role models for the intellectually and physically disabled were rare.”Rafer really paved the path for many of us to understand the responsibilities that come with being a successful athlete and the number of lives you can impact and change,” Evans said.’An extraordinary man’Maria Shriver recalled meeting Johnson for the first time at age 10 or 11 through her mother, Eunice.”He and I joked that I’ve been in love with him ever since,” she said. “He really was an extraordinary man, such a loving, gracious, elegant, humble man who handled his success in such a beautiful way and stayed so true to himself throughout his life.”Peter Ueberroth, who chose Johnson to light the Olympic torch in 1984, called him “just one great person, a marvelous human being.”Johnson worked for the Peace Corps, March of Dimes, Muscular Dystrophy Association and American Red Cross. In 2016, he received the UCLA Medal, the university’s highest award for extraordinary accomplishments. The school’s track is named for Johnson and his wife, Betsy.His children, Jenny Johnson Jordan and Josh Johnson, were athletes themselves. Jenny was a beach volleyball player who competed in the 2000 Sydney Olympics and is on the coaching staff of UCLA’s beach volleyball team. Josh competed in javelin at UCLA, where he was an All-American.Besides his wife of 49 years and children, he is survived by son-in-law Kevin Jordan and four grandchildren.
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Bloggers, Activists Stage Hunger Strike Over Vietnam Prison Conditions
A blogger jailed after filming protests over a toxic spill has gone on a hunger strike over unjust treatment in Vietnam’s An Diem prison, alongside two other prisoners of conscience.Nguyen Van Hoa, 25, a blogger and contributor to Radio Free Asia (RFA) Vietnam Service, is protesting prison conditions with human rights defender Nguyen Bac Truyen and blogger and activist Pham Van Diep.In a call to his home, Truyen said he began his hunger strike in November and would continue until prison conditions and treatment improved, his wife, Bui Thi Kim Phuong, told VOA Vietnamese on November 28.“He told me the reasons for the hunger strike were unjust treatments by the prison officials. They have protested about lack of access to medical care and confiscation of letters from prisoners to their families without explanation,” Phuong said.Truyen tried to send two letters home in April, but prison authorities blocked them, Phuong said, without detailing the content of the letters.In 2019, Truyen filed a request to prison authorities in An Diem, which falls under the Ministry of Public Security’s supervision, for a health checkup and examination by medical specialists, but the request was ignored, Phuong said.“It has been more than three years since his arrest, and he has not been granted the health checkup,” she said.Several prisoners also requested transfers to prisons closer to their families. Prisoners of conscience are often imprisoned far from their homes, which makes it difficult for their families to visit.Truyen’s parents and his wife live in Ho Chi Minh City. His parents are unable to make the 900 km trip to the prison to see him, and Phuong says she falls sick after every visit because of the long travel, with the journey taking 14 to 16 hours if going by rail or car.Declining healthBlogger Hoa’s health is extremely poor, his sister Nguyen Thi Hue said. When she spoke with RFA’s Vietnamese Service on November 27, the day after she last saw her brother, he had been on the hunger strike for at least eight days.“I couldn’t believe it was him because he looked so ill and tired, and he had to be supported by someone who helped him walk to the visiting booth because he was too weak to walk by himself,” Hue said. “This was the first time in the past four years that I saw my brother’s health so badly broken down.”Hue said her brother told her that prison guards This photo from the Vietnam News Agency taken on Nov. 27, 2017, shows activist Nguyen Van Hoa standing trial at a local people’s court in the central province of Ha Tinh.Thomas added, “[We] urge the Vietnamese authorities to ensure that those who stand up for human rights in the country are free to do so without fear of harassment, violence or imprisonment.”In October, the Norwegian human rights organization Stefanus Alliance International awarded Truyen its Stefanus Prize for his work promoting human rights in Vietnam, including freedom of religion.The 52-year-old activist is a Hoa Hao Buddhist and he has long fought for the rights of religious minorities and other human rights in Vietnam. Two groups of Hoa Hao Buddhists exist in Vietnam: one backed by the government, and a group that is not registered, to which Truyen belongs.On July 30, 2017, Truyen was assaulted and arrested by plainclothes police while waiting for his wife outside his office in Ho Chi Minh City. On April 5, 2018, a court sentenced him to 11 years in prison and three years’ probation for “activities aimed at overthrowing the government.”Filmed protestsBlogger Hoa was jailed on November 27, 2017, after filming protests outside the Taiwan-owned Formosa Plastics Group steel plant. A toxic spill there in 2016 killed an estimated 115 tons of fish and left fishery and tourism workers jobless in four central provinces. Hoa, who had blogged and produced videos for RFA, was arrested January 11, 2017, for “abusing democratic freedoms to infringe upon the interests of the state.”The charges were later upgraded to “conducting propaganda against the state.” Hoa is serving a seven-year sentence, followed by three years’ probation.RFA and VOA are both independent networks funded by the U.S. Congress.The third person on the hunger strike, Diep, is a 54-year-old activist from the northern province of Thanh Hoa. In 2019 Diep was jailed for nine years for spreading “distorted information defaming the Communist Party and the Vietnamese government.” Diep is a human rights advocate and government critic who used his blog and later his Facebook account to discuss human rights abuses.Vietnam has been consistently rated “not free” in the areas of internet and press freedom by Freedom House, a U.S.-based watchdog group.Reporters Without Borders ranks Vietnam 175th out of 180, where 1 is the most free, in its 2020 World Press Freedom Index. About 25 journalists and bloggers are held in Vietnam’s jails, “where mistreatment is common,” the Paris-based watchdog group said.This story originated in VOA Vietnamese.
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Former French President Giscard d’Estaing Dies at 94
Valery Giscard d’Estaing, the president of France from 1974 to 1981 who became a champion of European integration, died on Wednesday. He was 94.Giscard d’Estaing’s office said he passed away in his family home in the Loir-et-Cher region, in central France, after contracting COVID-19.”In accordance with his wishes, his funeral will take place in strict privacy,” his office said.Giscard d’Estaing was hospitalized last month with heart problems, but remained vigorous deep into old age.In a January 2020 interview with The Associated Press, he displayed a firm handshake and sharp eye, recounting details from his meetings as French president in the 1970s with then-U.S. President Jimmy Carter and then-Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat, whose photos graced his office walls.He wrote the article in the EU charter that allowed Brexit to happen – the brief measure that allows a member state to leave the bloc.On the eve of Britain’s departure this year, Giscard told AP it was a “step backward” geopolitically, but took the long view. “We functioned without Britain during the first years of the European Union. … So we will rediscover a situation that we have already known.”Born in Germany in the wake of World War I, Giscard d’Estaing helped liberate Paris from the Nazis in the next world war, and later laid the groundwork for the shared euro currency and helped integrate Britain into what became the EU in the 1970s.Seeing the Britons leave, “I feel great regret,” he said.FILE – Valery Giscard d’Estaing, left, as finance minister and Jacques Chirac as secretary of state to finance leave Elysee Palace, Aug. 9, 1969.He remained unfailingly optimistic in the European project, forecasting that the EU and the euro would bounce back and gradually grow stronger and bigger despite the challenges of losing a major member.When he took office in 1974, Giscard d’Estaing began as the model of a modern French president, a conservative with liberal views on social issues.Abortion and divorce by mutual consent were legalized under his term, and he reduced the age of majority from 21 to 18.He played his accordion in working class neighborhoods. One Christmas morning, he invited four passing garbage men to breakfast at the presidential palace.He lost his reelection bid in 1981 to Socialist Francois Mitterrand.Born in 1926 in Coblenz, Germany, where his father was a financial director of the post-World War I French occupation administration, he grew up with a pan-European view. After joining the French Resistance during World War II, he next saw Germany as a tank commander in the French military in 1944.In 1952, he married Anne-AymoneIt de Brantes, the daughter of a count and heiress to a steel fortune. They had four children: Valerie-Anne, Louis, Henri and Jacinte.Young Giscard d’Estaing studied at the prestigious Polytechnical Institute and then the elite National School of Administration, before mastering economics at Oxford.President Charles de Gaulle named him finance minister at the age of 36.
After his defeat in the 1981 presidential election, he temporarily retired from politics.FILE – French former President Valery Giscard d’Estaing speaks to the media in Paris, April 8, 2013.He then found a second calling in the European Union. He worked on writing a European Constitution, which was formally presented in 2004 but rejected by French and Dutch voters. However, it paved the way for the adoption of the Treaty on European Union in 2007.At age 83, he published a romance novel called The Princess and the President, which he said was based on Princess Diana, with whom he said he discussed writing a love story.Asked about the nature of their relationship, he said only: “Let us not exaggerate. I knew her a bit in a climate of a confidential relationship. She needed to communicate.”Earlier this year, a German journalist accused Giscard of repeatedly grabbing her during an interview, and filed a sexual assault complaint with Paris prosecutors. Giscard’s French lawyer said the 94-year-old former president “retains no memory” of the incident.Former French President Francois Hollande paid tribute to “a statesman who had chosen to open up to the world and was thinking that Europe was a condition for France to be greater.”Hollande’s predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy, expressed his “deep sadness.” Giscard d’Estaing “made France be proud,” he said.
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Britain Approves Pfizer Coronavirus Vaccine, Raising Hopes of Return to Normality
Britain has approved the use of the coronavirus vaccine made by Pfizer – and plans to begin inoculations in the coming days. As Henry Ridgwell reports, it represents a significant milestone in the battle against the pandemic – but challenges remain.Camera: Henry Ridgwell Producer: Bakhtiyar Zamanov
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