Two South African medics are swapping their medical gear for oars as they train for a risky 4,000-kilometer (2,500-mile) journey by rowboat through the Arctic Northwest Passage. If the 14-member team finishes the trip, across the north of Canada to Alaska, they will make history as all attempts to row the icy waters have failed. Franco Puglisi reports from Johannesburg. Camera: Franco Puglisi
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Month: February 2021
Supreme Court Will Not Halt Trump Tax Record Turnover
In a significant defeat for former President Donald Trump, the Supreme Court on Monday declined to step in to halt the turnover of his tax records to a New York prosecutor.The court’s action is the apparent culmination of a lengthy legal battle that had already reached the high court once before. Trump’s tax records are not supposed to become public as part of prosecutor’s criminal investigation, but the high court’s action is a blow to Trump because he has for so long fought on so many fronts to keep his tax records shielded from view. The ongoing investigation the records are part of could also become an issue for Trump in his life after the presidency. Trump has called it “a fishing expedition” and “a continuation of the witch hunt — the greatest witch hunt in history.”The Supreme Court waited months to act in the case. The last of the written briefs in the case was filed Oct. 19. But a court that includes three Trump appointees waited through the election, Trump’s challenge to his defeat and a month after Trump left office before issuing its order.The court offered no explanation for the delay, and the legal issue before the justices did not involve whether Trump was due any special deference because he was president.The court’s order is a win for Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., who has been seeking Trump’s tax records since 2019 as part of an investigation. Vance, a Democrat, had subpoenaed the records from the Mazars accounting firm that has long done work for Trump and his businesses. Mazars has said it would comply with the subpoena, but Trump, a Republican, sued to block the records’ release.Vance’s office had said it would be free to enforce the subpoena and obtain the records in the event the Supreme Court declined to step in and halt the records’ turnover, but it was unclear when that might happen.The case the high court ruled in involves a grand jury subpoena for more than eight years of Trump’s personal and corporate tax records. Vance has disclosed little about what prompted him to request the records. In one court filing last year, however, prosecutors said they were justified in demanding the records because of public reports of “possibly extensive and protracted criminal conduct at the Trump Organization.”Part of the probe involves payments to two women — porn actress Stormy Daniels and model Karen McDougal — to keep them quiet during the 2016 presidential campaign about alleged extramarital affairs with Trump. Trump has denied the affairs.In July, the justices in a 7-2 ruling rejected Trump’s argument that the president is immune from investigation while he holds office or that a prosecutor must show a greater need than normal to obtain the tax records. Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, whom Trump nominated to the high court, joined that decision. It was issued before Trump’s third nominee, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, replaced the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the court.As part of its July decision, the high court returned the Vance case and a similar case involving records sought by Congress to lower courts. And the court prevented the records from being turned over while the cases proceeded.Since the high court’s ruling, in the Vance case, Trump’s attorneys made additional arguments that his tax records should not be turned over, but they lost again in federal court in New York and on appeal. It was those rulings that Trump had sought to put on hold.
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US on Verge of 500,000 COVID Deaths
The United States is on the verge of half a million COVID-19 deaths, more coronavirus-related deaths than anywhere else, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. U.S. President Joe Biden will talk about the lives lost to the virus Monday evening at the White House, followed by a moment of silence and a candle lighting ceremony. “People decades from now are going to be talking about this as a terribly historic milestone in the history of this country, to have these many people to have died from a respiratory-borne infection,” Anthony Fauci, the top U.S. infectious disease expert said Sunday on CNN.President Joe Biden speaks during a visit to the National Institutes of Health, Feb. 11, 2021, in Bethesda, Md. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, listens at right.To commemorate the dismal sum, the New York Times dedicated prime space on Sunday’s front page with a graphic containing nearly 500,000 dots, representing each individual in the U.S. who has succumbed to the deadly virus. The U.S. is also the global leader for COVID-19 cases with more than 28 million infections. Italy
It was one year ago that Italy became the first country outside of Asia to confirm locally transmitted coronavirus infections. Pope Francis and Italian President Sergio Mattarella marked the anniversary Sunday by establishing the National Day of Health Care Personnel, an annual day to honor doctors, nurses and other medical providers. Vaccination campaigns
Elsewhere in Europe, the rollout of vaccination campaigns in a number of European Union countries is being stymied by what public health officials say is misinformation about the safety and efficacy of the AstraZeneca shot. Germany’s Spiegel magazine reported last week that figures from the country’s Robert Koch Institute showed that of the 736,000 AstraZeneca vaccine doses sent to Germany, only 64,869 have been used. Meanwhile, many people in the European Union, including health care workers, are refusing the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine, citing concerns about the shot’s efficacy and safety. Public health officials say the concerns are unfounded, but the misinformation continues, affecting the vaccination rate in a number of countries. According to a report in The Telegraph, Britian, which is using the Astra Zeneca vaccine, is on track with its inoculations with 23.9% of its population receiving the first dose. The newspaper account says only 3.2% of the EU population has received a dose.Solidarity, cooperation key, UN Says
“The virus has thrived because poverty, discrimination, the destruction of our natural environment and other human rights failures have created enormous fragilities in our societies,” Antonio Guterres, the U.N. secretary-general, wrote in an essay published Monday in The Guardian. “An effective response to the pandemic must be based on solidarity and cooperation. Divisive approaches, authoritarianism and nationalism make no sense against a global threat.”Flowers adorn the tombstone of Adriano Trevisan, Italy’s first known victim of COVID-19, at the cemetery of Vo Vecchio, in Vo Euganeo, Feb. 10, 2021.The CEO of the Serum Institute of India has warned “countries and governments” in a post on Twitter that they may not receive their coronavirus vaccines in a timely manner because the company “has been directed to prioritize the huge needs of India and along with that balance the needs of the rest of the world. We are trying our best.” India has more than 11 million coronavirus cases, according to Hopkins. Tanzania
In Tanzania Sunday, John Magufuli, the country’s president, acknowledged that the East African nation was battling a coronavirus outbreak. Tanzania had stopped reporting virus case and death numbers last spring, when 500 cases and 20 deaths had been recorded. The president had claimed the nation was “coronavirus-free” and stated falsely that the virus had been defeated by prayer. The country is now seeing the deaths of some government officials, including Seif Sharif Hamad, known as Maalim Seif, who died last week at the age of 77. The popular vice president of semi-autonomous Zanzibar had COVID-19, his political party said earlier. On Saturday, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the World Health Organization chief, called the denial in Tanzania “very concerning.” The WHO chief again urged the country to start reporting coronavirus cases and share its data. “A number of Tanzanians traveling to neighboring countries and beyond have tested positive for COVID-19,” the WHO director-general said in a statement. “This underscores the need for Tanzania to take robust action both to safeguard their own people and protect populations in these countries and beyond.” On Sunday, Magufuli encouraged Tanzanians to wear face masks, but only ones made in-country. Magufuli has repeatedly expressed concern about foreign-made goods, including vaccines. Hopkins reported early Monday that there are more than 111 million global COVID infections and nearly 2.5 million global deaths.
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India-China Border Disputes Persist Despite Troop Pullback
Artillery and tanks have rolled back, and Chinese and Indian soldiers have retreated from along the banks of Pangong Tso, a strategic Himalayan lake that straddles their border. It is the biggest push to ease tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbors since Indian accusations of Chinese transgressions into its territory and a deadly clash in June led to a huge nine-month military build-up along their Himalayan border. Announcing the “smooth” completion of the disengagement process, a joint news release by both sides called it a “significant step forward.” This handout photograph released by the Indian Army on Feb. 16, 2021 shows People Liberation Army (PLA) soldiers and tanks during military disengagement along the Line of Actual Control at the border in Ladakh. (Indian Defense Ministry/AFP)But analysts caution that the troop withdrawal from Pangong Lake represents only a start of a potentially long process as soldiers from both sides remain massed along several other stretches of the Himalayan border. “It’s a first step, a tentative step,” according to Jayadeva Ranade at Center for China Analysis and Strategy in New Delhi. “It is aimed at defusing the tension which exists particularly at this point around Pangong.” Indian Defense Minister Rajnath Singh told parliament earlier this month that other disputes remain to be resolved along the border known as the line of actual control, or LAC.“There are still some outstanding issues with regard to deployment and patrolling at some other points along the LAC,” the minister said. “We will focus on these in future discussions.” The most contentious dispute centers on a large strategic plateau of over 900 kilometers known as the Depsang Plains where the two Asian giants have also deployed a significant number of troops, according to analysts. Following the disengagement at Pangong, negotiations on pulling back from three other so-called “friction points” where troops are still in close proximity have begun between military commanders. In the joint statement, the two countries said they will “push for a mutually acceptable resolution of the remaining issues in a steady and orderly manner, so as to jointly maintain peace and tranquility in the border areas.” Analysts warn however that the negotiations will not be easy as the months-long standoff has significantly damaged ties, particularly in the wake of the brutal clash last June in which 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers were killed. While India said the standoff was triggered by Chinese intrusions into its territory, Beijing denied that its troops had transgressed the LAC and accused Indian border guards of provocative behavior. “I would say that we will have to rebuild the relationship rather than take what existed forward,” according to Ranade. “The main point is what did the Chinese hope to achieve by their action, what was their intention? Certainly, those will be factors in the minds of the Indian planners and will ensure that we will be vigilant in future for Chinese actions.” While the territorial differences between the Asian rivals may continue to simmer, economic ties could revive faster, according to analysts. Over the last two decades, India and China had put border disputes on the backburner and focused on building economic ties — in 2019 China emerged as India’s top trading partner with trade topping $90 billion. But the recent military standoff gave those ties a jolt. India has permanently blocked 59 Chinese apps including hugely popular ones such as Tik Tok, and put barriers to Chinese investment in sensitive sectors. The government announced initiatives to boost local manufacturing aimed at reducing reliance on Chinese imports. A leading traders organization vowed to boycott Chinese goods amid a burst of nationalist sentiment. In the wake of the recent disengagement, trade experts in New Delhi expect the rhetoric to cool down and trade ties to get a boost.“We have got really economically entangled with China just like most major economies,” points out Biswajit Dhar a trade anaylst and professor at New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University. “Suddenly trying to move out of the Chinese ambit would be costly for India.” Chinese goods, from mobile phones to ordinary household goods continue to flood Indian markets. FILE – An Indian man speaks on his mobile phone in front of a shop selling OPPO phones, a Chinese consumer electronics company, in Noida, outskirts of New Delhi, India, June 18, 2020.Many Indian industries such as pharmaceuticals and solar power remain critically dependent on Chinese components. More significantly, Indian exports to China grew last year. “Indian industry is now looking at China as a market and China has offered India the market,” says Dhar underlining that there is a push to keep trade ties intact with Beijing. “Earlier the push came only from sectors dependent on imports from China. Now there are sectors like steel and others who are dependent on markets in China. So, there is going to be a substantially large constituency in India which will be seeking normalization of relations with China.” That means in the coming year political and economic ties between Asia’s two biggest countries could take divergent paths.
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European Markets Slump at Start of Trading Week
European markets were in a slump Monday as impatience appeared to be growing among investors with the slow introduction of new COVID-19 vaccines and the slow pace of economic stimulus legislation in the United States.Britain’s benchmark FTSE index was down 0.7% at midday. The CAC 40 in France was 0.4% lower, and Germany’s DAX index was down 0.6%. Markets in Australia and Asia ended mostly lower earlier Monday. Australia’s S&P/ASX index dropped 0.1%. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index fell just over one percent, while Shanghai’s Composite index plunged 1.4%. South Korea’s KOSPI lost 0.9%, and Mumbai’s Sensex sank 2.2%. Asian Markets Mixed Amid Uncertainty Over Direction of Global Economy Gold, oil trading higher, US markets trading lower in futures markets Japan’s benchmark Nikkei and Taiwan’s TSEC index both closed up 0.4%.In commodities trading, gold wa selling at $1,792.40, up 0.8%. U.S. crude oil was selling at $59.86 per barrel, up just over one percent, and Brent crude was selling at $63.38, up 0.7%. All three U.S. indices were trending negatively in futures trading ahead of the opening bell on Wall Street.
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UN Chief Demands Immediate Return to Democratic Rule in Myanmar
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has denounced the military coup in Myanmar and demanded an immediate return to democratic rule. Guterres condemned Myanmar’s repressive actions in his opening address to the 46th session of the UN Human rights Council. Guterres departed from his lengthy speech on COVID-19 related violations to blast Myanmar’s military for its takeover of the country’s democratically elected government. “We see the undermining of democracy, the use of brutal force, arbitrary arrests, repression in all its manifestations,” Guterres said. “Restrictions of civic space. Attacks on civil society. Serious violations against minorities with no accountability, including what has rightly been called ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya population. The list goes on.”EU to Impose Sanctions on Myanmar US Secretary of State to join foreign ministers meeting in Brussels via videoconference Guterres said coups have no place in our modern world. He praised the Human Rights Council for its recent and timely focus on this critical situation. The council held an emergency session on the Myanmar crisis on February 12 and demanded the immediate and unconditional release of all detained people, including the country’s de facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi.Over the coming month, the council will examine the human rights records of Myanmar and many other countries accused of gross violations of human rights. The council will focus on ways in which COVID-19 has accelerated inequalities, setback progress on poverty reduction and deepened discrimination and racism.Guterres said the pandemic has triggered a vicious circle of violations. He said unscrupulous leaders are using COVID-19 as a pretext to entrench their power and criminalize fundamental freedoms. He said the virus has spurred resurgent neo-Nazism and white supremacist movements, as well as racially and ethnically motivated terrorism.”The danger of these hate-driven movements is growing by the day. Let us call them what they are,” Guterres said. “White supremacy and neo-Nazi movements are more than domestic terror threats. They are becoming a transnational threat. These and other groups have exploited the pandemic to boost their ranks through social polarization and political and cultural manipulation.” UN Chief Guterres warned these extremist movements represented the number one internal security threat in several countries. He said global coordinated action was needed to defeat this grave and growing danger.He noted similar global coordinated action was needed to defeat the pandemic, which has killed millions of people and ruined many more lives.
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EU to Impose Sanctions on Myanmar
EU foreign ministers meeting in Brussels Monday have decided to prepare a series of sanctions against those responsible for the February 1 military coup in Myanmar. “The European Union calls for de-escalation of the current crisis through an immediate end to the state of emergency, the restoration of the legitimate civilian government and the opening of the newly elected parliament,” the ministers said in a statement. “In response to the military coup, the European Union stands ready to adopt restrictive measures targeting those directly responsible. All other tools at the disposal of the European Union and its Member States will be kept under review,” the statement said. Ministers are also likely to impose new sanctions on Russia for jailing opposition leader Alexey Navalny. Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny gestures as he posed for photographers standing in a glass enclosure at the Babuskinsky District Court in Moscow, Russia, Feb. 20, 2021.Speaking to reporters ahead of the meeting, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said, “it is clear that Russia is on a confrontational course” with EU, adding that “in the case of Mr. Navalny, there is a blunt refusal to respect their engagements, including the refusal of taking into account the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights.” Weighing in on the case of Russia, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said he would support “issuing the mandate to impose such sanctions,” on Russia and “preparing the list of individuals.” “We need Russia to resolve many international conflicts, and so that will also be a question we must deal with: How is it possible to maintain a constructive dialogue with Russia, even though relations between the EU and Russia have certainly reached a low point?” Maas said. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is expected to join the foreign ministers’ monthly meeting later in the day via videoconference to discuss Russia’s crackdown on Navalny and his supporters, the coup in Myanmar, the Iran nuclear agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and the situation in Hong Kong.
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Why Countries as Far Away as France and UK Send Ships to the South China Sea
Leaders as far away as Canada and Western Europe are sending navy ships to the contested South China Sea this year as pushback against Beijing, which they feel has gone too far and begun alarming their citizens, analysts in the region say. French Defense Minister Florence Parly said in early February that France had dispatched an attack submarine to the sea this month. A British defense official said last month the U.K.’s flagship aircraft carrier strike group was ready to enter the waterway. A Royal Canadian Navy warship sailed near the sea in January with a passage through the Taiwan Strait on its way to join exercises nearby with Australian, Japanese and U.S. navies.The Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser USS Chancellorsville (CG 62) transits the Taiwan Strait, Nov. 12, 2019, in this photo made available by U.S. Navy.These Western countries claim no sovereignty over the 3.5 million-square-kilometer sea, which lies more than a continent away from their own territorial waters. But they want to support the United States in resisting unilateral expansion by China, which has sparred with former European colonies and alarmed people in Western countries, scholars say. “I think there’s pretty much unanimity in terms of the French, the Dutch, the U.K. and other countries that what we’re seeing from China is an attempt to revise the order so that power, not a rules-based approach to the region, is the way the region will be governed or managed going forward,” said Stephen Nagy, senior associate professor of politics and international studies at International Christian University in Tokyo. Western countries would resent that management of the sea if it goes against their former colonies or current economic interests in Asia such as access to the sea’s busy cargo shipping lanes, analysts add. The U.K., for example, is bound by its 1971 Five Power Defense Arrangements to help defend former protectorate Malaysia. Malaysia disputes part of the Chinese claim to about 90% of the South China Sea. The sea stretches from Hong Kong south to the island of Borneo. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson eventually wants his country to take a stronger role in Asia due to economic and trade links in the region, University of New South Wales Emeritus Professor Carl Thayer said in an e-mailed briefing on Monday. Former French colony Vietnam contests China’s maritime claim including the sea’s Paracel Islands. China controls the Paracel chain today. France still maintains “cultural” and “economic” ties with its former Southeast Asian colonies, Nagy said.FILE – A Vietnamese sinking boat (L) which was rammed and then sunk by Chinese vessels near disputed Paracels Islands, is seen near a Marine Guard ship (R) at Ly Son island of Vietnam’s central Quang Ngai province.A Chinese survey vessel entered into standoffs in April 2020 with Malaysia and Vietnam. All three countries drill aggressively for oil and value the sea’s 11 billion barrels of oil and 190 trillion cubic feet of natural gas reserves estimated by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. French armed forces Minister Florence Parly tweeted on February 9 that the submarine made its voyage to “enrich our knowledge of this area and affirm that international law is the only rule that is valid, regardless of the sea where we sail.” It further showed “striking proof of the capacity of our French Navy to deploy far away and for a long time in connection with our Australian, American and Japanese strategic partners,” she said. Brunei, the Philippines and Taiwan dispute parts of the sea too. Asian governments prize the waterway for its fisheries and undersea fossil fuel reserves. China has taken a lead in the dispute over the past decade by landfilling some of the tiny islets for military infrastructure. Western countries with no claims in the sea have passed ships through as far back as the 1970s as the sovereignty dispute first came into focus. China cites historic usage records to back its activity in the sea despite a 2016 world arbitration court ruling that negated a legal basis for its claims. Canada, Australia and Western European countries send ships as well to show support for the United States, which has dispatched destroyers to the sea twice this month following regular sailings in 2020, experts believe. In France’s case, “they just might have notified the U.S. side, and that would be equal to using the submarine passage to indicate indirect support for the United States,” said Huang Kwei-bo, vice dean of the international affairs college at National Chengchi University in Taipei. Citizens of countries far from Asia would support their missions in the Asian sea because they began paying more attention last year to China as the source of COVID-19, Nagy said. They’re noticing Chinese pressure on India and Taiwan as well as the militarily weaker South China Sea claimants, he said. Western leaders hope to “create leverage” against China, said Alan Chong, associate professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore. “One way of reading leverage is to ensure that Beijing takes European values and principles of sustaining free and open transit through international waters seriously,” Chong said.
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US to Mark Somber COVID Milestone
The United States is on the verge of half a million COVID-19 deaths, more coronavirus-related deaths than anywhere else, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. U.S. President Joe Biden will talk about the lives lost to the virus Monday evening at the White House, followed by a moment of silence and a candle lighting ceremony. “People decades from now are going to be talking about this as a terribly historic milestone in the history of this country, to have these many people to have died from a respiratory-borne infection,” Anthony Fauci, the top U.S. infectious disease expert said Sunday on CNN.President Joe Biden speaks during a visit to the National Institutes of Health, Feb. 11, 2021, in Bethesda, Md. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, listens at right.To commemorate the dismal sum, the New York Times dedicated prime space on Sunday’s front page with a graphic containing nearly 500,000 dots, representing each individual in the U.S. who has succumbed to the deadly virus. The U.S. is also the global leader for COVID-19 cases with more than 28 million infections. It was one year ago that Italy became the first country outside of Asia to confirm locally transmitted coronavirus infections. Pope Francis and Italian President Sergio Mattarella marked the anniversary Sunday by establishing the National Day of Health Care Personnel, an annual day to honor doctors, nurses and other medical providers. “The virus has thrived because poverty, discrimination, the destruction of our natural environment and other human rights failures have created enormous fragilities in our societies,” Antonio Guterres, the U.N. secretary-general, wrote in an essay published Monday in The Guardian. “An effective response to the pandemic must be based on solidarity and cooperation. Divisive approaches, authoritarianism and nationalism make no sense against a global threat.”Flowers adorn the tombstone of Adriano Trevisan, Italy’s first known victim of COVID-19, at the cemetery of Vo Vecchio, in Vo Euganeo, Feb. 10, 2021.The CEO of the Serum Institute of India has warned “countries and governments” in a post on Twitter that they may not receive their coronavirus vaccines in a timely manner because the company “has been directed to prioritize the huge needs of India and along with that balance the needs of the rest of the world. We are trying our best.” India has more than 11 million coronavirus cases, according to Hopkins. In Tanzania Sunday, John Magufuli, the country’s president, acknowledged that the East African nation was battling a coronavirus outbreak. Tanzania had stopped reporting virus case and death numbers last spring, when 500 cases and 20 deaths had been recorded. The president had claimed the nation was “coronavirus-free” and stated falsely that the virus had been defeated by prayer. The country is now seeing the deaths of some government officials, including Seif Sharif Hamad, known as Maalim Seif, who died last week at the age of 77. The popular vice president of semi-autonomous Zanzibar had COVID-19, his political party said earlier. On Saturday, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the World Health Organization chief, called the denial in Tanzania “very concerning.” The WHO chief again urged the country to start reporting coronavirus cases and share its data. “A number of Tanzanians traveling to neighboring countries and beyond have tested positive for COVID-19,” the WHO director-general said in a statement. “This underscores the need for Tanzania to take robust action both to safeguard their own people and protect populations in these countries and beyond.” On Sunday, Magufuli encouraged Tanzanians to wear face masks, but only ones made in-country. Magufuli has repeatedly expressed concern about foreign-made goods, including vaccines. Hopkins reported early Monday that there are more than 111 million global COVID infections and nearly 2.5 million global deaths.
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Anti-Coup Demonstrations Resume in Myanmar Monday Despite Open Threat from Junta
Protesters in Myanmar are back out in large numbers Monday, demonstrating against the country’s military regime despite an ominous warning of a deadly response by security forces. A group called Gen Z along with the Civil Disobedience Movement issued a call Sunday for a general strike, urging people to come together for a “spring revolution” on the “Five Twos,” a reference to the digits in Monday’s date, 22/2/2021, and a nod to the 8888 pro-democracy uprising in Myanmar on August 8, 1988. A message carried Sunday on state-owned MRTV warned protesters “are now inciting the people, especially emotional teenagers and youths, to a confrontation path where they will suffer the loss of life.” Reports out of Yangon says security forces have set up roadblocks near some foreign embassies, which have become gathering points for protesters calling for foreign intervention. Tom Andrews, the U.N.’s special rapporteur for Myanmar, tweeted late Sunday that he was “deeply concerned” about the junta’s warning, adding a warning of his own: “Unlike 1988, actions by security forces are being recorded & you will be held accountable.” Deeply concerned w an ominous public warning by the junta that protesters are “inciting the people” to “a confrontation path where they will suffer the loss of life”. Warning to the junta: Unlike 1988, actions by security forces are being recorded & you will be held accountable. pic.twitter.com/1VGa3lWvqS— UN Special Rapporteur Tom Andrews (@RapporteurUn) February 22, 2021Three people have already been killed as a result of the daily protests across Myanmar since the overthrow of the civilian government on February 1, including two people killed in Mandalay Saturday — one of them a teenage boy — when police and security forces used live and rubber bullets, tear gas, water cannon and slingshots against demonstrators. An additional 20 people were wounded in Saturday’s violence, according to the head of a volunteer emergency service. The activist group Assistance Association for Political Prisoners says 640 people have since been arrested, charged or sentenced in connection with the military takeover. One of those arrested is actor Lu Min, who was detained at his home in Yangon, according to a message posted on his Facebook page by his wife. Lu Min had taken part in protests in Yangon and was one of six celebrities the army said were wanted under an anti-incitement law. The army accused Lu Min of encouraging civil servants to join in the protest. If convicted, he faces a two-year prison sentence. An internet shutdown Monday morning has been rumored in Myanmar, with the U.S. embassy among those warning people to be prepared for a blackout.Reports received that internet and mobile data may not be available from 1:00 am to 12:00 pm tomorrow in Yangon.— American Citizen Services – Burma (Myanmar) (@ACSRangoon) February 21, 2021NetBlocks, which tracks internet disruptions and shutdowns, reported that Myanmar was back online from 9 am Monday after an eighth night of internet shutdowns imposed by the military NetBlocks said that while connectivity is restored, online platforms remain filtered with indications that mobile data restrictions are now in place. Update: #Myanmar is back online from 9 am after an eighth night of internet shutdowns imposed by the military 📈While connectivity is restored, online platforms remain filtered with indications that mobile data restrictions are now in place #Yangon📰https://t.co/Jgc20OBk27pic.twitter.com/YAPlAhbIHe— NetBlocks (@netblocks) February 22, 2021Sunday, Facebook took down the main page of the Myanmar military, known as Tatmadaw, citing the firm’s policy of prohibiting the incitement of violence, Reuters reported. A company spokesperson said in a statement that the page was removed “for repeated violations of our Community Standards prohibiting incitement of violence and coordinating harm.” On February 11, Facebook announced it was limiting the distribution of all content from the military’s pages and profiles “in line with our global policies on repeat offenders of misinformation.” U.S Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned on Twitter Sunday that the United States “will continue to take firm action against those who perpetrate violence against the people of Burma as they demand the restoration of their democratically elected government,” referring to Myanmar’s previous name. “We stand with the people of Burma.”The United States will continue to take firm action against those who perpetrate violence against the people of Burma as they demand the restoration of their democratically elected government. We stand with the people of Burma.— Secretary Antony Blinken (@SecBlinken) February 22, 2021U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned the deadly violence. “The use of lethal force, intimidation & harassment against peaceful demonstrators is unacceptable,” he said on Twitter late Saturday.I condemn the use of deadly violence in Myanmar.The use of lethal force, intimidation & harassment against peaceful demonstrators is unacceptable.Everyone has a right to peaceful assembly. I call on all parties to respect election results and return to civilian rule.— António Guterres (@antonioguterres) February 21, 2021Britain said it would consider further action against those involved in violence against protesters, and the French Foreign Ministry called the violence “unacceptable.” In a Twitter message, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell called on “the military and all security forces in #Myanmar to immediately stop violence against civilians.”I strongly condemn the violence against peaceful civilian protestors by the military. I urge the military and all security forces in #Myanmar to immediately stop violence against civilians. We will discuss on Monday #FAC the latest events in Myanmar to take appropriate decisions— Josep Borrell Fontelles (@JosepBorrellF) February 20, 2021EU foreign ministers are to meet Monday to discuss possible sanctions. In a statement released late Sunday, Myanmar’s Foreign Ministry called the messages “flagrant interference” in its internal affairs. “Despite facing the unlawful demonstrations, incitements of unrest and violence, the authorities concerned are exercising utmost restraint through minimum use of force to address the disturbances,” it said in a statement. But security forces have grown increasingly aggressive against the protesters, who have clashed with them since the military detained de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi and other high-ranking officials of the civilian government nearly three weeks ago. The military declared a one-year state of emergency, citing widespread fraud in last November’s general elections, won in a landslide by Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy. The military’s claims were rejected by Myanmar’s electoral commission. Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, who led the coup, promised last week in a nationally televised speech that new elections would be held to bring what he called a “true and disciplined democracy,” but he did not specify when they would take place.
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Biden’s Pick for Attorney General No Stranger to Washington Politics
U.S. President Joe Biden’s pick for attorney general, Merrick Garland, is no stranger to Washington politics. He rose to national prominence in late 2016 when Republicans in Congress blocked his nomination by then-President Barack Obama to a seat on the Supreme Court. Garland, a federal appellate judge, is once again in the limelight and on the verge of taking on a high-profile position, this time as attorney general – essentially the nation’s top law enforcement officer. Garland said he agreed to take the job of attorney general after being assured by both Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris that the Justice Department would retain its independence from political interference. Biden said of his nominee in January, “Your loyalty is not to me,” and apparent dig at former President Donald Trump who demanded loyalty of his Cabinet members. “It’s to the law, to the Constitution, to the people of this nation,” Biden said. Judicial background Garland, 68, is the chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, sometimes called the “second highest court in the land” in part because of the frequency with which its judges ascend to the Supreme Court just a few blocks away. After graduating from Harvard College and Harvard Law School, Garland clerked for two appointees of Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower: the liberal U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Brennan Jr. and Judge Henry J. Friendly, for whom Chief Justice John Roberts also clerked. Before becoming a judge himself, he was a prosecutor and supervised Justice Department investigations into the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and Unabomber Ted Kaczynski.Attorney General nominee Judge Merrick Garland speaks during an event with President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris at The Queen theater in Wilmington, Del, Jan. 7, 2021.His background made him popular even with Republicans when he was nominated to the D.C. Circuit by President Bill Clinton. Garland was confirmed to the post in 1997 by a vote of 76-23 with 32 Republicans voting in favor of his nomination. However, in 2016, when then-President Barack Obama nominated Garland to a vacant seat on the Supreme Court, Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to even hold hearings on the nomination. McConnell argued that the winner of the 2016 election, which turned out to be Donald Trump, should be able to nominate the next Supreme Court member, a move that infuriated Democratic senators. Garland’s nomination lasted 293 days, the longest to date, and the seat for which he was nominated was eventually filled by Neil Gorsuch, appointed by Trump. Challenges ahead Garland’s selection forces Senate Republicans to deal with the nomination of someone they once snubbed. After his two-day confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, members will vote on his nomination March 1. If confirmed, Garland will face huge challenges leading the Justice Department, including overseeing the prosecution of Trump supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6 over Trump’s baseless claims that he won the November 3 presidential election. He will also make decisions on controversial Trump-era policies on immigration and civil rights and will likely face calls to investigate Trump himself. Other politically sensitive cases facing Garland include an ongoing investigating into the taxes of Biden’s son, Hunter, and the origins of the federal probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Garland also will be tasked with restoring confidence in the Justice Department’s independence and improving the agency’s morale. Trump’s attorney general, William Barr, intervened directly in criminal cases that benefited the former president’s political allies, including former national security adviser Michael Flynn, to the dismay of many career prosecutors. Garland has earned a reputation as a moderate jurist whose nomination has been well received by some Republicans. His path to confirmation in the full Senate is very narrow, though, given that Democrats – and the independents who typically vote along with them – control 50 of its 100 seats.
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China Calls for Reset in Sino-US Relations with Biden Admin
Senior Chinese diplomat Wang Yi called on the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden to work with Beijing to reopen dialog between the two countries to restore a bilateral relationship damaged under the presidency of Donald Trump. Wang, a Chinese state councilor and foreign minister, said the Trump administration’s actions to suppress and contain China inflicted immeasurable harm, and called on Washington to remove tariffs on Chinese goods and abandon what he said was an irrational suppression of the Chinese tech sector. Wang also urged Washington to respect China’s core interests, stop interfering in Beijing’s internal affairs and stop “conniving” with separatist forces for Taiwan’s independence. “Over the past few years, the United States basically cut off bilateral dialog at all levels,” Wang said in prepared remarks translated into English. “We stand ready to have candid communication with the U.S. side, and engage in dialogs aimed at solving problems,” he said. Wang pointed to a recent call between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Biden as a positive step. The comments come with the bilateral relationship at its lowest in decades. Washington and Beijing have clashed on multiple fronts including trade, accusations of human rights crimes against the Uighur Muslim minorities in Xinjiang region and Beijing’s territorial claims in the resources-rich South China Sea. The Biden administration has, however, signaled it will maintain pressure on Beijing. Biden has voiced concern about Beijing’s “coercive and unfair” trade practices and endorsed a Trump administration determination that China has committed genocide against Muslim minorities in the far western region of Xinjiang.
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Pressure on Schools to Reopen as Teachers Get Vaccinated
The United States is approaching the statistic of 500,000 deaths from COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. Vaccines and falling infection rates have increasingly given hope that life may soon return to normal. One contentious issue, however, is the reopening of schools. Michelle Quinn reports.Producer: Mary Cieslak
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US Attorney General Nominee Merrick Garland Faces Confirmation Hearing
U.S. Attorney General nominee Merrick Garland, nominated by President Joe Biden as the country’s top law enforcement official, plans to tell senators at his confirmation hearing Monday that he is committed to fighting discrimination and extremist attacks against the government.The 68-year-old Garland, currently a federal appellate court judge in Washington and in 2016 a Supreme Court nominee whom Senate Republicans refused to consider in a presidential election year, is one of Biden’s most important Cabinet nominees.If confirmed by the Senate, he would head the Department of Justice amid its ongoing investigation of hundreds of supporters of President Donald Trump, many of them with anti-government views, who stormed into the U.S. Capitol last month to confront lawmakers as they were certifying that Biden defeated Trump in last November’s election.In addition, Garland could oversee contentious racial disputes involving law enforcement abuses of minorities in criminal cases that led to massive street demonstrations in recent months. Senate Schedules Confirmation Hearing for Merrick Garland The two-day hearing will include Garland’s testimony and a second day for outside witnesses to testifyIn written remarks released ahead of his confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Garland says that the United States “does not yet have equal justice.”“Communities of color and other minorities still face discrimination in housing, education, employment, and the criminal justice system; and bear the brunt of the harm caused by pandemic, pollution, and climate change,” Garland says.Garland says that if he becomes attorney general, it would be “the culmination of a career I have dedicated to ensuring that the laws of our country are fairly and faithfully enforced, and that the rights of all Americans are protected.”Former Democratic President Barack Obama nominated Garland to the Supreme Court five years ago, but Republicans, who then controlled the Senate, refused to consider the nomination in the months ahead of the 2016 election won by Trump. The Republican-controlled chamber, reversing course, quickly approved one of Trump’s appointments to the high court, Amy Coney Barrett, just days ahead of the 2020 election.The Biden administration has touted Garland, who is viewed as a judicial moderate, as a welcome change to the frequent turmoil that erupted in Trump’s Justice Department.Garland’s nomination has been praised by civil rights groups as well as by police organizations, more than 150 former Justice Department officials of both the Democratic and Republicans parties, and 61 former federal judges.Two Republican senators have expressed their support for Garland. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and a member of the Judiciary Committee tweeted support on January 6.“He is a man of great character, integrity, and tremendous competency in the law,” Graham wrote.He will be asked many questions regarding existing investigations that, in my view, need to continue. I look forward to the confirmation process and will closely follow his answers.— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) January 6, 2021And John Cornyn, a Republican from Texas issued a statement January 25 saying he expected to support Garland’s nomination.“Judge Garland’s extensive legal experience makes him well-suited to lead the Department of Justice, and I appreciated his commitment to keep politics out of the Justice Department,” Cornyn’s statement added.Garland has been a federal appeals court judge in Washington for the past two decades. Early in his career, Garland was best known for overseeing the investigation and prosecution of Timothy McVeigh, the man who detonated a bomb outside a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995, killing 168 people. McVeigh was convicted, sentenced to death and executed in 2001.Now, Garland says that experience will put him in good stead in the investigation of the attack on the Capitol.“If confirmed, I will supervise the prosecution of white supremacists and others who stormed the Capitol on January 6 — a heinous attack that sought to disrupt a cornerstone of our democracy: the peaceful transfer of power to a newly elected government,” he says in his prepared remarks.
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Oath Keeper Claims She Met With Secret Service Before Capitol Riot
A leader of the far-right Oath Keepers group charged in the deadly U.S. Capitol riots said she was in Washington on January 6 to provide security for legislators and meet with Secret Service agents, according to a court filing.Jessica Watkins, 38, is one of nine associates of the anti-government group charged with conspiring to storm the Capitol to prevent Congress from certifying President Joe Biden’s election victory.Prosecutors said Watkins entered the Capitol building illegally. According to a defense petition filed Saturday: “Ms. Watkins did not engage in any violence or force at the Capitol grounds or in the Capitol.”Watkins, an Afghanistan war veteran, has pleaded not guilty to the conspiracy charges. According to the indictment, Watkins arrived at the Capitol with communication devices, reinforced vests, camouflage helmets and goggles. She forcibly entered the Capitol “with a line of individuals wearing Oath Keeper clothing, patches, and insignia,” prosecutors said.But her attorney said, “Ms. Watkins was present not as an insurrectionist, but to provide security to the speakers at the rally, to provide escort for the legislators and others to march to the Capitol as directed by the then-president, and to safely escort protesters away from the Capitol to their vehicles and cars at the conclusion of the protest. She was given a VIP pass to the rally. She met with Secret Service agents.”Independent Commission to Examine Capitol Riot, Pelosi Says In a letter to Democratic colleagues, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the House will also put forth supplemental spending to boost security at the CapitolA Secret Service representative said it worked with government partners for security on January 6, but added, “Any assertion that the Secret Service employed private citizens to perform those functions is false.”Prosecutors allege members of the Oath Keepers conspired as early as November to storm the Capitol and had extensively planned for a military-style attack. More than 200 people have been charged so far for their roles in the assault by followers of then-President Donald Trump that left five dead, including a police officer.Watkins, who has been detained since mid-January, is asking for the court to release her to home confinement pending trial, noting she is at risk for “harsh treatment” as a transgender woman.
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Somali President Told to Stay Out of Process to Choose Successor
Somalia’s president, whose four-year term expired this month, should not take part in talks aimed at resolving a dispute that has delayed the selection of a new head of state, two of Somalia’s five regional governments said Sunday.Parliament had been set to make a choice February 8, but this was delayed because new lawmakers have yet to be picked while opponents of President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, who is seeking a second term, accuse him of packing his supporters into the regional and national boards who choose the legislators.The delay has stoked tensions in the Horn of Africa nation that was ripped apart by civil war and which is still battling an insurgency by al Shabab, an Islamist group that frequently launches attacks in Mogadishu and elsewhere.The government of Jubbaland, one of Somalia’s five regions, said the president’s term had expired and he should be excluded from any talks on the dispute.”He should not have a role in the process of election in order for all political stakeholders to have confidence in it,” Jubbaland’s state house said in a statement.A second state, Puntland shared similar sentiments.”We are not going to a conference with Farmajo…,” its president, Said Abdulahi Deni, said in a televised speech, referring to the president.The constitution allows the head of state to continue in his post until a new president is picked, if parliament approves. But experts say the president, by staying on, risks upsetting the delicate power balance between rival clans and regions that is at the heart of the nation’s political reconstruction effort.The central government spokesman did not immediately respond to calls or emails seeking comment.The president met Sunday with the prime minister and presidents of the Hirshabelle, Galmudug and South West states, as well U.N. representatives and Mogadishu’s mayor.The meeting was reported by the state-run Somalia News Agency. The Facebook page of the president’s office said it was a preliminary meeting, without saying when more talks would be held.An alliance of opposition parties said in early February they would reject any attempt to extend Mohamed’s term, calling a national council of lawmakers, opposition leaders and civil society to rule until a successor was chosen.Government troops and opposition supporters exchanged gunfire in Mogadishu on Friday during a protest over the delayed vote. Rival presidential candidates have called for more protests until a new head of state is chosen.Somalia had planned to hold elections to pick a president and lawmakers, its first direct vote since civil war erupted in 1991. But delays in preparations and al Shabab attacks meant this was replaced by an indirect vote in which lawmakers are picked by selected elders and others.
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7 Poll Workers Killed by Landmine as Niger Votes in Presidential Runoff
Seven election workers were killed during Niger’s presidential vote on Sunday when their vehicle struck a landmine, a local official said, marring a day meant to usher in the country’s first democratic transition of power. The West African country regularly suffers attacks by Islamist militants and had stepped up security to protect the poll, in which ruling party candidate Mohamed Bazoum is facing former president Mahamane Ousmane. A vehicle belonging to the electoral commission (CENI) and carrying election workers to their polling stations hit a mine in the rural commune of Dargol in the southwest, said Harouna Mounkaila, the vice president of CENI’s local branch. “They were leaving to drop off the ballot boxes and the members of the polling station,” Moukaila told Reuters, adding that three other workers were seriously wounded. Dargol is about 80 kms (50 miles) from the border with Mali, a hotbed of militant activity. An attack on two villages near the border in January killed at least 100 civilians, the worst such incident in recent memory. Niger’s twin security crises – one near its western border with Mali and Burkina Faso, where militants linked to al Qaeda and Islamic State operate, and the other along the southeastern border with Nigeria, where Boko Harm is active – were the dominant campaign issues. Continuity versus change In the first round on Dec. 27, ruling party candidate Bazoum, a former interior and foreign affairs minister, won 39.3% of the vote to Ousmane’s 17%. Bazoum then won the endorsements of the candidates who came third and fourth in the first round.In the capital Niamey, the vote appeared to go smoothly. After casting his ballot, President Mahamadou Issoufou, who is stepping down after two five-year terms, hailed the historic nature of the election in a country that has seen four coups since independence from France in 1960. Bazoum, for his part, projected confidence. “I hope that luck is on my side, but I have many reasons to believe it is indeed,” he said. Niger’s presidential candidate Mohamed Bazoum (C) prepares to cast his vote at the polling station during Niger’s election runoff, in Niamey, Feb. 21, 2021.The 61-year-old Bazoum has vowed to continue Issoufou’s policies to crack down on militants linked to al Qaeda and Islamic State and to revamp the economy. Ousmane, 71, was Niger’s first democratically elected president and was ousted in a 1996 military coup. Endorsed by around a dozen smaller parties and first round candidates, he has promised to bring change and tackle corruption. “The vote is in every way between continuity and change,” said Mahamadou Harouna, a 30-year-old student who declined to say how he voted. One of the world’s poorest nations, Niger has struggled with drought, floods, coronavirus and weak prices for its main export, uranium. Ousmane has rejected the conventional wisdom that Bazoum is the favourite, alleging that the ruling party candidate’s first-round margin was due to fraud, without providing evidence. “If the citizens ever notice fraud again, I fear the situation will be difficult to manage,” he said after voting on Sunday.
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Cyprus Activists: Hunters’ Lead Pellets Threaten Flamingos
Conservationists in Cyprus are urging authorities to expand a hunting ban throughout a coastal salt lake network amid concerns that migrating flamingos could potentially swallow lethal quantities of lead shotgun pellets.Martin Hellicar, director of Birdlife Cyprus, said flamingos are at risk of ingesting the tiny pellets lying on the lakebed as they feed. Like other birds, flamingos swallow small pebbles to aid digestion, but can’t distinguish between pebbles and the lead pellets.”Last year, we had tens of losses of flamingos,” Hellicar said. Cyprus is a key stop on the migration path for many types of birds flying from Africa to Europe. The Larnaca Salt Lake, a wetlands network of four lakes, typically welcomes as many as 15,000 flamingos from colder climates to the southern coast of the island nation in the eastern Mediterranean. They stay through the winter and leave in March. Other waterfowl frequenting the lake include ducks, waders and seagulls.Hunting is banned around most of the salt lake, but hunters are still allowed to shoot ducks in the network’s southern tip.The government’s Game and Fauna Service says in the first two months of last year, 96 flamingos were found dead in the Larnaca Salt Lake wetlands as a result of lead poisoning. Cyprus Veterinary Services official Panayiotis Constantinou, who has conducted autopsies on flamingos, said lead from the pellets poisoned the birds. The high number of deaths is mainly attributed to heavy winter rain two years ago that stirred up the lake sediment and dislodged embedded lead shot. A sport shooting range near the lake’s northern tip closed nearly 18 years ago and authorities organized a cleanup of lead pellets in the lakebed there.But Hellicar says the cleanup was apparently incomplete. A European Union-funded study is under way to identify where significant amounts of lead pellets remain so they can be removed. Preliminary results of the study showed very high lead levels in the wetland’s southern tip and continued duck hunting there could compound the problem, Hellicar said. “The problem is pronounced,” he said. “The danger is real for the flamingos and other birds that use the area.” Cyprus Hunting Federation official Alexandros Loizides disagrees, saying that hunting in a 200-meter northern swath is not a problem because of the limited number of hunters. He said he’s unaware of any flamingo deaths in the area and faults pesticide and fertilizer runoff from nearby farms for creating any pollution problems hurting wildlife. “I think the effect of hunting there is very small on the specific part of the lake,” Loizides said. “It’d be a shame for hunters to lose the only area where hunting is permitted near wetlands.” A ban on the use of lead pellets near wetlands has been in force in Cyprus for several years. A similar, EU-wide ban took effect last month, but conservationists believe the laws are not being enforced enough.Pantelis Hadjiyerou, head of the Game and Fauna Service, said it’s less important to ban hunting in the area than to persuade hunters to stop using shells with lead pellets. “It should be drummed into people that the use of lead pellets is prohibited near wetlands and that only steel pellets are permitted,” Hadjiyerou told The Associated Press.
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Libya’s Interior Minister Survives Assassination Attempt
Libya’s interior minister survived unscathed Sunday an attack by gunmen on his motorcade, according to sources from his office.The gunmen fired on Fathi Bashagha’s convoy as he drove across the capital of Tripoli Sunday following a visit to the National Oil Corporation.Two of the assailants were arrested and a third was killed in a confrontation with Bashagha’s guards. Bashagha’s office said the minister was unharmed, but at least one of his guards was wounded.A statement from the ministry said Bashagha survived an “assassination attempt as he returned from his residence in Janzur.”The attack comes weeks after Libya agreed to an internationally recognized transitional government tasked with guiding the country to national elections later this year. Libya Agrees to Transitional Government After more than a year of negotiations and escalating violence, Libya takes a step toward end-of-year national elections Bashagha, who has served as interior minister for the Government of National Accord (GNA) since 2018, has in recent months stepped up efforts to absorb armed groups across the country into national security forces.Libya fell into internal armed conflict after the ousting and assassination of former dictator Moammar Gadhafi in October 2011. The country has gone through cycles of violence, including having land and oil fields seized by terrorist groups, and the latest escalation, which began in April 2019, when Haftar’s LNA moved on Tripoli.In October, a cease-fire was signed between the two main parties — the Tripoli-based GNA and the forces of General Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan National Army (LNA).
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British Fishermen Sinking Without EU Trade
Britain’s departure from the European Union, following months of negotiations, has affected trade in many industries; but fishing has been hit particularly hard by the break known as “Brexit.” VOA’s Arash Arabasadi reports that some in the business fear for their futures due to an EU ban on the export of live shellfish from Britain.
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School Teachers in US Protest Against Returning to the Classroom
A new wave of social media stars are proving the online world is not just for young people. Nina Vishneva has the story, narrated by Anna Rice
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White House Hopes Majority of Public Schools Will Be Reopened by April
The United States is struggling to reopen its public schools across the country amid the coronavirus pandemic, but the White House said Sunday it is hoping to have full-time, in-class instruction in a majority of schools by April. “That’s our goal, that’s our objective, that’s our plan,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told ABC’s “This Week” show. But she said meeting the goal is contingent on congressional approval of President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill, which includes $130 billion in assistance for schools. “Many schools across the country don’t have the resources to be able to invest in improving the facilities, on hiring more bus drivers, on hiring more temporary teachers so we can have smaller class sizes,” she said. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has given “clear, science-based guidelines for school districts on the range of steps they can take to be safe. But every school in the country does not have that funding and the resources,” Psaki said. “We need the federal government to address that.” The House of Representatives is planning to vote this week on the Biden relief package with the hope of full congressional approval by mid-March. FILE – A teacher calls names for schoolchildren to collect a swab and test themselves for COVID-19 to prevent the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in the classroom at South Boston Catholic Academy in Boston, Massachusetts, Jan. 28, 2021.Currently, 47% of U.S. pupils in kindergarten through 8th grade are attending classes in person and 33% of 9th through 12th graders, while the remainder are attending classes virtually from home or in a mix of at-home and in-school instruction. But one Republican critic of the size of the Biden relief aid, Congressman Steve Scalise of Louisiana, told ABC, “There’s money out there already,” more than $1 trillion in unspent funds from previous relief packages he says that could be sent to local communities throughout the country to help reopen schools. He also criticized the Biden package for not requiring schools to reopen in full if more money is approved. “There’s so much science out there that says [virtual learning] is hurting kids,” Scalise said. “Millions of kids in America right now are not getting in-classroom learning every day.” He said about 40% are attending classes in schools, “so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Those are in hot spots, places where the virus is not as serious. If you look at what the priority should be, it should be the children.” “Our kids can’t wait,” he said. “They need to be in a classroom today. The science says they can be in a classroom today. The question is, is the will there for some politicians in Washington who are bowing to the teachers’ unions,” some of which are opposed to restarting full-time classroom instruction. FILE – Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci speaks during an unscheduled briefing after a Coronavirus Task Force meeting at the White House on April 5, 2020, in Washington.Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top U.S. infectious disease expert and Biden’s chief medical adviser, told CNN the “default position (of the Biden administration) is to get the children back to school and protect the teachers.” He said school systems across the U.S. can reopen if they follow guidelines issued last week by the CDC to “get the children back to school in the safest way possible.” The U.S., with 4% of the world’s population, is nearing 500,000 deaths, 20% of the global total, according to the Johns Hopkins University, which is monitoring the global outbreak. “It’s terrible,” Fauci said. “It’s really horrible. It’s a terrible milestone in the history of this country.” But Fauci said better days are ahead as millions of Americans are being vaccinated against the virus. “We’re going to have a significant degree of normality toward the end of the year,” he said. “It’ll be much better over where we are right now.”
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Britain’s Royal Family Braces for ‘Harry and Meghan’ Interview
Britain’s royal family is bracing for a March 7 airing of an American television interview with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, widely referred to as Harry and Meghan, amid reports that the content is explosive and will make for uncomfortable viewing for the British monarch and senior royals. The interview with talk show host Oprah Winfrey was taped in California, a day before Buckingham Palace announced that the couple have decided not to return to the royal fold. They will continue to live independently in the United States, where they have struck lucrative deals to produce programming for both Netflix and Spotify and launched their own non-profit foundation. CBS television insiders say the interview will likely widen the gulf between the couple and the royal household. And they warn it will likely go down as the most notorious interview featuring a member of Britain’s storied royal family since Harry’s mother, the late Diana, Princess of Wales, gave her side of the story in 1995 about the collapse of her marriage to Prince Charles. It was during the 1995 interview that Diana explained that her husband had maintained an affair with a previous paramour soon after their wedding. “There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded,” she said. She also admitted to having affairs herself because of loneliness and the betrayal. FILE – Britain’s Prince Harry and his wife Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, are pictured in this undated handout photo supplied to Reuters, following an announcement that they are expecting their second child.The Duke and Duchess of Sussex, who is pregnant with their second child, decided a year ago to walk away from their roles as working members of the royal family for a trial period, saying they wanted freedom to pursue their own projects and were aiming to become financially independent, something they have accomplished rapidly. The pair, who chafed at the strictures of royal life, said they did not desire a complete severing of ties but were hoping for a bespoke half-in-half-out arrangement with Harry maintaining royal patronages and keeping his honorary military titles, including as captain-general of Britain’s Royal Marines. The titles are bestowed by Queen Elizabeth II. FILE – Britain’s Queen Elizabeth, Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, pose for a picture at in London, Britain, June 26, 2018. (John Stillwell/Pool via Reuters)Last week, the couple and Buckingham Palace, which was never happy with the bespoke arrangement, reviewed the trial separation and confirmed Friday that Harry and Meghan won’t be returning to royal duties, a decision that makes final the couple’s split from the royal family. It was also announced that Harry will be giving up his honorary military titles, which friends of the couple say has infuriated him. The statements about finalizing what has become known as Megxit were official in tone, but they also indicated the couple and Buckingham Palace are far apart and that the rift is likely to grow. “Some will say the Sussexes have just stamped their feet again after they didn’t get what they wanted,” according to the royal correspondent of Britain’s Sky News, Rhiannon Mills. “Others will criticize the royal firm for being too traditional, too old-fashioned and unwilling to work on a compromise with the couple. One thing it has done, which neither side would want, is ramp up the stories of a rift, which will potentially be stoked further by their interview with Oprah,” she added. According to royal reporters, Harry and Meghan did not inform Buckingham Palace that they were taping a television interview while negotiations between the couple and the royal household were ongoing — an omission that has added to alarm. Britain’s “red-top” tabloid newspapers lost no time pivoting Sunday from the coronavirus pandemic and Brexit to Megxit. “Have they no respect?” screamed the front page of Saturday’s Daily Mail. The paper made much of the fact that the final break between the couple and Buckingham Palace coincided with the ill health of Prince Philip, who was admitted to the hospital last week. FILE – Britain’s Prince Harry (L) and Meghan (2nd R) follow Prince William (C), and Catherine (R) as they depart Westminster Abbey after attending the annual Commonwealth Service in London, March 9, 2020.The Sun reported that Harry’s brother, Prince William, was left “really sad and genuinely shocked” over his brother Harry and Meghan’s “petulant” response to the queen as they officially quit the royal family. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex and Buckingham Palace lightly dueled in their statements about the meaning of public service. But it is the timing of the Sussexes’ interview with Oprah Winfrey that is prompting worry in Buckingham Palace with courtiers fearful about what the couple will say and how that will rebound on Britain’s 94-year-old monarch. “We don’t need to hear any more from them now,” a palace official told Britain’s The Sunday Times. Harry is sixth in line to Britain’s throne. FILE – Guardsmen escort the coffin of Diana, Princess of Wales draped in the Royal Standard, as the cortege passes through crowds gathered along Whitehall.The collapse of his parents’ marriage became ensnared in a media frenzy with the tabloids adding insult to injury as much as they could. Both Charles and Diana, and their staffs, were drawn in, leaking against each other to try to manipulate the press coverage of their tumultuous separation and bitter divorce, say royal commentators. And that appears to be happening again with households and staffs briefing against each other. Some of the couple’s friends are worried that the interview with Oprah Winfrey may end up damaging Harry and Meghan. Royal interviews have often backfired. In 2019, the Duke of York, commonly known as Prince Andrew, gave an interview explaining his friendship with the late pedophile billionaire Jeffrey Epstein. He thought the encounter had gone well but it resulted in him having to withdraw from public life. Diana also later said she “deeply regretted” her 1995 interview. The couple’s bid to define a celebrity role for themselves sits badly with the royal family. Palace insiders fear an unleashed “brand Sussex” could eclipse Prince Charles and Prince William. One of the royal family’s uppermost fears is that Harry and Meghan will become increasingly outspoken now they are unmoored from the royal household risking blowback on the British monarchy, “Royals have to act differently from celebrities in order to ensure the standing and longevity of the institution, which relies on public goodwill to survive,” a palace official told VOA recently.
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India, China Complete Troop Pullout From Lake Area
Indian and Chinese troops have completed a pullout from a lake area on their disputed border in the western Himalayas, setting the scene for disengagement at other friction points, the two countries said on Sunday. Thousands of soldiers have been facing off since April on the Line of Actual Control (LAC), or the de facto border, including at the glacial Pangong Tso lake. Earlier this month, military commanders agreed to begin pulling out troops, tanks and artillery in a first step towards full withdrawal. On Saturday, the two commanders met to review the pullout. “The two sides positively appraised the smooth completion of disengagement of frontline troops in the Pangong Lake area noting that it was a significant step forward that provided a good basis for resolution of other remaining issues along the LAC in Western Sector,” a joint press release said. The deployment in the remote area that falls in India’s Ladakh region and adjoins the Chinese-administered Aksai Chin plateau had raised fears of a broader conflict between the two countries. A clash erupted in the Galwan Valley in June, when 20 Indian soldiers were killed in the first combat losses on the disputed border in more than four decades. China said this week it lost four soldiers in the fighting. Troops remain in close proximity on other parts of the undefined border including at Hot Springs, Gogra Post and the Depsang plains, officials said. The commanders had a candid and in-depth exchange of views on the situation on the border, the two countries said in the press release. “The two sides agreed to follow the important consensus of their state leaders, continue their communication and dialogue, stabilize and control the situation on the ground, push for a mutually acceptable resolution of the remaining issues in a steady and orderly manner, so as to jointly maintain peace and tranquility in the border areas,” they said. India and China fought a war in 1962 and the border remains undefined. India said Chinese troops had intruded deep into its side of the LAC last April, triggering the most serious stand-offs in decades. China denied its troops had transgressed the LAC and accused Indian border guards of provocative behavior.
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