An American woman who has long accused the late businessman Jeffrey Epstein of sexual abuse sued Prince Andrew on Monday over alleged sexual assault. Virginia Giuffre filed the lawsuit in federal court Monday in Manhattan under the Child Victims Act. Giuffre, who now lives in Australia, said she was 17 when the assault by the member of the British royal family took place. In a statement, Giuffre said, “I am holding Prince Andrew accountable for what he did to me.” She said she hopes other victims will see from her lawsuit “that it is possible not to live in silence and fear but to reclaim one’s life by speaking out and demanding justice.” Giuffre’s lawsuit claims that the prince sexually abused her on multiple occasions in 2001, including in Epstein’s New York mansion and at the London home of Ghislaine Maxwell, who has been linked to Epstein and charged with sex trafficking. FILE – Virginia Giuffre, center, who says she was trafficked by sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, holds a news conference outside a Manhattan court in New York, Aug. 27, 2019.Andrew, the second son of Queen Elizabeth II, has repeatedly denied having sexual contact with Giuffre and told BBC Newsnight in 2019 that he had “no recollection” of ever meeting her. Epstein died two years ago from apparent suicide in a federal prison in Manhattan, where he was awaiting trial on federal child sex trafficking charges. Maxwell faces trial in November on sex trafficking charges. She has pleaded not guilty. ABC News reported Monday that Giuffre’s lawsuit comes just days before the expiration of a New York state law that allows alleged victims of childhood sexual abuse to file civil claims when criminal charges might otherwise be barred by statutes of limitations. Giuffre’s lawyer, David Boies, told the news network, “If she doesn’t do it now, she would be allowing (Andrew) to escape any accountability for his actions.” A spokesman for Andrew told ABC news there would be no comment on the lawsuit. After Giuffre first accused the prince of sexual abuse in public court filings in 2014, a palace statement at that time said, “the allegations made are false and without any foundation.” Some information in this report came from The Associated Press.
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Month: August 2021
Fires in Greece Show No Signs of Slowing
More than 600 firefighters continue to battle a massive wildfire ravaging the Greek island of Evia that has charred buildings and pine forests and forced thousands to evacuate.The fire covering the country’s second-largest island has been blazing, uncontrolled, for seven consecutive days, resulting in the deaths of a volunteer firefighter and an Athens official.The United States and several European and Middle Eastern countries sent firefighters and firefighting planes and helicopters to Greece. Over the weekend, the U.S. Navy provided a reconnaissance plane from an airbase in Sicily, according to the Navy Times.An helicopter fills with water as people watch from the beach during a wildfire at Pefki village on Evia island.The European Union sent nearly 1,000 firefighters and nine planes. It is also sending resources to other countries affected by the fires, including Turkey and Italy.”We are mobilising one of Europe’s biggest ever common firefighting operations as multiple fires affect several countries simultaneously,” said the EU commissioner for crisis management, Janez Lenarčič, in a Sunday statement.The result of a record heat wave that baked countries, the wildfires have also struck Turkey, Italy, Spain, North Macedonia, Albania and Lebanon.Arsonists Behind More than Half of Italy’s Wildfires, Officials SayAbout 800 wildfires have struck Italy this year, tripling normal annual average and causing millions of dollars in damageIn Greece, temperatures reached 45 C (113 F) in what Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis called the worst heat wave in three decades.Mitsotakis conveyed his appreciation in a Sunday Twitter statement addressing the 22 countries that had sent help to Greece.”On behalf of the Greek people, I would like to express our heartfelt gratitude to all the countries that have sent assistance and resources to help fight the wildfires. We thank you for standing by Greece during these trying times,” Mitsotakis said.The ongoing fires in Greece come as the United Nations released a new climate report Monday that warned of worsening global warming in the coming years.Average global temperature will rise by 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F), compared with preindustrial temperatures, by the early 2030s, the report predicts.Many scientists believe that if temperatures surpass the 1.5-degree threshold, many effects of climate change may irreversibly worsen, leading to more intense heat waves, higher sea levels and larger storms.For example, the report predicted the frequency of extreme heat waves would increase from once every 50 years to once every decade.Though some climate changes may be permanent, authors of the report called for increased action to address greenhouse gas emissions, which are considered a major factor in human-driven climate change.Nearly 200 countries agreed to limit temperatures from reaching the 1.5-degree threshold in the 2015 Paris climate agreement, but individual progress on the goal has varied.U.S. President Joe Biden recently pledged to cut emissions in half, compared with 2005 levels, by 2030. European Union leaders similarly released an aggressive emission reduction plan that they hope to make legally binding, a step the U.S. has not taken.Some information in this report came from The Associated Press.
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US, Along With UK and Canada, Slaps More Sanctions on Belarus
The United States, in coordination with Britain and Canada, rolled out new sanctions on Belarus on Monday, the one-year anniversary of the start of protests in the eastern European country against elections that were widely seen as fraudulent. Since that time, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has taken harsh action against peaceful demonstrators and political opponents. “Rather than respect the clear will of the Belarusian people, the Lukashenko regime perpetrated election fraud, followed by a brutal campaign of repression to stifle dissent,” U.S. President Joe Biden said in a statement. “From detaining thousands of peaceful protesters, to imprisoning more than 500 activists, civil society leaders and journalists as political prisoners, to forcing the diversion of an international flight in an affront to global norms, the actions of the Lukashenko regime are an illegitimate effort to hold on to power at any price.”FILE – Women wearing carnival masks march down the streets under umbrellas with the colors of the former white-red-white flag of Belarus to protest against the Belarus presidential election results in Minsk, on Jan. 26, 2021.Actions by Washington, as well as Ottawa and London, are targeting the construction, energy, potash and tobacco industries of Minsk, which the U.S. Treasury Department described as the “wallets” of the Lukashenko government. “Together with our Canadian and British partners, today we are demonstrating continued international condemnation of the Lukashenko regime’s undemocratic actions,” U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a statement.Among the entities being blacklisted is the state-owned potash producer Belaruskali OAO, a primary source of the country’s foreign currency earnings. In response to the British sanctions, which were announced earlier in the day, Lukashenko told reporters on Monday that Britain could “choke on” them.”You are America’s lapdogs,” Lukashenko stated at an hourlong news conference during which he denied being a dictator and said his actions against demonstrators and political opponents defended Belarus against a coup.Britain and the United States previously targeted Belarusian individuals by freezing assets and imposing travel bans, but those actions have failed to moderate the behavior of Lukashenko, who has run the former Soviet republic since 1994.“The United States once again calls on the Belarusian authorities to end the crackdown on members of civil society, the media, athletes, students, legal professionals and other citizens, immediately release all political prisoners, engage in a genuine dialogue with the democratic opposition and civil society, as called for in the OSCE Expert Mission report, and hold free and fair elections under international observation,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement. “We will continue working with the international community to hold to account those responsible for human rights violations and abuses in Belarus.”
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Mentors Help South African Women Miners Break Barriers
The mining industry has long been one of South Africa’s largest sectors, but women are still a minority in its workforce. Now, a group called Women in Mining South Africa is trying to change that through a mentorship program to help young women enter the field. For VOA, Linda Givetash reports from Johannesburg. Camera: Zaheer Cassim Produced by: Zaheer Cassim
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US Democrats Unveil Sweeping Social Safety Net Plan
U.S. Senate Democrats on Monday unveiled a sweeping $3.5 trillion social safety net proposal that would sharply expand the role of the national government in the lives of millions of Americans. The plan formally embraces many of the 2020 campaign promises of President Joe Biden, to give impoverished people a better shot at joining middle class American life. At the same time, it would expand government services across an array of existing and new programs. It would provide universal free pre-kindergarten schooling for 3- and 4-year-old children and two years of free community college classes for high school graduates. For older Americans, the plan would boost federal spending for added health care benefits with first-time funding for dental, vision and hearing aid care. The Democrats’ plan, already being uniformly pilloried by Republican lawmakers as too costly and a vast overreach toward a socialist wish list of government largesse, also would invest new sums to fight climate change, change federal immigration laws and attempt to lower prescription drug prices. Some Democratic lawmakers have also voiced reservations about the massive cost of the proposal. The Senate Democrats say they would pay for the package with higher taxes on corporations and individuals earning more than $400,000 a year, which Republicans also oppose it because the changes would undo some of the tax cuts they enacted in 2017 under former President Donald Trump. The new spending proposal is in addition to the estimated $1 trillion infrastructure package for road and bridge repair, broadband internet construction, and rail and transit expansion that is nearing approval in the Senate, possibly on Tuesday. The Senate is likely to approve the infrastructure measure with unanimous Democratic support and about a third of the 50-member Republican bloc of lawmakers before sending it to the House of Representatives, where some Democrats say the package is too small and passage is uncertain. Some House Democratic progressives say they won’t vote for the infrastructure package, another Biden priority, until they can approve the social safety net legislation. FILE – In this image from Senate TV, Vice President Kamala Harris sits in the chair on the Senate floor to cast her first tie-breaking vote at the Capitol in Washington, Feb. 5, 2021.Senate Democrats, with no Republican support, hope to push through the broad outlines of the new social safety net spending plan in the coming days on a simple majority vote in the politically divided Senate, with Vice President Kamala Harris casting the tie-breaking vote for the Democrats. But any eventual legislation, with specific spending proposals, could take Congress months for consideration and enactment. In introducing the $3.5 trillion package, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York told Democratic colleagues in a letter, “At its core, this legislation is about restoring the middle class in the 21st Century and giving more Americans the opportunity to get there.” “By making education, health care, childcare, and housing more affordable, we can give tens of millions of families a leg up,” Schumer said. The social safety net legislation was largely drafted by one of the Senate’s most liberal lawmakers, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. In a statement, Sanders said, “For too many decades, Congress has ignored the needs of the working class, the elderly, the children, the sick and the poor.” “Now is the time for bold action,” he said. “Now is the time to restore faith in ordinary Americans that their government can work for them, and not just wealthy campaign contributors.” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky walks towards the Senate chamber in Washington, Aug. 9, 2021.But the Senate Republican leader, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, is scoffing at the Democratic proposal. He said last week that discussion of it “will thrust the Senate into an ultra-partisan showdown over the staggering, reckless taxing and spending spree” that Democrats want. He said Schumer is making Democrats vote on “nothing less than Chairman Sanders’ dream shopping list. Every American family will know exactly where their senator stands.”
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Kenyan Aid Group Helps Women During Pandemic
Aid groups say COVID-19 has caused greater suffering, both psychologically and economically, to women compared to men, especially in developing countries like Kenya. One aid group took it upon itself to step in and make a difference.
Kenyan beautician Cynthia Okewe was full of hope when the business she opened four years ago started making a profit.
But the COVID-19 pandemic slashed her income by more than 80%, making daily life a struggle and sending her into a deep slump.
“So many people have died and done so many things because of COVID. And now, even me, myself, I got the counseling because I needed to understand myself and know and cope with the COVID-19 and know what’s going on around me so that I can cope well without hurting myself, because I got into depression because of COVID-19,” she said.
Okewe received telecounseling help from the Center for Rights Education and Awareness (CREAW) in Nairobi’s Kibera, Africa’s largest urban slum.
The counselors target women and girls, who they say are more vulnerable to pandemic shocks than men because of fewer jobs and higher job losses. Nerea Akoth, lead counselor at the organization, says woman have been hit on multiple fronts.“With COVID, a lot of things have happened. We’ve seen an economy that has gone down. We’ve seen jobs have reduced. So, even the small jobs that are available for the women is no longer there. So, women are actually strained, and they find themselves in tight situations. They have to provide, yet there are no job opportunities,” Akoth said.
The counseling service is supported by aid group Care International, in Kenya, which has been advocating for women’s rights for more than two decades.
Dorothy Aseyo, senior manager for the women’s voice and leadership program, told VOA that while the COVID-19 pandemic posed a new challenge, the group managed to help about 9,000 women so far.
“The psycho-social aspect has come in very strongly because of the need of differentiated impacts of either COVID-19 or any other issues that women and girls have been facing in Kenya. And this actually has meant that we need to support them to receive psycho-social support because of the mental health issues and also the other effects of COVID-19 on their health,” Asyeo said.
The U.N.’s COVID-19 gender assessment report, released last December, found that nearly half of female-led households affected by COVID-19 needed economic and social support.
For thousands of women like Okewe, the counseling has provided a much-needed lifeline.
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Thai Protesters Claim ‘Change of Heart’ as They Take to Streets to Reject PM Prayuth
A weekend of major protests across Bangkok in defiance of an emergency order to control the pandemic, brought out thousands of anti-government protesters, including some of the city’s rich, a new threat to the royalist establishment and Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha’s grip on power. For VOA, Vijitra Duangdee reports from Bangkok.
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Canada Reopens Land Border to Vaccinated US Citizens
Canada Monday reopened its land border with the United States to vaccinated citizens for non-essential travel, the first time U.S. citizens could do so since March of 2020.Under the plan, along with filling out an application, visitors must provide proof of full vaccination with a Canada health department-approved vaccine and a negative COVID-19 test taken within the previous 72 hours. The application is available via a downloadable smartphone app.The Associated Press reports while the Canada Border Services Agency won’t say how many people it’s expecting, a U.S. company that offers same-day COVID-19 testing says it has seen the number of procedures it performs more than triple in recent weeks.Video from various border crossings in New York and Washington states showed cars lining up to cross into Canada Monday. Businesses on both sides of the border believe increased traffic will boost commerce.The move follows Canada’s decision last month to drop a two-week quarantine requirement for its citizens when they return home from the U.S.
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Arsonists Behind More than Half of Italy’s Wildfires, Officials Say
About 800 wildfires have struck Italy this year, tripling the normal annual average and causing millions of dollars in damage. But more than half of them were likely started by arsonists or farmers breaching fire rules, authorities say.A 50-year-old sheep and goat farmer was arrested last week after a surveillance camera captured him setting undergrowth afire Thursday near the town of Montesarchio, 48 kilometers from Naples in southern Italy, near to where another wildfire raged last year.Local officials say the farmer likely wanted to renew his pasture by burning it off in defiance of strict rules regulating such burns. They say he tried to get rid of his lighter when he spotted Carabinieri officers later heading toward him.For law enforcement authorities, even more troubling are the arsonists.Last week, Roberto Cingolani, minister for ecological transition, told parliament that 57.4% of Italy’s recent wildfires were caused by arson, and 13.7% the result of unintentional human action.“More than 70% of the fires in Italy are our responsibility,” he said. “Less than 2% are caused naturally, for example, by a lightning strike. For 4.4%, the cause is undetermined, and 22% are unclassifiable situations in which it is difficult to know what triggered the fire,” he added.With the earth being parched, the fires quickly take hold, Italian officials say, noting that climate change has brought unprecedented high temperatures to the country, drying out the land and making it even more combustible.Most of the wildfires have been in the southern regions of Lazio, Campania, Puglia, Calabria, Basilicata and Sicily. Blazes have also occurred in the central provinces of Tuscany, Umbria and Abruzzo, where on Sunday vacationers were evacuated after a wildfire tore through a pine wood near the coastal city of Pescara.Wildfires on the island of Sardinia have been described by the local media as “apocalyptic,” and by the end of the month will likely have caused more economic damage than the costs from blazes in 1983 and 1994. Sardinia has declared an official “state of calamity” and called for more central government assistance.General view of a burnt area in the aftermath of a wildfire in Cuglieri, Sardinia, Italy, July 25, 2021, in this screen grab obtained from a social media video. (Credit: Cronache Nuoresi)According to Coldiretti, the country’s main agricultural association, the extreme heat and a lack of rainfall are causing a “worrying drought that is decimating crops but also favors the spread of fires and the action of arsonists.”The association said in a statement that the economic cost was incalculable from the fires, which have “destroyed tens of thousands of hectares of woods and Mediterranean scrub with charred trees, olive groves, destroyed pastures and led to a real slaughter of animals.”Coldiretti also said it believes that 60% of the fires are lit by arsonists, some with mafia ties, in disputes over land or in a bid to force farmers to sell to make way for industrial development.“Arsonists are devastating the Apulian countryside,” Coldiretti President Savino Muraglia said.A pair of arsonists were arrested last week in Troina in central Sicily, where solar power plants are being built.“We must pay close attention to the hypothesis that solar interests want to undermine farmers,” Troina Mayor Fabio Venezia told La Repubblica newspaper. Arson investigations have also begun in Lazio, Calabria and Sicily, where Claudio Fava, head of the regional anti-mafia commission, said at a recent hearing, “We must take note that in Sicily, it is not barbecues and brushwood causing these fires.”Fava said 98% of the island’s fires are being caused by “willful misconduct.” Other fires are thought to be started because of personal disputes and grudges. In Puglia, a young farmer near Lecce appeared to have fallen afoul of some of his neighbors in June. A fire burned much of his land, tools and irrigation system.
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Food Aid Only Reaching Half of Tigrayans in Need
Food aid from the United Nations only reached half of its intended recipients in the Tigray region of Ethiopia, the World Food Program (WFP) said Monday.WFP said it delivered food to a million people in war-torn Tigray in June and July, but that shortages of fuel and telecommunications mean another million people slated to receive assistance have been out of reach.The United Nations has estimated that 5.2 million people – a shocking 90% of the population of Tigray – is in need of food assistance.“People in Tigray are suffering due to lack of humanitarian support over the past month – we need to reach them now before they fall into famine. WFP is calling for all parties to agree to a ceasefire and guarantee an unimpeded flow of humanitarian supplies into Tigray, so that we can deliver lifesaving food and other emergency supplies safely before it’s too late,” said Michael Dunford, WFP’s Corporate Response Director for Tigray. The war erupted in Ethiopia last November between the federal government in Ethiopia and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, after Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed accused Tigrayan troops of attacking federal military camps.The war in Ethiopia has caused a devastating humanitarian crisis mostly in the Tigray region.Tens of thousands of Tigray residents have fled to neighboring Sudan since the conflict began.
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Indonesia’s Mount Merapi Erupts for 2nd Straight Day
Mount Merapi, Indonesia’s most active volcano, erupted Monday, sending plumes of ash into the air and pyroclastic flows — a mixture of volcanic debris — down its slopes for a second straight day. Geologists in Indonesia say the 2,968-meter-high Merapi stratovolcano has seen increased volcanic activity in recent weeks, with a dome of solidified lava growing rapidly on its summit. They say the lava dome partially collapsed Sunday, sending at least seven pyroclastic flows, as much as 3 kilometers down the mountain’s sides. There were three such flows on Monday.Officials say ash from the eruption blanketed several villages and nearby towns, but no casualties were reported. Mount Merapi is located on Java, Indonesia’s most populous Island, and is located near Yogyakarta, an ancient city of about 400,000 people.Hanik Humaida, head of Yogyakarta’s Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation Center, told the Associated Press the volcano has been at the orange alert level — the second highest alert status — since eruptions began last November. She said the current eruptions did not change the volcano’s status. However, villagers living on Merapi’s slopes were advised to stay 5 kilometers away from the crater’s mouth. Merapi’s last major eruption in 2010 killed 347 people and displaced 10,000, one of the deadliest volcanic eruptions in recent years.Some information in this report came from the Associated Press.
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New Orleans Cancels Jazz Fest Due to COVID-19 Surges
Organizers of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival have cancelled this year’s event due to the latest surge in COVID-19 cases in the region.In a statement on the festival’s website, the organizers said they made the decision based on “recent exponential growth of new COVID cases in New Orleans and the region and the ongoing public health emergency.”The event commonly known as “Jazz Fest” is traditionally held over the last weekend of April and the first weekend of May. After the event was cancelled in 2020, organizers had hoped to hold the event in October. But as deadlines for guaranteeing acts and building the festival site were approaching, they had to make an immediate decision.In the first 50 years of Jazz Fest, which began in 1970, the event had never been cancelled. While featuring big name international stars such as the Rolling Stones and Jimmy Buffett, the event also celebrates the indigenous music and culture of New Orleans and Louisiana, featuring nearly every music style imaginable: blues, R&B, gospel, Cajun, Zydeco, Afro-Caribbean, folk, Latin, rock, rap, contemporary and traditional jazz, country, bluegrass and others.The festival is now scheduled to return to its usual spring dates in 2022, three years after it was last held.While a disappointment to music fans, cancellation of Jazz Fest is also a setback for the economic recovery of New Orleans, a city that relies heavily on tourism. Officials from the area’s hospitality industry told NOLA.com hotels in the city had been nearly totally booked for the two weeks of the festival.The city had attempted to return to normal in recent months, with popular local music venues requiring proof of vaccination to enter. But the recent COVID-19 surge, driven largely by the highly contagious delta variant, have forced many of those venues to cancel concerts through August.(Some information in this report came from the Associated Press.)
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China’s Wandering Elephants May Finally Be Heading Home
An elephant herd that fascinated locals and people around the world by making a yearlong journey into urbanized southwest China, raiding farms and even a retirement home for food, appears finally to be headed home.Local authorities have deployed trucks, workers and drones to monitor the elephants, evacuated roads for them to pass safely and used food to steer them away from populated areas. Despite their entrance into villages and a close approach to the Yunnan provincial capital of Kunming, no animals or humans have been injured.The 14 Asian elephants of various sizes and ages were guided across the Yuanjiang river in Yunnan on Sunday night and a path is being opened for them to return to the nature reserve where they lived in the Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture.FILE – A migrating herd of elephants roam through farmlands of Shuanghe Township, Jinning District of Kunming city in southwestern China’s Yunnan Province, June 4, 2021.The elephants left the reserve more than a year ago for unknown reasons and roamed more than 500 kilometers (300 miles) north. After reaching the outskirts of Kunming, a center for business and tourism, they turned south again, but still are far from the reserve.One male that separated from the herd was subsequently tranquilized and returned to the reserve.Asian elephants are among the most highly protected animals in China and their population has grown to around 300, even while their habitat has shrunk because of expanded farming and urban growth.As of Sunday night, the herd was still in Yuanjiang County, approximately 200 kilometers (125 miles) from the reserve.However, the National Forestry and Grassland Administration said the animals were in a “suitable habitat” after crossing the river.A notice issued by provincial government said the herd’s progress was significant and it would continue to work on getting the elephants back in their natural habitat soon.
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More Cubans Try Dangerous Trip to US Across Florida Straits
Zuleydis Elledias has gotten up each morning for the past two months hoping for a phone call, a message — any news on the fate of her husband and nephew, who disappeared at sea after the boat they were in capsized as they tried to reach Florida. Another half dozen families in the small town of Orlando Nodarse, 35 miles (55 kilometers) west of Havana and near the port of Mariel, are living with the same uncertainty. “Due to the pandemic my husband lost his job. Many places closed and he had been home for more than a year. Every time he went to his workplace, they told him to wait. And that made him desperate because we have a 2-year-old son,” Elledias, a 38-year-old homemaker, told The Associated Press through tears. Cuba is seeing a surge in unauthorized migration to the United States, fueled by an economic crisis exacerbated by the pandemic, increased U.S. sanctions and cutbacks in aid from its also-crisis-wracked Venezuelan ally. That has led to shortages in many goods and a series of protests that shook the island on July 11. FILE – Cubans are seen outside Havana’s Capitol during a demonstration against the government of Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel in Havana, July 11, 2021.And legal ways to leave have been strained by the Trump administration’s near-closure of the U.S. Consulate in 2017 following a series of mysterious illnesses among diplomatic personnel that some claimed could result from an attack — allegations Cuba bitterly denies. Most Cubans who want to try for a U.S. visa now have to go to embassies in other countries — and getting there is almost impossible due to sharp cuts in air traffic during the pandemic. Most can’t afford tickets anyway unless relatives abroad can front them the money. That has pushed many Cubans to launch themselves into the sea on small boats or rafts to attempt the dangerous crossing of the Florida Straits to the United States. The U.S. Coast Guard said recently it has intercepted 595 Cubans at sea since the current fiscal year started on Oct. 1. That’s larger than any any full fiscal year since 2017 — during which the U.S. announced that even Cubans reaching U.S. shores were likely to be expelled, ending a longstanding policy of granting asylum to those who reached dry land. FILE – Cuban deportees wait to be quarantined at a COVID control center, after disembarking from Coast Guard cutter Charles Sexton to be handed over to the Cuban authorities at Orozco Bay in Artemisa, Cuba, June 29, 2021.It’s still small in comparison with the nearly 5,400 halted at sea in 2016 or the dramatic crises of 1994-1995 and 1980, when Cuba’s government temporarily stopped trying to block departures and tens of thousands set out en masse. Thousands died in the ocean. It’s also still far smaller than the current flow of those who have somehow made their way to the continent and worked their way north. The U.S. Border Patrol had recorded 26,196 Cubans trying to enter the U.S. without documents between Oct. 1 and June 30, most by land. As well as her husband — 45-year-old driver Fernando Quiñones — Elledias is also awaiting word on her nephew, Ismel Reyes, 22, who worked on a farm. They were among a group of 18 men and two women who left Cuba for Florida on May 25. The boat sank the following night and survivors were rescued by the U.S. Coast Guard about 18 miles (29 kilometers) southwest of Key West. The search by sea, land and air lasted for days. “Something happened, I don’t know, the currents, the boat flipped. The United States Coast Guard rescued eight people alive, found two bodies and there are 10 people missing,” Elledias said. Among the survivors were four cousins of Elledias, some of whom have already been repatriated to Cuba. Elledias, her sister Sudenis — Reyes’ mother — and other Orlando Nodarse residents who spoke with the AP all agreed that the risky decision to head for the United States was triggered by the economic crisis and the difficulties in obtaining a visa. Cuban historian Alina Bárbara López noted that two earlier mass exoduses by sea were spawned by crises and Cuban authorities opened the borders as a kind of release valve in the face of social pressure. In 1980, with unhappy Cubans pouring into foreign embassy compounds seeking visas, Fidel Castro opened the port at Mariel for people who wanted to leave and 125,000 Cubans rushed north, setting off a political crisis for the government of U.S. President Jimmy Carter. The dire economic tailspin of the early 1990s following the collapse of Cuba’s aid from the Soviet Union led tens of thousands to put to sea in innertubes, makeshift rafts and highjacked boats. Then too, many died. But now Havana is “trapped” because it cannot open its borders due to migration agreements signed with the Washington in that wake of that crisis, she said. Meanwhile, Cuba’s economic reforms have only been superficial, López said. The economy remains stagnant. “All this makes the underlying political foundation of this crisis much stronger than in the previous” crises, she said. Cuban authorities acknowledge there are “symptoms” of a possible migratory crisis but say it could be deactivated if President Joe Biden fulfills a campaign promise to jettison Trump’s tighter sanctions, which were aimed at trying to drive the Communist Party from power, and resumes the dialogue launched by former U.S. President Barack Obama. “The situation we have now is the result of a number of negative factors,” said Jesús Perz Calderón of the United States department at Cuba’s Foreign Ministry. “In the first place, the deterioration of the economy as a result of COVID-19 … but at the same time the resurgence of an economic war of blockade against Cuba by the United States.” José Ramón Cabañas, a former Cuban ambassador to the U.S. and current director of the Center for International Policy Research, said both nations have instruments in place to prevent an exodus to Florida, “There are agreements in force but they are not being fully applied,” Cabañas said. The United States had been providing 22,000 visas a year to Cuba for two decades until 2017, when Trump froze relations. The consulate shutdown made applying for a visa almost moot for most Cubans. FILE – Cubans drive past the U.S. Embassy during a rally calling for the end of the U.S. blockade against Cuba, in Havana, March 28, 2021In addition, at the beginning of 2017, Obama eliminated the policy known as “wet foot-dry foot” that let Cubans who reached U.S. shores remain, usually as refugees, while those caught at sea were sent back. Back in Orlando Nodarse, Elledias hopes a miracle will bring home her loved ones. “I would tell people who are thinking about this option [of crossing the Florida Straits] not to do it, that it is not a safe route. There is no money in the world that can pay for this suffering we are going through,” she said.
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At Least 51 Killed in Mali Village Raids, District Official Says
At least 51 people were killed when Islamist militants raided three villages in central Mali near the border with Niger, a district administrator said on Monday.The towns of Ouatagouna, Karou and Deouteguef were simultaneously attacked around 6 p.m. on Sunday, according to a note from the Asongo district administrator to the governor of Gao region.Houses were ransacked and burned to the ground and herds of livestock carried away, said the note, which was seen by Reuters.”Provisional toll is 51 killed, several other injured,” it said.No group has yet taken responsibility for the attacks in the area where Malian troops, French and European forces, and United Nations peacekeepers have been battling insurgents linked to the Islamic State and al Qaeda.Mali’s army spokesman Colonel Souleymane Dembele confirmed the attacks but gave no further details.Other local sources told Reuters that militants stationed themselves at the towns’ entrances and fired indiscriminately upon civilians.The administrator said Malian troops were sweeping the area. He also requested military escort to “help with the funerals, reassure the populations and offer condolences to the bereaved families,” according to the note.
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US Injunction Allows Cruise Line to Ask Passengers About Vaccine Status
A cruise ship line is now free to require proof of coronavirus vaccination from passengers in Florida. A U.S. federal judge granted Norwegian Cruise Line a preliminary injunction Sunday that enables the line to ask passengers for their vaccine status. “We welcome today’s ruling that allows us to sail with 100% fully vaccinated guests and crew which we believe is the safest and most prudent way to resume cruise operations amid this global pandemic,” Frank Del Rio, president and chief executive officer of Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd., said in a statement. The injunction overrules an order Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law earlier this year that fined businesses asking for vaccination proof. There was no immediate response from the governor’s office. Another U.S. governor said that the law he signed banning mask mandates in his state was a mistake. Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson said Sunday on CBS’s “Face The Nation” that signing the mask ban was an “error.” “Whenever I signed that law, our cases were low, we were hoping that the whole thing was gone, in terms of the virus, but it roared back with the delta variant,” Hutchinson said.Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson stands next to a chart displaying COVID-19 hospitalization data as he speaks at a news conference at the state Capitol in Little Rock, Ark., July 29, 2021.Arkansas has one of the nation’s lowest vaccination rates and has recently reported more than 2,000 daily new infections. One-third of Israel’s seniors — about 420,000 of those age 60 and older — have received a coronavirus booster shot, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said Sunday, adding that the figure could reach 500,000 by the end of the day. Bennett announced the progress of the vaccine campaign, which began 10 days ago and uses the Pfizer vaccine, at a Cabinet meeting. Israel became a vaccination leader early in the pandemic, with about 5.4 million of its population of 9.3 million people fully vaccinated. Still, with hospitalizations on the rise, almost exclusively with the delta variant, the government offered the third shot and reinstated a mask mandate indoors. With the world a year and a half into the pandemic, the United States, India and Brazil have suffered the most cases of COVID-19 and deaths from the virus by far, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. The U.S. has reported more than 35.7 million cases and more than 616,000 deaths. India has reported nearly 32 million cases and nearly 428,000 deaths. Brazil has reported 20.1 million cases and more than 563,000 deaths. France, Russia and the United Kingdom fill the next three spots with more than 6 million cases each and 112,000 to 162,000 deaths. India, which faced a devastating second wave of the virus earlier this year, said Sunday that it had recorded more than 39,000 new COVID-19 cases in the previous 24-hour period. Brazil reported more than 43,000 new cases on Sunday. The U.S. reported just more than 44,000 new cases, all figures according to Johns Hopkins.Neither the U.S. nor any European country has yet authorized booster shots of the vaccine. Last week, the World Health Organization called for a moratorium on discussions of booster shots until more of the global population is vaccinated. In India, just more than 8% of its population has been fully vaccinated. In Brazil, that figure stands at 21%, and the U.S. sits at almost 51%, all according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. Coronavirus cases are rising in the U.S., which confirmed an average of 100,000 new infections every day in the last week. Infections have been rising, due to the more contagious delta variant. Frances Collins, director of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, told ABC’s “This Week” Sunday that the country was failing in its pandemic response. “We should not really have ever got to the place we are,” he said. 202.7 million global COVID cases and 4.2 million deaths were reported Monday, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. Some information in this report was provided by The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
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Nagasaki Marks 76th Anniversary of Atomic Bombing
Nagasaki Monday marked the 76th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing of the Japanese city with its mayor urging Japan, the United States and Russia to do more to eliminate nuclear weapons. In his speech at the Nagasaki Peace Park, Mayor Tomihisa Taue urged Japan’s government to take the lead in creating a nuclear-free zone in Northeast Asia rather than staying under the U.S. nuclear umbrella – a reference to the U.S. promise to use its own nuclear weapons to defend allies without them. Taue also singled out the United States and Russia – which have the biggest arsenals by far – to do more for nuclear disarmament, as he raised concern that nuclear states have backtracked from disarmament efforts and are upgrading and miniaturizing nuclear weapons. “Please look into building a nuclear-weapons-free zone in the Northeast Asia that would create a ‘non-nuclear umbrella’ instead of a ‘nuclear umbrella’ and be a step in the direction of a world free of nuclear weapons,” Taue said as he urged Japan’s government to do more to take action for nuclear disarmament. At 11:02 a.m., the moment the B-29 bomber dropped a plutonium bomb, Nagasaki survivors and other participants in the ceremony stood in a minute of silence to honor more than 70,000 lives lost. The Aug. 9, 1945, bombing came three days after the United States made the world’s first atomic attack on Hiroshima, killing 140,000. Japan surrendered on Aug. 15, ending World War II. The mayor also called Japan’s government and lawmakers to quickly sign the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons that took effect in January. Tokyo renounces its own possession, production or hosting of nuclear weapons, but as a U.S. ally Japan hosts 50,000 American troops and is protected by the U.S. nuclear umbrella. The post-WWII security arrangement complicates the push to get Japan to sign the treaty as it beefs up its own military while stepping up defense cooperation with other nuclear-weapons states such as Britain and France, to deal with threats from North Korea and China, among others. Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said the security environment is severe and that global views are deeply divided over nuclear disarmament, and that it is necessary to remove distrust by promoting dialogue and form a mutual ground for discussion. Taue also called for a substantial progress toward nuclear disarmament made at next year’s Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty conference, “starting with greater steps by the U.S. and Russia to reduce nuclear weapons.” He asked Suga’s government to step up and speed up medical and welfare support for the aging atomic bombing survivors, or hibakusha, whose average age is now over 83 years.
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US Judge Says Florida Can’t Ban Cruise Ship’s ‘Vaccine Passport’ Program
A U.S. judge has allowed Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd. to demand that passengers show written proof of coronavirus vaccination before they board a ship, dealing a major blow to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s effort to ban “vaccine passports.” In a preliminary ruling issued on Sunday, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams in Miami said Norwegian would likely prevail on its argument that the “vaccine passport” ban, signed into law by DeSantis in May, jeopardizes public health and is an unconstitutional infringement on Norwegian’s rights. The judge blocked DeSantis from enforcing the law against Norwegian, allowing the cruise ship operator to proceed with a plan to resume port activity in Miami on Aug. 15. Violations of the law could have triggered a penalty of $5,000 per passenger, potentially adding up to millions of dollars per cruise.Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks at a news conference at Orlando Regional Medical Center, June 23, 2020, in Orlando, Fla.Raymond Treadwill, a lawyer for DeSantis, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The ruling comes as big business and some government entities are responding to the rapid spread of the Delta variant of the coronavirus with vaccination requirements, prompting legal challenges from vaccine skeptics and civil libertarians. “We are pleased that Judge Williams saw the facts, the law and the science as we did and granted the Company’s motion for preliminary injunction allowing us to operate cruises from Florida with 100% vaccinated guests and crew,” the company’s executive vice president Daniel S. Farkas said in the statement. Norwegian has said Florida’s law would prevent the company from ensuring at least 95% of passengers were vaccinated so it could comply with health regulations when it conducts its first post-pandemic voyage from Miami on Aug. 15. DeSantis has become a national figure for opposing pandemic restrictions, even as the Republican governor’s state has become a hotbed of infections and hospitalizations have hit record levels. He has argued that Florida law prevents discrimination and protects privacy by preventing businesses, schools or governments from demanding proof of immunity in return for service. Norwegian has said the law was not about protecting passengers but scoring political points. Norwegian is ramping up its return to cruises, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shut down in March 2020 with its “No Sail” order. In order to sail, Norwegian has attested to the CDC it would confirm that at least 95% of passengers have been vaccinated. Norwegian said the law violates the company’s First Amendment right to interact with customers and does not prevent discrimination because the company would have to segregate and mask passengers who declined to prove they were vaccinated. The state argued that Norwegian could have opted, as rival cruise operators did, to seek CDC approval through a process of running simulated voyages and applying other COVID-19 protocols such as masking indoors.
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Ex-Justice Official Said to Have Been Pressured by Trump on Election
Former President Donald Trump mounted an intense pressure campaign on the U.S. Justice Department to overturn his election defeat in his final weeks in office, the department’s head during that time testified to lawmakers, a senior Senate Democrat said on Sunday.Former Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen provided “invaluable” testimony during seven hours of a closed-door hearing on Saturday, in which he implicated Trump in an attempt to subvert the election result, Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin told CNN’s “State of the Union.”According to Durbin, Rosen testified that Trump directly pressured him to falsely assert that continuing election fraud investigations cast doubt on President Joe Biden’s victory.”It was real. Very real. And it was very specific,” Durbin said of Trump’s pressure on Rosen. “The former president is not subtle when he wants something.”Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, praised Rosen, a conservative lawyer, for his voluntary cooperation with the committee’s ongoing investigation into Trump’s actions after the election.”I have to say history is going to be very kind to Mr. Rosen when this is all over. When he was initially appointed, I didn’t think that was the case. I was wrong,” Durbin said, adding: “It’s a good thing for America we had someone like Rosen in that position.”Rosen’s testimony came a week after a House of Representatives committee released Justice Department documents showing Trump had urged top officials last year to falsely claim his election defeat was corrupt.”Just say that the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me and the R. Congressmen,” Trump told Rosen, referring to Republicans, in a December 27 phone call, according to handwritten notes taken by a Rosen aide.The notes showed Rosen told Trump the department could not and would not “change the outcome of the election.”Durbin said in the CNN interview that his committee also wants testimony from former Attorney General Bill Barr, who Rosen replaced during the final weeks of Trump’s presidency.Barr stepped down in December, shortly after the Electoral College confirmed Trump’s loss to Biden.Barr had angered Trump by not supporting his false claims that the November 3 election result had been tainted by widespread fraud. Multiple courts, state election officials and members of Trump’s administration rejected those claims as unfounded.Durbin said he also wants to hear from former Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Clark, who reportedly plotted with Trump to try to oust Rosen so he could take over the Justice Department.”I would like to bring in Jeffrey Clark, for example,” Durbin said. “He was the heir apparent in Trump’s mind if Rosen was not going to do his bidding. And Rosen stood fast and didn’t.”When asked if Trump engaged in an attempted coup, Durbin said: “It was leading up to that process.”Durbin declined to say whether Trump should face criminal charges for his efforts to subvert the election, saying it was too early in the investigation to answer that question.Last week, Douglas Collins, said the former president would not attempt to keep former Justice Department officials from testifying before either the House or the Senate committees, according to the New York Times.
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Malawi Lawyers Accused of Cashing in on Rape Case
Legal experts and rights campaigners here are criticizing the group Women Lawyers Association of Malawi, or WLA, for claiming thousands of dollars in legal fees after representing 18 women in a rape case involving police. The critics say the association is trying to cash in after saying it was working pro bono. Representatives of the WLA say their claim is normal.At issue is the $313,000 the WLA claimed or demanded as compensation for representing the 18 women, who accused police of rape during post-election protests in 2019. The plaintiffs, who will share a $148,000 award, said 17 police officers sexually assaulted them in retaliation after protesters stoned a police officer to death in the capital, Lilongwe.Thabo Chakaka-Nyirenda, a legal expert based in Lilongwe, says the fees appear immoral.
“In view of the background of the case, Women Lawyers Association got funding from donors; U.N. and Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa – almost $200,000. And I think to get those costs again, that would amount to just enrichment, also maybe we could say double-dipping in that case,” Chakaka-Nyirenda.
Peter Dimba, chairperson of the legal affairs committee in parliament, says the claim for legal fees is not justified considering that the association was fully sponsored by donors in handling the case.
“And what is more concerning is that here is a case where you are trying to deal with injustices that were perpetrated on women and women volunteer themselves to help them on a pro bono basis, and then, use the same case to exploit fellow women… This is a case of exploitation. You cannot represent somebody and charge [an] amount of legal fees when the actual victims have gotten much less,” Dimba said.
The 18 victims received compensation ranging from $5,000 to $12,000 each.A beneficiary who did not want to be named told VOA the compensation was too low.In a statement issued Saturday, Malawi’s Human Rights Commission asked the association to clarify what it meant when it said it was representing the victims pro bono. Kate Kujaliwa, the spokesperson for the commission, says the public want to know.
“Basically, what we are saying is: let them bring forth the information and it should be clear; justification and clarification if any; answer the question that the public is asking. The public is demanding how and why this has come to be,” Kujaliwa said.
VOA attempted to speak with representatives of the association Sunday but no one there answered the phone.In a statement signed by its president, Immaculate Maluza, Saturday, the lawyers said their claim for legal fees was appropriate because they took into account the time spent working on the case.Lawmaker Dimba told VOA that parliament’s legal committee has pledged to consult the courts to review the fees – a move the Malawi Law Society has also supported.
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Somalia, Kenya Agree to Mend Strained Relations
The governments of Somalia and Kenya agreed to improve strained diplomatic ties following a meeting in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, between officials of both countries on Sunday.The Kenyan delegation led by Foreign Affairs Minister Raychelle Omamo held talks with Somali Prime Minister Mohamed Hussein Roble.
According to a press statement from the prime minister’s office, the neighboring states, whose ties have not been on a strong footing for several months, agreed to cement their relations particularly in the areas of diplomacy, trade and security.
The statement further added that Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta extended an invitation for Somalia’s prime minister to visit Nairobi.
Somalia has underscored that an existing maritime dispute between both nations will be decided by The Hague-based International Court of Justice, or ICJ, despite several requests by Kenya to reach a settlement out of court.
Mogadishu severed diplomatic ties with Nairobi in December of last year over claims of Kenyan political interference in Somalia’s affairs, an accusation denied by Nairobi.
Analyst Ali Abdulkadir said the visit by the Kenyans is a sign of improving relations despite thorny issues on both sides.
He said the disagreement over the maritime border has been the main cause of the diplomatic dispute over the years, adding that since Kenya acknowledged that the case at ICJ is irreversible, there has been a need to improve bilateral relations.
Kenya is among countries that have contributed to the African Union peacekeeping mission in Somalia to fight armed group al-Shabab since a Kenyan troop incursion into southern Somalia in late 2011. The militants have carried out attacks inside Kenya since then.
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Fire-friendly Weather to Return to Northern California
Thick smoke that held down temperatures began to clear Sunday from the scenic forestlands of Northern California as firefighters battling the largest single wildfire in state history braced for a return of fire-friendly weather. The winds weren’t expected to reach the ferocious speeds that helped the Dixie Fire explode in size last week. But they were nonetheless concerning for firefighters working in unprecedented conditions to protect thousands of threatened homes. “The live trees that are out there now have a lower fuel moisture than you would find when you go to a hardware store or a lumber yard and get that piece of lumber that’s kiln dried,” Mark Brunton, operations section chief for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, said in an online briefing Sunday morning. “It’s that dry, so it doesn’t take much for any sort of embers, sparks or small flaming front to get that going.”Fueled by strong winds and bone-dry vegetation, the fire incinerated much of the town of Greenville on Wednesday and Thursday, destroying 370 homes and structures and threatening nearly 14,000 buildings in the northern Sierra Nevada. The Dixie Fire, named for the road where it started nearly four weeks ago, grew overnight to an area of 1,875 square kilometers (725 square miles) Sunday morning and was 21% contained, according to CalFire. It had scorched an area more than twice the size of New York City. With smoke clearing out on eastern portions of the fire, crews that had been directly attacking the front lines would be forced to retreat and build containment lines farther back, said Dan McKeague, a fire information officer from the U.S. Forest Service. On the plus side, better visibility should allow planes and helicopters to return to the firefight and make it safer for ground crews to maneuver. “As soon as that air clears, we can fly again,” McKeague said. Crews have constructed 748 km (465 miles) of line around the massive blaze, Deputy Incident Commander Chris Waters said. That’s about the distance from the central California city of Chico to Los Angeles. But officials are only confident that about 20% of the line is secure, he said. “Every bit of that line needs to be constructed, staffed, mopped up and actually put to bed before we can call this fire fully contained,” Waters said during Saturday evening’s incident briefing. Erratic winds were predicted again Sunday afternoon. But the weather was expected to settle a bit starting Monday. Damage reports are preliminary because assessment teams can’t get into many areas, officials said.The blaze became the largest single fire in California’s recorded history, surpassing last year’s Creek Fire in the Central Valley. It’s about half the size of the August Complex, a series of lightning-caused 2020 fires across seven counties that were fought together and that state officials consider California’s largest wildfire overall. The fire’s cause was under investigation. The Pacific Gas & Electric utility has said it may have been sparked when a tree fell on one of its power lines. A federal judge ordered PG&E on Friday to give details by August 16 about the equipment and vegetation where the fire started.Cooler temperatures and higher humidity slowed the spread of the fire, and temperatures topped 32 degrees Celsius (90 degrees Fahrenheit) instead of the triple-digit Fahrenheit highs recorded earlier in the week. But the blaze and its neighboring fires, within several hundred miles of each other, posed an ongoing threat.Gov. Gavin Newsom surveyed the damage in Greenville on Saturday, writing on Twitter that “our hearts ache for this town.””These are climate-induced wildfires, and we have to acknowledge that we have the capacity in not just the state but in this country to solve this,” Newsom said on CNN.Heat waves and historic drought tied to climate change have made wildfires harder to fight in the American West. Scientists have said climate change has made the region much warmer and drier in the past 30 years and will continue to make the weather more extreme and wildfires more frequent and destructive.Northwest of the Dixie Fire in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest, hundreds of homes remained threatened by the McFarland and Monument fires, which continued growing. About a fifth of the McFarland Fire was contained and none of the Monument Fire. South of the Dixie Fire, firefighters prevented further growth of the River Fire, which broke out Wednesday near Colfax and destroyed 68 homes. California’s fire season is on track to surpass last year’s season, which was the worst fire season in recent recorded state history. Since the start of the year, more than 6,000 blazes have destroyed more than 1,260 square miles (3,260 square kilometers) of land — more than triple the losses for the same period in 2020, according to state fire figures.California’s raging wildfires were among 107 large fires burning across 14 states, mostly in the West, where historic drought conditions have left lands parched and ripe for ignition.
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Spying Gets Craftier as China, Taiwan Up Use of Cyber Tools
Espionage between Taiwan and China has grown more sophisticated because of fewer people-to-people exchanges and more use of cyber tools, as relations between the two remain chill, analysts in Taipei say.China claims sovereignty over Taiwan and insists that the two sides eventually unify, by force if needed. Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen, bolstered by domestic opinion polls, rejects unification and relations have soured since she took office in 2016. Analysts say those conditions make each side want to know more. Attention has riveted on spying over the past week as Taipei prosecutors evaluate whether former Deputy Defense Minister Chang Che-ping and others made contact with a representative of the Central Military Commission — China’s national defense organization — and if so, whether the contact constituted spying.Chang and his wife traveled to China, expenses paid, after he met a Hong Kong businessperson who the commission sent to Taiwan in 2012, Taiwan-based United Daily News reports. The former deputy minister’s case would follow the 2019 flap over Chinese national Wang Liqiang, who defected to Australia and said he had secretly helped China in relation to Taiwan affairs. Earlier this year, a Taiwan court gave jail sentences to two former Taiwanese legislative aides for setting up a network of Chinese spies. On the other side, Chinese security agencies say they have “foiled” hundreds of espionage cases involving spies from Taiwan and arrested several of them, China’s party-run Global Times news website reported in October. “This is not an isolated operation, as the mainland carries out similar actions every year, given that the rising number of spying operations by Taiwan authorities in the Chinese mainland over the years,” the Global Times says. Spying takes place now, as always, through business transactions and academic exchanges, as well as through use of cyber tools, the experts say. Intelligence gathering through hacking or mining public data can avoid the risk of detection that actual agents on the ground face. Such online methods are more important now because COVID-19 and cooled Taiwan-China relations have reduced face-to-face cross-border exchanges, the analysts add. “In that sense, I think maybe the espionage is decreasing but the intensity may increase too,” said Alex Chiang, associate professor of international politics at National Chengchi University in Taipei. “The variety of espionage activity probably will be more diverse,” he said, adding that diminished personal contact reduces the odds of spies being caught, he added. Chang’s case would stand out because of his rank, said Chen Yi-fan, assistant professor of diplomacy and international relations at Tamkang University in Taiwan. “The former deputy defense minister’s case if true would be the highest-ranking military personnel who is involved in espionage cases,” he said. Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council, the government body handling mainland China affairs, said in a November statement that in “recent years” China had “maliciously extended to overseas espionage” its effort to protect national security. The council had protested a month before over China’s “framing” of Taiwanese citizens to become spies. FILE – Chinese President Xi Jinping shakes hands with Taiwan’s President Ma Ying-jeou during a summit in Singapore November 7, 2015.The signing of 23 transit, trade and investment deals with China under Taiwan’s former president Ma Ying-jeou had increased contact, expanding the pool of people who could buy and sell secrets. Today’s tense relations have reduced the number of Chinese entrepreneurs and university students in Taiwan while cutting back academic visits by Taiwanese to China, meaning fewer in-person meetings presenting an opportunity for espionage. From 2010 to 2016, Taiwan unearthed least 33 cases involving citizens who sold sensitive defense-related information to China, Hawaii-based Asia researcher and author William Sharp told VOA at the time. Taiwan Readies for Fresh Wave of Espionage by China
Taiwan’s incoming ruling party is signaling its intention to get tougher on espionage by China as cross-strait relations sour and increased contact between the two sides makes spying easier.The Democratic Progressive Party government of President-elect Tsai Ing-wen intends to raise the military budget and experts said it may add a cyber-espionage unit to the defense ministry.
Cyber-spying poses a particular threat now, some experts say. Chinese spies had used the internet for at least a decade before 2015, said Russell Hsiao, executive director of the Global Taiwan Institute policy incubator, on his blog. Hackers from a Chinese city “infiltrated” computers in Taiwan in one 2011 case and installed programs that “stole a large trove of data,” Hsiao said, citing local media reports. The attack infected 42 government websites and 216 computers. Today’s hacker-spies are hard to differentiate from Chinese “nationalists” who use the internet on their own to spite Taiwan, said Sean Su, an independent political analyst in Taipei. China may be “ramping up”, he said. Although more reports of spying are likely to emerge as Western countries focus harder on China’s activities directed at foreign countries, Su said, actual levels of the crime will probably hold constant. “We will think that there’s more spying but in reality, it feels like it’s just the same old, same old all this time,” he said.
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Hundreds in Warsaw Protest Political Repression in Belarus
Hundreds of people, among them many Belarusians living in exile in Poland, marched Sunday in Warsaw to protest political repression in neighboring Belarus — a demonstration held on the eve of the one-year anniversary of the Belarus presidential election that they consider rigged.Many carried the Belarusian opposition’s red-and-white flag, which is banned in Belarus, and chanted “Long live Belarus!”The protest focused on the Aug. 9, 2020, presidential election in Belarus in which President Alexander Lukashenko was awarded a sixth term in a vote that the opposition and many in the West view as fraudulent.A belief that the vote was stolen triggered mass protests in Belarus that led to increased repressions by Lukashenko’s regime on protesters, dissidents and independent media. More than 35,000 people were arrested and thousands were beaten and jailed.The protesters began in central Warsaw and marched past the U.S. and Russian embassies, aiming for the Belarusian embassy in a southern Warsaw district.Frantz Aslauski, a 56-years-old Belarusian who traveled from his new home in Wroclaw, Poland, said he believed Belarusians abroad must protest “because in Belarus people cannot go to the streets because they will be thrown into prison.””We have the opportunity (to demonstrate), therefore this responsibility rests on us, we must shout at the whole world, so that the whole world supports us in our pursuit of freedom and democracy,” Aslauski said.In front of the Russian embassy, speakers accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of being responsible for the repressions in Belarus. One banner showed an image of Lukashenko depicted as a vampire, with blood dripping from his mouth.Lukashenko has earned the nickname of “Europe’s last dictator” in the West for his relentless repression of dissent since taking the helm in 1994. In one shocking case, the regime this year arrested a dissident journalist after forcing his flight to divert to Belarus.The organizers of the Warsaw march said the event was held as a sign that Belarusians in Poland will not give up their fight to bring change to Belarus. Among their demands was the release of political prisoners back home. Poland, along with Lithuania and Ukraine, has become a center of life in exile for Belarusians who have fled their homeland. Many people in Poland, an ex-communist country now in the European Union that shares a border with Belarus, support the efforts of Belarusians seeking democratic change.One of the most recent Belarusians to arrive is Krystsina Tsimanouskaya, an Olympic sprinter who, fearing reprisals at home, fled last week from the Tokyo Olympics to Poland.Thousands of Belarusians have also fled to neighboring Ukraine, fearing persecution back home. In Ukraine’s capital of Kyiv on Sunday, some 500 Belarusians also took to the streets to protest repression in Belarus and to mark the anniversary of the presidential election that triggered the largest and the most sustained wave of protests in Belarus’ history.The demonstrators carried red-and-white flags and banners saying “Belarus under Lukashenko has become a concentration camp,” “North Korea in the center of Europe. Stop.” They demanded that international authorities create a tribunal to investigate what they called Lukashenko’s crimes. “Every day Lukashenko is in power, there are more victims of political repressions, even in Ukraine,” 21-year-old Bazhena Zholudz said at the rally.Zholudz was the girlfriend of Vitaly Shishov, a Belarusian activist who ran a group in Ukraine helping Belarusians fleeing persecution. Shishov was found hanged in Kyiv last week, and Ukrainian police are investigating whether it was a murder made to look like a suicide. Following Shishov’s death, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyi told the country’s police and security forces to study security risks for all Belarusians who have arrived in Ukraine over the past year. “Every Belarusian who can be a target for criminals in connection with his public political position should receive special and reliable protection,” Zelenskiy’s office quoted him as saying.
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