Greece has erected a 25-mile fence and installed a new surveillance system on its border with Turkey as fears mount of a surge in Afghan refugees trying to reach Europe. Greece has faced recurring refugee crises since 2015, when more than a million mainly Syrian refugees swarmed through its land and sea borders to escape conflict in their homeland. Speaking from Checkpoint One, Greece’s key border post along the country’s rugged land frontiers with Turkey, Public Order Minister Michalis Chryssochoidis sounded what he called a clear and fair warning.
Our borders, he said, will remain safe and inviolable. And we will not allow any indiscriminate inflow of refugees.
The minister’s warning sounded as he toured the checkpoint and a soaring, 25-mile, steel fence completed in recent days amid fears of a deluge of Afghan refugees fleeing for their lives after the Taliban takeover.Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline.Download File360p | 7 MB480p | 10 MB540p | 13 MB720p | 26 MB1080p | 50 MBOriginal | 159 MB Embed” />Copy Download AudioAfghan Refugees in Turkey Terrified at Taliban TakeoverDefense Minister Nikos Panagiotopoulos said the Greek fence along the shallow Evros river that separates the country from Turkey is just part of a bigger plan pieced together by authorities to further shield the country against a new migration crisis.
We are on alert, but Greece, he said, will continue to protect itself from any threat.
The defense minister said special surveillance systems, including a fleet of drones and night cameras, had been installed across the new fence to watch for illegal crossings. Army bulldozers were also seen plowing across stretches of the country’s northern frontier with Bulgaria, where military trucks were unloading barbed wired to erect more fences.
Greece has been on the front line of Europe’s migration woes since about 1.2 million refugees from Syria streamed through in 2015, sparking the biggest migration push to the European continent since the Second World War.
Greece has repeatedly complained to the European Union about doing too little to support hundreds of thousands of migrants and refugees trapped in the country for six years, as neighboring states and other European nations, including Germany, turned a blind eye, sealing their borders to keep them away.
The United Nations is now making appeals for countries in the region to not do the same to fleeing Afghanis. But the government in Athens says it won’t sit passively.In fact, in a surprise move. Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis placed an urgent telephone call to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday trying to drum up support and a common strategy on how to deal with a potential migration crisis in the region.
Details of the meeting or any decision between the two men were not released. But no sooner had the call ended than Erdogan warned Europe he too would not allow Turkey to become what he called a refugee warehouse.
Turkey is already hosting 3.6 million Syrian refugees and more than 300,000 Afghans.
In Greece, meanwhile, humanitarian groups, Afghan refugees and leftist parties are now up in arms about the border fence and the government’s controversial plan of deterrence. Those groups say the plan completely disregards human rights and the right to asylum to those fleeing danger and bloodshed.
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Month: August 2021
Afghan Refugees Expected in Uganda
Ugandan officials have confirmed the country will be receiving 145 evacuees from Afghanistan on Sunday.After days of discussion, Uganda has confirmed it will receive evacuees from Afghanistan Sunday. The latest developments come a day after evacuations in Kabul were temporarily halted due to overcrowding at an evacuee receiving center in Qatar.Esther Anyakun, Uganda’s deputy minister for disaster preparedness and refugees, spoke to VOA.”IRC (International Red Cross) and other development partners have been working with U.S. government also to see the people who we are going to evacuate by tomorrow. Just 145,” said Anyakun.Earlier this week, Anyakun said Uganda would accept up to 2,000 Afghan refugees, but other officials said at that time the matter was still under discussion. Uganda to Host 2,000 Afghan Refugees at US Request U.N. High Commission for Refugees Uganda representative Joel Boutroue also confirms the decision to receive the Afghan refugeesOn whether all the evacuees will be Afghans or Ugandans, Anyakun had this to say.”You cannot tell whether it is a Ugandan. Because people are just like, trying to fight through those walls in Afghanistan to get into the plane,” said Anyakun. “So, they can’t even categorize and say that we are taking probably diplomats, or Ugandans alone. So, the moment you manage to succeeded to penetrate and you get there then you will be lucky. I think when they’ve already reached here is when we shall now categorize.”Appearing on a local radio show Saturday morning, Uganda’s Minister for Relief, Disaster Preparedness and Refugees, Hillary Onek, explained that those arriving from Afghanistan are mainly women and children. He said they won’t stay in Uganda forever, adding that the East African country will be used as a transit point before they are taken to the United States.Minister Onek said officials have already booked hotels in the city of Entebbe, where the 145 evacuees will stay.
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US East Coast Braces for Hurricane Henri
The U.S. National Hurricane Center said early Saturday that Tropical Storm Henri is expected to strengthen into a hurricane later in the day, bringing rain, wind and worries to people from North Carolina to Massachusetts. Located 320 kilometers south southeast of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina Saturday morning, Henri has maximum sustained winds of 110 kilometers per hour. “Henri is expected to make landfall in Long Island or southern New England on Sunday,” an NHC advisory said. Several extremely popular summer vacation destinations are in Henri’s path including Cape Hatteras in North Carolina, New York’s Long Island, as well as Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts.
National Hurricane Center map showing the expected track of Tropical Storm Henri, as of 5 AM EDT Aug. 21, 20021.Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker urged tourists Friday to adjust their plans to avoid Henri.“We don’t want people to be stuck in traffic on the Cape Cod bridges when the storm is in full force on Sunday,” he said.Henri will be New England’s first hurricane in 30 years.Hurricane, storm and storm surge watches and warnings have been declared for many locations along the East Coast of the U.S. Henri is expected to produce rainfall amounts of 8 to 15 centimeters over Long Island and New England Sunday into Monday, with isolated maximum totals near 25 centimeters.In Mexico, meanwhile, Hurricane Grace’s maximum sustained winds have decreased and the storm is expected to continue to rapidly weaken to a tropical storm Saturday afternoon as it moves inland over central Mexico, according to the NHC. Hurricane conditions “are likely” to persist for the next few hours along parts of the coast of eastern Mexico. A hurricane warning is in effect for the coast of mainland Mexico from Puerto Veracruz to Cabo Rojo.
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Why the EU Sides with Southeast Asia in the South China Sea Dispute
European Union members will step up their advocacy of open access to the disputed South China Sea, a key world trade route, despite Chinese claims to nearly all of it as they discuss the issue with Southeast Asian countries, analysts believe.The 27 EU members, such as France and Germany, hope all countries can follow United Nations maritime rules in the South China Sea to ensure consistency with other world waterways and to protect a booming seaborne trade in goods with Asia, the experts say.China claims about 90% of the 3.5 million-square-kilometer sea, including pieces of the U.N.-prescribed exclusive economic zones of four Southeast Asian states. Chinese officials point to maritime documents dating back to dynastic times to back their claim.EU leaders met in early August with the 10-country Association of Southeast Asian Nations for discussions that touched on the South China Sea, and the two sides are due to convene again this quarter. The EU has met with the Southeast Asian association since 1977, part of the ASEAN’s series of dialogues with other major countries and regions.ASEAN is the EU’s third-largest trading partner outside Europe, after China and the United States, with more than $221 billion in trade in goods last year.About 60% of maritime trade by volume passes through Asia and about one-third goes through the South China Sea, the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development estimates. The sea is a connector between East Asia and the Indian Ocean, which puts ships on their way to Europe.“The EU … has a big stake in the Indo Pacific region and has every interest that the regional architecture remains open and rules-based,” the European side said in a statement in April.However, it continued, “current dynamics in the Indo Pacific have given rise to intense geopolitical competition, adding to increasing pressure on trade and supply chains as well as in tensions in technological, political and security areas.”Neither the EU nor any of its member countries claim sovereignty over the South China Sea. ASEAN members Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam call parts of the sea their own, overlapping China’s own boundary line, and Taiwan claims almost all of it.France, Germany, and non-EU member Britain issued a joint note to the United Nations almost a year ago challenging China’s claims in the sea, which they view as a potential threat to international traffic.“That’s pretty clear, they want consistency,” said Carl Thayer, Asia-specialized emeritus professor from the University of New South Wales in Australia.“Why? Because the way you can do business. It lowers the risk,” he said.Some EU positions on the South China Sea echo that of its Western ally, the United States, which regularly sends warships to the waterway as warnings to China. The EU’s website says, for example, that its members and ASEAN uphold “principles of a rules-based international order.”EU nations have stepped up their own ship movements this year as well, but experts say they’re focused more on international law than with taking a pro-U.S. position.China’s Likely Responses to European and Indian Warships in Sea it Calls its OwnChinese authorities may tail foreign vessels, protest verbally and target other countries one by one, analysts suggest If South China Sea claimants violate the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, they would open the possibility for individual countries to control European seas, said Alexander Vuving, professor at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Hawaii. The convention sets up exclusive economic zones for maritime states, among other provisions aimed at sharing cross-border waterways.“Their primary interest is to maintain international law, maintain open freedom of navigation rather than siding with the United States in its strategic competition with China,” Vuving said.Southeast Asian countries with claims to the South China Sea oppose Beijing’s landfilling of small islets for military use and passing its vessels through their exclusive economic zones.However, they seldom use language that enrages China, a key Southeast Asia trade partner, and the EU backs that approach to the maritime dispute, Alan Chong, associate professor at the Singapore-based S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, said. Both blocs look to China for trade as well.“They are coming along to ASEAN in part because they are aware that ASEAN’s game is probably the surest and safest way of maintaining this dual policy of both engagement and constraining China,” Chong said.Even the subtle language preferred by ASEAN is “enough to put Beijing on notice,” Chong said. China will probably avoid responding publicly but privately ask around for the meaning of any communiques that come out of the EU-ASEAN dialogue, he said.
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Malawi Struggles to End Attacks on People With Albinism
Police said the death of 21-year-old Ian Muhama in the Kachere area of Blantyre brings the number of albino attacks this year to four — a drop from past years, but still disconcerting.Three victims, including Muhama, have been killed, while another, a baby girl, is missing.James Kadadzera is a spokesperson for the Malawi Police Service.“The first incident this year in Mangochi (district), the suspects were arrested and the body was also found,” Kadadzera said. “Another incident in Chikwawa [district] where a 20-month-old baby was abducted, we are on ground and we are sure of finding the suspected and we are sure of finding the whereabouts of the abducted baby.”Kadadzera also said police are investigating the death of Muhama.This girl survived an abduction in April 2019 the night when her albino brother Goodson was abducted in Dedza district in central Malawi. (Lameck Masina/VOA)Statistics show that since 2014, more than 170 albinos have been attacked in Malawi because of false beliefs that concoctions mixed with their body parts bring luck and wealth.In some cases, grave robbers have exhumed corpses to retrieve albinos’ bodies.Observers say efforts to end the attacks haven’t helped much.In 2018 the government and the United Nations developed the National Action Plan on Persons with Albinism. The plan is designed to discourage attacks and provide albinos with greater protection, in part by giving out security alarms.Maria Jose Torres is the U.N. national coordinator in Malawi. She said full implementation of the plan could help end the attacks.“The United Nations is calling upon the authorities to continue implementing that National Action Plan on Persons with Albinism to ensure that the criminal practice of attacking persons with albinism is fully eliminated in Malawi,” Torres said.Boniface Massa is chairperson for the Disability and Elderly Rights Directorate at the Malawi Human Rights Commission, a key stakeholder in the action plans.Massa said the plan, for its promises, is falling short.“We have so far highlighted serious gaps in terms of the actual protection pillar under the National Action Plan,” Massa said. “So overall what we noted from our findings that we are still analyzing is that there hasn’t been direct impact on the life of people with albinism.”A Malawi musician with albinism, Lazarus Chigwandali, practices his guitar and drum before leaving his home at Likuni to go and perform at a market in the capital Lilongwe on May 10, 2019.In a statement this week, Amnesty International said the recent attack is the “latest reminder that Malawi remains a dangerous place for persons with albinism.”Some rights activists believe the attacks could end only if police mount a crackdown on markets for the albino body parts.But police spokesperson Kadadzera says there is no such market.“There are a lot of people that we have arrested with bones,” Kadadzera said. “And they don’t have anywhere to sell the bones so that’s why I am saying this is just a mystery; this is just a belief that is unfounded.”He said in the meantime, police, chiefs and religious leaders are trying to educate people to stop believing in the myths that perpetuate the attacks.
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A Final Appeal and the Khmer Rouge Tribunal Winds Down
The last surviving leader of the Khmer Rouge, Khieu Samphan, has made his final appeal against his conviction for genocide as the long-running United Nations-backed Cambodia tribunal held its last public hearings before winding down. Amid tight security and health restrictions imposed to guard against the COVID-19 pandemic, Khieu Samphan delivered a dramatic 16-minute defense in which he categorically refused to accept his 2018 conviction for genocide against Cambodia’s Muslim Cham and ethnic Vietnamese.“I cannot accept the accusation that I was involved in a plot to commit crimes against my compatriots, including the Cham or the Vietnamese,” he said.“Many years of sitting as a defendant at the end of this long case it is important for me to inform you and especially inform the Cambodian people that I never wanted to commit a crime against my compatriots or anyone else,” he said.“No matter what you decide I will die in prison. I will die always remembering the suffering of my Cambodian people. I will die seeing death. I am alone in front of you. I am judged symbolically rather than by my actual deed and as an individual. That’s the end.”With that, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia ended 15 years of public hearings and went into its final recess.Courts spokesman Neth Pheaktra said a decision on the appeal was not expected until the fourth quarter of next year, and in the meantime the court will finalize outstanding legal issues and cases that would not proceed.“We still have some administrative work to finalize between the Cambodian government and the United Nations before the court will close. It means, complete its mission,” he told VOA.The Khmer Rouge split from the Indochinese Communist Party after secret meetings were held at the back of the Phnom Penh railway station in 1960 and then pushed Cambodia into a civil war as the conflict in neighboring Vietnam was gathering pace.Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot seized power in 1975 and held it until early 1979, when a Vietnamese invasion forced the Khmer Rouge into the remote jungles near the Thai border. Up to 2.2 million people, a third of this country’s population, had perished.Ex-Khmer Rouge Official Appeals Genocide Verdict in Cambodia His defense team is seeking to overturn a 2018 verdict finding him guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimesPol Pot died under house arrest in 1998. It was only then that a war crimes tribunal became a serious prospect, leading to the establishment of the Extraordinary Chambers in 2006.Senior Khmer Rouge leaders, including former Foreign Minister Ieng Sary, his wife Ieng Thirith and former army chief Ta Mok, died behind bars, awaiting trial.Only Khieu Samphan, 91, survives. He was convicted for genocide alongside Nuon Chea, known as Brother No. 2, and second in command of the Khmer Rouge, who died two years ago.Another Khmer Rouge leader, Kaing Guek Eav, known as Duch, was also convicted of crimes against humanity. He ran the S21 death camp, where 24,000 people were processed for extermination in the Killing Fields. The court heard there were 196 such camps across the country.Helen Jarvis, a former chief of the court’s Public Affairs and Victims Support Sections, said it took a “Herculean” effort to get the tribunal up and running amid wrangling with the U.N. and over funding issues.“It was a very important historical event that needed to be done. It was long overdue to recognize the crimes that had taken place here, crimes against humanity, genocide. It needed to be done. I think it has been done,” she said.Jarvis said the Extraordinary Chambers compared favorably with other tribunals, noting its $330 million cost to date is about a quarter of what was spent on the Rwandan war crimes tribunal and about half of the budget for the tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.The other tribunals were held under the auspices of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, with no local component and a long way from where the atrocities were committed. However, the Khmer Rouge court was a hybrid tribunal made up of local and international judges and it was held in Cambodia.That created its own issues.Prosecutors have been divided along international and Cambodian lines over whether to prosecute four lower-level Khmer Rouge officials, which means those cases cannot proceed.“The most important thing is that the Cambodian people have been there, have been part of it right through. It wasn’t something done like former Yugoslavia or Rwanda, done outside the country,” Jarvis said.“It was done in Cambodia with Cambodia’s full participation, a 500-seat courtroom which was full every day,” she said.Ou Virak, president of the Future Form think tank in Phnom Penh said the tribunal had played an important role in Cambodia’s development. “It was a success, it was necessary, it was an establishment of fact and truth and in some ways that will be studied by historians but more importantly by the Cambodian population,” he said.Ou Virak also said the trials will provide contemporary and future historians with much greater insights into the regional political dynamics of the 1970s by major powers – the United States, the Soviet Union and China, which backed the Khmer Rouge. “There are a lot more people now trying to understand the roles of different major powers, different parties back then including the involvement of America as well as China.“Because of that I think there will be more interest in the tribunal, not because of historical atrocities, but more so because of its relevance to the current geo-political discussion,” he said.Even if Khieu Samphan wins his appeal he will remain behind bars after exhausting the appeals process for his conviction for crimes against humanity.Either way authorities can now plan commemorations for Pol Pot’s victims, who are expected to be cremated in accordance with traditional Buddhist rites, delivering some closure for one of the great tragedies of the 20th century.David Potter contributed to this report.
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Anti-Lockdown Protesters Clash with Police in Australia
Thousands of anti-lockdown protesters in Australia have clashed with police. There have been clashes in Melbourne, while many arrests have also been made in Sydney. Both cities are under strict stay-at-home orders as the delta variant continues to surge.In Melbourne, thousands of people defied the authorities to march in the city center. Protesters clashed with the police, and videos posted on social media have shown chaotic scenes in Australia’s second-biggest city. In Sydney, 1,400 police officers prevented a large-scale anti-lockdown rally, but there was still violence. Demonstrators were heard chanting against strict stay-at-home orders and repeating anti-vaccine conspiracy theories. Hundreds of protesters march on a street during an anti-lockdown protest in Melbourne, Australia, Aug. 21, 2021.Many arrests have reportedly been made in both cities, which are under some of Australia’s toughest-ever lockdown restrictions.Earlier, authorities in New South Wales state announced Australia’s worst day of the pandemic so far, with 825 new COVID-19 infections in the state.State Premier Gladys Berejiklian says the delta variant is so contagious that Australia’s long-held strategy of trying to eliminate the virus is over.“We can’t live in our bubble forever,” said Berejiklian. “The challenge is that every state has to live with the fact that once you get to 80% double doses and your population is allowed to live more freely, the delta variant will creep in.” Authorities are making a final push to stop the worsening COVID-19 crisis in Australia’s biggest city.Australia Reports Record-high Number of COVID-19 Cases US will offer booster shots next month Sydney’s lockdown is being extended and it’s getting even stricter. There will be a curfew in virus hotspots, masks must be worn outdoors, and the police have even tougher powers to enforce stay-at-home orders. Mass vaccinations are continuing as the number of infections rises. WOMAN 1: “With the cases today, yeah, we’re very happy we’ve been able to come here and get vaccinated.”WOMAN 2: “It’s a really scary number. To think that even last week we were concerned about it and now it just seems like it’s getting out of hand.”New Zealand has extended a nationwide lockdown until at least Wednesday as a cluster of Covid-19 infections has grown to more than 50 cases. “We just don’t quite know the full scale of this delta outbreak. All in all, that tells us we need to continue to be cautious,” said Prime minister Jacinda Ardern.Health officials in New Zealand have linked the delta variant infections to a traveler who returned from New South Wales two weeks ago. New Zealand has reported about 3,000 COVID-19 cases and 26 fatalities since the pandemic began.Australia has recorded 42,200 coronavirus infections since the start of the pandemic. Nine hundred seventy-four people have died, according to the Health Department.Both countries closed their international borders to most foreign nationals in March of last year.
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New England Preps for 1st Hurricane in 30 Years With Henri
New Englanders bracing for their first hurricane in 30 years began hauling boats out of the water and taking other precautions Friday as Tropical Storm Henri barreled toward the Northeast coast.Henri was expected to intensify into a hurricane by Saturday, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said. Impacts could be felt in New England states by Sunday, including on Cape Cod, which is teeming with tens of thousands of summer tourists.Henri’s track was imprecise, but as of 5 p.m. EDT Friday, the National Weather Service suggested it might make landfall first in eastern Long Island before careening further north. The White House said President Joe Biden was briefed on the storm’s track.National Hurricane Center map showing the expected track of Tropical Storm Henri, as of 5 AM EDT Aug. 21, 20021.Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker on Friday urged people vacationing on the Cape to leave well before Henri hits, and those who planned to start vacations there to delay their plans. “We don’t want people to be stuck in traffic on the Cape Cod bridges when the storm is in full force on Sunday,” he said.Baker said up to 1,000 National Guard troops were on standby to help with evacuations if needed.“This storm is extremely worrisome,” said Michael Finkelstein, police chief and emergency management director in East Lyme, Connecticut. “We haven’t been down this road in quite a while and there’s no doubt that we and the rest of New England would have some real difficulties with a direct hit from a hurricane.”Finkelstein said he’s most concerned about low-lying areas of town that could become impossible to access because of flooding and a storm surge.Thursday marked exactly 30 years since Hurricane Bob came ashore in Rhode Island as a Category 2 storm, killing at least 17 people and leaving behind more than $1.5 billion worth of damage. Bob, which left streets in coastal towns littered with boats blown free of their moorings, knocked out power and water to hundreds of thousands for days.Large swaths of the Eastern seaboard were mopping up on Friday from the effects of Henri’s predecessor, Tropical Depression Fred. In North Carolina, Haywood County Sheriff Greg Christopher said four people died and five individuals remained unaccounted for, down from around 20 people reported missing on Thursday.The weather service warned of the potential for damaging winds and widespread coastal flooding from Henri, and officials in Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York cautioned that people could lose power for a week or even longer. Authorities urged people to secure their boats, fuel up their vehicles and stock up on canned goods.The system was centered in the Atlantic Ocean late Friday about 230 miles (370 kilometers) south-southeast of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, and about 615 miles (990 kilometers) south of Montauk Point, New York. It had maximum sustained winds of 70 mph (110 kph).A hurricane warning stretched across the South Shore of Long Island from Fire Island Inlet to Montauk, and the North Shore from Port Jefferson Harbor to Montauk.The main threats were expected to be storm surge, wind and rain, forecasters said. Storm surge between 3 and 5 feet (1 to 1.5 meters) was possible from Flushing, New York, to Chatham, Massachusetts; and parts of the North Shore and South Shore of Long Island.Rainfall between 3 to 6 inches (7.5 to 15 centimeters) was expected Sunday through Monday over the region.Henri was heading north Friday night, and forecasters expected it to approach the coastlines of New York’s Long Island or southern New England by Sunday. New York hasn’t had a direct hit from a major hurricane season storm since Superstorm Sandy wreaked havoc in 2012.At Safe Harbor Marina in coastal Plymouth, Massachusetts, Steve Berlo was among the many boaters having their vessels pulled out of the water ahead of the storm.“It’s rare, but when it happens, you want to be sure you’re ready,” said Berlo, 54. “Got to protect our second home. So that’s that. Now I can sleep tonight.”In the Hamptons, the celebrity playground on Long Island’s east end, officials warned of dangerous rip currents and flooding that’s likely to turn streets, like mansion-lined Dune Road on the Atlantic coast, into lagoons.Ryan Murphy, the emergency management administrator for the Town of Southampton, said that while the storm’s track continues to evolve, “we have to plan as if it’s going to be like a Category 1 hurricane that would be hitting us.”The National Weather Service also warned residents and beachgoers on the North Carolina coast of rip currents and rough surf associated with Henri. Meteorologist Steven Pfaff of the weather service’s Wilmington office said swells from Henri were expected to create hazardous surf conditions beginning Friday and continuing on Saturday.At the U.S. Navy’s submarine base in Groton, Connecticut, personnel on Friday were securing submarine moorings, installing flood gates in front of doors on some waterfront buildings, and doubling up lines on small boats, officials said. Families were being encouraged to watch the forecast and make any necessary preparations.The Coast Guard urged boaters to stay off the water, saying in a statement: “The Coast Guard’s search and rescue capabilities degrade as storm conditions strengthen. This means help could be delayed.”At the Port Niantic marina in Niantic, Connecticut, Debbie Shelburn and her employees were already busy Friday hauling boats out of the water and into a large storage building.“Basically, it’s become all hands on deck. No matter your position — mechanic, whatever — everybody is out there helping with the logistics of moving the boats and getting them secure on land,” she said.
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Japanese Diplomat Has Origami Instagram
Every day for a year, a Japanese diplomat has posted a near-identical Instagram video of the paper crane he has folded that day.”Today is my 365th day in Seattle,” says Hisao Inagaki, consul general in the western US city, in a video posted Friday.”I have folded a 365th crane while praying for everyone’s health and peace.”It was a triumphant moment for Inagaki, 60, who arrived in the United States in August last year as the country was in the depths of the Covid-19 health crisis, and person-to-person contact was tricky.”I started recording origami cranes because of the pandemic,” he told AFP in a video interview.”I wanted to use my social media to send a message to everyone expressing my sympathies.”So began his Zen-like meditation, in which every identically framed video shows Inagaki delivering the same message, with only the numbers — and his shirts — changing.Paper cranes have been created for centuries in Japan, where they symbolize longevity.”It is thought that folding 1,000 paper cranes is a prelude to good things,” says Inagaki, adding that 1,000 is not a precise number, and stands instead for “a lot.”Not counting a two-day outage that kept him off the platform on days 193 and 194, Inagaki has remained faithful to his plan — and his script.Day 195 marked a slight deviation, when he added an enthusiastic: “I’m back!” to the start of the video, before returning to his pattern.Friday’s post saw the diplomat — wearing a suit for the occasion — showing off the numbers “365” constructed out of paper cranes.”To keep (posting) every day, I thought it is better to be simple,” Inagaki says.That simplicity makes Inagaki’s Instagram account almost hypnotic, with each 10- or 11-second video a self-contained piece of performance art.Each folded crane is dated and preserved in a large box, but at the end of his Seattle posting, Inagaki says he would like to donate his works.”I want to give them to someone… to provide these folded cranes to a nursery” or an old people’s home, he said. Until then, he will keep on folding — much to the delight of his nearly 900 followers.”I look forward to your videos every day,” wrote one follower on Day 360.”Lovely,” wrote another. “I’m glad you live in my city.”
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Erdogan Reiterates Interest in Securing Kabul Airport, Faces Criticism
Despite earlier reports that Turkey had dropped plans to secure Kabul’s international airport, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Friday that Turkey is ready to talk with the Taliban about what role, if any, Turkey would play in Afghanistan.“If there is a knock on our door, we will open it for dialogue,” Erdogan said Friday.Turkey has been involved in infrastructure efforts in Afghanistan, Erdogan added, and is still interested in providing such work.Turkey is also still interested in providing security at Kabul’s airport, Erdogan said Wednesday in a television interview, despite reports by Reuters Monday that plans to secure the airport had been dropped after the Taliban takeover.“Turkey’s military presence in Afghanistan will strengthen the new administration’s hand in the international arena,” Erdogan said in the interview, adding that Turkey is in contact with all sides in Afghanistan.As a NATO member, Turkey has about 600 troops in Afghanistan, and Turkish authorities do not view their presence as a combat force.In June, Turkey proposed to guard the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul after the withdrawal of NATO forces. The United States and Turkey had negotiated the details to keep the airport open as a safe passage for diplomatic missions in Afghanistan.In July, the Taliban warned Turkey against a military presence at the airport, calling the proposal “a violation of our sovereignty and territorial integrity and against our national interests.”Taliban Threaten Turkish Troops with ‘Jihad’ if They Stay in Afghanistan Warning comes amid fresh battlefield moves that critics say show Taliban are planning military takeover of Afghanistan in defiance of their peace pledges’New picture’Erdogan said Wednesday that a new picture to maintain security at the airport emerged after the Taliban fighters took control of the country.“Now we are making our plans according to these new realities that were formed on the field, and we are continuing our talks accordingly,” Erdogan said.Some experts argue that Turkey would guard the airport if the Taliban requested it; however, NATO and the U.S. would not subsidize such a military presence in a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.“What people overlooked is that in the initial agreement, Ankara wasn’t going to fight the Taliban,” Aaron Stein, the director of research at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, told VOA. “Ankara was having indirect or perhaps even direct discussions with the Taliban via Doha, via Pakistan, to basically get the Taliban’s approval to stick around. They had to balance this with the official Afghan government.” EvacuationsTurkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told the daily Hurriyet that it is too early to say whether Turkey has canceled its plans to secure the airport.“We work together with the United States and other countries on evacuations and other issues. Our priority is to evacuate our citizens who want to return,” Cavusoglu said.As of August 18, Turkey has evacuated 552 citizens from Afghanistan. OppositionOn the other hand, the Turkish opposition, including the Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the Iyi Party, is urging the government to evacuate the Turkish soldiers from Afghanistan.“What is left from Afghanistan? Why should our troops stay there? Stop talking nonsense to please the United States and withdraw our soldiers from this swamp,” Meral Aksener, the leader of the Iyi Party, tweeted on August 16.Çıkmış hâlâ, “Türk askeri Afganistan’da kalmalı.” diyorlar.Kardeşim; Afganistan kaldı mı da askerimiz kalsın?ABD’ye şirinlik peşinde abuk sabuk konuşmayı bırakın, askerimizi derhal o bataklıktan çekin! pic.twitter.com/jHqdwP39bN— Meral Akşener (@meral_aksener) August 16, 2021The CHP and Iyi parties also voiced concerns over the government’s Afghan policy, warning that it would cause large numbers of Afghan refugees to enter Turkey.“I am saying this once again: Erdogan, you are not going to sign an agreement that would bring more refugees (to Turkey),” Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the leader of main opposition CHP, tweeted on Tuesday. The tweet came after German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Germany should work closely with Turkey on a potential Afghan refugee influx.Earlier this month, in a Twitter thread, Kilicdaroglu claimed that Erdogan had an agreement with the U.S. to accept Afghan refugees into Turkey.It is also evident why a young interpreter from the Kavakci family is allowed to take part in the meeting instead of an official interpreter. Erdogan behaved so in order to conceal his decision.— Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu (@kilicdarogluk) August 3, 2021The U.S. Embassy in Turkey denied this claim on Wednesday.The U.S. Embassy wishes to state that allegations regarding an “agreement” or “deal” between President Biden and President Erdoğan regarding Afghan refugees or migrants are completely without foundation.— U.S. Embassy Turkey (@USEmbassyTurkey) August 18, 2021Erdogan described the opposition’s stance on Afghan refugees as hate speech in a televised address following a Cabinet meeting late Thursday. He said that Turkey is home to 300,000 Afghan refugees, including unregistered ones.He also criticized the European countries for staying out of the refugee problem “by harshly sealing its borders to protect the safety and well-being of its citizens.”“Turkey has no duty, responsibility, or obligation to be Europe’s refugee warehouse,” Erdogan said.Erdogan announced that Turkey had reinforced its border with Iran with law enforcement units and that a wall along the Turkey-Iran border was almost completed.An increasing number of Afghan refugees have been crossing into Turkey from Iran, prompting the rise in anti-refugee rhetoric in the country.However, Aykan Erdemir, senior director of the Turkey program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former member of the Turkish parliament, said the Erdogan government views the Afghan refugee flow as a unique opportunity “to cut various deals to extract concessions from Brussels and Washington.”“This time around, however, the domestic political costs of instrumentalizing refugees in relations with the West appear to be much higher. Amid Turkey’s economic crisis, there has been a dramatic spike in nativist and anti-refugee sentiment, including violent attacks, undermining the popularity of Turkey’s ruling coalition,” Erdemir said.This story originated in VOA’s Turkish Service.
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AFL-CIO Elects First Woman President, First African American for No. 2 Job
The AFL-CIO, the largest U.S. labor organization, on Friday elected Liz Shuler, a longtime trade unionist, to serve as the federation’s first woman president, succeeding Richard Trumka, who died unexpectedly earlier this month.The AFL-CIO’s executive council also elected Fred Redmond, a United Steelworkers (USW) union official as secretary-treasurer, making him the first African American to hold the organization’s No. 2 office.Trumka, who died of a heart attack at age 72 during a camping trip, had led the trade federation of 56 unions representing 12.5 million workers since 2009.President Joe Biden called Shuler to offer his congratulations and vowed to partner with the coalition to create union jobs and increase wages, according to a White House official.Shuler, who grew up in a union household, said she was determined to continue Trumka’s push to expand the power of organized labor, reduce the income gap between rich and poor while increasing union membership, which has fallen for decades in the country.”This is a moment for us to lead societal transformations — to leverage our power to bring women and people of color from the margins to the center — at work, in our unions and in our economy,” she said in a statement.Shuler, 51, worked as an organizer at Local 125 of the Electrical Workers (IBEW) union at Portland General Electric, working with a coalition of activists to challenge energy giant Enron Corp when it tried to muscle electricity deregulation through the Oregon Legislature.In 2009, she was elected as Trumka’s top deputy, the first woman elected to the position of secretary-treasurer, and the youngest woman ever on the federation’s executive council.The AFL-CIO’s executive officers’ terms run through June 2022, when delegates to a convention in Philadelphia will elect leaders for new four-year terms.
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US Extends Restrictions on Travel from Canada and Mexico
The U.S. government on Friday once again extended a ban on nonessential travel across its land borders from Canada and Mexico, citing efforts to minimize the spread of the delta variant. The ban limits border crossings by land or ferry, though flights between the U.S. and Canada and Mexico remain unrestricted.The Department of Homeland Security has extended the travel restrictions on a monthly basis since the coronavirus pandemic began last year. The restrictions, set to end on August 21, have been extended through at least September 21.”In coordination with public health and medical experts, DHS continues working closely with its partners across the United States and internationally to determine how to safely and sustainably resume normal travel,” the department said on Twitter.Nonessential travel restrictions do not apply to U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents, who have been permitted to enter Canada since August 9 upon presentation of proof of an approved vaccination. But the United States has not reciprocated for visitors from other countries. Members of Congress, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, have criticized the ongoing restrictions for separating binational families and hurting businesses reliant on cross-border tourism. Representative Elise Stefanik, a Republican, recently introduced legislation to loosen nonessential travel restrictions for families and businesses.”The cost of President Biden’s inaction is devastating to North Country families, businesses, and communities hopeful that the United States would restore travel across the border,” Stefanik said in a Friday statement. “It is shameful that while the Canadian government has opened travel for fully vaccinated American travelers, President Biden would still deny northern border communities access to family, travel, and commerce.”Organizations such as Let Us Reunite have also been lobbying the federal government to loosen land border restrictions, pointing out discrepancies in the application of travel policies and citing a need to reconnect with family members across the border.Founder Devon Weber said that the group has attracted over 3,000 members and has held meetings with dozens of congressional offices about loosening travel restrictions since its inception last year.Weber, who has dual citizenship, moved from New York to Canada in February 2020. Because her French-Canadian husband doesn’t have a U.S. passport and they can’t afford multiple plane tickets, Weber has visited her family in New York only once during the pandemic.She described the lack of air travel restrictions as “classist” and said Let Us Reunite hopes to make it easier for binational families to visit each other by car and boat.”There’s just sort of this hodgepodge of closures with no rhyme or reason to them and that is very frustrating to folks,” Weber said. “It’s bureaucratic paralysis. The border closure is rolling over every 30 days, and there is no comment from the White House and nothing more than a tweet from DHS the day of the closure.”The Biden administration has provided few details on when or how the restrictions will end. It may require all foreign nationals entering the U.S. to be fully vaccinated, according to Reuters, but no official plans have been announced.Meanwhile, COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations have been on the rise domestically since the more transmissible delta variant took hold in July. Over 70% of U.S. adults have received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine, and infections are occurring primarily among the unvaccinated. Some information for this report came from Reuters.
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Biden Taps Career Diplomat, Not Politician, as Ambassador to China
President Joe Biden plans to nominate veteran U.S. diplomat Nicholas Burns to serve as U.S. ambassador to China, the White House said Friday, signaling the administration may be looking for the envoy to play a more central role in the increasingly fractious relations between the two global rivals. The White House also announced Biden’s intent to nominate Rahm Emanuel, a former U.S. lawmaker who served as chief of staff to former President Barack Obama and as mayor of Chicago, to be ambassador to Japan, a U.S. ally increasingly at odds with Beijing. The choice of Burns, a retired career foreign service officer who served as undersecretary of state from 2005 to 2008, marks a shift for the role of the ambassador to Beijing, the ranks of which over the past decade have been filled by former politicians, not seasoned diplomats. If confirmed by the Senate, Burns would head to China as the two countries’ ties are at their lowest point in decades, and fill a post left vacant since October, after former President Donald Trump’s envoy to China, Terry Branstad, stepped down. The United States and China, the world’s No. 1 and No. 2 economies, are at odds over issues across the board, including trade, technology, the coronavirus, Taiwan, and Chinese military activities in the disputed South China Sea, with each accusing the other of deliberately provocative behavior. A new headache Burns would have to deal with is fallout from the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan and the chaotic U.S. evacuation from Kabul, which has raised questions about the Biden administration’s ability to swiftly shift focus to the Indo-Pacific region and countering China. China has not officially recognized the Taliban as Afghanistan’s new rulers, but its foreign minister, Wang Yi, last month hosted Mullah Baradar, chief of the group’s political office, and has said the world should guide and support the country as it transitions to a new government instead of putting more pressure on it. ‘Intimate understanding’ Burns said he looked forward to returning to public service, if confirmed by the Senate, and working on “the strategic competition between the U.S. and the PRC [People’s Republic of China], as well as other difficult and complex challenges we face at this critical juncture in our relationship.” While Burns is not considered a China policy specialist, neither were the previous four U.S. ambassadors to Beijing. He does have close ties to Biden, though, having served as an adviser to his election campaign, and has worked closely over the years with some of the president’s most trusted advisers, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Former Republican President George W. Bush appointed Burns as undersecretary for political affairs, historically the State Department’s third-ranking official, with global responsibilities. Evan Medeiros, an Asia specialist in the Obama administration now at Georgetown University, said the choice of Burns indicated Biden sought a new model of communication with Beijing at a time when regular high-level dialogues have atrophied in the face of increasingly ideological competition. “What you’re saying is we need a work horse, not a show horse,” he said. “We want our ambassador to be among the key players in the relationship, and we need somebody who understands great power politics.” Trump had named Branstad, hoping the former Iowa governor could leverage ties with Chinese officials – including Xi Jinping before he became China’s top leader – to help navigate trade tensions. But the two sides plunged headlong into an unprecedented trade war anyway. More pivotal roleAs tensions between Beijing and Washington have escalated in recent years, the China-based role of the U.S. ambassador has been increasingly constrained, particularly as Beijing has sought to curtail the ambassador’s engagement with ordinary people. With the Biden administration indicating a reluctance to return to the regular, structured, high-level dialogue Beijing has sought, some analysts say it is possible the ambassador will take on a more pivotal role as a result. “The U.S. ambassador in Beijing could return to serving as both a messenger to and a sounding board for Chinese officials,” said James Green, a former U.S. official who served multiple tours at the Beijing embassy. He said the Biden administration would benefit from Burns’ “intimate understanding of the foreign policy bureaucracy” as well as a “clarity of message” to Beijing given his time as State Department spokesman in the mid-1990s. Burns has also served as U.S. ambassador to NATO and to Greece. After retiring from the Foreign Service, he worked with the Cohen Group, a Washington consulting firm, and became a professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
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Malaysia’s King Names New Prime Minister from Corruption-Mired Party
Malaysia’s king on Friday appointed Ismail Sabri Yaakob the country’s new prime minister, returning a member of the corruption-mired United Malays National Organization to the top job three years after Malaysians voted the party out of office.King Sultan Abdullah Sultan Ahmad Shah said Ismail Sabri had secured the support of 114 of the 220 sitting members of the House of Representatives. He replaces Muhyiddin Yassin, whom he served as deputy prime minister and who resigned Monday after conceding that he had lost majority support in parliament.FILE PHOTO: Malaysia’s Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin speaks during opening remarks for virtual APEC Economic Leaders Meeting 2020, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Nov. 20, 2020.Muhyiddin was appointed prime minister by the king in February 2020 after helping engineer the collapse of the coalition government that beat UMNO at the polls in 2018. But his Bersatu party’s own coalition with UMNO was fragile from the start, with some members of the larger UMNO bristling at playing a junior role in the alliance.“UMNO engineered the collapse of the previous government and now they are reaping the rewards of the position of the prime minister,” said Adib Zalkapli, Malaysia analyst for consulting firm Bower Group Asia.But as Malaysia’s third prime minister in as many years, analysts say Ismail Sabri’s coalition, comprising the same mix of parties as the last, will likely prove just as shaky.“In the Malaysian context, it’s basically the status quo,” Adib said.Wong Chin Huat, a political analyst and professor at Malaysia’s Sunway University, is also expecting a short run for the new prime minister.“Pressure will be mounted on him to have an election once the [pandemic] situation improves. But his power base may be challenged even before then because his coalition enjoys only 52% majority in the House and is very fragmented by parties as well as factions,” he said.Elections are due by 2023 but could be called sooner. The king ruled out elections to choose Muhyiddin’s immediate successor as a precautions against the spread of the coronavirus.Malaysians take part in a rare anti-government rally in Kuala Lumpur on July 31, 2021, despite a tough Covid-19 coronavirus lockdown in place restricting gatherings and public assemblies.The country of 32 million is suffering the highest rate of new daily COVID-19 cases per 1 million people in Southeast Asia. It recorded 178 deaths on Thursday and a record 22,948 new cases, pushing the country’s total number of cases since the start of the pandemic up to nearly 1.5 million.Public anger at the government’s pandemic response has been mounting with the rising caseload. But with the same parties running the government, Adib said Ismail Sabri’s Cabinet was also likely to bear some similarities to Muhyiddin’s, promising little change in policy.“Very likely we will see some of the similar faces — whether they did well or not so well — who will be back. So, I think there will be continuity as far as the management of the pandemic is concerned,” he said.Days before resigning, in a last-ditch effort to cling to power, Muhyiddin offered to push through a list of political and economic reforms opposition parties have been calling for in exchange for their support but failed.Wong said the offer came too late and seemed insincere, but added he would be looking to see if Ismail Sabri picks up on some of the proposals in order to woo opposition lawmakers and hedge against the threat of those in his own coalition who might pull out.He and Adib said having UMNO back in the prime minister’s seat was also raising concerns that the corruption cases opened against party heavyweights over the past three years may be dropped or stymied.A number of senior UMNO officials including former Prime Minister Najib Razak and party president Ahmad Zahid Hamidi are facing dozens of charges. Najib was convicted on seven charges and sentenced to 12 years in jail in July 2020 but remains out on bail and in Parliament while appealing the decision. He and the others deny any wrongdoing and claim the cases are politically motivated.The day he announced his resignation, Muhyiddin blamed his coalition’s collapse on his refusal to “compromise with kleptocrats.” He did not name anyone, but the remarks were seen as a dig at some UMNO members; some of them, Najib and Ahmed Zahid included, publicly pulled their support for Muhyiddin weeks earlier.“It’s definitely something that everyone is talking about, whether the cases will continue or not,” Adib said.“Partly people do not believe that the judiciary, while it has been improved, has become totally independent,” Wong added.The professor said reforming the Attorney General’s Chambers, which oversee prosecutions, could prove “low-lying fruit” for Ismail, a relatively easy way to both shore up support with power-players within his coalition who want to see the corruption cases through and voters who rejected UMNO at the polls.“For Ismail Sabri, to strike a delicate balance within his coalition and also to demonstrate to the public he can deliver something, embarking on the AGC reform is the most important thing,” he said.
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Arson Attack Hits Home of Journalist in Netherlands
Unidentified attackers on Thursday threw Molotov cocktails into the Netherlands home of journalist Willem Groeneveld.The motive for the attack, which took place in the city of Groningen around 2:45 a.m. local time, was not clear, but Groeneveld had previously been harassed over reporting on issues involving real estate and landlords.No one was injured in the assault, and the journalist was cited in reports as saying he woke to the sound of breaking glass and was able to put out the fire.Media organizations said they were troubled by the attack, which came just a month after veteran crime journalist Peter R. de Vries died after being shot in Amsterdam.“This is a very sad year for journalism. This attack on Willem with a firebomb could have ended very differently,” Thomas Bruning, head of the Dutch Association of Journalists, told local media.Thursday’s attack was not a first for Groeneveld, who founded the investigative website Sikkom and is a contributor to the daily regional newspaper Dagblad van het Noorden.In 2019, attackers threw stones through the windows of the journalist’s home, and on another occasion someone posted Groeneveld’s address and phone number on Facebook. In June, about 30 bicycles were left outside the journalist’s apartment after he reported that a businessman had been removing bikes from around the city, according to local reports.Police on Friday announced they had arrested two suspects on accusations of arson and attempted murder. The Netherlands has one of the best records for press freedom, ranking 6th out of 180 countries, where 1 is freest, on the annual index by watchdog Reporters Without Borders.But recent attacks and July’s fatal shooting are concerning rights groups, including the International Press Institute and European Centre for Press and Media Freedom.The arson “represents another serious attack on media freedom in the Netherlands,” several press freedom groups said in a joint statement. “It is an attack on Willem Groeneveld, but also on the entire Dutch journalistic community.”The media groups called for a “rigorous investigation” into what is behind the increase in attacks on journalists.The Netherlands is not the only European Union member state to experience violence and fatal attacks on media this year.In April, Greek police reporter Giorgos Karaivaz was killed outside Athens, in what authorities have said they believe was a contract killing.The same month, the Committee to Protect Journalists reported that police in Greece had arrested three people suspected of involvement in an alleged plot to kill investigative journalist Kostas Vaxevanis.
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US Appeals Court Refuses to End CDC’s Eviction Moratorium
A federal appeals court on Friday said a pause in evictions designed to curb the spread of the coronavirus could remain in place for now, setting up a battle before the nation’s highest court.A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia rejected a bid by Alabama and Georgia landlords to block the eviction moratorium reinstated by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this month. The landlords plan to immediately file an emergency motion to the Supreme Court, said National Association of Realtors spokesman Patrick Newton.”With a majority of the Supreme Court in agreement that any further extension of this eviction moratorium requires congressional authorization, we are confident and hopeful for a quick resolution,” he said in an emailed statement.In a short written decision, the panel said the appeals court had rejected a similar bid and a lower court had also declined to overturn the moratorium.”In view of that decision and on the record before us, we likewise deny the emergency motion directed to this court,” the judges said in the ruling.High court rulingThe Supreme Court voted 5-4 in June to allow the moratorium to continue through the end of July. But Justice Brett Kavanaugh — who joined the majority — warned the administration not to act further without explicit congressional approval.The Biden administration allowed an earlier moratorium to lapse on July 31, saying it had no legal authority to allow it to continue. But the CDC issued a new moratorium days later as pressure mounted from lawmakers and others to help vulnerable renters stay in their homes as the coronavirus’ delta variant surged. The moratorium is scheduled to expire October 3.FILE – Protesters display placards while calling for support for tenants and homeowners at risk of eviction during a demonstration on the Boston Common, in Boston, Oct. 11, 2020.As of August 2, roughly 3.5 million people in the United States said they faced eviction in the next two months, according to the Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey.The new moratorium temporarily halted evictions in counties with “substantial and high levels” of virus transmissions and would cover areas where 90% of the U.S. population lives.The Trump administration initially put a nationwide eviction moratorium in place last year out of fear that people who couldn’t pay their rent would end up in crowded living conditions like homeless shelters and help spread the virus.Legality questionsPresident Joe Biden acknowledged there were questions about the legality of the new eviction freeze. But he said a court fight over the new order would buy time for the distribution of some of the more than $45 billion in rental assistance that has been approved but not yet used.In urging the appeals court to keep the ban in place, the Biden administration noted that the new moratorium was more targeted than the nationwide ban that had lapsed, and that the landscape had changed since the Supreme Court ruling because of the spread of the highly contagious delta variant.The landlords accused Biden’s administration of caving to political pressure and reinstating the moratorium even though it knew it was illegal.”As the president himself has acknowledged, the CDC’s latest extension is little more than a delay tactic designed to buy time to distribute rental assistance,” their attorneys wrote in court documents.A lower-court judge ruled earlier this month that the freeze was illegal, but rejected the landlords’ request to lift the moratorium, saying her hands had been tied by an appellate decision from the last time courts considered the evictions moratorium in the spring.
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Kenyan Court Blocks Attempt to Change Constitution
Kenya’s Court of Appeal ruled Friday that a plan by President Uhuru Kenyatta and opposition leader Raila Odinga to change the Constitution was unlawful.Justice Gatembu Kairu said the power to change the Constitution lay with the citizens, not the political elite.“Abolishing or abrogating provisions of the Constitution in such a way to alter its foundation and structure is therefore not envisaged under Chapter 16 of the Constitution,” Kairu said. “That is a preserve of people exercising sovereign power, which belongs to them in accordance with the Article 1 of the Constitution.”Kenyatta and Odinga unveiled what they called the Building Bridges Initiative in 2018, a year after a hotly contested election almost split the country.The proposed changes would create more political positions, greatly increase the amount of government revenue going to the county level, and allow politicians to simultaneously serve as members of parliament and as members of the government.However, Justice Hannah Okwengu said there was no public participation in the process of changing the Constitution.“No evidence was laid before the court to prove that there was any meaningful participation before the collection of signatures in support of the proposed constitutional amendment,” Okwengu said.Commission had empty seatsIn January, the electoral commission verified that supporters of the amendment had collected the 1.1 million signatures required to move it forward.However, Justice Francis Tuiyott said the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission was not properly constituted when verifying those signatures.The IEBC had only three commissioners — it should have seven — when it gave the green light.“To hold that the quorum could be anything less than half membership of seven is to weaken the commission,” Tuiyott said. Odinga, in a statement posted on Twitter, said he accepted the court ruling.”It’s likely that this is not the end of the conversation and the parties involved will each make their own decision on how to proceed from the decision that has been delivered today,” Odinga said.Odinga said this week he wouldn’t challenge the ruling at the Supreme Court.Political commentator Martin Andati said Friday’s ruling made it difficult for politicians to form a government for the few.”They wanted to expand the executive so that it makes it very easy for them, but that now has collapsed … so that’s also good for the country, because for you to be able to win an election you must look for a clever way of bringing everybody on board and making sure all those interests which support you are catered for.”Kenya is scheduled to conduct a general election in August 2022. The East African nation has witnessed a heated electoral process over the years, leading to killings and large-scale displacement of people from their homes.
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Courts Deliver Setbacks to Biden Administration Immigration Agenda
While the Biden administration focuses on the Afghanistan evacuation crisis, serious problems fester at the U.S.-Mexico border with increasing numbers of unaccompanied children and two important court rulings complicating the administration’s efforts to implement its immigration policies.The Unaccompanied minor migrants wait to be transported by the U.S. Border Patrol after crossing the Rio Grande river into the United States from Mexico in Roma, Texas, Aug. 14, 2021.‘Remain in Mexico’ RulingOn Thursday, the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals denied the Biden administration’s attempt to halt a Texas judge’s ruling demanding the government resume a controversial Trump-era border policy known as Migrant Protection Policy (MPP) — the so-called “remain in Mexico” measure.Former President Donald Trump’s White House announced the directive in 2019, which gave border patrol agents power to send non-Mexican asylum-seekers to Mexico, where they had to wait for their asylum cases to be reviewed and processed by U.S. immigration courts, rather than allowing them to stay in the U.S.Human rights activists said an estimated 68,000 migrants were sent back to Mexico under the policy and were often assaulted, kidnapped and extorted. Fewer than 2% won their cases in U.S. immigration courts.The Biden administration deemed the directive excessively harsh and ended the program earlier this year. But Texas and Missouri sued the government in April arguing that ending MPP led to a significant increase in migrants at the southern border that added to the states’ costs of dealing with migrants.Department of Justice attorneys argued that to reinstitute the policy, Mexico must cooperate with the U.S. In the past, Mexico border towns have refused to accept migrants returned under MPP.In the order, the court of appeals acknowledged the complications and said, “The injunction only requires good faith on the part of the United States — if the government’s good-faith efforts to implement MPP are thwarted by Mexico, it nonetheless will be in compliance with the district court’s order, so long as it also adheres to the rest of the statutory requirements.”The next step for the Biden administration is to file an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court.People queue to cross to the United States at San Ysidro crossing port on the Mexican side of the US – Mexico border in Tijuana, Baja Caifornia state, on Aug. 20, 2021.Enforcement prioritiesAnother court ruling coming from Texas presented an additional setback for the Biden administration.U.S. District Court Judge Drew Tipton blocked a recent “enforcement priorities” directive that guides immigration agents regarding who they should prioritize for detention and deportation from the country.Tipton, a judge appointed by Trump, prohibited directives from being implemented that ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to focus more narrowly on arresting certain types of immigrants.Tipton concluded that ICE’s enforcement priorities should have been implemented through regulations that were open to public comments, and therefore were in violation of federal administrative law. In his 160-page ruling, Tipton said some priorities could lead ICE officers to infringe on laws that guide the detention of foreign nationals the government attempts to deport.For decades, every presidential administration has issued ICE enforcement priorities that fit with their immigration plan. Biden’s memos were issued in January and February. Biden enforcement prioritiesUnder Biden’s “enforcement priorities,” ICE agents were asked to get supervisory approval before arresting undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. who did not fall within three specified categories: migrants that pose a threat to national security, who have crossed the border since November 1, or who committed “aggravated felonies.”Biden officials say it is important to allow ICE agents to focus their limited resources on arresting immigrants within U.S. borders who have been convicted of serious crimes or are a threat to national security.Tipton ordered the administration to file monthly reports on immigrants who were released from custody and not immediately detained by ICE, and to also submit by September 3 a court filing with “specificity what guidance, protocols, or standards control the detention of these aliens in light of the fact that the Memoranda have been enjoined.”It is unknown if Biden officials will appeal this decision. An ICE spokesperson told VOA “As a matter of practice, ICE does not comment on pending litigation.”
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Biden Vows to Bring Americans Home From Afghanistan
U.S. President Joe Biden reiterated a vow Friday to stay in Afghanistan until all American citizens who want to leave and Afghans who risked their lives working for the U.S. government during the conflict have been evacuated.“Any American who wants to come home, we will get you home. Make no mistake, this is dangerous. It involves risks to our armed forces and is being conducted under difficult circumstances,” Biden said alongside Vice President Kamala Harris and Secretary of State Antony Blinken at the White House.Biden also said his administration would do “everything that we can” to safely evacuate “our Afghan allies, partners and Afghans who might be targeted.”The president said the U.S. military evacuated 5,700 people from Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul on Thursday and 13,000 since August 14, the Saturday before the Taliban entered Kabul. He said a total of 18,000 people had been evacuated since the end of July.Marines assist with security at an evacuation control checkpoint at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, Aug. 20, 2021. (Staff Sgt. Victor Mancilla/U.S. Marine Corps via AP)Biden also said that U.S. forces went outside the airport gate in Kabul and brought 169 Americans “over the wall.” He noted that his administration worked with The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post to “successfully” evacuate 204 of their staff in the country.The president said his administration was in constant contact with the Taliban to ensure safe evacuations while also issuing a warning.”We made clear to the Taliban that any attack, any attack on our forces or disruption of our operations at the airport will be met with swift and forceful response,” Biden said.A Marine assigned to the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit calms an infant during an evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Aug. 20, 2021. (Sgt. Isaiah Campbell/U.S. Marine Corps via AP)The White House said Thursday that the evacuees were flown out on 16 flights by C-17 aircraft. The White House said the evacuees included 350 U.S. citizens, their family members, vulnerable Afghans and applicants for special immigrant visas and their families.A statement Friday said that in the previous 24 hours, the U.S. military had also helped the departure of 11 charter flights. The passengers on those charter flights were not included in the totals above. Biden met with his national security team on the situation in Afghanistan early Friday, before making remarks on the evacuation process.The president has stressed that the U.S. military is now in control at the airport and evacuating thousands with the goal of getting everyone who needs to be evacuated out, both American and Afghan, by August 31.Concern is growing with reports that Afghans and American citizens are having trouble getting to the airport because of Taliban checkpoints. The U.S. is continuing to communicate with local Taliban commanders to move people through the checkpoints.VOA’s Patsy Widakuswara and Steve Herman contributed to this report.
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Britain, US Sanction Russian Intelligence Agents Over Navalny Poisoning
Britain and the United States imposed sanctions Friday on men they said were Russian intelligence operatives responsible for the poisoning one year ago of Kremlin critic Alexey Navalny.The two countries targeted seven Russians with sanctions and issued a joint statement warning Russia about chemical weapons.Washington separately imposed sanctions on another two men and four Russian institutes it said were involved in chemical weapons research or what it described as an assassination attempt against Navalny.Navalny was flown to Germany for medical treatment after being poisoned in Siberia on August 20, 2020, with what Western experts concluded was the military nerve agent Novichok.Moscow has rejected their findings and accused the West of conducting a smear campaign against it.”The sanctioned individuals are directly responsible for planning or carrying out the attack on Mr. Navalny,” a Foreign Office statement said.British Foreign Minister Dominic Raab said the move was a warning to Russia.Call for investigation”We are sending a clear message that any use of chemical weapons by the Russian state violates international law, and a transparent criminal investigation must be held,” he said.The sanctions will affect those people named who have overseas assets.The British document listed Alexey Alexandrov, Vladimir Panyaev, Ivan Osipov, Vladimir Bogdanov, Kirill Vasilyev, Stanislav Makshakov and Alexei Sedov. It said they were all members of Russia’s FSB security service and were either directly or indirectly involved in the poisoning.The U.S. Treasury later said it was imposing sanctions on the same seven men and two additional Russian officials it said were involved in the poisoning: Konstantin Kudryavtsev and Artur Zhirov.It also targeted the FSB Criminalistics Institute, a lab where most of those implicated in the attack worked, and the Russian defense ministry’s State Institute for Experimental Military Medicine.The State Department also imposed sanctions on two other Russian military scientific institutes involved in chemical weapons, it said.Neither the Kremlin nor any of those named offered any immediate comment.Phone, travel records citedThe British government cited evidence including phone and travel records showing some of the operatives were present in the Siberian city of Tomsk at the time of the poisoning.For others it said there were reasonable grounds to suspect that, because of their positions in the intelligence service, they had “responsibility for, provided support for or promoted the actions of the operatives who carried out the operation.”Navalny was jailed for parole violations on what he said were politically motivated charges when he flew back to Russia earlier this year from Germany.”We call on Russia to comply fully with the Chemical Weapons Convention, including its obligations to declare and dismantle its chemical weapons program,” the joint U.S.-British statement said.”We remain determined to uphold the global norm against the use of chemical weapons.”
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Chinese Astronauts Conduct Second Space Walk Outside New Space Station Module
The China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) says two of the three crew members on board the Chinese space station module Tianhe have conducted their second spacewalk since the crew arrived there in June.Chinese state television broadcast the six-hour spacewalk live, showing astronauts Nie Haisheng and Liu Boming hard at work fixing a robotic arm, installing thermal control equipment and adjusting a camera.The third astronaut, Tang Hongbo, carried out the team’s first spacewalk July 4, and he assisted Friday’s event from inside the module’s control room. The spacewalk was the third ever in China’s space program. The crew members arrived June 17 for a three-month mission aboard the Tianhe module, which will make up the core of China’s third orbital station, scheduled to be fully operational and crewed by the end of next year. The module was launched April 29.Explainer: The Significance of China’s New Space Station While China concedes it arrived late at the space station game, it says its facility is cutting-edge and it could also outlast the International Space Station, which is nearing the end of its functional lifespanChina says two more modules are expected to be added to the space station and once it is completed, it will operate for at least 10 years. It is designed to be permanently occupied by astronauts on long-term stays.The space station is the third built by the Chinese, who have been excluded from the International Space Station due to U.S. political objections and legislative restrictions. The country’s space program has become more ambitious in the past decade and in the past year alone has landed exploratory rovers on the moon and Mars.While astronauts from the European Space Agency (ESA) have flown on U.S. or Russian spacecraft to the ISS, China is only the third country to conduct its own manned missions into space.Some information for this report was provided by the Associated Press, Reuters and the French news agency, AFP.
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Merkel Makes Final Visit to Russia as German Chancellor
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, scheduled to leave office later this year after nearly 16 years, is in Moscow for one final meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.Before the two leaders met for talks in the Kremlin Friday, Merkel took part in a wreath-laying ceremony at Russia’s Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Moscow and viewed a military procession immediately after.German Chancellor Angela Merkel takes part in a wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier by the Kremlin Wall in central Moscow, Russia, Aug. 20, 2021.Later, at the Kremlin, Putin presented the German chancellor with a bouquet of flowers as they met for a photo opportunity before their talks. In front of reporters, Merkel told Putin though they have deep differences, she feels it is important they meet for talks. Merkel said the two leaders had much to discuss, including, among other issues, the situation in Afghanistan and Libya as well as bilateral relations.Putin and Merkel are likely to broach Russia’s Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline to Germany, which is nearly complete. The U.S. has raised questions about the deal, as it represents a huge blow to ally Ukraine by bypassing the historic gas transit country.The two were scheduled to hold a joint news conference soon after their talks.Merkel is scheduled to visit Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv on Sunday.Some Information for this report was provided by the Associated Press, Reuters and the French news agency, AFP.
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Family of Hawks Builds Nest in Middle of Manhattan
In the heart of Manhattan lives a pair of unlikely neighbors, after a family of hawks built a nest near the window of an apartment building. Two families — human and fowl — are now watching each other, and the world is watching them through social media. Anna Nelson was fortunate enough to see this interaction with her own eyes. Anna Rice narrates her report. Camera: Dmitrii Vershinin, Natalia Latukhina, Maxim Avloshenko
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Covering Italian Mafia a Risky, Dangerous Beat
For Italy’s journalists, covering the mafia has always been dangerous. There have been attacks recently against some reporters and almost two dozen are currently under police protection because of threats. VOA’s Iacopo Luzi has more.
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