Nearly 70 students kidnapped in northern Nigeria two weeks ago are free, authorities said Monday. Zamfara state Governor Bello Matawalle said security forces freed the students from the Government Day Secondary School. He said no ransom was paid. Heavily armed gunmen kidnapped them on September 1, continuing a wave of similar attacks in Zamfara that prompted the state government to shut all schools. UNICEF said there have been 10 similar attacks in Nigeria over the past year, leading to 1,436 kidnappings and 16 deaths. In this incident, 73 students were initially taken, but five were rescued the day after the attack. “Using some of the bandits that repented, we were able to know where they were keeping these children. We worked closely with them for about 10 days, and yesterday at about 2 a.m., the commissioner of police, alongside others, took off to the location where these children were rescued,” Matawalle said. Authorities blame the abductions on bandits seeking ransom, but some are fearful the bandits are linked to the Islamist extremist group Boko Haram. Some information in this report comes from The Associated Press.
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Month: September 2021
UN: Environmental Crises Threaten Human Rights Globally
The U.N. Human Rights Council has begun its annual session in Geneva, and in an opening address Monday, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michele Bachelet warned that climate change and pollution pose grave threats to human rights and humanity itself.The U.N. rights chief says human inaction in the face of planetary disasters is having a severe impact on a broad range of rights, including the rights to adequate food, water, education, health and even life itself.Michele Bachelet says extreme and murderous climate events have been unleashed on people in every region in recent months.“Monumental fires in Siberia and California; huge sudden floods in China, Germany and Turkey; Arctic heatwaves leading to unprecedented methane emissions; and the persistence of interminable drought, from Morocco and Senegal to Siberia, potentially forcing millions of people into misery, hunger, and displacement,” Bachelet said.Bachelet warns intensifying environmental threats constitute the single greatest challenge to human rights. She says environmental disasters amplify conflicts, tensions, increase vulnerabilities, and structural inequalities around the world.For example, she notes the humanitarian emergency in Africa’s Sahel countries is being fueled by climate change. She says long droughts followed by flash floods, unequal access to natural resources, and high rates of youth unemployment are plaguing the region.“These trends compel people into displacement, aggravate conflicts and political instability, and fuel recruitment by violent extremist groups,” Bachelet said. “In such a situation it should be clear that there can be no purely military solution to the conflicts in the region. To date, four million people across the Sahel have been displaced, according to UNHCR estimates.”Bachelet says similar trends and challenges exist in different forms and to varying degrees in all regions of the world. For example, Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa are gripped by water shortages causing tensions to rise over this scarce resource.She reports climate change is having a striking impact on poverty, displacement and fundamental human rights in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. She says environmental and human rights defenders are being threatened, harassed, and even killed, often with complete impunity, in Latin America, South-East Asia and other regions.The U.N. rights chief says a safe, clean, healthy, and sustainable environment is the foundation of human life. She adds the future of humanity depends on governments acting to preserve the world’s precious resources.
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What Happened to Germany’s Greens?
Four months ago, Germany’s Green Party was riding high in the opinion polls and at one point even overtook Angela Merkel’s storied Christian Democrats and its Bavarian affiliate, the Christian Social Union, to briefly become the country’s most popular party in Germany.
As the country headed into the campaign for September 26th federal elections there was much talk that 40-year-old party leader Annalena Baerbock, a fresh face, could become Europe’s first Green head-of-government. Germany’s media described her as the “superior candidate” to succeed longtime Chancellor Angela Merkel, who’s retiring from politics.
Stern magazine put her on the cover and announced, “At Last, Something Different.”
But now, two weeks away from voting, and Baerbock seems unlikely to pull off the political equivalent of what British sports-star Emma Raducanu managed this week in winning the U.S. Open tennis tournament. The Greens have slipped to third place according to pollsters, losing around 10 percent since highs in April and May.
Popularity waningBaerbock’s star has waned with voters worrying how climate-action policies will impact their livelihoods and lifestyles, dashing the party’s hopes of repeating its success in May when it surged past the Social Democrats to capture second place in European parliamentary elections.
The precipitous slump is partly due to the impact of an old political tactic employed by their establishment opponents — labeling the Greens as nagging, didactic and keen to ban things, say pollsters. Baerbock has argued on the campaign trail that there should be a super-ministry with environmental veto powers over other Cabinet departments. Armin Laschet, chairman of the German Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the party’s top candidate for the federal election, addresses the media during a press conference at the party’s headquarters in Berlin, Germany, Sept. 13, 2021.Earlier in the campaign, Christian Democrat leader Armin Laschet was quick to seize on the Greens call for a hike in gas prices, accusing them of wanting to punish working-class motorists and of being too ready to ignore the needs of less-well-off Germans living in rural areas and small towns where public transport is less available. A Green plan to ban short-haul flights also appeared to go down badly with voters and the fall in their support started to be seen in the opinion polling.
On Sunday during a three-way televised debate with Laschet and the leader of the Social Democrats, Olaf Scholz, currently Germany’s finance minister, Baerbock was unable to revive her flagging campaign. She said Germany faced a stark choice between a new start or getting bogged down in “more of the same.”
But snap polling after the debate by broadcaster ARD showed that 41% of those asked thought Scholz was the most compelling performer, compared to 27% for Laschet and 25% for Baerbock.
Part of the Green dip can be blamed on Baerbock, say analysts. While widely seen as tough, talented and highly ambitious, she has come under fire after the discovery of several exaggerations on her official resumé, lapses that undermined her party’s commitment to transparency and integrity. And she faced calls to quit over plagiarism claims after it emerged, she copied dozens of passages from other works for a book she published this year.
Baerbock has also had to acknowledge during the campaign to break parliamentary rules by failing to declare thousands of euros she received from her party in addition to her salary as a federal lawmaker. The lapses have allowed critics to cast doubt on whether the 40-year-old is ready for the highest office after serving just eight years as a federal lawmaker.
“The number of unforced errors on the part of Baerbock, from embellishing her resumé to publishing an ill-conceived book, has sown doubts about her suitability. It has become obvious that the Green candidate and those around her may not yet have reached the level of professionalism required to aim at the highest office,” according to Henning Hoff, editor of the Internationale Politik Quarterly, which is published by the German Council on Foreign Relations.Olaf Scholz Another key factor has been the surprising campaigning success of Germany’s center-left Social Democrats under the leadership of the candidate for the chancellorship, Olaf Scholz. The story so far of this year’s German election campaign has been the unexpected rise in the fortunes of the Social Democrats. “
With great strategic foresight and remarkable focus, the Social Democrats’ candidate Olaf Scholz is now leading the race to replace Angela Merkel,” according to Hoff.
In April, the SPD was only attracting around 13% support in opinion polls. An Insa poll Monday put the SPD on 26% ahead of Laschet, whose CDU is on 20%. “With the German election campaign entering its final stretch, Scholz’ popularity — always much greater than Baerbock’s and Laschet’s — has finally morphed into support for his party,” says Hoff. “With only two more weeks to go, there is now much to suggest that Germany’s next government will be led by Olaf Scholz,” he adds.
Merkel announced in October 2018 that she would be stepping down as chancellor in 2021. She has held the office since 2005. Part of the reason for Scholz’s rise has been success in presenting himself as a safe pair of hands and a natural successor to Merkel, say pollsters. His climate-policy proposals are more cautious — suggesting Germans may not be ready to be as green as the Greens.
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Crews in Southern Spain Face ‘Complex’ Wildfire for 5th Day
Firefighting crews in southern Spain are looking at the sky for much-needed rainfall expected on Monday and that they hope can help extinguish a major wildfire that has ravaged 7,700 hectares in five days and displaced around 2,600 people from their homes. Authorities are describing the blaze in Sierra Bermeja, a mountain range in the Malaga province, as a sixth-generation fire of the extreme kind brought by the shifting climate on the planet. The “mega fires” are catastrophic events that kill, blacken large areas and are difficult to stop. In Spain, that is paired with an increasing dynamic of rural areas losing population, leading to poorer management of forests and accumulation of burnable material. “We are facing the most complex fire known by the forestry extinction services in recent years,’ Juan Sanchez, director of the southern Andalusia region’s anti-fire service, told reporters late Sunday. “We have been talking a lot about the consequences of the abandonment of the rural environment and climate change,” Sanchez added. “We are seeing them today.” The affected area has doubled since Saturday, when authorities said that the flames were contained within a perimeter of around 40 kilometers. An ember cloud led to a new fire hot spot soon after, causing a new wildfire that eventually joined the previous blaze, experts said Sunday. By Monday morning, the perimeter had reached 85 kilometers. Spain’s weather agency, AEMET, had forecasted rain in the area for later Monday, but it was unclear if the rainfall would be sufficient to quell the flames. About 500 firefighters were working in shifts on the ground, assisted by 50 water-dropping airplanes and helicopters from the air. They were joined on Sunday by 260 members of a military emergency unit. A 44-year-old firefighter died Thursday while trying to extinguish the blaze. Around 2,600 residents have been relocated in total. Most of those evacuated from parts of the resort town of Estepona, had been able to return home by Monday, but 1,700 people remained displaced from six villages and hosted in other towns, including in a pavilion in the city of Ronda. Climate scientists say there is little doubt that climate change from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas is driving more extreme events, such as heat waves, droughts, wildfires, floods and storms. In Spain, official data showed that the country had experienced fewer fires so far this year than the average during the past decade, but the number of big forest fires — those affecting more than 500 hectares — was 19 in the first eight months of 2021 compared to 14 on average for the same period since 2011. That has also led to a greater bush and forest area burned: 75,000 hectares as of Sept. 5, compared to an average of 71,000 hectares on average in the previous years, data from the Ministry of Ecological Transition showed.
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Vietnam Speeds Up Hanoi Vaccine Drive; 1M Jabs Over Weekend
Vietnam is speeding up its vaccination program in an effort to loosen coronavirus lockdown restrictions in major cities by the end of the month, the government said Monday.
Health workers administered vaccines throughout the night in the capital, Hanoi, which has been under lockdown since July.
More than a million vaccine shots were given over the weekend in Hanoi, out of around 5.5 million administered there since vaccinations started in March, the Health Ministry said.
“We have to speed up the vaccination program so we can make a plan to reopen the city,” Hanoi mayor Chu Ngoc Anh said Sunday. More than half of the country’s 98 million population is also under lockdown.
About 80% of the city’s 5.7 million adults have received at least one shot, with authorities aiming for 100% by the end of this week.
However, the country’s overall vaccination rate remains low at about 28%, and only 4% have been fully vaccinated with both jabs.
Vietnam managed to keep its infection rate relatively low up until April this year, with only 35 deaths. Last year it was praised for keeping the virus under control, an accomplishment generally attributed to the discipline of being a single-party communist state with tight controls at all levels.
But vaccine shortages forced Vietnam to slow down its vaccination program in recent months, even as the delta variant of the virus infected over 600,000 people and killed more than 15,000 in just four months.
In Ho Chi Minh City, the nation’s business hub and most hard-hit by the surge, over 95% of adults have received the first vaccine, but many who need to come in for the second dose aren’t able to get it due to low supplies.
Among measures to cope with the shortage, Vietnam’s health authority has allowed combinations of different two-dose COVID-19 vaccines to speed up the vaccination campaign. Experts say this tactic is likely safe and effective, but researchers are still gathering data to be sure.
Vietnam is currently using AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Moderna and Sinopharm, a Chinese-made vaccine.
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Tropical Storm Nicholas Could Be Hurricane before Coming Ashore in Texas Thursday
The U.S. National Hurricane Center reported Monday that Tropical Storm Nicholas is gaining strength over the warm waters of the Gulf Mexco and could come ashore in the southwestern U.S. state of Texas later today. Forecasters said Nicholas was roughly 335 kms south of Port Conner, Texas with winds of about 95 kilometers per hour. They say the storm is forecast to follow a track that will take it along or just offshore the coasts of northeastern Mexico and south Texas early Monday and move onshore along the coast of south or central Texas later in the day. The forecasters say the storm will likely strengthen and may reach hurricane strength before making landfall somewhere near Port O’Conner, Texas, about 270 kilometers south of Galveston, on the state’s Gulf coast. Regardless of its status, the storm is likely to bring strong winds, and between 20 to 40 centimeters of heavy rain, which is likely to cause flooding in both rural and urban areas. Warnings of life-threatening storm surges all along the Texas coastline are in effect. Surge warnings and watches extend north and east into Louisiana. The forecasters say Nicholas is likely to weaken quickly once it comes ashore but storm conditions are expected to persist for at least the next 48 hours. Some information for this report was provided by the Associated Press.
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New Malaysian Prime Minister, Opposition Leader to Sign Cooperation Deal
Malaysian Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob will sign a cooperation deal with the main opposition bloc Monday aimed at ensuring the stability of his new government.Under the accord between Prime Minister Ismail and veteran opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, Ismail has agreed to a set of reforms including new laws to prevent party defections, limiting the prime minister’s term to 10 years, and lowering the voting age from 21 to 18.The agreement also ensures bipartisan agreement on every bill that is introduced in parliament, input from the opposition on a national recovery council, and an assurance that the opposition leader receives the same pay and privileges as a Cabinet minister.Ismail became Malaysia’s third prime minister in three years when he was appointed prime minister by King Sultan Abdullah Sultan Ahmad Shah last month to succeed Muhyiddin Yassin. Muhyiddin resigned after conceding he had lost the majority of lawmakers. Ismail served as deputy prime minister under Muhyiddin.The king selected Muhyiddin as prime minister in March 2020 after then-Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad’s ruling coalition had collapsed a month earlier. But Muhyiddin was beset by constant challenges to his leadership within his fragile coalition and rising anger over his government’s poor response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The country of 32 million is suffering the highest rate of new daily COVID-19 cases per 1 million people in Southeast Asia, with 1.9 million total infections and 20,711 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.Muhyiddin’s tenuous grip on power began unraveling when a group of lawmakers with the United Malays National Organization, the largest party in the coalition, withdrew their support. UMNO, once Malaysia’s long-serving ruling party dating back to the country’s independence in 1957, has a handful of politicians facing corruption charges, including former Prime Minister Najib Razak.Muhyiddin’s 17-month tenure as prime minister is the shortest in Malaysian history.(Some information for this report came from the Associated Press and Reuters.)
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US Debates Biden Administration Vaccine Mandate
President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for workplaces across the United States is facing pushback from some Republican lawmakers who say they will sue the administration. Michelle Quinn reports.Produced by: Mary Cieslak
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Biden Approves California Disaster Declaration Ahead of Sacramento Visit
U.S. President Joe Biden has approved a disaster declaration for California and will travel to Sacramento Monday to survey the damage from recent wildfires, the White House said on Sunday. “President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. declared that a major disaster exists in the State of California and ordered Federal assistance to supplement State, tribal, and local recovery efforts in the areas affected by the Caldor Fire beginning on August 14, 2021, and continuing,” the White House said late on Sunday. More than 6,800 wildfires large and small have blackened an estimated 689,000 hectares within California alone this season, stretching available firefighting forces and equipment dangerously thin. The blazes have been stoked by extremely hot, dry conditions that experts say are symptomatic of climate change during a summer fire season shaping up as one of the most destructive on record. Biden said last week that wildfires, hurricanes and floods were hitting every part of the United States, with more than 100 million Americans affected this summer alone, as he pressed for investments to boost infrastructure and fight global warming. Biden made fighting climate change a key plank of his 2020 presidential campaign and a top priority of his administration, but some of his goals rely on getting the U.S. Congress to pass multi-trillion-dollar legislation on infrastructure and other priorities. This month, the Biden declared an emergency in California and ordered federal assistance to boost responders’ efforts to battle the Caldor fire. “Additional designations may be made at a later date if requested by the State and warranted by the results of further damage assessments,” the White House said on Sunday. The Caldor fire, burning since mid-August, is 65% contained. It has led to 5 injuries and damaged 81 residential, commercial and other structures while destroying over a thousand such structures, according to authorities.
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Shanghai Suspends Schools, Flights as Typhoon Approaches China
Authorities in Shanghai and neighboring coastal regions canceled flights, and suspended schools, subways and trains as Typhoon Chanthu approached China after drenching Taiwan though causing little damage there. The storm, with winds of more than 170 kilometers per hour near its eye, had been downgraded from a super typhoon to a strong typhoon on Sunday evening and was expected to gradually weaken, Shanghai city authorities said in a post on their official WeChat account. But it was still expected to bring strong winds and heavy rain to coastal regions. The province of Zhejiang near Shanghai raised its emergency response to the highest level on Sunday, closing schools and suspending flights and rail services in some cities, the official Xinhua news service reported. Zhejiang also issued red alerts for flash floods in nine districts. Ningbo port, China’s second-biggest container transporting hub after Shanghai, had suspended operations since Sunday noon. The port just resumed from a weeks-long port congestion, following typhoon In-Fa in late-July and a COVID-19-related terminal closure in mid-August. In Shanghai, home to about 26 million people, all flights at the city’s larger Pudong International Airport were to be canceled from 11 a.m. local time (0300 GMT), while flights from the smaller Hongqiao airport in the west of the city were to be canceled from 3 p.m., the Shanghai government announced on WeChat. Port terminals in Shanghai regions suspended containers import and export services from Monday till further notice. The city also suspended subway services on some lines serving the city’s southern districts, and said parks, outdoor tourist attractions and playgrounds would be closed on Monday and Tuesday. Classes were also due to be suspended on Monday afternoon and Tuesday. Official forecasts called for rainfall of 250-280 millimeters in some areas of southeastern Jiangsu province, Shanghai and northeastern Zhejiang. The typhoon passed by Taiwan’s east coast over the weekend, disrupting transport and causing some power outages, but otherwise little damage.
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Afghans Find Themselves Unable to Work or Attend School in US
After undergoing the traumatic experience of leaving their home country, thousands of Afghans are relieved to be in the United States. Many are finding, however, that they have been granted temporary status, forbidding them to work or attend school. VOA’s Carolyn Presutti takes a look at how evacuees are coping with the lack of benefits and opportunity in a foreign country.Camera: Mike Burke
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N. Korea Tests Long Range Cruise Missile Designed to Evade Defenses
North Korea has conducted its first missile test in about six months. The long-range cruise missile being tested could give Pyongyang another way to evade its neighbors’ missile defenses, say analysts. The “newly-developed long-range cruise missiles” flew 1,500 kilometers over North Korean territory before successfully hitting their targets, North Korean state media reported Monday. The reports did not say how many missiles were tested, but said the tests occurred Saturday and Sunday. Pictures posted in North Korean state media showed one of the cruise missiles being fired from a five-canister, road-mobile launcher that appeared to be parked on a highway. Several analysts said the missile appeared visually similar to the U.S. Tomahawk, a nuclear-capable cruise missile with a range of about 1,600 kilometers. The cruise missile test appears to be less provocative than a long-range or intercontinental ballistic missile launch, which would involve technology that could target the mainland United States. But the launch will still serve as a test for U.S. President Joe Biden, who has said he is open to both diplomacy and additional economic pressure on North Korea. Designed to evade U.S. and South Korean officials, who usually detect and report North Korean missile tests shortly after they occur, did not publish statements until after the North Korean state media announcement. In a statement, the U.S. military said it was aware of the reported launches and is monitoring and consulting closely with its allies and partners. “This activity highlights DPRK’s continuing focus on developing its military program and the threats that poses to its neighbors and the international community,” the statement read. In a statement to VOA, South Korea’s military confirmed the launch, saying it is conducting a “detailed analysis in close coordination with South Korean and U.S. intelligence agencies.” It is North Korea’s first known missile launch since March, when it also appeared to test cruise missile technology. That test was only confirmed by U.S. officials after the first reports of the test appeared in The Washington Post.North Korea Conducts First Launch of 2021 Test is routine, US officials insist Cruise missiles are harder to detect than the ballistic missiles typically launched by North Korea, since they fly at a relatively low altitude and can be controlled in-flight. “This is another system that is designed to fly under missile defense radars or around them,” Jeffrey Lewis, an expert in nuclear nonproliferation with the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, said on Twitter. Nuclear-capable? North Korean state media referred to the cruise missiles as “strategic,” implying a nuclear capability. Some defense experts are not sure whether that statement reflects current or eventual capabilities. “While you could say the missile will be nuclear capable, there is no known North Korean warhead for it yet,” said Melissa Hanham, an affiliate with the Stanford Center for International Security and Cooperation. Hanham stressed that she has not yet conducted analysis to estimate the size of the missile, but it does not appear North Korea has a nuclear warhead small enough to fit on it. “They are certainly claiming to have a new cruise missile with a range and look similar to the U.S. Tomahawk,” Hanham said. A range of 1,500 kilometers would mean that the new North Korean cruise missiles could reach all of South Korea and most of Japan. Latest test The missile represents another lethal component in North Korea’s missile arsenal, which has significantly expanded since 2019, when Pyongyang resumed major weapons tests. Since then, North Korea appears to have test-fired at least five types of new missiles — mostly short-range ballistic missiles also designed to evade its neighbor’s defenses. North Korea has not conducted an intercontinental ballistic missile or nuclear test since 2017, though Pyongyang has at times hinted it may do so. In January 2020, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un announced he no longer felt bound by his self-imposed moratorium on long-range ballistic missile and nuclear tests. That moratorium was put in place during the diplomacy between Kim and former U.S. President Donald Trump. Trump repeatedly downplayed North Korea’s short-range launches. Biden, too, in March, shrugged off North Korea’s cruise missile test, calling it “business as usual.” Biden has not yet responded to the North’s latest test. Under United Nations Security Council resolutions, North Korea is prohibited from any ballistic missile activity. Although those resolutions do not mention cruise missile technology, some analysts say the latest tests could still receive a tough U.S. response, given the missiles’ possible nuclear capability. “If that is the case, then the test is deserving of an international effort to strengthen sanctions,” said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul. Stalled talks Negotiations between the U.S. and North Korea broke down in 2019 over disagreements on how to pace sanctions relief with steps to dismantle North Korea’s nuclear program. The Biden administration has repeatedly said it is open to resuming talks with North Korea, but for now North Korea’s focus appears elsewhere. For the past year and a half, North Korea has imposed a strict pandemic lockdown, sealing its borders, cutting imports, and restricting domestic travel.
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Armed Groups Killing, Recruiting More Children in Niger, Report Says
Increasing numbers of children are being killed or targeted for recruitment by armed groups in conflicts raging at Niger’s borders with Mali and Burkina Faso, Amnesty International said in a report published Monday. “In Niger’s Tillaberi region, an entire generation is growing up surrounded by death and destruction,” said Matt Wells, Amnesty’s deputy director for crisis response. “Armed groups have repeatedly attacked schools and reserves, and are targeting children for recruitment,” he added in a statement. Amnesty blamed the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS) and the al-Qaida-affiliated Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), for causing the “devastating impact on children” in the region. The rights group released a 57-page report documenting the impact on children of the conflict in Niger’s western Tillaberi, an area of 100,000 square kilometers (38,000 square miles) on the borders of Mali and Burkina Faso that is home to different ethnic groups such as Djerma, Fulani, Tuareg and Hausa. According to conflict tracking organization ACLED, cited by Amnesty, violence against civilians has led to 544 conflict-related deaths from January to July 23 this year, already exceeding the 397 people killed in the whole of 2020. “Armed groups have killed more than 60 children in Niger’s tri-border area in 2021,” the report said, adding that the ISGS, which operates primarily on the border with Mali, appears responsible for most of the large-scale killing. During the research for the report, Amnesty spoke to 16 boys who had narrowly survived ISGS attacks on their villages. “We all are used to hearing gunshots and to seeing [dead] people layered on top of [dead] people,” one boy, age 13 or 14, said. Another boy, who witnessed the killing of his 12-year-old friend Wahab in March, told the researchers: “I think of Wahab and how he was killed. “Sometimes I have nightmares of being chased by people on motorbikes or seeing Wahab pleading with the [attackers] again,” he said. According to Amnesty, both “ISGS and JNIM have committed war crimes and other abuses in the conflict, including the murder of civilians and targeting of schools. “Many children are experiencing trauma after witnessing deadly attacks on their villages. In some areas, women and girls have been barred from activities outside the home, and risk abduction or forced marriage to fighters,” the report said. Witnesses said JNIM has picked out males ages 15 to 17, and possibly younger, as recruits, offering bribes of food, money and clothes. “The Nigerien government and its international partners must urgently take action to monitor and prevent further abuses and protect the basic rights of all those affected by this deadly conflict — especially children,” Wells said. Amnesty International said it had interviewed 119 people, including 22 children, three young adults between 18 and 20, and 36 parents for the study. Others interviewed included staff from NGOs and humanitarian agencies, United Nations officials and government officials.
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Tropical Storm Nicholas Could Bring Flooding to Louisiana
U.S. weather authorities warned Sunday that Tropical Storm Nicholas will bring heavy rain and potential flash flooding along parts of the U.S. Gulf Coast.Coastal areas in Texas and Louisiana are expected to see 12-25 centimeters (5-10 inches) of rainfall in the next few days, the National Hurricane Center said. The center also issued hurricane watches and storm surge warnings for parts of the Texas and Louisiana coast. Flash flooding is possible over portions of coastal Texas and Louisiana through the middle of the week as Tropical Storm #Nicholas is expected to produce storm total rainfall of 5 to 10 inches, with isolated maximum amounts of 15 inches across those areas. https://t.co/tW4KeGdBFbpic.twitter.com/VgzKk7h43H— National Hurricane Center (@NHC_Atlantic) September 12, 2021Some of the heaviest rain from the storm is expected to fall in areas of Louisiana recently devastated by Hurricane Ida. Though meteorologists do not expect the heavy winds that Ida brought, heavy rain and flash flooding will further impede efforts to rebuild homes and infrastructure.Two weeks after Ida made landfall, roughly 6.3% of the state, about 140,200 homes, is still without power, according to the Louisiana Public Service Commission.“All of Southern Louisiana — but especially Southwest Louisiana — should keep a close eye on Tropical Storm Nicholas,” Governor John Bel Edwards wrote on Twitter. “Listen to local officials, monitor local news & stay prepared”.All of Southern Louisiana — but especially Southwest Louisiana — should keep a close eye on Tropical Storm Nicholas, which could bring heavy rains & flash flooding to the state in the next few days. Listen to local officials, monitor local news & stay prepared. #lagov#lawxpic.twitter.com/D8EFP5RQPL— John Bel Edwards (@LouisianaGov) September 12, 2021Some information in this report came from the Associated Press.
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North Korea Test-fires Long-range Cruise Missile, State Media Says
North Korea carried out successful tests of a new long-range cruise missile over the weekend, its state media, KCNA, said on Monday, amid a protracted standoff with the United States over denuclearization.The missiles flew 1,500 km (930 miles) before hitting their targets and falling into the country’s territorial waters during the tests held on Saturday and Sunday, KCNA said.It was seen as the North’s first missile launch after it tested a new tactical short-range ballistic missile in March. North Korea also conducted a cruise missile test just hours after U.S. President Joe Biden took office in late January.The latest test highlighted steady progress in Pyongyang’s weapons program amid gridlock over talks aimed at dismantling the North’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs in return for U.S. sanctions relief. The talks have stalled since 2019.Rodong Sinmun, the ruling Workers’ Party’s official newspaper, ran photos of the new long-range cruise missile flying and being fired from a launcher.North Korea tested a “newly developed long-range cruise missile,” according to its Rodong Sinmun newspaper. Tests allegedly happened Saturday and Sunday, but we never heard about them from US or South Korean authorities. pic.twitter.com/puPaPLegtY— William Gallo (@GalloVOA) September 12, 2021The missile is a strategic weapon that has been developed over the past two years and is a key element of a five-year plan outlined in January to advance defense science and arsenals, KCNA said.The test provides “strategic significance of possessing another effective deterrence means for more reliably guaranteeing the security of our state and strongly containing the military maneuvers of the hostile forces,” KCNA said.”In this course, detailed tests of missile parts, scores of engine ground thrust tests, various flight tests, control and guidance tests, warhead power tests etc. were conducted with success,” KCNA added.North Korean leader Kim Jong Un did not appear to have attended the test, with KCNA saying Pak Jong Chon, a member of the Workers’ Party’s powerful politburo and a secretary of its central committee, oversaw it.The reclusive North has long accused the United States and South Korea of a “hostile policy” toward Pyongyang.The unveiling of the test came just a day before chief nuclear negotiators from the United States, South Korea and Japan meet in Tokyo to explore ways to break the standoff with North Korea.China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, is also scheduled to visit Seoul on Tuesday for talks with his counterpart, Chung Eui-yong.Biden’s administration has said it is open to diplomacy to achieve North Korea’s denuclearization but has shown no willingness to ease sanctions.Sung Kim, the U.S. envoy for North Korea, said in August in Seoul that he was ready to meet with North Korean officials “anywhere, at any time.”A reactivation of inter-Korean hotlines in July raised hopes for a restart of the negotiations, but the North stopped answering calls as annual South Korea-U.S. military exercises began last month, which Pyongyang had warned could trigger a security crisis.
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Polish Nun, Cardinal Who Defied Communism Are Beatified
Poland’s top political leaders on Sunday attended the beatification of two revered figures of the Catholic Church — a cardinal who led the Polish church’s resistance to communism and a blind nun who devoted her life to helping others who couldn’t see.Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski and Mother Elzbieta Roza Czacka took a step toward sainthood at a time of declining church attendance and as some Poles have left the church over sex abuse scandals and the church’s coziness with the current right-wing government.In a time of growing secularization and societal divisions, the celebration was a reminder of the moral authority and the unifying power the church once held over Poland.The Mass was led by Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, the head of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of Saints. It took place in the Temple of Divine Providence in Warsaw, attended by President Andrzej Duda, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, ruling party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski and many faithful.Wyszynski was Poland’s primate, or top church leader, from 1948 until his death in 1981. He was under house arrest in the 1950s for his refusal to bend to the communist regime and was considered by some to be the true leader of the nation. His long resistance to communism is credited as a factor that led to the election of a Polish pope, John Paul II, and ultimately the toppling of Poland’s communist system in 1989.Czacka, born in 1876 to an aristocratic family, went blind as a young woman and devoted the rest of her life to helping others. The Franciscan nun helped develop a Polish version of Braille and opened a center for the blind near Warsaw.Pope Francis paid tribute to them both during a visit to Budapest on Sunday, recalling how Wyszynski was arrested and imprisoned and how Czacka devoted her whole life to helping the blind.”May the example of these new Blesseds encourage us to transform darkness into light with the power of love,” he said.Wyszynski led the church through nearly three turbulent decades of often bitter conflict with the communist authorities, followed later by a form of partnership with the secular regime. Late in his life, Wyszynski had become accepted by the authorities as an important force in national life, and members of the regime attended his funeral.During the difficult years of the 1950s, when Poland’s avowedly atheistic government sought to silence the church, the tall, slender Wyszynski thundered from his pulpit that “Christ has the right to be announced, and we have the right to announce him.”Warsaw Archbishop Kazimierz Nycz recalled Wyszynski as a man who saved the Polish church under communism.Wyszynski is often called the Primate of the Millennium in recognition of his achievement of holding a celebration of Poland’s millennium of Christianity in 1966.Sunday’s ceremony comes after the Holy See has punished around 10 Polish bishops and archbishops over reported cover-ups of sexual abuse of minors by priests under their authority.The revelations of clerical abuse and coverups have been pushing some Poles away from the church and leading some to take their children out of religion classes in schools.Some Poles are also angry about the church’s closeness with the right-wing government and a new restriction on abortion. The ruling, which went into effect earlier this year, denies women the right to abort fetuses with congenital defects.
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Oil-rich Norway Goes to Polls with Climate on the Agenda
North Sea oil and gas have helped make Norway one of the wealthiest countries in the world. But as Norwegians head to the polls on Monday, fears about climate change have put the future of the industry at the top of the campaign agenda.The ruling Conservatives, led by Prime Minister Erna Solberg, and the opposition Labor Party, which is leading in opinion polls, both advocate for a gradual move away from the fossil fuels that continue to underpin the economy.But the larger parties rarely rule alone in Norway; smaller players are usually required to build a majority coalition, and they can have an outsize influence on the government agenda. Some are demanding a more radical severing with the country’s dominant industry and income stream.”Our demand is to stop looking for oil and gas, and stop handing out new permits to companies,” says Lars Haltbrekken, climate and energy spokesman for the Socialist Left party — a likely coalition partner for Labor. He claims that after eight years in charge the government is protecting a status quo at a time when the country is thirsty for a post-oil future.A report in August from the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicting global floods and fires created a wave in Norway that has crested throughout this election campaign.It is also forcing Norwegians to wrestle with a paradox at the heart of their society.With their hydro-powered energy grid and electric cars, they are among the world’s most enthusiastic consumers of green power, but decades of exporting oil and gas means this nation of 5.3 million enjoys a generous welfare buffer and sits on the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund.Tina Bru, the oil and energy minister, says it’s unthinkable that the country should force an end to the country’s biggest industry, which is responsible for more than 40% of exports and directly employs more than 5% of the workforce.”My question is always: What happens after you stop? What else are you going to do to make sure the world reaches its climate goals? It might affect our own climate budget, but it’s not going to make a difference globally,” she says.She agrees with a report highlighted by the Norwegian Oil and Gas Association, an industry group, that says an end to Norwegian production would have a net negative effect on global emissions. Demand would stay the same, and cleaner Norwegian production would be replaced by other countries with higher emissions, she says. She prefers a longer-term approach that focuses on demand.”It is kind of disappointing in this campaign where we see the only way to discuss policy and have credibility on your will to cut emissions is to stop producing oil and gas. It is such a more nuanced issue involving other things like agriculture and transport.”About 70% of all new cars sold in Norway are electric, with consumers continuing to benefit from government subsidies, and the government has signaled that environment taxes will rise. Earlier this month, it also proposed a tweak to the existing tax regime, where some explorers will have to shoulder more of the risk of searching for oil.Labor supports the approach and admits that it charts a similar future for the industry. But it has promised a more interventionist industrial policy that will funnel support to new green industries, like wind power, “blue hydrogen” that uses natural gas to produce an alternative fuel, and carbon capture and storage, which seeks to bury carbon dioxide under the ocean.However, any post-election horse trading is likely to be fraught for Labor. The Socialist Left says it won’t offer support lightly, and the other probable partner, the Center Party, is also demanding a more aggressive approach to the energy shift.”Right now our plan is to run together with our two old friends from these parties,” says Espen Barth Eide, Labor’s Energy spokesman. “We still think this works. But if their opening position is to end exploration, that is not going to happen. … We will try to have a mature dialogue about the next phase of the oil industry.”Most of the country’s oil and gas still comes from mature areas in the North Sea, but most of the untapped reserves are in the Barents Sea, above the Arctic Circle — a red line for environmentalists. Eide says a possible compromise might be found by focusing on where oil exploration can be carried out in the future. However, Haltbrekken, a former chairman of Norway’s Friends of the Earth, a climate charity, says the new government needs to be more urgent. “The IPCC report made a huge impression on the population,” he said. “But there is one thing I fear more than what was in the report, and that is that apathy and hopelessness will take over. People could think this is such a huge problem that we cannot do anything. But we can. We can do a lot to solve it. It just has to start now.”Election forecasts will be released when voting closes at 9 p.m. (1900 GMT) on Monday. The final official tally for the 169-member parliament usually comes at some point overnight, but experts believe the results could come quicker this year with a record number of people having already made their choice in advance voting. More than 78% of eligible people in this nation of 5.3 million voted in the last national election.
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In Conservative Somalia, A Rare Woman Presidential Candidate
The woman who broke barriers as the first female foreign minister and deputy prime minister in culturally conservative Somalia now aims for the country’s top office as the Horn of Africa nation moves toward a long-delayed presidential election.Parliament member Fawzia Yusuf H. Adam is well aware of the challenges in winning votes in a nation where women often remain marginalized. In an interview with The Associated Press, she described the struggle of leading a foreign ministry staff that was overwhelmingly male.”They were very reluctant to collaborate with me just because I am a female,” she said.Even as more educated women return to Somalia from the large diaspora to help rebuild the country after three decades of conflict, attitudes toward Adam’s run for office are mostly skeptical, if sympathetic. Even friends and colleagues see her chances as next to impossible because of her gender.”She’s good, but unfortunately she’s a woman,” said Abdiwahid Mohamed Adam, a doctor at Mogadishu Memorial Hospital. Complicating her bid, he said, is the fact that Adam comes from the breakaway region of Somaliland, a comparatively stable area in the north that has sought international recognition as an independent country for years.But the soft-spoken Adam, a widow and mother of three, said she believes her run for the presidency is worthwhile, not futile, on several levels, while the timing of the election has been pushed back once again amid political tensions from mid-October toward the end of the year.”I want to break this barrier against women, so that in the near future many others will have the courage to run and even win,” she said, adding that it’s time to fight for the rights of women.Somalia’s years of insecurity marked by devastating attacks by the al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab extremist group also have driven Adam to run. “There was mayhem in this country for the past 30 years,” she said. “Young people are dying like flies, killing each other, exploding themselves, killing other people.”Like others across Somalia, she has watched as the insecurity weakened the country’s foundation. High unemployment, poor education and one of the world’s least-equipped health systems are all a result. Corruption and political squabbling haven’t helped.”I thought a woman may be what this country needs, the leadership of a woman, to bring peace and stability,” Adam said.Her presidential campaign has been relatively low-profile because of the insecurity and the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead of holding large public rallies, Adam prefers smaller indoor gatherings. “This could be less expensive but less effective as well,” said Liban Abdullahi Farah, a political analyst in the capital, Mogadishu.Unlike many other candidates and every day people in Somalia, where face masks are hardly seen despite having one of the highest COVID-19 fatality rates in Africa, Adam says she takes the pandemic seriously and speaks bluntly about its dangers after seeing several friends die.”I keep giving advice on this pandemic, particularly how badly it impacts women and the poorest of them,” she said. “We don’t have a good health system to deal with this phenomenon.”Women in Somalia have been especially hard hit by the coronavirus, Adam said, both physically and economically.”I personally took my two vaccinations, many people did, but many poor people in the camps, the internally displaced people, the very poor, vulnerable people do not have that chance,” she said. “What I am hoping is to win this election. (The pandemic) will be one of my priorities, because we don’t want to lose more people.”Apart from some awareness messaging, Somalia’s federal government does little to enforce basic virus prevention measures of social distancing, hand-washing and mask-wearing.At the country’s coronavirus treatment center in the capital, deputy director Abdirahim Omar Amin told the AP that “very many women have been infected” by COVID-19. Health ministry data, however, show that men represent more than 70% of confirmed cases in Somalia.”The people themselves do not have the awareness, or they are in a state of denial, calling it ‘just heartburn’ and stay at home, and the person is brought here when it is too late,” he said.Among the women Adam hopes to help if elected president is Fatuma Mohamed, one of the hundreds of thousands of people living in camps in Mogadishu after being displaced by insecurity or climate shocks like drought.Mohamed said her husband died of COVID-19, while she survived. Now she struggles to raise two young children, earning money by doing laundry when she can.”This disease has devastated us, it killed my mother and my husband,” she said. “I have not seen anyone offering me a helping hand. I struggle all alone.”Adam’s path in life has been far different. Married to a general, she first entered politics in her hometown of Hargeisa in Somaliland years ago but fled to Mogadishu, saying local politicians saw her as a threat. She later started a political party, the National Democratic Party, and rose to some of the country’s highest offices.Now, in pursuit of the presidency, Adam has Somaliland in mind as part of her ambitions.”If I am elected, I am sure I could reunite my country as I belong to both sides, the north and south,” she said, “and I believe that I am the only person who’s capable of doing that as I already made a plan for the unification.”If her candidacy fails, she said, she aims to become prime minister, adding, “I would always advise whomever wins the presidency.”
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Britain Reverses Course on ‘Vaccine Passports’ for Nightclubs
Britain’s Health Ministry announced Sunday that it would reverse its decision to require ‘vaccine passports’ for Britons entering nightclubs and bars.Health Minister Sajid Javid said Sunday that the idea, which faced pushback from conservative lawmakers, had been shelved but would be reconsidered if rates of COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus, increased substantially.Britain is expected to announce this week its plans for inoculating 12- to 15-year-old youngsters in the battle against the virus. The vaccine campaign will likely start later this month.US Surgeon General: New COVID Restrictions Are ‘Appropriate Response’ But 19 Republican state governors oppose vaccination mandates imperiling workers’ jobs Elsewhere, Bangladesh reopened schools after over 500 days of closure Sunday, as the government reported that 97% of teachers throughout the country have been fully vaccinated.Children were still required to wear masks in schools and the government warned against being lax on safety measures. For now, students in each class will attend school once a week. More than 50% of Japan’s population has received COVID-19 vaccines, according to the Japanese government. Economy Minister Yasutoshi Nishimura said in a television interview Sunday that the inoculation rate is expected to reach 60% by the end of September.Myanmar is fighting a third COVID-19 wave at a time of increasing political tensions. According to World Health Organization data, more than 400,000 people have been infected with COVID-19 in Myanmar, with more than 16,000 dead. Public health officials, however, say they believe the figures are widely undercounted. The Times of India reported that the northeastern state of Mizoram’s COVID-19 tally reached 70,000, after 1,089 new cases were recorded Sunday, including 245 children. The Johns Hopkins University has recorded 33.2 million COVID-19 cases in India and more than 442,000 deaths. Health officials say they believe that India’s COVID-19 numbers are likely undercounted. India is second only to the United States in COVID infections. The U.S. has a COVID-19 tally of 41 million infections and nearly 660,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins.The Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center reported early Sunday that it has recorded 224.4 million global COVID-19 infections and 4.6 million global deaths. The center also said 5.7 billion vaccines have been administered.
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US Surgeon General: New COVID Restrictions Are ‘Appropriate Response’
U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy on Sunday defended President Joe Biden’s new directives requiring millions of workers to get vaccinated against the coronavirus under the possible threat of losing their jobs, although there is widespread opposition from Republican state governors. “This is not an unusual step,” Murthy told ABC’s “This Week” show. “This is an appropriate response.” FILE – Dr. William Dittrich looks over a COVID-19 patient in the Medical Intensive care unit (MICU) at St. Luke’s Boise Medical Center in Boise, Idaho, Aug. 31, 2021.With about 150,000 new delta variant coronavirus cases and 1,500 more deaths being recorded daily in the United States, Biden last week directed businesses with 100 employees or more to mandate vaccinations for their workers or require the employees to undergo weekly COVID-19 testing if they refuse inoculations. About 80 million workers throughout the U.S. economy, the world’s largest, could be affected by the Biden mandate, potentially costing them their jobs if they refuse vaccinations or testing. The president also ordered about 2.5 million workers employed by the national government to get the shot if they haven’t already, and he ended a previous option they had for weekly testing if they choose not to get the vaccine. Some large companies had already started mandating vaccinations and executives at major businesses have generally voiced support for Biden’s orders. But 19 Republican governors, many of them frequent critics of the Democratic president, have objected to his directives and say they are considering legal challenges. One of the Republican governors, Nebraska’s Pete Ricketts, told the “Fox News Sunday” show that the president’s orders are an “egregious overreach” by the national government. Ricketts said he has heard from many workers who are afraid they will be fired if they are forced to take the shot. “You shouldn’t have to make a choice between keeping your job or getting a jab in the arm,” Ricketts said. “There’s just a lot of people who don’t know what to trust right now,” even though federal health regulators have given full approval to the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and emergency use authorization for the Moderna vaccine, the two most commonly administered coronavirus vaccines in the U.S. Ricketts said that for some people, hesitancy “is really an outcome of what the [U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] has done because they’ve flip-flopped on so many issues,” such as whether one should wear a mask if they have been vaccinated and under what circumstances. “It should be a personal choice (whether to get vaccinated), not something mandated by the government,” he said. Another Republican governor, Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, told NBC’s “Meet the Press” show, “This is a very serious deadly virus, and we’re all together in trying to get an increased level of vaccination out in the population.” But he added, “The problem is that I’m trying to overcome resistance, but the president’s actions in a mandate hardens the resistance.” States throughout the country routinely require children to be vaccinated against communicable childhood diseases. Such requirements, Hutchinson said, “have always come at the state level, never at the national level.” “And so, this is an unprecedented assumption of federal mandate authority that really disrupts and divides the country,” he said. “It divides our partnership between the federal government and the states, and it increases the division in terms of vaccination when we should all be together trying to increase the vaccination uptake.” Hutchinson said he, unlike some other Republican governors, supports the right of individual businesses to mandate inoculations for their workers. “But to have the federal mandate will be counterproductive,” he argued. Months ago, Biden heralded what appeared to be a growing success in the fight against the coronavirus, but the delta variant has led to a new wave of concern, and the workplace vaccination mandates he ordered last week. “Delta is a tough foe,” Murthy told ABC. “It’s throwing curve balls at us.” But he said health officials “know these kinds of vaccinations work,” and described Biden’s orders as “the next step” in fighting the virus that causes COVID-19.
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Why China Would Give More Aid, Investment to Leery Philippines
The Philippines will get more aid and investment from China, Chinese officials say, as analysts believe assistance given so far has failed to meet Filipinos’ expectations and Beijing doesn’t want the Southeast Asian country to depend too much on the United States, China’s rival.“China is willing to work with the Philippines to implement more cooperation projects and allow the people in both countries to benefit more from bilateral cooperation,” the Chinese Foreign Affairs Ministry said in an August 27 statement issued after a tele-summit between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte.According to the statement, Xi added that his country’s cooperation with the Philippines would “make more contributions to regional peace and prosperity.” After Duterte and Xi met in Beijing in 2016, auguring a new Sino-Philippine friendship, China pledged $24 billion in aid that was expected to speed infrastructure renewal work in the relatively poor Southeast Asian country. China was already known for building infrastructure across Eurasia as a way to open trade routes.China has offered several billion dollars’ worth of investment in Philippine railways among other projects, helped the country explore for undersea oil, sent COVID-19 vaccines and donated arms to fight Muslim rebels who periodically attack government positions in the archipelago’s southernmost islands.Many Filipinos, though, believe this support has fallen short of Beijing’s original pledge, especially against the backdrop of a festering South China Sea maritime sovereignty dispute that exploded in March when 220 Chinese fishing vessels moored at a contested islet, analysts in Manila say.Chinese ‘Flotilla’ in Contested Waters Further Sours Once-Upbeat RelationsManila concerned over presence of 220 finishing boats near a reef in the Spratly Islands, demands their removal“It’s kind of like maybe the Chinese side really wanting to make sure that the bilateral relations will remain stable and maintain the current momentum going forward – avoid disruptions,” said Aaron Rabena, research fellow at the Asia-Pacific Pathways to Progress Foundation in Metro Manila.Xi discussed aid with Duterte the tele-summit and pledged on the call to help further with infrastructure projects and COVID-19 relief.Duterte said in a statement that day he looks forward to China’s “continued support for landmark projects,” including flood control work, a railway north of Manila and two key bridges.Some earlier Chinese-funded projects are still in the pipeline or may be stalled by Philippine bureaucracy, Rabena said.Aid as pledged in 2016 was seen then as part of China’s bid for friendship with the Philippines, a historic U.S. ally. Duterte pushed back against Washington in the early part of his six-year presidential term as he pursued a multicountry foreign policy but pivoted back this year by lifting an order to cancel the U.S.-Philippine Visiting Forces Agreement of 1999.Philippines Says US Visiting Forces Agreement to Remain in EffectDuterte retracts termination letter sent last yearDuterte’s renewed support for that agreement probably worries China, Rabena said.“You could say that the relationship between the two countries[China and the Philippines] [is] not as quiet and rosy as they were in the past five years,” said Jay Batongbacal, international maritime affairs professor at the University of the Philippines in Quezon City.U.S. forces regularly train their Philippine counterparts to fight in the South China Sea, if needed, and the Visiting Forces Agreement gives U.S. troops easy access to the Philippines.Beijing claims about 90% of the 3.5 million-square-kilometer sea, overlapping waters the Philippines and four other governments also claim.Chinese officials point to documents dating back more than 1,000 years as support for their maritime claim. Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam cite a United Nations convention to back their own. Taiwan claims most of the sea as well. Claimant governments prize the sea for fisheries, fossil fuel reserves and marine shipping lanes.Most Filipinos questioned Duterte’s overtures to China that began in 2016, according to a poll two years later by the Quezon City-based research organization Social Weather Stations.“Assuming Beijing even follows through on any of its supposed aid pledges, the Filipino public and military are strongly pro-American and would most likely resent Xi Jinping trying to buy them off,” said Sean King, vice president of the Park Strategies political consultancy in New York.Duterte, who must step down in mid-2022 due to term limits, wants China to keep its aid pledges partly to give him the “political capital” to endorse a successor in next year’s election, Rabena said.
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Country Violators to be Scrutinized by UN Human Rights Council
The human rights records of more than 40 countries will come under scrutiny by the 47-member United Nations Human Rights Council during its upcoming four-week session.
The session promises to be extremely busy. Nearly 90 reports on a wide range of thematic issues will be presented. They include torture, enforced disappearances, the right to development, slavery, the rights of people of African descent and racism. As in previous years, the council’s laser-lens focus on the way governments treat their people is expected to garner a lot of attention. Reported abuses, some amounting to crimes against humanity, will be examined in countries such as Myanmar, Belarus, Syria, Eritrea, Burundi, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michele Bachelet will present an oral update on the situation in Afghanistan Monday as a follow-up to the council’s August 24 special session on that country. The European Union, Mexico and Britain along with human rights activists have criticized the resolution that was adopted for failing to establish a robust independent mechanism to monitor violations by the Taliban. Council President Fiji Ambassador Nazhat Shameem Khan says discussion on Afghanistan has not ended with the special session. “And, really, it is a matter for states to decide whether they want to take the outcome of the special session further and achieve another result,” she said. “But I do want to note that the Security Council on the 30th of August adopted a resolution on safe passage. It addressed human rights concerns particularly as it relates to women and children.” Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth says he is dismayed at the council’s reluctance to take on powerful countries such as Russia and China. He says he fears the Kremlin will not be held to account for its unprecedented crackdown on opposition parties in advance of this month’s parliamentary elections. “Ideally, we would like to have a resolution. At minimum, there should be a joint statement. But, again, this is a situation that just because a government is relatively powerful, should not mean that it escapes scrutiny. And this is again a bit of a test of the council’s credibility,” he said.Roth says the same dynamics are playing out regarding China’s abusive treatment of more than a million Uyghurs in internment camps in Xinjiang province. “China has always escaped formal scrutiny by the council. There has never been a resolution on China. It is time to end that, given the severity and the atrocities, the crimes against humanity being committed in Xinjiang,” he said.China maintains the Uyghurs are being held in reeducation camps and that the vocational training they are receiving is necessary to counter terrorism and alleviate poverty. Roth is calling on Bachelet to present a report describing the inhumane conditions under which the Uyghurs are being incarcerated and to call for the Chinese government to be held accountable.
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Australian Court Rules Media Companies Responsible for Comments on their Facebook Pages
Some of Australia’s biggest media companies have lost a legal battle with a former youth detainee over allegedly defamatory comments posted about him on their Facebook pages. The high court has found the media groups are legally responsible as “publishers” for third parties’ comments on their Facebook pages.Dylan Voller was held in youth detention in Australia’s Northern Territory. His treatment was the focus of a 2016 television documentary, which led to a wide-ranging inquiry into the mistreatment of inmates. Images of him shackled to a chair wearing a spit hood sparked outrage. They also prompted some Facebook users to make allegedly defamatory remarks about him on the media companies’ pages online.As a result, Voller wants to sue several Australian media companies.The case has been held up by a separate legal dispute over whether the outlets were the publishers of users’ comments.The High Court, Australia’s highest court, Wednesday found they were because in setting up a public Facebook page and posting content, the media groups had allowed and encouraged comments from the platform’s users.The judges said it did not matter that the companies deleted the messages after becoming aware of them.A spokesperson for Australia’s Nine Network, which is one of the companies involved, said, “we are obviously disappointed with the outcome as it will have ramifications for what we can post on social media in the future.” Voller’s lawyer, Peter O’Brien, told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. Voller is relieved the long legal fight, or “stoush,” in Australian parlance, is over.“I spoke to Dylan this morning. He is obviously elated at the decision. It has been a long legal stoush. People who might be vulnerable to social media mob attacks – they are protected.”The High Court decision clears the way for Voller to continue his legal action against high-profile newspapers – The Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian – and others, including broadcaster Sky News.The defamation case will continue later in the New South Wales state Supreme Court. A trial there will decide whether the Facebook comments did, in fact, defame the former youth detention inmate.
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Al-Qaida Chief Appears in 9/11 Video amid Rumors He Is Dead
Al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri appeared in a new video marking the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11, attacks, months after rumors spread that he was dead.The SITE Intelligence Group that monitors jihadist websites said the video was released Saturday. In it, al-Zawahri said that “Jerusalem Will Never be Judaized,” and praised al-Qaida attacks including one that targeted Russian troops in Syria in January.SITE said al-Zawahri also noted the U.S. military’s withdrawal from Afghanistan after 20 years of war. It added that his comments do not necessarily indicate a recent recording, as the withdrawal agreement with the Taliban was signed in February 2020.Al-Zawahri made no mention of the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan and the capital Kabul last month, SITE added. But he did mention a Jan. 1, attack that targeted Russian troops on the edge of the northern Syrian city of Raqqa. Rumors have spread since late 2020 that al-Zawahri had died from illness. Since then, no video or proof of life surfaced, until Saturday.“He could still be dead, though if so, it would have been at some point in or after Jan 2021,” tweeted Rita Katz, SITE’s director.Al-Zawahri’s speech was recorded in a 61-minute, 37-second video produced by the group’s as-Sahab Media Foundation.In recent years, al-Qaida has faced competition in jihadi circles from its rival, the Islamic State group. IS rose to prominence by seizing large swaths of Iraq and Syria in 2014, declaring a “caliphate” and extending affiliates to multiple countries across the region.IS’s physical “caliphate” was crushed in Iraq and Syria, though its militants are still active and carrying out attacks. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the shadowy leader of IS was killed by U.S. special forces in a raid in northwestern Syria in October 2019.Al-Zawahri, an Egyptian, became leader of al-Qaida following the 2011 killing of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan by U.S. Navy SEALs.
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