The Turkish lira had a very bad year in 2021 and lost a significant amount of its value against the U.S. dollar. That’s led to a cross-border shopping spree from neighboring Bulgaria. VOA’s Umut Colak filed this report from Edirne, Turkey, narrated by Ezel Sahinkaya.
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Month: January 2022
Afghan Refugees at Wisconsin’s Military Base Continue to Seek Housing
Following the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan, hundreds of thousands of Afghans have sought sanctuary and resettlement in the United States. But now that they’re here, some families in Wisconsin’s two largest cities are having trouble finding a place to live. Nukhbat Malik reports from Wisconsin.
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Citing Crime, US Warns to ‘Reconsider Travel’ to Nigeria
With kidnappings and other crimes on rise in Nigeria, the U.S. Department of State is urging Americans, dual citizens and others to “reconsider travel” to the West African country.
The State Department’s travel advisory issued January 4, warns that “violent crime – such as armed robbery, assault, carjacking, kidnapping, hostage taking, banditry, and rape – is common throughout the country. Kidnappings for ransom occur frequently, often targeting dual national citizens who have returned to Nigeria for a visit, as well as U.S. citizens with perceived wealth.”
That same day, Nigeria’s federal government officially designated armed bandits as terrorists, as Agence France-Presse reported.The designation provides tougher sanctions and penalties for criminals and those who assist them.
The U.S. advisory includes a flat “do not travel” warning for Borno, Yobe and northern Adamawa states due to terrorism and kidnapping concerns, and a similar warning for the northern states of Bauchi, Gombe, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina and Zamfara due to kidnapping.
Coastal areas in Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa, Cross River, Delta and Rivers states – except for Port Harcourt – are also on the “do not travel” list.
Africa’s most populous country has been gripped by growing insecurity, including a surge in kidnapping for ransom. In Kaduna state alone the government reported 1,723 people kidnapped in the first six months of 2021, compared with nearly 2,000 for the entire previous year.
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Covid 19 Vaccine Developed by US Researchers Could Help Low-, Middle -Income Countries
An affordable COVID-19 vaccine developed by U.S. researchers and being produced in India could help address the vaccine inequity that is prolonging the pandemic as hundreds of millions in low-income countries wait for shots, according to public health experts.
India recently granted restricted emergency authorization to the vaccine, called Corbevax, which is based on a conventional, protein-based technology.
The Hyderabad-based company Biological E that collaborated with Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development and Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, has said it will make 100 million doses starting next month and plans to deliver 1 billion doses globally. It already has a stockpile of 150 million doses.
There could still be time before Corbevax shots get into arms – Indian authorities have not yet added it to the shots being presently used in the country’s inoculation program.
The vaccine’s affordability is getting attention, though, as the raging omicron variant turns the spotlight on the abysmally low vaccination coverage in many countries and raises demands for booster shots in others.
“We think it’ll be one of the lowest-cost vaccines out there — a few dollars a dose. So certainly far less than the cost of mRNA vaccines or some of the other technologies, which again is a big advantage,” Dr. Peter Hotez, told VOA. He developed the vaccine along with Dr. Maria Elena Bottazzi. Both are co-directors at the Texas vaccine development center.
Its developers say the reason for the vaccine’s lower cost is that it is being shared patent-free without “any strings attached.” According to reports, it could be the cheapest vaccine available so far – less expensive than the AstraZeneca vaccine that has been the backbone of inoculation programs in India and several other developing countries.
Public health experts are optimistic that the vaccine could make a difference in Asian and African countries where vaccine coverage is abysmally low.
“It is going to be helpful in the overall global vaccination program. As we are still facing the challenge of variants, we will need more vaccines for many more people and as the West is preoccupied with giving booster after booster, the rest of the world is going to be kept waiting,” said K. Srinath Reddy, president of the Public Health Foundation of India.
“So, it is best to use this time-tested technology to produce more vaccines to ensure that more people in other countries also get the vaccine. It’s a simpler, safer technology, something that has been time-tested and adverse effects are very few in number though they do exist,” he said.
Health experts point out that variants of concern have emerged in countries with low vaccination coverage — the delta variant originated in India last year when most people were not inoculated and the omicron variant was first identified in South Africa.
“If we ever hope to forestall the emergence of future variants, it means vaccinating the southern hemisphere, vaccinating Asia, Africa and Latin America as fast as possible, and that’s the goal with our vaccine,” Hotez told VOA.
While world vaccine availability has improved with several new vaccines, cost still remains a limiting factor. Health experts point out that Astra Zeneca, whose COVID-19 vaccine was billed as the vaccine for the world, said in November that it will restrict its not-for-profit model only to poorer countries. Meanwhile, despite pressure, Moderna and Pfizer have not agreed to license their mRNA technology to developing countries, keeping it out of reach for much of the world.
Many African countries, including some of the continent’s largest, such as Nigeria, have so far vaccinated fewer than 5% of their populations. The World Health Organization has been pushing for a 70% coverage for all countries by the middle of this year, but this could also be missed across many countries.
The developers of Corbevax say they are talking to manufacturers around the world.
“We now have relationships with other manufacturers in Indonesia, in Bangladesh — we’re working with a company that is building capacity — in many locations in Africa, including Botswana and South Africa,” Bottazzi told VOA. “We have the hope that we also can transfer this technology to other countries like Vietnam, potentially also in Latin America.”
However, there are skeptics. While the Texas Children Hospital has said the vaccine was found to be safe and well-tolerated through Phase 3 clinical trials with more than 3,000 subjects, some caution that public data on its clinical efficacy is limited.
“It still has to be approved by the World Health Organization and we will also need more data to be convinced that it works against omicron,” according to Achal Prabhala at Access IBSA project, which campaigns for access to medicines in India, Brazil and South Africa.
“Moreover, Corbevax takes longer to produce, hence it is not really that easy to scale up. And the world needs billions of more doses,” he said.
Preliminary research has suggested that many of the existing vaccines do not work to prevent infection against omicron, though they reduce the severity of the disease.
Bottazzi said that studies of the vaccine’s efficacy against omicron are continuing. The vaccine is based on a conventional technology used to make the recombinant Hepatitis B vaccine that had been used for several decades.
Experts say that as countries begin to opt for vaccine combinations, Corbevax could help low- and middle-income countries expand their programs.
In India, the vaccine is in trial for booster doses and could also be used for export according to officials.
So far boosters will be rolled out starting Monday to health care workers and senior citizens with comorbidities with AstraZeneca and a locally developed vaccine.
However, public health experts expect Corbevax to play a role when the country widens the administration of booster shots — calls for a third shot have been growing as the omicron variant spread rapidly in the country.
Megan Duzor contributed to this report.
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US Supreme Court Reviews COVID Vaccine Mandates
The U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled Friday to hear oral arguments against two of President Joe Biden’s administration’s COVID-19 vaccine policies issued by government agencies to combat the deadly coronavirus.
The policies “are critical to our nation’s COVID-19 response,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement.
The mandates coming under review were issued by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
The OSHA policy requires employers with 100 or more employees to ensure their workers are either fully vaccinated or tested weekly. The CMS mandate for workers at health care facilities accepting federal Medicare and Medicaid funds requires workers to be fully vaccinated, with exemptions, including for sincerely held religious beliefs.
Republican-led states and an alliance of business and religious groups are challenging the policies’ broad sweep and the effects the mandates are having on companies and workers.
The policies have, however, been endorsed by the American Medical Association and the American Public Health Association and a number of former federal health officials.
The challenge is being presented before the Supreme Court after a number of lower courts issued differing opinions on the policies.
COVID-19 has infected millions of people in the U.S. and killed more than 800,000.
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Officials: Colorado Wildfire Caused $513 Million in Damage
Last week’s Colorado wildfire caused at least $513 million in damage and destroyed nearly 1,100 homes and structures, officials said Thursday as they updated the toll of property lost in the most destructive wildfire in state history.
Boulder County released the new totals after further assessing the suburban area located between Denver and Boulder where entire neighborhoods were charred. It’s the first estimate of economic damage for the Dec. 30 blaze.
Authorities previously estimated that at least 991 homes and other buildings were destroyed. Two people are missing, though officials have found partial human remains at one location.
President Joe Biden was scheduled to survey the damage Friday.
Investigators are still trying to determine what caused the wind-whipped wildfire, which forced thousands to flee on very little notice. The inferno erupted following months of drought and fed on bone-dry grassland surrounding fast-growing development in the area near the Rocky Mountain foothills.
Experts say similar events will become more common as climate change warms the planet and suburbs grow in fire-prone areas. Ninety percent of Boulder County is in severe or extreme drought, and it hadn’t seen substantial rainfall since mid-summer.
The fire, which spanned 24 square kilometers, ranks as the most destructive in state history in terms of homes and other structures destroyed and damaged. A 2013 fire outside Colorado Springs destroyed 489 homes and killed two people.
In 2020, Colorado also suffered its three largest wildfires in recorded history as a prolonged drought holds its grip on the Western U.S.
The new totals include destroyed barns, sheds and other outbuildings, but the vast majority were residences, Boulder County officials said. The worst damage was in and around Louisville and Superior, neighboring towns about 32 kilometers northwest of Denver with a combined population of 34,000.
Seven commercial structures were destroyed and 30 damaged, the county said. Losses to commercial buildings were still being calculated.
Federal and state investigators have interviewed dozens of people as they work to determine what started the fire on a day when winds surpassed 160 kph. Their efforts are focused on an area near Boulder where a passer-by captured video of a burning shed on the day the fire began.
Disaster experts say the number of possible casualties is remarkably low given how fast the fire ripped through subdivisions and especially considering a public alert system did not reach everyone. Boulder County officials said Thursday that emergency alerts were sent to more than 24,000 contacts. Some 35,000 people fled their homes.
One of the destroyed houses was owned by Bill Stephens, the pastor at Ascent Community Church in Louisville, who said Thursday that at least 17 members of his congregation also lost their homes in the fire. Stephens was at a disaster assistance center picking up a $500 check from the Red Cross to help buy necessities.
The church itself, a renovated former Sam’s Club building, survived the fire but suffered extensive smoke damage. Church volunteers spent the day removing holiday decorations that reeked of smoke. Industrial fans and filters churned throughout the sanctuary to help remove the smell.
Although the congregation won’t be able to hold services at the church for several weeks, Stephens said the wildfire will not stop them from worshiping. They’ll hold Sunday services at a local hotel until the church is cleaned up and ready to reopen.
“I’m trying my best to take care of the congregation. At the same time, we’re dealing with the fact that our own house is gone,” Stephens said. “It’s just a community that’s all been rocked by this.”
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US, Japan to Launch New Defense Research and Development Agreement
The United States and Japan will sign a new defense collaboration deal to counter emerging defense threats, including hypersonic and space-based capabilities, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Thursday.
Foreign and defense ministers of the United States and Japan met virtually to discuss stepping up security ties amid a focus on Japan’s role as tensions rise over Taiwan and North Korean missile threats continue.
Blinken said the U.S.-Japan alliance “must not only strengthen the tools we have, but also develop new ones,” citing Russia’s military buildup against Ukraine, Beijing’s “provocative” actions over Taiwan and North Korea’s latest missile launch.
North Korea fired a “hypersonic missile” this week that successfully hit a target, its state news agency said.
Russia, China and the United States are also racing to build hypersonic weapons whose extreme speed and maneuverability make them hard to spot and block with interceptor missiles.
“We’re launching a new research and development agreement that will make it easier for our scientists, for our engineers and program managers to collaborate on emerging defense related issues, from countering hypersonic threats to advancing space-based capabilities,” Blinken said at the opening of the meeting.
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the meeting would help lay down a framework for the future of the security alliance, including evolving missions to “reflect Japan’s growing ability to contribute to regional peace and stability.”
As its neighboring countries are testing hypersonic missiles, Japan has been working on electromagnetic “railgun” technology to target those missiles.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s government last month approved record defense spending, with a 10th straight annual increase in 2022.
Top Japanese officials have said that developing enemy base strike capabilities is an option to consider to boost defense, but some experts say such a move might hit hurdles such as a streak of pacifism in domestic politics.
Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi told his U.S. counterparts that the international community faces challenges including “unilateral corrosive attempts to change the status quo, abusive use of unfair pressure and the expanding authoritarian regimes.”
The two nations will also sign a new five-year agreement covering the continued basing of U.S. troops in Japan, Blinken said, in a deal where Japan has said it agreed to pay $9.3 billion to share the upkeep of U.S. forces in Japan over five years.
your ad hereChinese National Pleads Guilty in US of Economic Espionage
A Chinese national pleaded guilty on Thursday of conspiring to steal a trade secret from American agribusiness giant Monsanto, the Justice Department said.
Xiang Haitao, 44, was employed as an imaging scientist by Monsanto and its subsidiary, the Climate Corporation, from 2008 to 2017, the department said in a statement.
Xiang pleaded guilty in Missouri, where Monsanto is based, to one count of conspiracy to commit economic espionage on behalf of China, it said.
According to the Justice Department, Xiang stole proprietary software developed by Monsanto to help farmers improve crop yields.
“Despite Xiang’s agreements to protect Monsanto’s intellectual property and repeated training on his obligations to do so, Xiang has now admitted that he stole a trade secret from Monsanto, transferred it to a memory card and attempted to take it to the People’s Republic of China for the benefit of the Chinese government,” Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen said.
“Mr. Xiang used his insider status at a major international company to steal valuable trade secrets for use in his native China,” said Sayler Fleming, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri.
“We cannot allow U.S. citizens or foreign nationals to hand sensitive business information over to competitors in other countries,” Fleming added.
Xiang is to be sentenced on April 7. He faces a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison and a potential fine of $5 million.
A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, speaking in 2019 at the time Xiang was charged by U.S. authorities, said Washington was trying to use the case to back its accusations that China steals technology from U.S. companies.
“We resolutely oppose the U.S. side’s attempts to use the case, which we regard as an ordinary, isolated incident, to hype up claims of China’s organized and systematic attempts to steal intellectual property from the U.S.,” spokesman Geng Shuang said.
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Paris Attacks Trial Resumes With Main Suspect Back in Court
A marathon trial of suspects in the November 2015 Paris attack resumed Thursday after a negative COVID-19 test allowed the main suspect to attend.
Salah Abdeslam, the only survivor of the 10 assailants, had not appeared in court since November 25 and tested positive at the end of December.
He is set to take the stand for questioning next Thursday and Friday, an event long awaited by families of the 130 people killed on November 13, 2015.
In the meantime, there was a tense standoff between the presiding judge and another defendant.
Osama Krayem, 29, a Swedish national, informed the court through his lawyer that he would remain silent “until the end of proceedings” and refused to even attend the trial, calling it “an illusion.”
Judge vows force
But when it was Krayem’s turn on Thursday to be questioned about his role in the series of jihadi attacks on bars, restaurants, the Bataclan concert hall and the national stadium, chief judge Jean-Louis Peries said that he would be made to show up.
“I will have no option but to use force to make him appear on the stand,” he said.
That turned out to be unnecessary, as Krayem made his way to the bench uncoerced, and sat down next to Abdeslam.
“It’s good of you to come willingly,” the judge commented.
Abdeslam, a dual French Moroccan national, was captured in Brussels after discarding his suicide vest and fleeing the French capital in the chaotic aftermath of the bloodshed.
Bataclan attack
The attack on the Bataclan, where 90 people mostly in their 20s and 30s were massacred as they watched a rock concert, represented the most traumatic of a string of separate attacks claimed by the Islamic State group over several years.
Abdeslam’s co-defendants are answering charges ranging from providing logistical support to planning the attacks, as well as supplying weapons.
Krayem, whom Belgian investigators identified as one of the killers of a Jordanian pilot burned alive by IS in early 2015 in Syria, is also under investigation in Sweden for war crimes.
After four months of proceedings, the trial has now entered a new phase in which the 14 suspects present are to be questioned. Six others are being tried in absentia, although five of them are believed to be dead, mostly in airstrikes in Syria.
The 2015 attacks began when the first attackers detonated suicide belts outside the national stadium where France was playing a football match against Germany.
A group of gunmen later opened fire from a car on half a dozen restaurants, and Abdeslam’s brother Brahim blew himself up in a bar.
The trial, the biggest in modern French history, is to last until May.
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US Hits 8 Cuban Officials With Travel Bans
The Biden administration has placed a travel ban on eight Cuban officials it says have been complicit in the repression of opposition protesters and other dissidents.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced visa restrictions Thursday in a statement that condemned an ongoing crackdown on participants in demonstrations that began last July and called prison sentences handed down to those involved “harsh and unjust.”
The eight officials were not named, but Blinken said all of them are connected to the “detention, sentencing and imprisonment” of peaceful protesters. The U.S. says about 600 protesters across the communist island remain jailed after the July 11 protests despite appeals for their release.
“The United States took steps to enforce visa restrictions in response to Cuban government attempts to deny Cubans their freedom and rights through continued intimidation tactics, unjust imprisonment, and severe sentences,” Blinken said.
The travel bans are the latest actions against Cuba from the Biden administration, which has largely followed former President Donald Trump’s highly critical policies toward the island. In late November, Blinken announced travel bans on nine Cuban officials for similar actions against protesters.
“The United States continues to use all appropriate diplomatic and economic tools to push for the release of political prisoners and to support the Cuban people’s call for greater freedom and accountability,” Blinken said.
In July, thousands of Cubans took to the streets in cities across the island to protest shortages of goods and power blackouts, the largest demonstrations against the Communist administration in recent history. Some called for a change in government.
Cuban authorities have said that the United States was the real force behind the protests.
The Biden administration has spoken in support of the Cuban activists and praised the anti-government protests.
Soon after the July protests, the U.S. announced new sanctions on Cuba’s national revolutionary police and its top two officials.
your ad hereRussian Troops Deploy to Timbuktu in Mali After French Withdrawal
Russian soldiers have deployed to Timbuktu in northern Mali to train Malian forces at a base vacated by French troops last month, Mali’s army spokesperson said Thursday.
Mali’s government said last month that “Russian trainers” had arrived in the country, but Bamako and Moscow have so far provided few details on the deployment, including how many soldiers are involved or the Russian troops’ precise mission.
The Russians’ arrival has generated sharp criticism from Western countries, led by former colonial power France. They say the forces include contractors from the mercenary Wagner Group, which they accuse of human rights abuses in other countries.
Mali’s government has denied this, saying the Russian troops are in the country as part of a bilateral agreement.
“We had new acquisitions of planes and equipment from them [the Russians],” the Mali army spokesperson told Reuters. “It costs a lot less to train us on site than for us to go over there. … What is the harm?”
He did not say how many Russians had been sent to Timbuktu.
Local residents told Reuters that uniformed Russian men were seen driving around town but could not say how many there were.
Russia’s defense ministry was not immediately available for comment.
The Russian forces’ arrival in Mali follows deployments to several other African hot spots, part of what analysts say is an attempt by Moscow to recover influence on the continent after a long absence following the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991.
France helped to recapture Timbuktu from al-Qaida-linked militants in 2013. France’s withdrawal from the city is part of a significant drawdown of a previously 5,000-strong task force in West Africa’s Sahel region sent to battle jihadist groups.
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Former Biden Health Officials Urge New Approach to Fighting COVID
Nearly two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, six former health advisers for U.S. President Joe Biden are urging a different approach to fighting it.
Writing Thursday in The Journal of the American Medical Association, the advisers wrote three articles urging Americans to learn to live with the virus in a “new normal” as opposed to trying to eradicate it.
“Without a strategic plan for the ‘new normal’ with endemic COVID-19, more people in the U.S. will unnecessarily experience morbidity and mortality, health inequities will widen, and trillions will be lost from the U.S. economy,” Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, Michael Osterholm and Dr. Celine Gounder, who served on Biden’s transition COVID-19 advisory board in 2020, wrote in one of the articles.
The former officials called for building a “modern data infrastructure” and more public health workers, including school nurses, among other things.
“Two years into the pandemic, the U.S. is still heavily reliant on data from Israel and the U.K. for assessing the effectiveness and durability of COVID-19 vaccines and rate of vaccine breakthrough infections,” they wrote.
They called for better access to cheap and rapid testing, as well as more monitoring of air and wastewater to get ahead of potential outbreaks.
They also called for vaccine mandates and the development of variant-specific vaccines.
Moreover, they called for a rebuilding of trust in the nation’s public health institutions, calling the initial response to the pandemic “seriously flawed.”
The three officials wrote that rather than living in “a perpetual state of emergency,” the public should live with the virus by reducing peak outbreaks, and they called for “humility” in dealing with a persistent and evolving virus.
Booster eligibility
In other U.S. pandemic news, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention expanded COVID-19 booster shot eligibility for some adolescents to combat the highly transmissible omicron variant of the coronavirus. The move came as the agency faces criticism over messaging confusion on how to cope with infections.
In a statement late Wednesday, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky urged young people ages 12 and older to get COVID-19 boosters as soon as they’re eligible. Boosters were previously encouraged for people in the United States who were 16 and older.
The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is the sole option for children in the U.S. The CDC estimates that slightly more than half of 12-to-17-year-olds — 13.5 million people — have received two Pfizer shots. Boosters were first made available to 16- and 17-year-olds in December.
Wednesday’s decision made about 5 million younger adolescents who received their last shots in 2021 immediately eligible for boosters.
“This booster dose will provide optimized protection against COVID-19 and the omicron variant,” Walensky said in the statement. “I encourage all parents to keep their children up to date with CDC’s COVID-19 vaccine recommendations.”
Although children tend to not become as seriously ill from COVID-19 as adults, the omicron variant is fueling hospitalizations among children, most of whom are unvaccinated.
Some information for this report came from The Associated Press.
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Three Protesters Shot Dead in Sudan Anti-Military Rallies
Security forces shot dead three protesters and fired tear gas in Sudan on Thursday as crowds thronged Khartoum and other cities in more anti-military rallies, medics and other witnesses said.
At least 60 people have died and many more have been wounded in crackdowns on demonstrations since a coup in October that interrupted efforts to bring about democratic change, according to a group of medics aligned with the protest movement.
The people killed Thursday were all protesters and died from shots fired by security personnel during rallies in the cities of Omdurman and Bahri, across the River Nile from Khartoum, the Central Committee of Sudanese Doctors said.
Protesters again tried to reach the presidential palace in the capital to keep up pressure on the military, whose coup halted a power-sharing arrangement negotiated after the 2019 overthrow of Omar al-Bashir.
There was no immediate comment from authorities, who have justified the coup as a “correction” needed to stabilize the transition. They have said peaceful protests are permitted and those responsible for causing casualties will be held to account.
In Omdurman, where several protesters have been killed in the past week, a protester said that security forces fired live rounds and tear gas and ran over several protesters with armored vehicles.
“There was incredible violence today. The situation in Omdurman has become very difficult. Our friends have died. This situation can’t please God,” he said, asking not to be named as some protesters have been arrested in recent days.
Khartoum State’s health ministry said that security forces raided Arbaeen Hospital in Omdurman, attacking medical staff and injuring protesters, and that the forces besieged Khartoum Teaching Hospital and fired tear gas inside it.
In Bahri, a witness saw forces use heavy tear gas and stun grenades, with some canisters landing on houses and a school as protesters were prevented from reaching the bridge to Khartoum.
As in previous demonstrations, mobile phone and internet services were largely cut from late morning, Reuters journalists and Netblocks, an internet blockage observatory, said.
Most bridges connecting Khartoum with Bahri and Omdurman were closed. Images of protests in other cities including Gadarif, Kosti and Madani were posted on social media.
Kept back from palace
The Forces of Freedom and Change coalition, which had been sharing power with the military before the coup, called on the U.N. Security Council to investigate what it described as intentional killings and raids of hospitals.
In Khartoum, protesters tried to reach the presidential palace, but security forces advanced toward them, firing frequent volleys of tear gas, a witness told Reuters.
Some protesters wore gas masks, while many wore medical masks and other face coverings, and several brought hard hats and gloves in order to throw back tear gas canisters.
Protesters barricaded roads with rocks, bricks and branches as they marched toward downtown Khartoum and security forces approached from more than one side.
Motorcycles and rickshaws could be seen taking away injured protesters.
The protests, the first of several rounds of demonstrations planned for this month, came four days after Abdalla Hamdok resigned as prime minister.
Hamdok became prime minister in 2019 and oversaw major economic reforms before being deposed in the coup and returning in a failed bid to salvage the power-sharing arrangement.
“We came out today to get those people out. We don’t want them running our country,” said Mazin, a protester living in Khartoum, referring to the military.
Hamdok’s return and resignation did not matter, he said, adding, “We are going to continue regardless.”
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US Names New Horn of Africa Envoy
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday named career diplomat David Satterfield as the new special envoy to the troubled Horn of Africa.
Satterfield, 67, who has experience in the Persian Gulf states, Lebanon and Iraq, most recently has served as ambassador to Turkey. He is replacing Jeffrey Feltman, another veteran diplomat, who had held the Horn of Africa posting, covering the countries of Somalia, Djibouti, Eritrea and Ethiopia, since last April.
In making the appointment, Blinken said, “Ambassador Satterfield’s decades of diplomatic experience and work amidst some of the world’s most challenging conflicts will be instrumental in our continued effort to promote a peaceful and prosperous Horn of Africa and to advance U.S. interests in this strategic region.”
The top U.S. diplomat said Feltman, 63, would continue to work at the State Department in an advisory capacity on African affairs.
In assessing his tenure in the Horn of Africa in November, Feltman pleaded for an end to the “violence, humanitarian catastrophe and atrocities in northern Ethiopia,” in the Tigray, Amhara and Afar regions.
The Ethiopian government has been at war with Tigray’s ruling TPLF party since November 2020.
“But we are also deeply concerned with violence and tensions elsewhere in Ethiopia,” Feltman said. “If not addressed through dialogue and consensus, these problems can contribute to the deterioration of the integrity of the state.”
Last month, the State Department also expressed concern about Somalia’s delayed elections and what it called “the procedural irregularities that have undermined the credibility” of those polls.
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On Anniversary of Capitol Siege, Biden Lays Blame on Trump
On the first anniversary of the deadly January 6 Capitol riot, U.S. President Joe Biden delivered a forceful speech in defense of American democracy. He laid blame for the insurrection squarely on former President Donald Trump and Republicans who continue to spread the false narrative that the 2020 election was stolen. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara reports.
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Pope Francis Marks Epiphany, Traditional Catholic Feast
Pope Francis Thursday marked the Catholic feast day of Epiphany, the day traditionally observed to commemorate the three wise men — or Magi — visiting the baby Jesus, by urging people to “follow their dreams.”
During a Mass celebrated at the Vatican’s St. Peter’s Basilica, the pope recalled the journey of the Magi, who, according to Scripture, followed a star to Bethlehem where the baby Jesus was born in a manger. He said the three had a sort of “healthy restlessness” driven by a desire to see the Christ child.
Francis said, “They were not content to plod through life, but yearned for new and greater horizons.” He urged people to follow the example of the wise men, and lead their lives “brimming with desire, directed, like the Magi, towards the stars.”
He urged people to move past the “barriers of habit, beyond banal consumerism, beyond a drab and dreary faith, beyond the fear of becoming involved and serving others and the common good.”
Pope Francis said the Catholic Church could learn something from the Magi as well, saying it needs “this deep desire and zeal that should animate our journey of life and faith.”
The pope appeared to direct his comments specifically at the more conservative members of the Church who balked at his decision to restrict the traditionalist Latin Mass, saying the liturgy could not be trapped in a “dead language.”
The Pope concluded his message by noting the Magi’s return home “by another way,” saying they challenge all of us, as well, to take new paths, to be open to the “creativity of the Spirit.”
The Epiphany is observed in predominantly Catholic nations around the world. Falling 12 days after Christmas, in many places, it is traditionally the last day of the holiday season.
Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters, and Agence France-Presse.
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Ethiopia Dismisses Accusations of Abusing Repatriated Tigrayans from Saudi Arabia
Ethiopia’s government has dismissed a Human Rights Watch report that says authorities illegally detained, abused, and caused the forced disappearance of thousands of ethnic Tigrayans repatriated from Saudi Arabia.
Ethiopia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Thursday lashed out at the Human Rights Watch report that accuses the state of targeting ethnic Tigrayans recently repatriated from Saudi Arabia.
The rights group’s report accused authorities of detaining, abusing, and causing thousands of Tigrayans to effectively vanish in a sweep against illegal migrants.
Ministry spokesman Dina Mufti called the report unsubstantiated and an irresponsible move that aimed to discredit the government’s efforts to help citizens returned by Saudi authorities.
“We have repatriated more than 40,000 Ethiopians from Saudi Arabia in just a couple of months regardless of which ethnic group that they belong to,” Mufit said, according to a transcript of the briefing.
Ethiopia in January 2021 announced it had agreed with Saudi Arabia to repatriate 40,000 of its citizens detained in the country at a rate of 1,000 per day.
Human Rights Watch’s report Wednesday said 40% of returnees from November 2020 to June 2021 were Tigrayan.
The report said from June to July Saudi Arabia deported more than 30,000 Ethiopian citizens just as authorities were targeting ethnic Tigrayans.
The group’s refugee and migrant rights researcher Nadia Hardman said the Tigrayan returnees were detained in various parts of Ethiopia, beaten, and subjected to forced labor.
“Ethiopian authorities are persecuting Tigrayans deported from Saudi Arabia by wrongfully detaining and forcibly disappearing them,” Hardman said. “Saudi Arabia should stop contributing to this abuse by ending the forced return of Tigrayans to Ethiopia and allowing them to seek asylum or resettlement in third countries.”
The rights group also called on Ethiopian authorities to immediately release detained migrants and to stop profiling ethnic Tigrayans.
The report was based on interviews Human Rights Watch conducted with 23 alleged victims of the abuse.
Since the war broke out in November 2020 between Ethiopian federal authorities and those in the Tigray region, the government has denied discriminating against or targeting ethnic Tigrayans.
But reports from inside Ethiopia indicate authorities have subjected ethnic Tigrayans to arbitrary detentions, dismissal from official positions, and travel restrictions.
Ethiopian government spokesperson Legesse Tulu told the Reuters news agency there were no ethnic-based prison facilities or places for deportees from other countries.
But he acknowledged many Ethiopians were detained on suspicion of aiding what he called terrorists, the Ethiopian government’s term for the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front. The TPLF have long ruled the Tigray region and ran the federal government for three decades until they were ousted from power in 2018.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Mufti on Thursday said Ethiopia plans to send a committee of officials, religious leaders, and other stakeholders to Saudi Arabia to discuss measures for its citizens who remain in detention.
Some information for this report came from Reuters.
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US Jobless Benefit Claims Hold Steady
First-time claims for U.S. unemployment compensation remained near a five-decade- low level last week, with employers retaining their workers and searching for more as the United States continues its rapid economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.
The Labor Department said Thursday that 207,000 jobless workers made first-time claims for unemployment compensation, up 7,000 from the revised figure of the week before. The weekly total of new claims has hovered around 200,000, for a month now.
Even with the increase in claims last week, the figures from the last several weeks were well below the 256,000 total in mid-March 2020, when the pandemic first swept into the United States and employers started laying off workers by the hundreds of thousands.
The diminished number of claims for unemployment benefits, down from a 2021 high of 900,000 in one week last January, shows that many employers are hanging on to their workers, even as millions have quit jobs to move to other companies offering higher pay and more benefits.
Many employers are looking for more workers, despite about 6.9 million workers remaining unemployed in the United States.
At the end of November, there were 10.4 million job openings in the U.S., but the skills of available workers often do not match what employers want, or the job openings are not where the unemployed live. In addition, many of the available jobs are low-wage service positions that the jobless are shunning.
U.S. employers added only 210,000 new jobs in November, a lower-than-expected figure. But overall, the U.S. has added 6.1 million jobs through the first 11 months of the year in a much quicker recovery than many economists had originally forecast a year ago. The unemployment rate dropped in November to 4.2%, a figure some experts had projected would not be reached until mid-2024.
Information on job growth in December and the unemployment rate is set for release on Friday.
The U.S. economic advance is occurring even as President Joe Biden and Washington policy makers, along with consumers, voice concerns about the biggest increase in consumer prices in nearly four decades – 6.8% at an annualized rate in November.
The surging inflation rate has pushed policy makers at the country’s central bank, the Federal Reserve, to move more quickly to end their asset purchases they had used to boost the country’s economic recovery, by March rather than in mid-2022 as originally planned.
On Wednesday, minutes of the Fed board’s most recent meeting showed that policy makers are eyeing a faster pace for raising the benchmark interest rate that they have kept at near zero percent since the pandemic started.
The Federal Reserve has said it could raise the rate, which influences the borrowing costs for loans made to businesses and consumers, by a quarter of a percentage point three times this year to tamp down inflationary pressures.
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WHO Says New Coronavirus Variant in France Not a Threat – Yet
The World Health Organization says a new coronavirus variant recently detected in France is nothing to be concerned about right now.
Scientists at the IHU Mediterranee Infection Foundation in the city of Marseille say they discovered the new B.1.640.2 variant in December in 12 patients living near Marseille, with the first patient testing positive after traveling to the central African nation of Cameroon.
The researchers said they have identified 46 mutations in the new variant, which they labeled “IHU” after the institute, that could make it more resistant to vaccines and more infectious than the original coronavirus. The French team revealed the findings of a study in the online health sciences outlet medRxiv, which publishes studies that have not been peer-reviewed or published in an academic journal.
Abdi Mahmud, a COVID-19 incident manager with the World Health Organization, told reporters in Geneva earlier this week that, while the IHU variant is “on our radar,” it remains confined in Marseille and has not been labeled a “variant of concern” by the U.N. health agency.
Meanwhile, an international team of health care advocates and experts is calling for 22 billion doses of mRNA vaccine to be administered around the world this year to stop the spread of the highly contagious omicron variant. The team is urging the production of an additional 15 billion doses of mRNA vaccine, more than double the projected 7 billion doses.
The report says mRNA vaccines produced by Pfizer and Moderna have demonstrated the best protection against several variants by providing cross-immunity through so-called T-cells, an arm of the human immune system that kills virus-infected cells and keeps them from replicating and spreading.
The report was a collaboration among scientists at Harvard Medical School, Columbia University, New York University and the University of Saskatchewan and the advocacy groups PrEP4All and Partners in Health.
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Pope Francis: Don’t Be Afraid to Have Children
Pope Francis has called on childless couples to adopt children and is urging institutions to make the process easier. He also condemned the practice of adopting pets instead of children, calling it a “form of selfishness.”
In his first general audience of the New Year, Pope Francis stressed the importance of parenthood, especially when so many children have been orphaned in the world.
He said every time a person takes on the responsibility of someone else’s life, the person is exercising a form of parenthood. The pope called on people not to fear choosing the path of adoption, saying it is among the highest forms of love and parenthood.
How many children in the world, Pope Francis said, are waiting for someone to look after them and how many couples would like to become parents but are unable for biological reasons. Adoption, he said, is a beautiful and generous act.
The pope said having a child is always a risk, whether that child is biologically one’s own or adopted. Rejecting parenthood, he said, is an even greater risk.
He said the problem is not only the number of orphans, but the fact many people do not want to have children, a situation he described as a “demographic winter.”
The pope said many couples have no children because they do not want them or they choose to have only one but then have two dogs, two cats. Yes, the pope said, dogs and cats take the place of children. This may make people laugh, he said, but it is the reality.
Pope Francis said people who choose to have pets instead of children are manifesting a form of selfishness.
In a statement, Massimo Comparotto, the president of Italy’s International Organization for the Protection of Animals, OIPA, was critical of the pope’s comments. He said, “It is evident that for Francis, animal life is less important than human life. But those who feel that life is sacred love life beyond species.”
The pope urged institutions to make it simpler for couples to adopt children and provide more assistance to families that do so.
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A Season of Joy — and Caution — Kicks Off in New Orleans
Vaccinated, masked and ready-to-revel New Orleans residents will usher in Carnival season Thursday with a rolling party on the city’s historic streetcar line, an annual march honoring Joan of Arc in the French Quarter and a collective, wary eye on coronavirus statistics.
Carnival officially begins each year on Jan. 6 — the 12th day after Christmas — and, usually, comes to a raucous climax on Mardi Gras, or Fat Tuesday, which falls on March 1 this year. Thursday’s planned festivities come two years after a successful Mardi Gras became what officials later realized was an early Southern superspreader of COVID-19; and nearly a year after city officials, fearing more death and more stress on local hospitals, canceled parades and restricted access to the usually raucous Bourbon Street.
This year, the party is slated to go on despite rapidly rising COVID-19 cases driven by the omicron variant.
In what has become a traditional kickoff to the season, the Phunny Phorty Phellows will gather at a cavernous streetcar barn and board one of the historic St. Charles line cars along with a small brass band. Vaccinations were required in keeping with city regulations and seating on the streetcar was to be limited and spaced. And, in addition to the traditional over-the-eye costume masks, riders were equipped with face coverings to prevent viral spread.
Larger, more opulent parades will follow in February as Mardi Gras nears and the city attempts to leaven the season’s joy with caution.
“It was certainly the right thing to do to cancel last year,” said Dr. Susan Hassig, a Tulane University epidemiologist who also is a member of the Krewe of Muses, and who rides each year on a huge float in the Muses parade. “We didn’t have vaccines. There was raging and very serious illness all over the place.”
Now, she notes, the vaccination rate is high in New Orleans. While only about 65% of the total city population is fully vaccinated, according the city’s statistics, 81% of all adults are fully vaccinated. And the overall percentage is expected to increase now that eligibility is open to younger children.
And, while people from outside the city are a big part of Mardi Gras crowds, Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s anti-virus measures include proof of vaccination or a negative test for most venues. “The mayor has instituted a vaccine requirement and/or negative test to get into all the fun things to do in New Orleans — the food, the music,” said Hassig. She adds, however, that she’d like to see a federal requirement that air travelers be vaccinated.
Sharing Hassig’s cautious optimism is Elroy James, president of the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club, a predominantly Black organization whose Mardi Gras morning parade is a focal point of Carnival. Early in the pandemic, COVID-19 was blamed for the death of at least 17 of Zulu’s members. Compounding the tragedy: Restrictions on public gatherings meant no traditional jazz funeral sendoff for the dead.
“I think most krewes, particularly, I know, for Zulu, we’ve been very proactive, leaning in, with respect to all of the safety protocols that have been in place since the onset of this thing,” James said Wednesday. “Our float captains are confirming our riders are vaccinated. And part of the look for the 2022 Mardi Gras season is face masks.”
Statistics still show reason for concern in a state where the pandemic has claimed more than 15,000 lives over the past two years. Louisiana health officials reported more than 1,287 hospitalizations as of Tuesday — a sharp increase from fewer than 200 in mid-December. Still, reports nationwide indicate the omicron-driven illnesses are milder than previous cases. Hassig notes that a lower percentage of patients require ventilators, a sign of less-severe illness.
And dedicated parade participants aren’t stopping precautions at masks and shots. Muses founder Staci Rosenberg said the krewe had planned to gather at a bar a couple of blocks off the streetcar route to await the passing of the Phunny Phorty Phellows’ procession. Now, they’ve moved that party to an outside parking lot.
Hassig, meanwhile, says she doesn’t plan to attend any indoor gatherings. She, is, however, determined to ride in the Feb. 24 parade — vaccinated, face covered with an N95 mask and knowing that outdoor activities are generally less likely to spread disease.
It’s important to Hassig. She rode in her first parade in 2006 as the city fought to recover from catastrophic flooding following Hurricane Katrina. And she wants to participate in the tourist-dependent, tradition-loving city’s recovery from the economic ravages of the virus.
“It’s incredibly important, financially, for the city that this go well,” she said.
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WATCH: Biden Speaks on Anniversary of Capitol Attack
U.S. President Joe Biden will use the first anniversary of the January 6 Capitol riot to speak bluntly about the impact of the shocking event — and to lay responsibility at the feet of former President Donald Trump, the White House said Wednesday.
WATCH LIVE:
In an excerpt released ahead of the address, Biden says the United States “must decide what kind of nation we are going to be.”
“Are we going to be a nation that accepts political violence as a norm? Are we going to be a nation where we allow partisan election officials to overturn the legally expressed will of the people? Are we going to be a nation that lives not by the light of the truth but in the shadow of lies?” the president plans to say, according to the White House. “We cannot allow ourselves to be that kind of nation. The way forward is to recognize the truth and to live by it.”
White House press secretary Jen Psaki also previewed the speech in Wednesday’s briefing with reporters, saying she expects Biden to emphasize “the singular responsibility President Trump has for the chaos and carnage that we saw.”
“He will forcibly push back on the lie spread by the former president in an attempt to mislead the American people and his own supporters, as well as distract from his role in what happened,” Psaki said. “So, he will, of course, speak to the moment, to the importance in history of the peaceful transfer of power, of what we need to do to protect our own democracy and be forward-looking, but he will also reflect on the role his predecessor had.”
Vice President Kamala Harris will give remarks alongside Biden on Thursday morning. When asked if Biden would identify Trump by name during his speech to Congress, Psaki demurred.
“We’ll see,” she said. “We’re finalizing the speech. But I think people will know who he’s referring to.”
Also Wednesday, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland vowed that Justice Department prosecutors will pursue perpetrators “at any level” responsible for the riot.
He did not name any individuals who may face prosecution, but said: “There can be no different rules for the powerful and the powerless.”
Late Tuesday, Trump canceled a press conference scheduled for Thursday evening at his Florida estate, where he was expected to speak about the deadly attack on the Capitol that led to at least five deaths and more than 130 injuries and saw more than 720 participants charged with crimes. Trump said he would instead discuss “important topics” at a January 15 rally in Arizona.
VOA attempted to contact two associates of former Vice President Mike Pence to find out whether he had any plans on Thursday. They did not respond.
Trump, in a statement, accused the congressional committee investigating the January 6 event of showing “total bias and dishonesty.” He maintains that the November 2020 presidential election was marred by fraud and that he actually won. There is no evidence to support that claim.
On Wednesday, Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., that he believes the congressional select committee currently investigating the events of January 6 is a “sham.”
“Democrats across the country are destroying the rule of law by using their power in government to illegally target, bully and harass their political enemies,” he said.
Public opinion polls have shown about 70% of Republicans do not consider Biden’s election win legitimate.
A pro-Trump mob stormed the seat of Congress on January 6 last year as lawmakers inside were meeting to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election.
They overpowered the massively outnumbered Capitol Police officers on duty, smashing windows, erecting a gallows and vandalizing the historic building. Lawmakers were forced to flee for safety or lock themselves inside their offices.
Some rioters said they were seeking out specific individuals — in particular, Pence and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Only hours later, after federal law enforcement agencies and the military arrived to reestablish control of the Capitol, were the members of Congress able to complete their work and certify Biden’s election win, setting the stage for his inauguration weeks later.
Four Trump supporters died on the day of the assault, and a Capitol Police officer died the next day. The mob injured dozens of officers, and in the months since the attack, four officers have died by suicide.
Carl Tobias, a professor at the University of Richmond School of Law, told Agence France-Presse that Trump’s actions following the election are “unprecedented in U.S. history.”
“No former president has attempted to do so much to discredit his successor and the democratic process,” Tobias said.
While Biden prepares to lay blame for the insurrection on Trump, some Republican lawmakers accuse Democrats of attempting to channel fallout from the riot for partisan ends.
Chris Hannas contributed to this report.
Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, and Reuters.
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Jill Biden to Survey Kentucky Storm Damage
U.S. first lady Jill Biden is traveling Thursday to the state of Kentucky to survey damage from deadly storms that hit last month and to speak with officials about recovery efforts.
Joining Biden on the trip to the city of Bowling Green is Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Erik Hooks.
Severe storms in December brought tornadoes, other damaging winds and flooding to parts Kentucky, leaving 77 people dead and widespread damage. Another round of tornadoes Jan. 1 hit some of the same areas.
Biden is due to meet with Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear and his wife, Britainy.
The White House said Biden would highlight cooperation between federal and local agencies. President Joe Biden issued a disaster declaration for Kentucky last month to speed federal aid.
Beshear announced in an address late Wednesday proposed legislation that would send $150 million to communities hit by the storms, as well as $50 million to fund recovery efforts for schools.
“We will rebuild,” Beshear said. “Every structure and every life.”
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FBI Still Hunting Jan. 6 Suspects, Pipe Bomber a Year Later
The suspect was covered from head to toe, skulking through the dark streets of the nation’s capital before methodically placing two explosives outside the offices of the Republican and Democratic national committees.
Only 17 hours later — and just before the U.S. Capitol was stormed by a sea of pro-Trump rioters — were the pipe bombs discovered. It quickly became one of the highest-priority investigations for the FBI and the Justice Department.
But the trail grew cold almost immediately. A year later, federal investigators are no closer to learning the person’s identity. And a key question remains: Was there a connection between the pipe bombs and the riot at the Capitol?
The suspect is among hundreds of people still being sought by the FBI following last January’s deadly insurrection. So far, 250 people seen on video assaulting police at the Capitol still haven’t been fully identified and apprehended by the FBI, and another 100 are being sought for other crimes tied to the riot.
The investigation has been a massive undertaking for federal law enforcement officials. More than 700 people have been charged with federal crimes stemming from the Jan. 6 attack, and arrests are still being made regularly.
But for the FBI agents working on the cases, the job is far from over. Agents and investigative analysts have been poring over thousands of hours of surveillance video, going second by second in each video to try to capture clear images of people who attacked officers inside the Capitol.
“This investigation takes time because it is a lot of lot of work, a lot of painstaking work that they look at the video kind of frame by frame,” said Steven D’Antuono, the assistant director in charge of the FBI’s field office in Washington.
In one case, police body camera footage captures a man using a cane with electric prods on the end jabbing at officers and shocking them as they fight to hold back the riotous crowd trying to break through a barricaded line of officers at one of the doors of the Capitol. The crackling sound of the electricity can be heard as he prods his cane into one of the officers. The man, known only as “AFO114” — using shorthand for “assaulting a federal officer” — is still being sought.
“The assaults against the police officers are extremely serious,” D’Antuono said. More than 100 police officers were attacked by rioters on Jan. 6, some attacked by multiple people and some attacked multiple times, he said.
In another video, a man is seen repeatedly bashing a police officer over the head with a 1.8-meter metal pole as he tries to push his way into the Capitol. And a third shows a man spraying some kind of chemical from a can into the faces of other officers.
“There is still a lot of work to be done on this,” D’Antuono said. “There were a lot of people up there at the Capitol, a lot of people that either committed violence up there did other unlawful actions up there.”
In the search for the person who left the pipe bombs at the RNC and DNC offices, investigators have interviewed more than 900 people, collected 39,000 video files and examined more than 400 leads. They have dived into the components of the explosives and have been working to try to discern anything they can about the suspect, from analyzing the person’s gait to trying to collect information about purchases of the distinctive Nike sneakers the person wore.
But they are still no closer to finding the suspect’s identity and are hoping renewed attention on the video of the person may spark a tip to crack the case.
The explosive devices were placed outside the two buildings between 7:30 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. on Jan. 5, 2021, but weren’t located by law enforcement until the next day. U.S. Capitol Police and agents from the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were called to the Republican National Committee’s office around 12:45 p.m. on Jan. 6. About 30 minutes later, as the agents and bomb technicians were still investigating at the RNC, another call came in for a similar explosive device found at the Democratic National Committee headquarters nearby. The bombs were rendered safe, and no one was hurt.
Video released by the FBI shows a person in a gray hooded sweatshirt, a face mask and gloves appearing to place one of the explosives under a bench outside the DNC and separately shows the person walking in an alley near the RNC before the bomb was placed there. The person wore black and light gray Nike Air Max Speed Turf sneakers with a yellow logo.
“We’ve used and continue to use every investigative tool that we lawfully have to find this individual,” D’Antuono said. But, a year later, investigators still don’t know whether the suspect is a man or a woman. The person carried the bombs — made of threaded galvanized pipes, kitchen timers and homemade black powder — in a backpack.
“We’re still nose to the grindstone here and trying to find this individual, trying to bring the person to justice,” D’Antuono said. “But there is hopefully maybe somebody still out there that knows the person or sees the video again.”
It is unclear whether the bombs were related to planning for the insurrection or whether they were unrelated to the deadly riot. Both buildings are within a few blocks of the Capitol.
And the fact the suspect was covered from head to toe has made identifying the person extremely difficult for the FBI.
“In normal times, like if this wasn’t COVID,” D’Antuono said, “a person walking down the street in D.C. covered from head to toe with a mask on, glasses and gloves would have been a red flag.”
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