The Pentagon is now releasing details of Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s secretive hospitalization: Austin was treated for prostate cancer in late December, according to medical officials at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, and made an emergency trip to its intensive care unit on Jan. 1 due to complications from the procedure. VOA Pentagon correspondent Carla Babb has details.
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On January 15, the 2024 U.S. presidential election season will officially kick off with the Iowa caucuses. Republican candidates including Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Chris Christie, and Vivek Ramaswamy will seek to unseat the current front-runner, former President Donald Trump, as the party’s eventual nominee to challenge incumbent President Joe Biden in November’s general election. (Produced by: Alex Gendler)
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LONDON — 2024 will pose a major test of democratic rule as an estimated 4 billion people in more than 50 nations — almost half the world’s population — are set to vote in national elections, with the outcomes likely to shape global politics for years or decades to come.

Bangladesh began 2024 with the first major election of the year as Sheikh Hasina won a fourth consecutive term as prime minister Sunday. Opposition parties boycotted the vote over complaints that it was neither free nor fair.

A crucial presidential election is due to take place on the self-governing island of Taiwan on January 13. China’s threat to retake the island by force looms over the vote, with political parties divided on how to approach Beijing.

“We are not only choosing Taiwan’s future leaders to decide on the country’s future but also deciding on the peace and stability of the Indo-Pacific region,” William Lai, the presidential candidate for the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, told supporters at a campaign rally earlier this month. Lai is ahead in the polls.

In February, Indonesia is set to choose a new president to rule the nation of 277 million people, making it one of the world’s biggest votes held on a single day.

Pakistan will hold parliamentary elections in February; opposition leader and former Prime Minister Imran Khan remains jailed on charges of leaking state secrets, which he denies.

Russians will vote in presidential elections in March — although observers predict incumbent Vladimir Putin is all but certain to win as he is able to control the electoral process and state media.

“Putin is not going to have any genuine opponents,” said Ian Bond of the Center for European Reform. “He has control of all the administrative machinery required to make sure that a crushing vote in favor of him is delivered and we get another six years of Putin up to at least 2030.”

Largest democracy

India — the world’s biggest democracy — will hold parliamentary elections in April and May, with the Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, ahead in the polls.

Veteran Indian political journalist Pushp Saraf believes the opposition will struggle to make headway.

“It all depends how united they are,” Saraf said. “Otherwise, if they stay disunited, as they appear to be many times, they have little chance of succeeding against BJP, which is organizationally very strong, and with Narendra Modi, who is riding high on the popularity wave, at least in the Hindi heartland.”

“These are very significant elections because there are clearly two opinions in the country at the moment. One is that BJP is polarizing society along the communal lines. And on the other hand, there is the opinion that BJP is focusing more on national security,” Saraf told The Associated Press.

On June 2, Mexico is due to hold its presidential election, which could herald a new milestone for the country, “because of the possibility that, for the first time, a woman will govern Mexico,” according to Mexican pollster Patricio Morelos. Mexico’s ruling party has selected Claudia Sheinbaum, a former mayor of Mexico City, as its candidate.

The European Union, representing more than half-a-billion people, is set to hold parliamentary elections in June. Polls suggest a resurgence in support for right-wing populist parties in many countries, including France, Germany and Italy.

“There is a real possibility, I think, that the far right will do well in European elections. Not to the point of running the European Parliament, but conceivably to the point where anyone who wants to run the European Parliament has to take account of what they’re saying and doing,” Anand Menon, professor of international politics at Kings College London, told VOA.

Britain is scheduled to hold elections before the end of the year, with polls suggesting opposition Labour Party leader Keir Starmer is on course to end a tumultuous 14 years of Conservative rule, with five different prime ministers.

“We had the Brexit wars that dominated everything, then we had COVID-19, now we’ve got the cost-of-living crisis. We’ve had government instability… the instability itself has become a political issue,” Menon said.

On November 5, the United States is due to hold a highly anticipated presidential election as Americans decide whether to give Democrat Joe Biden a second term as U.S. president or choose a Republican alternative, with Donald Trump seemingly his most likely opponent — although the challenger faces numerous legal hurdles in the run up to the vote.

Worldwide effects

The impact of many of these elections in 2024 will likely be felt around the world, said analyst Menon.

“Yes, all politics is local — but there are global trends. Immigration is going to figure a lot in many elections around the world. It will figure in the U.S. election, it will figure in the European elections, it will figure in the U.K. election,” Memon said.

“Insecurity will be a major factor. One of the things we’re living with in the West now is an increased sense of insecurity, both economic — but also in security terms, given the war that’s going on in Ukraine and given the doubts about what the Taiwanese election later this month might mean for Taiwan-Chinese relations.

“So, there are common factors, but those are refracted through the prism of the local and domestic in each country, so they play out in different ways,” Menon said.
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The new year has been tough for vendors on New York City’s Brooklyn Bridge, as new rules banning them from selling their goods on the span went into effect this week. Nina Vishneva spoke with some who wonder where they will go next. Anna Rice narrates the story. VOA footage by Vladimir Badikov and Elena Matusovsky.
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HARVEY, Ill. — Rudolph Williams says he was home in a Chicago suburb when he realized the doors and windows to his courtyard-style apartment had been boarded up with plywood, locking him inside.

“I didn’t know exactly what was going on,” the 73-year-old said Monday in describing how he tried to open his blocked door. “What the hell?”

His story — chronicled by his nephew on now-viral videos — has generated a firestorm of criticism about rental conditions at the dilapidated low-income apartment complex in Harvey, Illinois. People are also debating who’s to blame; and Mayor Christopher Clark has promised an investigation.

City officials, residents, property owners and the property management company have conflicting accounts about what happened Friday at the 30-unit complex roughly 48.28 kilometers 30 miles) south of Chicago.

It started that afternoon when crews without any logos on their clothing or vehicles started boarding up units. Residents say they weren’t warned and that the workers ignored residents telling them people were still inside. City officials say police were on site earlier in the day and performed well-being checks, but not when units were set to be boarded up. The property owners say the tenants claims about residents being boarded inside are false, and the property managers say the units were empty before they started boarding up units at the city’s direction.

No injuries were reported.

Genevieve Tyler, who said she was recently laid off from her meat factory job, was home when she heard noises outside and ran for a second door in her apartment looking to escape because she thought it was a break-in. That’s when she said she came upon crews boarding up her windows.

“I feel sick,” she said, adding that she was too scared to return home for two days. “I’m still sad.”

The complex, which is in clear disrepair, has been on the city’s radar for months.

One of the two buildings has no heat, with residents using stoves and space heaters to keep warm. A set of stairs has collapsed and is blocked to pedestrians. There is garbage everywhere: broken furniture, a large dumbbell and liquor bottles.

There have also been numerous safety issues involving drugs and crime. Police were called to the property more than 300 times last year, according to Harvey Police Chief Cameron Biddings.

City officials say the property owners, identified by the city as Jay Patel and Henry Cho, were warned about the unsafe conditions and urged to make changes. The owners were then notified that people had to evacuate by Oct. 28 and had to let residents know.

However, only some residents say they got the message. Others who were notified say they were skeptical of the documents’ legitimacy. Some got letters on official city letterhead saying they had to leave due to the safety risk, while others received papers from the property managers that said the building would be shut down.

James Williams, Rudolph’s nephew, who lives with him at the property, said a bunch of notices were strewn around the courtyard.

He and other people on site helped free his uncle from the apartment Friday evening, partly by using a drill, he said.

In a joint statement emailed late Monday, the property owners dismissed the residents’ “viral allegations.” The owners said they tried to negotiate more time with the city for renters to stay and aimed to have required repairs finished by March for the building to reopen.

The owners hired property management company, Chicago Style Management, in November.

Tim Harstead with Chicago Style Management disputed Williams’ account, saying crews found one unauthorized person who left before they started boarding up units.

“A lot of people in that area are squatters and trying to stay there,” he said.

On Monday, Mayor Clark and other city officials toured the complex, which lies off a busy street in the community of 20,000.

In a series of interviews, Clark reluctantly acknowledged that people were still inside their units when the apartments started being shuttered, but he said he wanted to hear directly from residents rather than via social media videos.

The city played no role in boarding up the apartments, he said, pledging that city police would investigate and might turn the matter over to the state’s attorney or Illinois attorney general. Criticism of the city on social media was misdirected, he said.

“It’s horrible,” Clark said. “What’s even more horrible is the fact that they would attribute that to people who are trying to actually help the situation versus the people who actually put them in this situation.”

At least one city official, Alderman Tyrone Rogers, told media outlets over the weekend that residents’ claims were a “total exaggeration.” He did not return messages Monday from The Associated Press.

Some residents, including 34-year-old Loren Johnson, left last month. He said the shutdown notice scared him off as did the broken heating and criminal activity.

“They don’t do anything, but they take full rent,” he said of the landlords.

Roughly half a dozen residents remained on Monday, saying they look out for each other.

Mary Brooks, 66, lives in one of the few apartments that wasn’t boarded up.

She described herself as a cancer survivor with mental health issues who has nowhere else to go. She also said she has tried to reach city officials multiple times about the complex over her nearly four years of living there, a complaint she shared with the mayor when he visited her at home Monday.

“Nobody pays attention to the poor,” she said. “Nobody cares until something happens.”
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WASHINGTON — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he would discuss “the way forward” as he met Tuesday with Israeli leaders in Tel Aviv, amid a push to prevent the war in Gaza from spreading in the region and for Israeli officials to do more to protect civilians and facilitate humanitarian aid deliveries to Gaza.

 

Speaking alongside Israeli President Isaac Herzog, Blinken said he would have the opportunity to meet with the families of the some of the hostages held by Hamas militants in Gaza, and to relay to Israeli leaders some of what he heard from other leaders in the region during stops in Turkey, Greece, Jordan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.

Herzog thanked the United States for “standing steadfast with Israel” and said the war against Hamas is one that “affects international values and the values of the free world.”

Herzog also rejected a lawsuit filed at the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, calling the accusation “atrocious and preposterous.”

Hearings in the case are due to begin Thursday, and Herzog said Israel will “present proudly our case of using self-defense under our most inherent right under international humanitarian law.”

U.S. officials have called on Israel to do more to protect civilians in Gaza, and that message was one Blinken planned to repeat in his meetings Tuesday.

Gaza health officials say close to 23,000 Palestinians, a large percentage of them women and children, have been killed in Israel’s military offensive in the Gaza Strip.

Israel has criticized Hamas for locating its operations in civilian areas, including the use of tunnels under cities.  Herzog said Tuesday that Israel is “doing our utmost under extremely complicated circumstances” to ensure there are no civilian casualties.

Blinken said Monday that leaders in the Middle East are determined to prevent the Gaza conflict from spreading and that there is broad recognition on the need to “chart a political path forward for the Palestinians.”

“The West Bank and Gaza should be united under Palestinian-led governance,” Blinken told reporters in Saudi Arabia.

“The future of the region needs to be one of integration, not division and not conflict,” Blinken said, adding “for that to happen, we need to see the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.”

In a statement following talks with Blinken, Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman underscored the importance of halting military operations in the Gaza Strip and the need to create conditions for restoring peace and stability.

When asked about the U.S.-led talks to normalize the relationship between Saudi Arabia and Israel, Blinken said there is “a clear interest” in Saudi Arabia, as well as in the region, in pursuing that goal but “it will require that the conflict end in Gaza, and it will also clearly require that there be a practical pathway to a Palestinian state.”

Saudi Arabia has paused diplomatic talks to normalize ties with Israel amid the military conflict between Hamas militants and Israeli forces.

After an Israeli airstrike killed a key Hezbollah commander in southern Lebanon on Monday — the latest sign of a possibly widening conflict in the Middle East — Blinken told reporters it is clearly not in the interest of Israel, Lebanon, or Hezbollah to see an escalation outside Gaza and “the Israelis have been very clear with” the U.S. that “they want to find a diplomatic way forward.”

Hezbollah has identified the commander as Wissam al-Tawil. Last week, senior Hamas official Saleh al-Arouri was killed in a drone strike in Beirut. Both Hamas and Hezbollah are backed by Iran, whose militant allies in Syria, Iraq and Yemen have also been carrying out longer-range attacks against Israel.

 

The United States has urged Israel to shift to smaller scale military operations in Gaza but has continued to support Israel in refusing Arab demands for a cease-fire to halt the fighting in the three-month war. Israel has vowed to continue the war until it believes the threat of future Hamas attacks has been eradicated and the militant group no longer controls Gaza, a narrow strip of territory along the Mediterranean Sea.

Israel began its military campaign to wipe out Hamas after Hamas fighters crossed into southern Israel on Oct. 7. Israel said about 1,200 people were killed and about 240 captives taken in the terror attack.

Some material for this report was provided by Reuters and The Associated Press.

 

 
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PORTLAND, Ore. — The loud “boom” was startling enough, and the roaring wind that immediately filled the airline cabin left Kelly Bartlett unnerved. Still, it wasn’t until a shaken teenager, shirtless and scratched, slid into the seat next to her that she realized just how close disaster had come.

A section of the Boeing 737 Max 9’s fuselage just three rows away had blown out — at 4.8 kilometers (3 miles ) high — creating a vacuum that twisted the metal of the seats nearby, and snatched cellphones, headsets and even the shirt off the teenager’s back.

“We knew something was wrong,” Bartlett told The Associated Press on Monday. “We didn’t know what. We didn’t know how serious. We didn’t know if it meant we were going to crash.”

The first six minutes of Alaska Airlines flight 1282 from Portland to Southern California’s Ontario International Airport on Friday had been routine, the Boeing 737 Max 9 about halfway to its cruising altitude and traveling at more than 640 kph (400 mph).

Flight attendants had just told the 171 passengers that they could resume using electronic devices — in airplane mode, of course — when it happened.

Then suddenly a 61-centimeter-by-122-centimeter (2-foot-by-4-foot) piece of fuselage covering an unoperational emergency exit behind the left wing blew out. Only seven seats on the flight were unoccupied, and as fate would have it, these included the two seats closest to the blown-out hole.

The oxygen masks dropped immediately, and Bartlett saw a flight attendant walking down the aisle toward the affected row, leaning forward as if facing a stiff wind. Then flight attendants began moving passengers from the area where the blowout occurred and helped them move away.

Among them was the teenage boy moved next to Bartlett.

“His shirt got sucked off of his body when the panel blew out because of the pressure, and it was his seatbelt that kept him in his seat and saved his life. And there he was next to me,” she said, adding that his mother was reseated elsewhere.

“We had our masks on, and the plane was really loud so we couldn’t talk. But I had a … notes app on my phone that I was typing on. So I typed to him and I asked him if he was hurt,” Bartlett said. “I just couldn’t believe he was sitting there and what he must have gone through, what he must have been feeling at the time.”

She said the boy typed back that he was OK, but a bit scratched, adding “that was unbelievable” and “thank you for your kindness.”

The exit door plug landed in the southwest Portland backyard of high school physics teacher Bob Sauer. Sauer said his heart “did start beating a little faster” when he saw it in the beam of his flashlight Sunday night as he searched for any debris.

“It was very obviously part of a plane,” he told a group of reporters outside his home on Monday. “I thought, ‘Oh my goodness, people have been looking for this all weekend and it looks like it’s in my backyard.'”

Sauer said he and the seven National Transportation Safety Board agents who came to his home to pick up the door plug were amazed it was intact. It appeared that tree branches had broken its fall.

A headrest landed on the patio of Sauer’s neighbor, Diane Flaherty. Flaherty didn’t realize what the charcoal-colored cushion was until a friend emailed her to say federal agents were looking for airplane parts in her neighborhood. An NTSB agent came by to pick it up.

“What are the chances that a headrest cushion falls out of the sky into your backyard?” she said.

The pilots and flight attendants have not made public statements and their names have not been released, but in interviews with National Transportation Safety Board investigators they described how their training kicked in. The pilots focused on getting the plane quickly back to Portland and the flight attendants on keeping the passengers safe and as calm as possible.

“The actions of the flight crew were really incredible,” NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said at a Sunday night news conference. She described the scene inside the cabin during those first seconds as “chaos, very loud between the air and everything going on around them and it was very violent.”

Bartlett echoed praise for the crew, saying the entire time she felt like the plane was under control even though the roaring wind was so loud she couldn’t hear the captain’s announcements.

“The flight attendants really responded well to the situation. They got everyone safe and then they got themselves safe,” she said. “And then there was nothing to do but wait, right? We were just on our way down and it was just a normal descent. It felt normal.”

Inside the cockpit, the pilot and co-pilot donned their oxygen masks and opened their microphone, but “communication was a serious issue” between them and the flight attendants because of the noise, Homendy said. The pilots retrieved an emergency handbook kept secure next to the captain’s seat.

The co-pilot contacted air traffic controllers, declaring an emergency and saying the plane needed to immediately descend to 3,048 meters, (10,000 feet) the altitude where there is enough oxygen for everyone onboard to breathe.

“We need to turn back to Portland,” she said in a calm voice that she maintained throughout the landing.

In the cabin, the flight attendants’ immediate focus was on the five unaccompanied minors in their care and the three infants being carried on their parents’ laps.

“Were they safe? Were they secure? Did they have their seat belts on or their lap belts on? And did they have their masks on? And they did,” Homendy said.

Some passengers began sending messages on social media to loved ones. One young woman said on TikTok that she was certain the plane would nosedive at any second and she wondered how her death would affect her mother, worrying that she would never recover from the sorrow.

But she and others said the cabin remained surprisingly calm. One passenger, Evan Granger, who was sitting in front of the blowout, told NBC News that his “focus in that moment was just breathe into the oxygen mask and trust that the flight crew will do everything they can to keep us safe.”

“There were so many things that had to go right in order for all of us to survive,” Granger said.

Video taken by those on board showed flight attendants moving down the aisle checking on passengers. Through the hole, city lights could be seen flickering past.

Evan Smith, an attorney traveling on the plane, told reporters the descent and landing were loud but smooth. When the plane touched down at Portland International about 20 minutes after it departed, the passengers broke into applause. Firefighters came down the aisle to check for injuries, but no one was seriously hurt.

Homendy said that if the blowout had happened a few minutes later, after the plane reached cruising altitude, the accident might have become a tragedy.

Bartlett’s mind also keeps returning to the what-ifs.

“I’m glad that it is not any worse than it was — that’s all. I keep coming back to it,” she said. “Like, how lucky Jack got. That was his name, the kid who sat next to me. His name was Jack, and how lucky he was that he had a seatbelt on.”

On Sunday, a passenger’s cellphone that had been sucked out of the plane was found. It was still operational, having survived its plunge from the sky.

It was open to the owner’s baggage claim receipt.
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