Taiwan prosecutors say they have detained 10 people, including a former staff member of the China-friendly opposition party, and are investigating them on suspicion of falsifying documents to bring thousands of mainland Chinese to Taiwan, possibly including some who spied on the self-ruled island claimed by Beijing.The investigation comes just weeks before presidential and legislative elections in Taiwan in which Beijing has been accused of intervening in hopes of unseating independence-leaning President Tsai Ing-wen.The suspects allegedly sent letters containing false information that allowed at least 5,000 people to visit Taiwan from China between early 2017 and June this year, according to Chen Yu-ping, spokesman for the Taipei city prosecutor’s office.The letters issued by Taiwanese front companies and civic groups let the Chinese citizens enter for “professional exchanges” as a way around the stricter vetting required had they applied to visit as tourists, Chen said.Some of the visitors were “high-level” Communist Party officials and intelligence operatives “who would otherwise be barred from visiting,” the Taipei Times newspaper reported Thursday. It said two were connected to the Communist Party’s United Front Work Department dedicated to infiltrating civic groups, ethnic minorities and Chinese communities abroad.The chief suspect, Hung Ching-lin, worked for the director of the Nationalist Party caucus of New Taipei City, the biggest in Taiwan, in 2008, a party media liaison said. Any work he did after that year was unrelated to the party, the liaison said.The prosecutor’s office would not rule out Thursday that some arrivals had worked for the government or for China’s Communist Party, Chen said.He declined to say whether prosecutors were investigating the suspects for evidence of spying or other activities that might hurt Taiwan politically.China and Taiwan have been separately ruled since Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists retreated to the island during the Chinese civil war in 1949. Beijing insists that the two sides eventually unify and has threatened to use force to bring that about, despite government opinion polls in Taiwan that show that almost 80% of the people on the island reject the idea of unification under China’s authoritarian one_party Communist government.The risk of spies runs high because hundreds of thousands of Taiwanese invest in China, and mainland Chinese blend in inside Taiwan due to ethnic and linguistic similarities.Taiwan has allowed tourists from China for the past 11 years as a way to stimulate its economy, but frowns on giving entry to Chinese government officials who could take back sensitive information. Those who visit for professional exchanges, however, can avoid background checks aimed at identifying state or party officials.Since 2016, Taiwan’s armed forces have stepped up development of submarines and aircraft that could be used to repel any attack from the more powerful China, but the island’s defense remains highly dependent on the armed forces of chief ally, the United States.Despite their violent history with China’s ruling Communists, the Nationalists advocate close relations with Beijing and advocate eventual unification. The ruling Democratic Progressive Party officially advocates Taiwan’s formal independence and Beijing has sought to increase economic, diplomatic and military pressure on the administration since Tsai took office in 2016.Taiwanese authorities may never know what the thousands of Chinese did on their trips because they went home months or years ago, analysts said.“You need to see who each person was and check each one, plus these people already left so there’s some difficulty in checking them out,” said Liao You-lu, professor of department of criminal investigation at Central Police University in Taiwan.Police also raided three travel agencies in Taiwan before prosecutors took the case this week, Chen said. Hung’s wife and a daughter were among those detained for questioning. Other suspects were connected to travel agencies.The suspects had earned a combined NT$10 million (US$330,000) by charging NT$1,000 to NT$2,000 fees to get the letters, domestic media said. 
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A lawyer presenting Gambia’s case accusing Myanmar of committing genocide against Rohingya Muslims said Thursday that Myanmar’s de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi ignored allegations of mass killings and rape as she led her country’s defense before the U.N.’s top court.Paul Reichler told the International Court of Justice in The Hague Myanmar was choosing to ignore the alleged sexual violence because “it is undeniable and unspeakable.”Aung San Suu Kyi told the court Wednesday the mass exodus of the Rohingya minority stemmed from “an internal conflict started by coordinated and comprehensive armed attacks.”She said that “Myanmar’s defense services responded” to the attacks, creating an armed conflict “that led to the exodus of several hundred thousand Muslims.”   William Schabas, a Canadian attorney defending Myanmar against genocide charges at the U.N.’s International Court of Justice and Myanmar’s leader Aung San Suu Kyi attend a hearing in a case filed by Gambia, Dec. 11, 2019.
Appearing before the court in her official role as Myanmar’s foreign minister, the Nobel Peace laureate reiterated her government’s claim that the military was targeting Rohingya militants who had attacked security posts in western Rakhine state in August 2017.   Myanmar’s military launched a scorched earth campaign in response to the attacks, forcing more than 700,000 Rohingyas to flee into neighboring Bangladesh. A U.N. investigation concluded the campaign was carried out “with genocidal intent,” based on interviews with survivors who gave numerous accounts of massacres, extrajudicial killings, gang rapes and the torching of entire villages.
 
The case against Myanmar was brought to the IJC by the small West African nation Gambia on behalf of the 57-member Organization for Islamic Cooperation. Lawyers for Gambia recounted numerous acts of atrocities committed by Myanmar’s military during the crackdown during Tuesday’s opening session.Aung San Suu Kyi called the allegations made by Gambia “misleading” during her opening statement.  Gambia’s Justice Minister Aboubacarr Tambadou addresses judges of the International Court of Justice for the first day of three days of hearings in The Hague, Netherlands, Dec. 10, 2019.Gambian Justice Minister Abubacarr Tambadou told reporters Tuesday he wants the IJC to order special measures to protect the Rohingyas until the genocide case is heard in full.”We are signatories to the Genocide Convention like any other state. It shows that you don’t have to have military power or economic power to stand for justice,” Tambadou said.Aung San Suu Kyi won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 for her pro-democracy stand against Myanmar’s then-ruling military junta, which placed her under house arrest for 15 years until finally freeing her in 2010. But her defense of the military’s actions against the Rohingyas has wrecked her reputation among the international community as an icon of democracy and human rights.  The Rohingya were excluded from a 1982 citizenship law that bases full legal status through membership in a government-recognized indigenous group. The Myanmar government considers the Rohingya illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, effectively rendering the ethnic group stateless.A ruling from the court to approve measures to protect the Rohingya is expected within weeks. A final ruling on the accusation of genocide could take several years. 
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Two people who were being treated in the hospital after the eruption of New Zealand’s White Island volcano have died. It brings the official number of dead in the disaster to eight.The volcano on White Island in New Zealand’s Bay of Plenty erupted without warning Monday. At least 47 visitors from around the world, including many from Australia, were on the island at the time of two explosions.So far eight people have died in the disaster, but the death toll will increase.Nine people are still officially missing, and are presumed to be dead.A group of hikers was seen near the rim of the crater just moments before the blast.  Several bodies remain on the island, but recovery teams have been unable to reach them because of the risk of another eruption.The volcano is considered to be too unstable, and sent plumes of ash and smoke billowing more than three kilometers into the sky.Sarah Stewart-Black is New Zealand’s Civil Defense Emergency Management Director.“This is an utterly tragic situation,” she said. “We all agree that retrieving bodies of the deceased from the island is an absolute imperative. Every day that passes with those bodies unrecovered is a day of anguish for their loved ones who have been affected. We recognise this and we are doing everything we can.”Twenty people are in intensive care with severe burns. Some are so badly injured that they are unable to identify themselves. Five have been flown to Australia for treatment.Among the dead are teenage Australian brothers Matthew and Berend Hollander.The alert level at the popular tourist destination off New Zealand’s North Island was recently raised indicating “moderate to heightened volcanic unrest.” Officials had said there was no “direct hazard to visitors”.  New Zealand sits on the Pacific Ring of Fire, a region notorious for its intense volcanic activity and earthquakes.
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Y.C. Jao was a respected Chinese correspondent working for The Associated Press in April 1949 when Mao Zedong’s Red Army stormed into Nanjing, defeating the Nationalist forces of leader Chiang Kai-shek and paving the way for the Communist takeover of China.A family man in his late 40s, tall and erudite with liberal views, Jao was an intellectual deeply committed to news, and to modernizing journalism in China. He had studied at the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism in the 1920s, before returning after 10 years to teach journalism and to start an English-language paper.He was recommended to the AP as a local correspondent by the then U.S. ambassador to China, and worked under the supervision of Seymour Topping, the head of the AP bureau in Nanking, which was the capital city of the Nationalist Chinese government.Jao’s passion for journalism led to his death. The new authorities ordered his execution in April 1951. They accused Jao of spying and of counterrevolutionary activities, all owing to his work for AP.Sixty-eight years later, the AP on Wednesday recognized his sacrifice by installing Jao’s name on its memorial Wall of Honor for journalists who have fallen because of their work for the AP. Two of Jao’s children, Rao Jian and Rao Jiping, traveled from China to attend the ceremony. Also honored Wednesday was Mohamed Ben Khalifa, a freelance photographer and video journalist killed in Tripoli, Libya, in January covering fighting for the AP.Jao’s story was almost lost to AP’s history. It came to light when a nephew, Jilong Rao, wrote to AP President and CEO Gary Pruitt in 2018, calling attention to Jao’s death. He enclosed a copy of an official document — a Chinese court’s rejection of the family’s 1983 request that Jao be rehabilitated posthumously on grounds that there was no evidence he ever engaged in espionage.The court had ruled that the verdict would stand. It said it had been proven that Jao would write regularly to the AP in Hong Kong even after its American correspondents were expelled from the country. The court claimed that these letters contained “rumor, calumny and counter-revolutionary speech” and amounted to collecting intelligence “on behalf of imperialism.”Rao’s letter to Pruitt was the catalyst for reexamining Jao’s forgotten history. There was little mention of him in AP’s corporate archives, but his surviving colleague, Topping, now 98, who was a veteran of AP’s foreign service and later the longtime managing editor of The New York Times, remembered Jao immediately and was able to flesh out the story.Jao had worked as Topping’s assistant in Nanjing, then known as Nanking. After the Communists took power, American correspondents for AP were banned from working in the country and left for Taiwan or for the British possession of Hong Kong, both outside the Communists’ grasp. When Topping departed Nanking, he left Jao the keys to the AP bureau. Jao himself apparently never considered leaving. He did not feel he was in personal danger, according to his son, Rao Jian. Rather, he saw himself as a potential bridge between the new Communist authorities and the AP.Caught up by the talk of “liberation,” Jao initially looked upon the Communists’ arrival with optimism, Topping wrote in one of his books, “On the Front Lines of the Cold War.”“As the summer wore on, however, and the Communists began to tighten their controls, he began discreetly to voice sour observations. When I left Nanking, … he was distrustful of the Communists,” Topping recounted.Topping left Nanjing in September 1949. In January, Jao traveled to meet with Communist authorities in Beijing on AP’s behalf to ask for a visa for Topping to resume reporting on China for AP. Soon after, Jao wrote a letter to Fred Hampson, the former AP bureau chief in Shanghai who was then in Hong Kong, talking about the result of his trip and about his unease.“I must in the interest of truth say that Peking is not a very pleasant place for American correspondent to live in. … The prolonged and violent anti-American propaganda has some effect among the Chinese,” Jao’s 1950 letter said.“While a foreign correspondent must exercise care to avoid being expelled, a Chinese writing for a foreign press needs to exercise double care. True it is that he cannot be expelled, but worse things can happen to him. You therefore can readily understand my wish that as soon as we open here a foreigner be appointed, so that I can confine myself to the duty of a translator and interpreter.”Within a few months, Jao was summoned for communist indoctrination sessions and asked about his ties to AP. He wrote to Hampson that he was under pressure to join a communist publication, where he would be expected to write propaganda. Not long after, all contact between Jao and the AP ceased, although his family said he continued to send letters to the AP openly in the Chinese post.In February 1951, with hostility between the United States and China heightened by the Korean War, the Chinese began a massive internal purge. Citizens were urged to denounce counterrevolutionaries, and a wave of executions followed mass trials.Jao’s son said he was not too worried, even when they came to arrest him. He told his wife he would be home soon.On May 5, 1951, the Liberation Daily of Shanghai reported that Jao was among hundreds of people seized by the secret police on April 27 in raids in Nanjing, Hangzhou, and two other cities.An AP story on the Liberation Daily report identified Jao as a “well-known newspaperman” and a former employee of AP. “We never heard anything from Jao, or anything about him, thereafter,” wrote Topping.Jao, though, had already had been executed. His family later learned the date of death: April 29, 1951.The bereaved family never got over it, and Jao’s children suffered persecution for much of their lives afterward, Jilong Rao said. Jao’s mother died brokenhearted shortly after his execution, and his wife — who took up sewing to support their children — died in the 1960s in part from grief and hardship.It is unclear why Jao’s work was not recognized earlier. At the time of his death, Western journalists were barred from mainland China and the war in Korea was garnering most of the attention in the Far East. The AP also had no contact with his family.Adding Jao’s name to the AP’s wall of honor is an overdue act, said AP Executive Editor Sally Buzbee.“Y.C. Jao was killed in a turbulent time in China, but that cannot erase the fact that he died in the cause of independent journalism,” Buzbee said. “We honor his courage and the ultimate price he paid to report about China for AP’s worldwide audience.”Jao’s name and Khalifa’s will appear among 35 other names of AP journalists who died for their work since the founding of the news cooperative in 1846.“My father sacrificed his life for his work for the AP. It is certainly right for AP to hold a ceremony. It will console the spirit of my father in heaven. All my sisters and brother feel the same,” said Jao’s eldest son, Rao Jian.“I have no idea why my father stayed behind in Nanjing, but he continued to report for AP and I remember I saw him typing English with a typewriter. He wrote a story each week and sent them to AP’s Hong Kong office via post mail, while he received $150 per month from AP via the post.“All these activities were open, and he tried to understand the development of society and wrote stories based on information from newspapers and radio broadcasts. It had nothing to do with espionage.”
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Danish media are reporting that the Chinese government threatened to cancel a trade deal with the tiny Faroe Islands if the country does not agree to use internet networks supplied by Chinese tech company Huawei.
                   
Huawei is at the center of a global cybersecurity debate, with the U.S. warning it could allow the Chinese government to snoop on consumers. Huawei denies that.
                   
China and the U.S. are also in a global battle over trade and technological supremacy, and control over the 5G internet market is considered key.
                   
Danish media cited an audio recording made Nov. 15 by the local broadcaster as it prepared to interview the islands’ trade minister. The hot mic recording picked up a private conversation between the minister, Helgi Abrahamsen, and his aide.
                   
In it, the aide allegedly explains to the minister how the Chinese ambassador, Feng Tie, had in a meeting four days earlier threatened to pull a trade deal if the Faroe telecoms operator did not choose Huawei to build its 5G internet networks.Faroe Islands                   
The Faroe broadcaster had planned to broadcast the audio but a local court quickly issued an injunction – requested by the Faroe government. The injunction banned the airing of the recording, claiming it might damage relations between China and the country, a tiny nation of barely 50,000 people that is part of Denmark but enjoys broad autonomy.
                   
In Denmark, broadcaster DR and daily Berlingske reported Tuesday about the case. DR said it “is familiar with the contents of the audio file,” but declined to specify whether it had heard it directly. Berlingske could not be immediately reached for more information.
                   
Bardur Nielsen, the Faroese ‘ premier who attended the Nov. 11 meeting with the Chinese ambassador, has said he will not discuss the case. The Chinese embassy could not be reached for comment.
                   
China’s state-run paper Global Times cited the Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson, Hua Chunying, as saying that the claims “are completely false and have ulterior motives.”
                   
On Tuesday, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said it was up to the Faroe Islands, located midway between Scotland and Iceland – to decide who should provide the new-generation 5G network but they are welcome to seek advice in Denmark. 
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About 20,000 protesters marched through the streets of Sydney Wednesday to demand urgent government action on climate change.The protests were organized a day after the historic Australian city was shrouded by a thick cloud of haze stoked by hundreds of devastating bushfires that have burned for weeks on its outskirts, destroying more than 2 million hectares and more than 700 homes.  Six people have been killed in the disaster.Residents were forced to wear face masks to protect themselves from the toxic haze, as Sydney’s air quality index rose to 11 times above the limit considered to be hazardous.  The haze prompted officials to urge residents with heart and lung problems to stay indoors as much as possible.
 
Firefighters raced from building to building to disable alarms triggered by the thick haze, while some commuter ferries were canceled as visibility in the famous harbor was reduced to nearly zero.About 100 bushfires are burning in the eastern states of New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland, fueled by high temperatures and land left dry by drought and climate change.    
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Formula 1 car racing will debut next year in Vietnam as the fast-growing host country tries to attract high-end tourism and its own moneyed citizens take an ever keener interest in sports.A racing circuit is due for completion next month in the capital Hanoi, Formula 1 says on its website. In April, the international car racing event will hold the country’s first Formula 1 Grand Prix.The race’s arrival in Vietnam, a country racked by widespread poverty and the aftershocks of war 40 years ago, shows that many people have the money as well as the interest to buy tickets and the goods sold by event sponsors, country analysts say.Hosting Formula 1 races is also expected to stimulate more tourism.“It’s probably one of the strategies of the government to increase value-added tourism and also to brand the tourism economy in a better way, and then of course Vietnam’s own more upper middle class population would be interested in these types of events,” said Rajiv Biswas, Asia-Pacific chief economist at market research firm IHS Markit.The Vietnam Grand Prix circuit will extend 5.6 kilometers, 1.5 kilometers of which will be straight. It will allow speeds of about 335 kilometers per hour.Formula 1 keen on VietnamThe race organizer spotted in Vietnam an increasingly market-driven economy experiencing a boom in tourism and a growing local population with a “large and young workforce as well as an increase in disposable income in recent years”, corporate communications head Liam Parker said.“Hanoi is one of the most exciting cities in the world right now with such a rich history and an incredible future ahead of it,” Parker told VOA. “This is the perfect formula for Grand Prix racing and we believe this will become a real highlight of the F1 calendar.”Formula One F1 – Vietnamese Grand Prix – Hanoi circuit – Hanoi, Vietnam – April 20, 2019. Red Bull team perform during the kickoff ceremony.Between 2010 and 2018, the number of foreign tourists in Vietnam expanded from 5 million to more than 15 million.Raising the inbound headcountVietnamese officials probably hope Formula 1 will draw more tourists, said Mark Thomas, executive consultant with OmniCom Experiential Group, a marketing firm with expertise in sports. The governments of host countries pay to host the races and build the racing infrastructure.Vietnam, like China 15 years ago, is an “up-and-coming nation that wants to showcase itself to the world,” Thomas said.“I sort of think it works for both sides,” he said. “The government gets what they want, which is a global sort of advertising platform for what they are and what they want to become, and Formula 1 and their owners get a nice check.”Officials probably hope the races will lure high-spending tourists, Biswas said. Some companies would take clients to the races as well to show hospitality, he said.The races evolved more than a century ago in Europe, were officially inaugurated in 1950 and are managed now by a federation in Paris. Organizers say the world television audience totals 490 million. Around Asia, Formula 1 holds other races in China, Japan and Singapore.China breaks even on its Shanghai circuit by renting it out between races, Thomas said. Malaysia stopped hosting Formula 1 in 2018 after losing money over 17 years.Vietnamese automaker VinFast will help the events in Hanoi as the title sponsor.More money, attention to sports among VietnameseMore than one-third of Vietnam’s 97 million people will be middle class or more by next year, the Boston Consulting Group forecasts. They’re living better mainly because a boom in export manufacturing has generated new jobs.Soccer and basketball have already gained followings as people have the money to buy event tickets and goods sold by event sponsors. A Grand Prix ticket costs $30 to $312, depending on the exact event date and location of seats.“Generally speaking, (the) sports economy is really starting to take root in Vietnam. People in Vietnam love certain sports, especially soccer and now they’re starting to like basketball,” said Frederick Burke, partner with the law firm Baker McKenzie in Ho Chi Minh City.“Vietnamese now have some leisure time and entertainment is really lacking, and people like to go to these games,” he said. “They do really well.”Car racing will grab the most attention among expatriates and white-collar Vietnamese men, especially those who already like cars, said Phuong Hong, a Ho Chi Minh City travel sector businessperson. “The upper class of Vietnam, who care about car, about autos, surely they will like this,” she said.Phuong herself hopes to make it to Hanoi for a Grand Prix.
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 LONDON — Myanmar’s state counsellor, the Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, appeared at the International Court of Justice in The Hague on Tuesday to defend her government against accusations of genocide.Myanmar’s military is accused of conducting a campaign of mass killings, rape and torture against the country’s Rohingya Muslim community in 2017, forcing more than 700,000 to flee to neighboring Bangladesh.Aung San Suu Kyi was held under house arrest for 15 years until 2010, but she is now defending the military that once imprisoned her. Almost 28 years to the day since she won the Nobel Peace Prize, the state counsellor listened as lawyers for Gambia, which brought the case against Myanmar, began to detail the alleged acts of genocide.”One witness recounted, ‘The soldiers killed the male members of my family. They shot them first and then slit their throats. The courtyard was full of blood,'” lawyer Andrew Loewenstein told the court. “‘They killed my husband, my father-in-law and my two nephews of 15 and 8 years old. They even killed the child in the same way.'”FILE – Rohingya Muslims wait to cross the border to Bangladesh, in a temporary camp outside Maungdaw, northern Rakhine state, Myanmar, Nov. 12, 2017.Gambian Justice Minister Abubacarr Tambadou told reporters Tuesday he wants the International Court of Justice to order special measures to protect the Rohingyas until the genocide case is heard in full.”We are signatories to the Genocide Convention like any other state. It shows that you don’t have to have military power or economic power to stand for justice,” Tambadou said.There were protests in Myanmar against the court hearing. In refugee camps in neighboring Bangladesh, Rohingya Muslims held prayers as the case got under way.Refugee Lokman Hakim echoed the sentiment of many: “Aung San Suu Kyi knew about the genocide but she did not ask it to stop, so we want justice.”As state counsellor, Aung San Suu Kyi is head of Myanmar’s civilian government and is not directly responsible for the military. Her appearance at the court is part of a domestic political agenda, said Mark Farmaner of the Burma Campaign UK.”She’s using the nationalist card here to whip up support, but also it plays into another agenda she has, which is trying to persuade the military that she’s not a threat to them and that they should agree to further democratic reforms in the country,” Farmaner told VOA.Farmaner argues the civilian government is also guilty of genocide.”Aung San Suu Kyi is pursuing policies in the country which are killing Rohingya people every day. She’s denying them humanitarian aid from the international community. She’s restricting their access to health care. Rohingya children are not allowed access to higher education,” he said.Aung San Suu Kyi denies the accusations and has repeatedly claimed the military operations were a legitimate counterterrorism response to Rohingya attacks on security forces. She is expected to give evidence Wednesday.A ruling from the court to approve measures to protect the Rohingya is expected within weeks. A final ruling on the accusation of genocide could take several years.
 
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The sight of more than a dozen young men armed with machetes walking out of a burning village in Western Myanmar is the moment I realized that I was witnessing a genocide in progress.In the eight years I spent documenting a campaign of oppression against the country’s ethnic minority Rohingya Muslims, I had heard countless tales from victims who had endured or witnessed atrocities committed by Myanmar’s security forces.Now, I was witnessing it in real time during the tail end of a government-approved press tour to Rakhine state’s conflict zone in September of 2017.Two men, barefoot and wearing traditional longyis, stopped briefly on a dirt footpath in front of me as I filmed the destruction.A journalist asked what they were doing. Speaking a local dialect, one replied that they had been ordered by Myanmar’s Border Guard Forces (BGF) to burn the village.At their feet lay plastic jugs with diesel fuel. Behind them, orange flames devoured the bamboo huts in the now-empty hamlet of Gaw du Thara.Jugs of diesel fuel are seen on a path in the town of Maungdaw, Western Myanmar. (Photo: Steve Sandford / VOA)Reliable sources later told me that BGF and local militia had forced the Muslim residents out of their village that morning.It was a mix of bad timing and miscommunications by the media tour organizers that led to our press vans stopping on the stretch of road to witness the carnage first-hand.But journalists had been exposing details of the campaign of oppression against Rohingya since the start. Two Reuters journalists spent more than 500 days in prison for reporting on the killing of 10 Rohingya Muslim men and boys in Rakhine, in a case that drew international headlines. Still, the crackdown continued.Today, an estimated three-quarters of a million Rohingya have been forced across the border into Bangladesh, living in squalid camps.Decades of discriminationThis exodus to Bangladesh began after an armed group calling itself the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) staged a series of attacks on government security posts in the region in August of 2017.In the weeks that followed, the government carried out a massive campaign of collective punishment. The U.N.’s Independent International Fact-Finding Mission called it “grossly disproportionate to actual security threats” and said that “military necessity would never justify killing indiscriminately, gang raping women, assaulting children and burning entire villages.”The stateless Rohingya Muslim people in Myanmar’s Rakhine State were stripped of their citizenship under the 1982 Myanmar nationality law.Since then, they have faced decades of discrimination and abuse from the country’s regime.But it’s certainly not the first time that the Myanmar military’s been accused of crimes against humanity, directed against ethnic minority groups within the country.Rights groups have long documented how ‘Tatmadaw,’ as they are called locally, have carried out atrocities inside the country for more than five decades.Men seen burning huts in the town of Maungdaw, Myanmar. (Photo: Steve Sandford / VOA)The military’s use of rape as a weapon of war has been well documented in other ethnic regions.A Myanmar rights group published ‘License to Rape,’ a 2002 report that included details from 173 incidents of rape and other forms of sexual violence, involving 625 girls and women, allegedly committed by army troops in Shan state between 1996 and 2001.The rapes involved extreme brutality and often torture, such as mutilation and suffocation.Zipporah Sein, a prominent leader of the Karen Women’s Organization compiled her group’s report documenting systematic rape being committed by Myanmar’s against ethnic-Karen women. Sein told me in 2011 that she herself witnessed when a good friend was captured by soldiers, had her eyes gouged out in the village square, then was tied up and left to die.The pattern is disturbingly similar in other regions of the country.I recall in 2016 unable to hold back tears as I filmed interviews with dozens of young Rohingya women who had survived rape attacks by security forces. They also had been pushed to Bangladesh from Rakhine State in what many observers say was a smaller “trial balloon” military operation ahead of the massive 2017 campaign.There was not a dry eye in the room as human rights translators, interviewers and victims alike, broke down in the midst of the horrific accounts being recounted.Myanmar’s leader Aung San Suu Kyi, center, and Gambia’s Justice Minister Aboubacarr Tambadou, left, listen to judges in the court room of the International Court of Justice, in The Hague, Netherlands, Dec. 9, 2019.Aung San Suu Kyi’s track recordIn a recorded video address to a group of Nobel laureates in Canada in 2011, the Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi (ASSK) said Myanmar’s armed forces use rape to intimidate ethnic minorities and keep the Burmese people divided.  This week (starting Tuesday) Aung San Suu Kyi will appear at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to defend the very same army in the first of three international lawsuits that have been filed against Myanmar over brutal atrocities in 2016 and 2017.In 2017 more than 700,000 Rohingya fled Myanmar during a military operation.Although the UN has described it as “textbook ethnic cleansing”, Myanmar has denied large-scale killings by its forces.The case at the United Nations’ top court was brought by Gambia, with the support of the 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation, and accuses Myanmar of violating the 1948 Convention on Genocide. A judgement is expected to take years and will likely do little for the many people whose lives have already been destroyed by violence.But Gambia’s attorney general says this case is worth pursuing, even if justice moves slowly.“The case is to send a clear message to Myanmar and the rest of the international community that the world must not stand by and do nothing in the face of the terrible atrocities that are occurring around us,” said Abubacarr M. Tambadou.”It is a shame for our generation that we do nothing while genocide is unfolding before our own eyes.” 
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Experts say North Korea appeared to have conducted a fuel engine test on the ground, potentially for a long-range missile, in what Pyongyang claimed as “the test of great significance.”Michael Elleman, director of the Non-Proliferation and Nuclear Policy Program at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), said it is safe to assume North Korea conducted “a static engine test” but cannot conclude the type of engine tested based on currently available information.A static engine test means the engine was tested on the ground with a missile component but without launching an actual missile into the air.“The size of the engine, whether it was based on liquid or solid fuel, or the success of the test are impossible to know without more evidence, photographs,” said Elleman.  He added that it is also difficult to determine if the engine tested was “a new type or a test of an existing model.”North Korea said “a very important test took place at the Sohae Satellite Launching Ground” on Saturday afternoon, according to a statement issued on Sunday by the country’s official People watch a TV screen showing a file image of the North Korean long-range rocket at a launch pad during a news program at the Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, Dec. 9, 2019.Choi Hyun-soo, a spokesperson for South Korean Defense Ministry, on Monday said, “We are aware of North Korea’s announcement” without making a public assessment of the test.The spokesperson said Seoul is continuing to work closely with Washington to monitor activities around major test sites in North Korea including Dongchang-ri, the site of the Sohae facility.Bruce Bechtol, a former intelligence officer at the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency and now a professor of political science at Angelo State University in Texas, said it is difficult to determine what kind of engine North Korea tested because it broke with recent practice and did not release any photos of the test.Bechtol said the U.S. and South Korea governments may have images of the test. However, they have remained silent on the kind of weapons North Korea tested, he added.Ian Williams, deputy director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), expressed concern that the type of engine North Korea tested is “a larger solid fuel rocket engine” for a long-range missile.He said the next technology North Korea is probably looking to test is a long-range missile using a solid fuel engine because it had already tested a liquid fuel engine for an inter-continental ballistic missile (ICBM).  He said all the short-range missiles North Korea tested this year are propelled by solid fuel engines.“A big advance to them would be if they could get their longer-range missiles, move them into the use of solid fuel, which makes them much more operationally useful,” said Williams. Missiles using solid fuel engines are harder to detect because it takes shorter time to prepare than missiles using liquid fuel engines. Two years ago, physicist A man watches a TV screen showing a file image of the North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at his county long-range rocket launch site during a news program at the Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, Dec. 9, 2019. He added, “If the engine [North Korea] tested this weekend really was of an ICBM engine, and the test succeeded, then North Korea would pose a more serious threat to the United States in the future. And that would change the North Korean strategic position.”Days ahead of the test, activities were detected at Sohae Satellite Launching Station, according to satellite imagery captured by Planet Lab on Thursday, which was reported by CNN.North Korea has reportedly rebuilt the launch site after dismantling it partially when denuclearization talks with the U.S. began last year.The talks remain stalled without much progress made since the Singapore Summit held in June 2018 due to their differences.  Washington has been demanding Pyongyang take full denuclearization while Pyongyang wants Washington to relax sanctions first.  The two have remained locked in their position since the Hanoi Summit held in February.The most recent test came as North Korean ambassador to the United Nations said on Saturday that denuclearization is off the table in talks that he described as a “time-saving trick” to benefit a “domestic political agenda” of the U.S.Prospects for any talks with North Korea seem to be diminishing further as Pyongyang returned belittling U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday.Calling Trump “a heedless and erratic old man,” former North Korean nuclear negotiator Kim Yong-chol said, “We have nothing more to lose.”  He continued, “The time when we cannot but call him a ‘dotard’ again may come” through a statement released by the KCNA. Pyongyang called Trump a “dotard” when it exchanged threats and insults with Washington in 2017 while testing missiles. Trump resorted to calling Kim a “rocket man,” an expression he used in reference to Kim in 2017.In a separate statement issued by the KCNA on Monday, Ri Su-yong, vice-chairman of the Central Committee of North Korea ruling Workers’ Party, said, “Trump might be in great jitter, but he had better accept the status quo that as he sowed, so he should reap, and think twice if he does not want to see bigger catastrophic consequences.” Pyongyang’s two statements follow Trump’s Sunday Twitter message.  Trump said Kim “has far too much to lose, everything actually, if he acts in a hostile way” in response to North Korea’s test.Kim Jong Un is too smart and has far too much to lose, everything actually, if he acts in a hostile way. He signed a strong Denuclearization Agreement with me in Singapore. He does not want to void his special relationship with the President of the United States or interfere…. https://t.co/THfOjfB2uE— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 8, 2019Trump warned Kim not to jeopardize the “special relationship” with him or “interfere with the U.S. Presidential Election in November.On Monday, a State Department official said the U.S. plans to ask the United Nations Security Council to discuss North Korean provocations including the test on Saturday during its meeting this week. 
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Residents in parts of eastern Australia evacuated their homes on Tuesday as soaring temperatures and strong winds threatened to fan bushfires in a giant blaze north of Sydney, the country’s biggest city.Air quality in parts of Sydney plunged as the city awoke to another thick blanket of smoke, disrupting transport services and prompting health warnings from authorities.More than 100 fires are ablaze in New South Wales (NSW) and Victoria states in eastern Australia, many of which have been burning since November. The fires have killed at least four people, destroyed more than 680 homes and burned more than 2.5 million acres (1 million hectares) of bushland.After a brief respite over the weekend, conditions are set to worsen on Tuesday as temperatures top 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) and winds pick up, stoking fears that fires could spread to more populated areas.Such forecasts have heightened worries about a so-called megablaze burning north of Sydney.Stretching for more than 60 km (37.2 miles), the firefront in the Hawkesbury region, about 50 km north west of Sydney, could grow if the forecasted winds arrive, authorities have warned.While there is no official evacuation order, many locals have decided to leave their homes, Hawkesbury Mayor Barry Calvert told Reuters.”It is eerie, many people have decided to leave, and I’m going to do the same,” said Calvert.”I’ve been through this before about 20 years ago when I stood outside my house looking at flames 50 feet high, I decided then that I would leave early if it happened again.”Rural Fire Service (RFS) volunteers and NSW Fire and Rescue officers fight a bushfire encroaching on properties near Termeil, Australia, Dec. 3, 2019.While conditions are not expected to reach the higher “catastrophic fire danger” hit last month, authorities said the recent hot, dry weather has increased the expanse of potential fireground.”There are some that are much closer and with greater potential to impact on more densely populated or highly populated areas,” said NSW Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons.Keen to reassure locals, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said there were 111 aircraft ready to join firefighting efforts if needed.Bushfires are common in Australia’s hot, dry summers, but the ferocity and early arrival of the fires in the southern spring is unprecedented. Experts have said climate change has left bushland tinder-dry.The wildfires have blanketed Sydney – home to more than 5 million people – in smoke and ash for more than two weeks, turning the daytime sky orange, obscuring visibility and prompting commuters to wear breathing masks.Sydney’s air quality index readings in some parts of the city on Tuesday were 11 times the recommended safe levels, government data showed.The thick haze forced widespread transport disruptions, with ferries suspended and trains experiencing lengthy delays.”Remain inside with the windows and doors closed, preferably in an air-conditioned building,” the NSW state government’s health department said. 
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North Korea addressed new insults to U.S. President Donald Trump Monday, calling him a “heedless and erratic old man.”Pyongyang was responding to a Trump tweet saying that “Kim Jong Un is too smart and has far too much to lose, everything actually, if he acts in a hostile way.” Trump added that Kim “does not want to void his special relationship with the President of the United States or interfere with the U.S. Presidential Election in November.”Former North Korean nuclear negotiator Kim Yong Chol, said in a statement that his country has “nothing more to lose” even though “the U.S. may take away anything more from us, it can never remove the strong sense of self-respect, might and resentment against the U.S. from us.”Kim Yong Chol said Trump’s tweets clearly show that he is “bereft of patience” and the time may come “when we cannot but call him a ‘dotard’ again.”He leveled accusations that the Trump administration is attempting to buy time ahead of an end-of-year deadline set by Kim Jong Un for Washington “to salvage the nuclear talks.”Trump on Sunday warned North Korean leader Kim Jong Un against hostile military actions, even as Pyongyang announced it had conducted “a very important test” at a satellite launching site.”He signed a strong Denuclearization Agreement with me in Singapore,” the U.S. leader said. “He does not want to void his special relationship with the President of the United States or interfere with the U.S. Presidential Election in November. North Korea, under the leadership of Kim Jong Un, has tremendous economic potential, but it must denuclearize as promised. NATO, China, Russia, Japan, and the entire world is unified on this issue!” ….with the U.S. Presidential Election in November. North Korea, under the leadership of Kim Jong Un, has tremendous economic potential, but it must denuclearize as promised. NATO, China, Russia, Japan, and the entire world is unified on this issue!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) FILE – In this March 6, 2019 file photo, a man watches a TV screen showing an image of the Sohae Satellite Launching Station in Tongchang-ri, North Korea, during a news program at the Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea.The North Korean announcement came a day after CNN reported that Planet Labs, a commercial satellite imagery company, had detected activity at the Sohae Satellite Launching Station, including the image of a large shipping container.This year has been one of North Korea’s busiest in terms of missile launches. Saturday’s test comes as North Korea continues to emphasize its declared end-of-year deadline for the United States to change its approach to stalled nuclear talks.Pyongyang has carried out 13 rounds of short- or medium-range launches since May. Most experts say nearly all of the tests have involved some form of ballistic missile technology.Earlier this month, Trump, in answering reporters’ questions about North Korea at the NATO summit in London, said, “Now we have the most powerful military we’ve ever had and we’re by far the most powerful country in the world. And, hopefully, we don’t have to use it, but if we do, we’ll use it. If we have to, we’ll do it.”North Korea responded in kind. “Anyone can guess with what action the DPRK will answer if the U.S. undertakes military actions against the DPRK,” Pak Jong Chon, head of the Korean People’s Army, said on state media. “One thing I would like to make clear is that the use of armed forces is not the privilege of the U.S. only.”North Korea last tested an intercontinental ballistic missile in November 2017 and conducted a nuclear test in September 2017.In April 2018, Kim announced a self-imposed moratorium on ICBM and nuclear tests, saying North Korea “no longer need(s)” those tests. Recently, however, North Korean officials have issued reminders that North Korea’s pause on ICBM and nuclear tests was self-imposed and can be reversed. 
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