Author: Ohart

Reporting in India has never been without its risks, but journalists say attacks on the media during last week’s deadly communal riots between Hindus and Muslims in New Delhi show the situation is deteriorating.

One reporter was shot and survived, another had his teeth knocked out, and many more said Hindu mobs demanded proof of religion and tried to keep them from documenting vandalism and violence that included people attacking one another with axes, swords, metal pipes and guns.

Authorities have yet to provide an official account of what sparked the 72-hour clash that left 42 people dead and hundreds wounded, though tensions between Hindus and Muslims have been building for months over a new citizenship law. Nor have they addressed journalists’ allegations that they were singled out by Hindu mobs.

But experts and journalists say the attacks on reporters covering the riots — and censorship of critical content in the aftermath of the violence — are a sign of growing intolerance for independent reporting in India under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu-nationalist led government.

Anindya Chattopadhyay, a photographer for the Times of India newspaper, said that as he reached the scene of the riots Tuesday, a man approached him, offering to put a tilak, a mark indicating a person is Hindu, on his forehead.

The man said it would make his work easier. Chattopadhyay refused, but later, after he rushed to take pictures of a building on fire, he was approached by a group demanding to know whether he was Hindu or Muslim, threatening to remove his pants to check whether he was circumcised per Muslim custom.

“I folded my hands and pleaded with them to let me go, saying I was a lowly photographer,” Chattopadhyay recalled.

He noted that while journalists in India have always been targeted for their work, under Modi “the attackers are much more open, furious and fearless.”

Similar demands for proof of religion were made during 2002 riots in Gujarat, Modi’s home state and where he was the chief elected official at the time.

The state erupted in violence when a train filled with Hindu pilgrims was attacked by a Muslim mob and caught fire and 60 Hindus burned to death. In retaliation, more than 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, were killed in the state.

Modi was accused of tacit support for the rampage against Muslims, and was even banned by the U.S. from traveling there, though he was ultimately cleared by a court of wrongdoing and the travel ban was lifted.

Modi’s supporters saw the international criticism of him and pinned the blame for it on journalists and other critics, a feeling that continues today, said Ashutosh Varshney, a professor at Brown University and an expert on India’s history of riots.

“Right since 2002, Hindu nationalists have looked at journalists as part of the problem,” Varshney said.

He said Modi and his followers believe “critical media” is interfering with their plans to build a Hindu state.

Kuldeep Dhatwalia, a government spokesman and director of the federal Press Information Bureau, said he was not “aware of any complaints about press access.”

“It is not correct to link conditions of journalists for coverage of different incidents at different places,” he said.

Avowed Modi supporters have already attacked critical commentary of last week’s riots.

Mir Suhail, a Kashmiri cartoonist in New York, adapted a news photograph taken during the riots of a Muslim man crouched in supplication, his traditional garb splattered with blood, with a white-bearded man on his back practicing yoga poses.

Suhail had superimposed a stretching Modi from a video of his morning yoga exercise routine that the prime minister posted online in 2018 and was seen by millions of Indians.

Suhail’s animation was retweeted and praised, but also condemned.

By Thursday, a day after the riots came to an end, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter had removed Suhail’s cartoon, saying it violated community standards on hate speech.

This, Suhail said, is why he had to leave his job at a news organization in New Delhi.

“I can’t publish this cartoon,” he said. “I am also afraid that if I go back to India they will throw me in jail, because this is no big deal for them.”

Hotstar, India’s largest video streaming platform, also removed an episode of the American show “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver” that poked fun at Modi’s mega-rally with President Donald Trump, who made his first official visit to India last week. The comedian also criticized the Indian government’s response to the violence in New Delhi.

Ministry of Information and Broadcasting spokesman Saurabh Singh said the government “had nothing to do with” the censorship of the cartoon and episode.

Arvind Gunasekar, a reporter for New Delhi Television News, won’t be able to work again until after he has surgery to repair his jaw, which was shattered during the riots.

He and his colleagues were standing on an overpass Tuesday, using their cellphones to capture a Hindu mob tearing down the walls of a Muslim graveyard. One of the vandals spotted him and grabbed him by the collar, calling the others to join.

The blows came hard and fast as the group chanted pro-Hindu slogans.

Gunasekar’s colleague Saurabh Shukla ran his aid. Shukla showed the attackers the prayer beads hanging from his neck and shouted that he was a high-caste Hindu.

“I had to play that card or else they would have killed him. They were about to throw him over the (overpass),” Shukla said.

The mob made Gunasekar unlock his phone and delete the videos he had recorded.

“There are no more journalists here, only nationalists and anti-nationalists, according to our government,” he said. “And such identities are passed all the way down and we are ending up as victims at the hands of the polarized crowd.”

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Less than 24 hours after the United States signed a landmark deal with the Taliban to pave the way for peace in Afghanistan, its implementation has already hit the first speedbump. VOA’s Ayesha Tanzeem is in Doha following up on the developments. Here’s her report

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Former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, Pete Buttigieg is giving up his hopes of winning the White House in 2020.

Buttigieg’s campaign announced Sunday evening he is dropping out of the Democratic presidential race after a disappointing fourth-place finish in Saturday’s South Carolina primary, in which he won no delegates.

Buttigieg took off like a roman candle after he narrowly won the Iowa caucuses last month and finished a very close second in the New Hampshire primary.

But his message of moderation and unity along with his lack of a familiar name were soon overwhelmed by Bernie Sanders’ aggressive style and progressive ideas and Joe Biden’s experience and support from African Americans.

But at age 38, Buttigieg is young and has made a name for himself in Democratic circles, meaning he is unlikely to return to political obscurity.

Meanwhile, Biden, the easy winner in South Carolina faces an immediate new challenge from Sanders in this week’s Super Tuesday when 14 states hold primaries with more than 33% of the delegates up for grabs.

Biden, in three runs for the presidency, had never won a primary election until Saturday. But pre-election surveys show that Sanders, a self-declared democratic socialist, is handily leading in California, where the most delegates to the party’s midsummer national presidential nominating convention are at stake in the next round of voting. The polling shows Biden ahead in seven of the states with Tuesday contests, Sanders in six and Sen. Amy Klobuchar in the lead in her home state of Minnesota.

“It’s going to be very hard to make up ground in California,” Biden acknowledged Sunday on ABC News’s This Week. But he said, “I feel very good where it’s going” in other states, adding that he’s “not even certain” that he will be trailing Sanders in the overall convention delegate count after the Tuesday voting.

Biden declared that he can beat Republican President Donald Trump in November’s national election and “bring along (Democratic) candidates and win the Senate” that is now controlled by Republicans.

Also, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s name will appear on the ballots for the first time.
Sanders said on ABC that Biden “did well” in South Carolina. “We’ll see what happens Tuesday, but we have an excellent chance to win some of the largest states,” he said.

Some national Democratic figures have voiced concern that Sanders, who has called for a government-run national health care system and an end to the private insurance plans now used by most Americans to help pay their medical bills, would turn off voters with his left-wing political views and lead to Trump’s reelection to a second White House term.

Biden, Sanders Squaring Off in Next Democratic Presidential Voting

Biden wins South Carolina primary, but concedes it will be tough to overtake Sanders in California, the biggest prize in Tuesday’s voting

Sanders called Biden “a decent guy” and said that both of them of would support the eventual Democratic nominee against Trump. But Sanders said that he, and not Biden, would bring new voters to the Democratic party to defeat Trump, whom he called “a fraud, a liar who has undermined the democratic process” in Washington.

The mounting count of delegates to the national party convention is all important. The state-by-state Democratic primary contests award national convention representation based on the vote counts in the primary elections and caucuses, but candidates only win any delegates if they reach a 15% threshold in a given state.
Current projections show Sanders possibly reaching the national convention with a plurality of the delegate votes, but not a majority on the first ballot.

Sanders has argued that if he is close to a majority, the other Democratic  candidates should unite behind his candidacy, while Biden and other presidential aspirants have contended that the convention should then move to a second ballot where superdelegates (mostly party officials and elected Democratic officials) would be allowed to vote, allowing them to possibly deny Sanders the nomination.

Bloomberg, whose business information company has made him the 12th richest person in the world, has spent upwards of $400 million of his own money on his campaign. But by choice he skipped the voting in the first four primary contests.

Polling shows Bloomberg has some support for the Democratic presidential nomination race heading into the Tuesday voting, but often trailing both Sanders and Biden.

Other contenders are also looking for a breakthrough in the new contests, including Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Klobuchar, all of whom have had key moments in the spotlight during a lengthy run of debates among the Democratic challengers. But current polling shows none of the three would reach the Milwaukee convention among the leaders in the count of pledged delegates.

In the South Carolina vote, Biden won nearly 50% of the vote. Sanders was in a distant second place, with 19%. Tom Steyer, a billionaire and philanthropist who has invested substantial time and money campaigning in South Carolina, was in third place, with 11% of the vote, but after the result became known, ended his campaign.

Trump congratulated Biden after the South Carolina vote, but disparaged Steyer and Bloomberg’s candidacies.

“Tom Steyer who, other than Mini Mike Bloomberg, spent more dollars for NOTHING than any candidate in history, quit the race today proclaiming how thrilled he was to be a part of the the Democrat Clown Show. Go away Tom and save whatever little money you have left,” Trump said on Twitter.

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The government of Afghanistan has made no commitment to free 5,000 Taliban prisoners as stated in a pact signed between the United States and Taliban Islamic militants, President Ashraf Ghani said Sunday.

The Taliban demand for the release of its prisoners from Afghan jails cannot be a precondition to direct talks with the hard-line group, Ghani told a news briefing in the capital, Kabul.

Saturday’s accord between the United States and the Taliban said both were committed to work expeditiously to release combat and political prisoners as a confidence-building measure, with the coordination and approval of all relevant sides. 

Up to 5,000 jailed Taliban will be released in exchange for up to 1,000 Afghan government captives by March 10, the pact added.

…

Cambodian Rock Band, a play by Lauren Yee, tells the story of a Khmer Rouge survivor who returned to Cambodia for the first time in 30 years. The play that officially starts this week at the Signature Theater in New York City received high praise during previews. VOA Khmer’s Reasey Poch reports from New York City. 
 

…

A U.S. biomedical firm has announced it will begin additional clinical trials of remdesivir, so far the most promising potential drug for coronavirus, with clinical trials involving about 1,000 patients starting in March.

In a sign that the drug, invented by California-based Gilead Sciences, is gaining traction, a trial involving about 400 patients “with severe clinical manifestations of COVID-19” will skip the placebo step and instead enroll all of them in remdesivir treatment, with either five or 10 days on the drug.

Meanwhile roughly 600 patients “with moderate clinical manifestations of disease,” according to a Gilead statement, will be divided into three groups, with one-third receiving five days of remdesivir treatment, one-third receiving 10 days of treatment, and the remainder receiving “standard care alone,” which could include medicine for pain and fever, fluids, and oxygen, if needed.

In February, Gilead, working with Chinese authorities and medical scientists, initiated two clinical trials in Wuhan, where the outbreak was first reported, and a third “multicenter,” long-term trial, led by the University of Nebraska and “conducted in up to 50 sites globally.”

This fourth round of clinical trials will take place “at medical centers primarily across Asian countries,” the company said, “as well as other countries globally with high numbers of diagnosed cases.”

One goal of the new trial, a senior Gilead official told U.S. reporters, is to find out whether a shorter course of treatment will work. If so, “that automatically doubles the drug supply” while allowing hospitals to treat more patients.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the U.S. National Institutes of Health, mentioned remdesivir Thursday at a White House press conference with U.S. President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence.

Fauci said remdesivir has shown “anti-viral activity in vitro and in animal model.” He also said the trials underway would yield results “reasonably soon whether it works.

“And if it does, we will then have an effective therapy to distribute,” he said.

On Saturday, as the first fatality caused by COVID-19 was reported in the United States, Dr. Jeff Shuren of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said the agency is “dedicating all available resources to expediting the review of medical products, including diagnostics, to prevent the spread of this outbreak.”

Although the latest trials were announced after Gilead had gone through the process of rapid review and acceptance of remdesivir being filed as an investigational new drug for the treatment of COVID-19, the company points out that “remdesivir is not yet licensed or approved anywhere globally” and that Gilead is providing the drug to “qualified patients with COVID-19 on a compassionate use basis for emergency treatment outside of ongoing clinical trials.”

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Fears of an escalating conflict in Syria grew Friday as Turkish forces pounded Syria’s military in retaliation for the killing of 33 Turkish soldiers.

In the aftermath of the violence, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the country would no longer try to keep migrants from reaching Europe.  

Thousands of migrants have gathered at Turkey’s borders with Greece and Bulgaria. Greek police fired tear gas Saturday at migrants trying to cross into the country.

With Turkey already hosting over three-and-a-half million Syrians who fled the civil war, Erdogan has said his country can take no more.  

Idlib hosts over 3 million Syrians, the United Nations said this month. Nearly a million had been forced from their homes from recent fighting, many of whom are already on the Turkish border.  

In a move seen as putting pressure on the European Union, the spokesman of the ruling AKP Omer Celik declared Friday Turkey is “no longer able to hold refugees,” seeking to enter Europe. Local media reported free buses were being provided to take people to the border or sea crossing points to Greece.

“The Syrian border with Turkey is still extremely porous, and there is no guarantee those people will stay there with Assad breathing down their necks,” said analyst Atilla Yesilada of Global Source Partners. “You are essentially condemning these people to an eternal life of joblessness which offers them no future, and ‘what would you do if Assad tanks moved into these camps?'”

Ankara is looking to its Western allies to support its forces in Syria. “The international community must act to protect civilians and impose a no-fly-zone,” tweeted Fahrettin Altun, communications director at the Turkish presidency.

Turkey called for an emergency meeting of NATO Friday, but while receiving words of solidarity, no concrete measures of support were agreed on.

Russia’s and Turkey’s presidents spoke by telephone Friday but appeared to reach no agreement on cooling down either the rhetoric or the fighting.

The Kremlin said the leaders agreed on the need for “additional measures” to normalize the situation, and that there was the “possibility” of a summit soon.

“The two leaders will meet in-person as soon as possible,” said  Altun.  

Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin, while backing rival sides in the Syrian civil war, have been working closely to resolve the conflict.

But Thursday’s deadly airstrike is seen posing the biggest threat to the recent Turkish-Russian rapprochement.

“Turkish forces destroyed five Syrian regime choppers, 23 tanks, 10 armored vehicles, 23 howitzers, five ammunition trucks – as well as three ammunition depots, two equipment depots, a headquarters, and 309 regime troops,” Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar told reporters close to the Syrian-Turkish border.

Erdogan has issued an ultimatum for Damascus forces to, by Saturday, give up recent gains and retreat back behind a de-escalation zone agreed between Ankara and Moscow in 2018 in the Black Sea resort of Sochi.

U.S. President Donald Trump also spoke with Erdogan Friday. In a statement, the White House said Trump condemned the attack on Turkish personnel in Syria and “reaffirmed his support for Turkey’s efforts to de-escalate the situation in northwest Syria and avoid a humanitarian catastrophe.”

The statement added that Trump and Erdogan “agreed that the Syrian regime, Russia and the Iranian regime must halt their offensive before more innocent civilians are killed and displaced.”

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the United States is reviewing options to assist Turkey following the attack.

“We stand by our NATO Ally Turkey in the aftermath of the despicable and brazen February 27 attack on Turkish forces in Idlib, which resulted in the death of dozens of Turkish soldiers,” he said in a statement.

…

Ukraine’s State Bureau of Investigation, responsible for investigating high-level crime in that country, Thursday opened a criminal case concerning alleged pressure by then-U.S. vice president Joe Biden to get rid of Viktor Shokin, then Ukraine’s prosecutor general.

Biden, who served under former U.S. President Barack Obama, is running for the Democratic Party nomination to unseat U.S. President Donald Trump in November elections. Trump has claimed that Biden tried to have Shokin fired in 2015 in order to protect his son from prosecution.

Shokin`s lawyer, Oleksandr Teleshetsky, told reporters Thursday the move to open the case was made under a court order, based on a criminal complaint filed by Shokin.

He said that although the name “Biden” is present in the criminal complaint, the criminal case refers to an unnamed “U.S. citizen.” The lawyer said that based on public statements made by Biden, his client had good reason to believe that the former vice president ordered and instigated Shokin`s removal as prosecutor general.

Teleshetsky referred to a Biden statement at a 2018 Council on Foreign Relations event, when he talked about threatening to rescind a $1 billion U.S. government loan to Ukraine if Shokin were not fired.

Biden’s campaign, Ukrainian anti-corruption activists, and former Obama administration officials have long maintained that Biden`s demand was a part of an international campaign to remove the Ukrainian law enforcement official because he wasn`t actively pursuing corruption cases.

‘Means nothing’

Speaking of the new investigation, Kostiantyn Likarchuk, a managing partner in the Kyiv office of the Kinstellar law firm, told VOA, “Legally, that means nothing. If anybody reports a criminal offense, then goes to a court, and a court makes a decision that the State Bureau of Investigations has to register the probe, it would register it. It doesn`t mean that there are grounds for an investigation.”

“Ukrainian authorities have neither the capacity nor the skills required for the investigation of this kind. But in any event, to assume that Biden interfered with Shokin’s activity is absurd,” said Likarchuk.

Former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and a witness in the Trump impeachment inquiry William Taylor told VOA that he hopes the probe against Biden will be seen as “a normal law enforcement operation” and would not jeopardize the bipartisan support of Ukraine in Washington.

“What I have told my Ukrainian friends, over and over again, is that the most valuable strategic asset Ukraine has in the U.S. is this bipartisan support. It’s golden. Most issues in this city are in conflict; they are controversial; they don’t have bipartisan support. Ukraine has bipartisan support. And actions that are taken over there should not jeopardize that. Ukrainians don’t want to be involved in our politics, and we don’t want to be involved in Ukrainian politics. That should guide the Ukrainian government to be sure they’re not interfering in our politics,” Taylor said.

Ostap Yarysh of VOA’s Ukrainian Service contributed to this report.

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Concern about Iran’s worsening coronavirus outbreak has become so great in China, a key ally, that users of dominant Chinese microblog Sina Weibo have made it a top discussion item for days.

VOA reviews of Weibo’s “Hot Search” feature Friday and Saturday found that at least one Iran coronavirus-related story appeared in the microblog’s top 10 list of trending topics on both days, alongside other popular topics related to Chinese entertainment and domestic news.  

Iran’s health ministry said confirmed coronavirus cases in the country rose to 388 Friday from 245 a day before, while the death toll rose by eight to 34. The latest figures maintained Iran’s status as the country with the second-highest number of fatalities from the virus, after China, where it first emerged in December.

Early Saturday, China time, news of Beijing sending medical experts to Iran, its longtime economic partner and major energy supplier, was ranked seventh in Weibo’s Hot Search trends.  

Chinese Ambassador to Iran Chang Hua tweeted a photo Saturday morning, Iran time, showing the group of six Chinese experts, five in Red Cross uniforms, as they arrived at Tehran’s airport with a donated shipment of medical supplies.

50000✌✌ اولین محموله چین وارد ایران شد و کمک‌های بیشتر ارسال خواهند شد. قوی باش ایران. https://t.co/0oc5D2VIk3

— Chang Hua (@AmbChangHua) February 28, 2020

A day earlier, Chang quoted a tweet from the Iranian Embassy in Beijing, in which the Iranian mission posted photos of boxes that it said contained 50,000 Chinese coronavirus detection kits and breathing devices being prepared for a flight from Guangzhou to Tehran Friday night.

“Further assistance will be sent,” Chang wrote in a message quoting the Iranian Embassy tweet. “Be strong Iran,” he added.  

China also has sent 250,000 face masks to Iran in recent days. The Chinese government’s gestures of support for the Iranian people appeared to be well received by Weibo users, with many expressing solidarity with Iran.  

A Weibo user responded to a Thursday post by Hong Kong’s Wen Wei Po newspaper about the Chinese medical deliveries by saying: “(Our) #Iran #brothers have to hold on. Last time, Iran helped China and emptied its house for us. This time, it is our turn to support you!”

The man, surnamed Liang, is a verified Weibo user with 97,000 followers and serves as a general manager of Zhongying Building Materials Trading in Guangdong province. His praise of Iran for “emptying its house” was a reference to Tehran’s deliveries of 3 million masks to China by early February, as Beijing battled to contain its own coronavirus outbreak, the world’s most serious to date.

Another major theme of Chinese social media users’ reaction toward Iran’s escalating health crisis has been shock.

A screen grab of Weibo’s top trending topics early Friday China time showed the top item was news of Iran’s Vice President for Women’s and Family Affairs Masoumeh Ebtekar contracting the coronavirus. The eighth-highest topic was Iran’s former ambassador to the Vatican, Hadi Khosrowshahi, dying from the COVID-19 disease caused by the virus.

A Thursday Weibo post by China’s state-run Global Times newspaper about Ebtekar’s viral infection drew more than 6,000 reposts, 10,000 comments and 200,000 likes. Fewer than 60 of the comments were visible to the public, with the newspaper blocking the rest. Of those visible comments, most expressed shock that an Iranian official as senior as a vice president was infected with the virus, as well as hope that Iran could overcome the crisis soon.

Some Chinese Weibo users criticized U.S. sanctions that have hurt the Iranian economy as part of a U.S. policy of imposing “maximum pressure” on Tehran to end perceived malign behaviors. They said those sanctions have made it harder for Iran to cope with the coronavirus.

Other Weibo users were critical of Iran, echoing assessments by U.S. and U.N. officials that Iranian authorities have been underreporting the extent of coronavirus cases in the country.

Some users also said weaknesses in the Iranian health care system and shortages of medical supplies appear to have contributed to Iran’s relatively high ratio of virus deaths to confirmed cases.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has said it is ready to provide more aid to Iran through a Swiss humanitarian trade arrangement that is meant to ensure the aid goes to the people who need it. Washington has long accused Tehran of causing medical shortages by corruptly diverting aid to Iranian elites.  

This article originated in VOA’s Persian Service, in collaboration with VOA’s Mandarin Service and Extremism Watch Desk.
 

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As the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues to spread across the globe and countries are reporting new confirmed cases, the United States is closely monitoring and updating travel advisories.  
 
The State Department says when it comes to issuing a travel alert for Americans traveling abroad, it takes into account health risks, including current disease outbreaks or a crisis that disrupts a country’s medical infrastructure, as well as the issuance of a travel notice by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

There are four travel advisory levels: Level 4—do not travel; Level 3—reconsider travel; Level 2—exercise increased caution; and Level 1—exercise normal precautions.  

On Feb. 26, the State Department raised the travel advisory to level 3—reconsider travel—on South Korea.  The change comes after the CDC issued a Level 3 travel warning for people to avoid non-essential travel for South Korea, and after a U.S. soldier there tested positive for coronavirus.
 
The U.S.  is asking travelers who spent time in South Korea during the past 14 days and feel sick with fever, cough, or difficulty breathing to seek medical advice, and also to avoid contact with others.
 
Also on Wednesday, while maintaining a Level 4 warning or ‘do not travel’ to Iran (due to the risk of kidnapping and the arbitrary arrest and detention of U.S. citizens), the State Department updated information amid more confirmed cases of coronavirus and deaths in that country.  
 
“Several countries have closed their borders with Iran and/or suspended air traffic to and from Iran. As a result, commercial travel to and from Iran may become severely limited with little or no notice,” said the State Department.

The U.S. has advised against travel to Mongolia, a country that neighbors China, due to travel and transport restrictions.  The State Department has also allowed for the voluntary departure of non-emergency U.S. government employees and their family members.
 
The update comes after Mongolia’s government took several precautionary measures, including closing schools until March 30, the mandatory shutdown of restaurants and bars at midnight, and the prohibition of all public events such as concerts.  The country’s president, Battulga Khaltmaa, is also in quarantine after returning from a trip to China.
 
This week, the U.S. travel advisory on Italy was increased to Level 2 — exercise increased caution — after separate cases were confirmed in Tuscany and Sicily.  But the U.S. does not recommend canceling or postponing travel to Italy, a popular travel destination.  

Italy and Iran are among the countries with the largest numbers of coronavirus cases outside Asia.

 On Feb. 22, the travel advisory on Japan was raised to Level 2—exercise increased caution—after coronavirus infections on a cruise ship and an increase in cases confirmed in the country.
 
Thursday, Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe requested all schools to close from March 2 until the end of spring break, in a bid to stop coronavirus spreading.

At the 15th Novel Coronavirus Response Headquarters meeting, PM Abe stated that the government would put health and safety of children first and request all elementary, junior- and senior-high schools and special needs education schools to close from March 2 to the spring break. pic.twitter.com/PdZHLlZ1QK

— PM’s Office of Japan (@JPN_PMO) February 27, 2020

 
In another drastic move, Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido, which has seen the largest number of coronavirus cases in the country, declared a state of emergency on late Friday. The island is known for its volcanoes, natural hot springs and ski resorts.  
 
And as for whether the Summer Olympics in Tokyo will be canceled due to the coronavirus, the International Olympics Committee said a decision will be made around May.
 
The U.S. government already has a check-list for potential travelers to the sporting event set to open July 24 in Tokyo.
 
The following is a breakdown of travel advisories on countries and areas, as of Feb. 28, according to the State Department. 

Level 4: Do Not Travel

COVID-19 outbreak related updates: China, Iran.
Other non-coronavirus risk indicators, including terrorism, kidnapping, and armed conflict: Iraq, Mali, Central African Republic, Venezuela, Yemen, South Sudan, Burkina Faso, Syria, Somalia, Afghanistan, North Korea, Libya, North Korea, Afghan.

Level 3: Reconsider Travel

COVID-19 outbreak related updates: South Korea, Mongolia.
Other non-coronavirus risk indicators, including terrorism, kidnapping, and armed conflict: Pakistan, Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Niger, Nigeria, Lebanon, Guinea-Bissau, Chad, Sudan, Honduras, Haiti, Nicaragua.

Level 2: Exercise Increased Caution

COVID-19 outbreak related updates: Italy, Japan, Hong Kong, Macau.
Other non-coronavirus risk indicators, including crimes, civil unrest, and arbitrary enforcement of local laws: Ukraine, Guinea, Russia, Serbia, Timore-Leste, Brazil, Costa Rica, Bolivia, Nepal, Azerbaijan, Indonesia, Mauritania, South Africa, Belgium, Mexico, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, The Bahamas, Tajikistan, Dominica, Cuba, Chile, Ecuador, Peru, Spain, Papua New Guinea, Myanmar (Burma), El Salvador, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Malawi, Ethiopia, Cote d’lvoire, Uruguay, Netherlands, Madagascar, Egypt, Denmark, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sri Lanka, Germany, Kosovo, Guyana, Zimbabwe, Maldives, United Kingdom, Republic of the Congo, Jamaica, Dominican Republic, Uganda, Trinidad and Tobago, Philippines, Kenya, Colombia, Cameroon, Bangladesh, Algeria, Morocco, France, India, Guatemala, Turks and Caicos Islands, Eritrea, Antarctica, Belize, Tunisia, Israel, Jordan.

Level 1: Exercise Normal Precautions

Thailand, Palau, Solomon Island, Micronesia, Luxembourg, Australia, Slovenia, Montenegro, Poland, Croatia, Canada, The Kyrgyz Republic, Samoa, Armenia, Zambia, Namibia, Lesotho, Eswatini, Botswana, North Macedonia, Seychelles, Mauritius, Fiji, The Gambia, Rwanda, Equatorial Guinea, Cabo Verde, Bulgaria, Austria, New Zealand, French Guiana, Djibouti, Tonga, Kiribati, Ireland, Brunei, Belarus, Suriname, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Laos, Finland, Norway, Andorra, Hungary, Cyprus, Romania, Estonia, Slovakia, Latvia, Moldova, Ghana, Albania, Greece, Malta, Czech Republic, Iceland, Lithuania, Portugal, Benin, Togo, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain, Saint Kitts and Nevis, British Virgin Islands, Anguilla, Panama, Comoros, Turkmenistan, Saint Lucia, Malaysia, Georgia, Angola, Kazakhstan, Nauru, New Caledonia, Sweden, French Polynesia, Vanuatu, Barbados, Saint Vincent and The Grenadines, Montserrat, Antigua and Barbuda, Tuvalu, Grenada, French West Indies, Mozambique, Bhutan, Paraguay, Sao Tome and Principle, Gabon, Sint Maarten, Curacao, Cayman Islands, Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba, Bermuda, Aruba, Liberia, Cambodia, Vietnam, Taiwan, Singapore, Uzbekistan, Marshall Islands, Argentina.
 

…

Nigerian Health authorities  are preparing to handle any possible outbreak and urge citizens to remain calm.

“We have enough reagents to do the checking now, there are four laboratories in Nigeria that can test for this particular virus,” Health Minister Emmanuel Osagie said. “We also have a system for sample transport, so samples can be taken from somewhere and transported to a testing center within a few hours. So that is part of the network that we have prepared.”

The effort comes as officials confirmed the country’s  first case of the coronavirus.  Nigerian health authorities say the patient is a man from Italy — a country hit hard by the virus — who works in Nigeria and returned from the Italian city of Milan to Nigeria’s economic hub, Lagos, days ago.

This makes Nigeria the first country in sub-Saharan Africa to record a case of the virus, which is blamed for more than 2,800 deaths worldwide.

Health minister Osagie says they’re working with airline officials to identify other passengers who may have had contact with the infected patient, in order to prevent further spread.

“We are going to get the manifest and then do a contact tracing and find all the people who were there.” Osagie said.  “Usually we get their numbers and addresses and monitor them. We are not going to assume that all of them are OK or will fall sick, but advise anyone who has any symptoms to report and be monitored.”

The coronavirus was first reported in Wuhan, China, in December.

A recent assessment by the World Health Organization named Nigeria as one of 12 countries in Africa at high risk of the coronavirus threat, because of the high level of travel and trade between the West African country and China.

At an Abuja public briefing, WHO Health official  Dr. Clement Peter, admitted that the coronavirus issue is serious and challenging to contain.

“Indeed globally, the sounding from WHO is very clear,” he said. “We don’t know how this outbreak is going to go. While things should be stabilizing in China gradually, many countries are getting cases that have no link to China.”

The coronavirus has killed more than 2,800 people, and infected more than 83,000 in over 50 countries.

Nigerian health officials are hoping that no other cases turn up in Lagos, one of the largest and most densely populated cities in the world.

…

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo defended the Trump administration’s response to the spreading coronavirus and faced contentious questions from Democrats about an airstrike that killed Iran’s most powerful general.

Democrats on the House Foreign Affairs Committee expressed frustration that the panel was afforded only two hours to question Pompeo, who until Friday had gone months without a public appearance on Capitol Hill.

Rep. Gregory Meeks, a New York Democrat, recalled Pompeo’s “thundering” while in Congress about the need for testimony from one of his Democratic predecessors, Hillary Clinton.

But, “for you, sir, we had to move heaven and earth to get you here for just two hours,” Meeks said.

Rep. Brad Sherman, a California Democrat, asked sarcastically whether Pompeo would return to Congress next week to detail the steps the administration was taking against the coronavirus or whether he would again wait months for his next public appearance.

Democratic committee chairman Rep. Eliot Engel of New York called it an “embarrassment” that the panel had been given such a short time to question Pompeo. The secretary said he had briefed Congress more than 70 times on Iran, rejecting allegations that he had not been accessible.

The hearing was meant to focus on the Trump administration’s dealings with Iran and Iraq, but many of the questions centered on the coronavirus. Pompeo said he was confident that the administration had taken action to reduce the threat.

The COVID-19 illness caused by a new coronavirus that emerged in December in the Chinese city of Wuhan has stretched well beyond Asia. The global count of those infected as of Friday exceeds 83,000, with China still by far the hardest-hit country. Dozens of cases but no deaths have been confirmed in the United States.

Pompeo’s testimony comes three weeks after the conclusion of the Senate impeachment trial against President Donald Trump, who was accused of abusing his office by withholding aid from Ukraine while he was seeking an investigation into Democratic rival Joe Biden. Trump, who denied doing anything wrong, was acquitted by the Republican-led Senate.

The inquiry before House lawmakers featured the testimony of several foreign service officers, including some who’d been enlisted with trying to carry out the Republican president’s wishes and expressed concerns over it.

Though Pompeo was not a central figure to the impeachment inquiry, he’s faced criticism for not doing more to stand up for a workforce that’s been attacked by the president – including Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, who was ousted last spring after a push by the president’s allies.

…

The Russian-backed Syrian government push to capture the Idlib province in northwest Syria has worsened the humanitarian situation as nearly 1 million civilians have been forced to flee eastward to safer locations. VOA’s Zana Omer filed this report from Manbij, Syria.

…

The former mayor of Baltimore was sentenced to three years in prison Thursday on corruption charges related to sales of her self-published children’s book to companies with close ties to state and local government.

Catherine Pugh, a 69-year-old Democrat who resigned last year, was also ordered to pay around $1 million in restitution, according to a statement from the federal prosecutor for the US East Coast state of Maryland.

She pleaded guilty to fraud and tax evasion in November for raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars by selling her “Healthy Holly” children’s books to local organizations to which she had ties — sometimes without delivering the books.

“I accept total responsibility,” Pugh said in a video in which she expressed regret for tarnishing Baltimore’s image as the city of some 600,000 people grapples with a soaring crime rate, racial unrest and poverty levels that are among the highest in the country.  

But Maryland District Court Judge Deborah Chasanow said Thursday, “I have yet frankly to hear any explanation that makes sense.”

“This was not a tiny mistake, lapse of judgment,” she said, according to the Baltimore Sun newspaper. “This became a very large fraud. The nature and circumstances of this offense clearly I think are extremely, extremely serious.”

Book sales

The newspaper revealed last year that the University of Maryland Medical System spent $500,000 to buy 100,000 copies of Pugh’s “Healthy Holly” children’s books between 2012 and 2018, while she was a member of the health system’s board.

After first denouncing an investigation into the matter as a “witch hunt,” the former mayor then called the incident a “regrettable mistake” and returned $100,000 of the sales.

But other sales were uncovered, including to Kaiser Permanente insurance company, which said it paid Pugh $114,000 for “Healthy Holly” books from 2015 to 2018.

Kaiser had won a $48 million contract in 2017 to provide health insurance to city employees from 2018 to 2020.

Pugh, who was elected in 2016, finally quit her position in May 2019 after calls for her resignation intensified.  
 

…

In a landmark decision for the rights of smallholders, a leading Australian bank has agreed to pay more than 1,000 Cambodian families displaced by a sugar company it granted a loan to in 2011, even though the loan violated the bank’s stated human rights standards. 

ANZ Australia will pay the families with interest earned by the $40 million loan to Phnom Penh Sugar (PPS), a company owned by a conglomerate headed by Cambodian lawmaker and tycoon Ly Yong Phat, who is affiliated with the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP). 

At the time ANZ granted the loan through its Cambodian joint venture, ANZ Royal Bank, PPS had attracted international media attention following widespread allegations of its use of child labor and clashes with local human rights groups.

PPS did not respond to VOA Khmer’s requests for comment. 

At the heart of the dispute was the 2011 eviction of farm families, who allegedly received no compensation when PPS purportedly seized their holdings and homes in collusion with local authorities and Cambodia’s armed forces. At the time, plantations owned by Ly Yong Phat were spread across the Tbpong and Oral districts. They eventually occupied 23,000 hectares. 

Critics said his operations produced “blood sugar,” because of the violent forced evictions and other human rights abuses inflicted on the families. 

‘Huge difficulties’

Soeung Sokhom, a representative of the affected families in Cambodia’s Kompong Speu province, said he supported the outcome in a statement issued as part of the payment announcement.  

“We have experienced huge difficulties with our livelihoods since the sugar company took our land almost 10 years ago, and this contribution will greatly help our situation,” he said. “The whole affected community, including me, are deeply grateful that ANZ has resolved our complaint.” 

The bank did not disclose the exact amount it would pay the farmers, whose holdings varied in size. 

The agreement came five years after two nonprofits filed a complaint against the bank with a little-known entity within Australia’s treasury department, the nonjudicial Australian National Contact Point (ANCP). It oversees complaints about the behavior of Australian companies overseas based on guidelines for responsible corporate behavior set forth by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). 

Equitable Cambodia (EC), a nonprofit that since 2012 has worked to protect “all Cambodians from a protracted land-grabbing crisis,” filed the complaint.    

Inclusive Development International (IDI), a U.S. nonprofit based in Asheville, North Carolina, joined EC in filing the complaint. 

After filing the complaint, the two nonprofits had consistently called on ANZ to divest the profit from the loan and provide it to the families as reparations for their due diligence failings. 

‘Difficult to reconcile’

In a 2018 report, the ANCP found “there is some doubt in this case around the extent to which ANZ’s actual business practices aligned with its stated approach to human rights. … It is difficult to reconcile ANZ’s decision to take on PPS as a client with its own internal [human rights] policies.” 

In October 2018, the bank’s CEO, Shayne Elliott, told an Australian parliamentary committee this was “a dreadful situation” and that the bank would consider compensating the families.

ANCP negotiated the agreement, with talks continuing until earlier this month. 

In a joint statement issued Thursday with EC, Natalie Bugalski, IDI’s legal director, said, “This agreement sets an important precedent for the banking industry, and we welcome ANZ’s leadership in this regard. Going forward, all banks should recognize that they can’t look the other way when they loan money to corporations that abuse people’s rights and cause harm. If a bank contributes to adverse human rights impacts through its lending activities, it has a responsibility to contribute to a remedy.” 

David Pred, IDI’s executive director, told VOA Khmer by phone that the nonprofits and ANZ would continue to work “with the affected communities to identify the beneficiaries of this payment, the people who are affected by the Phnom Penh Sugar project, and ensure that all of these families receive the benefit of this agreement.” 

He described the amount the bank will pay as “significant.” 

In a statement by the three parties that was attached to the ANCP resolution, ANZ “acknowledges that its due diligence on the project funded by its loan was inadequate and recognizes the hardships faced by the affected communities.” 

“We congratulate Shayne Elliott and ANZ for doing the right thing by returning the revenue earned from the loan to affected families in Kampong Speu,” said Eang Vuthy, EC’s executive director. “This is an important recognition of the ongoing hardships that the communities have suffered all these years, and it will make a big difference for them. But this does not in any way replace Phnom Penh Sugar’s responsibility to fully compensate the communities for their damages.” 

ANCP praised the agreement in an accompanying statement: 

“Where a company has gained revenue in a manner inconsistent with the OECD guidelines, and that has resulted in parties being impacted, the payment of the revenues to those parties may be one way a company can comply with the requirements of the OECD guidelines.” 

‘Appalling record’

Pred pointed out, “This is only the second time out of more than 300 cases concluded in the 20-year history of the National Contact Point system when a complaint process has resulted in a concrete financial remedy for complainants. That’s an appalling record.” 

He continued, “We hope this outcome will help inspire a brighter future for corporate accountability, where the victims of corporate misconduct can expect legitimate complaints to result in effective remedies.” 

As part of the resolution, ANZ also agreed to review and strengthen its human rights policies, including its customer social and environmental screening processes and grievance mechanism.  

“We look forward to working with ANZ to establish an accessible and effective grievance mechanism for affected communities, and we urge other banks to follow suit,” Pred said. 

Last year, Friends of the Earth Australia issued a report finding Australia’s largest banks, including ANZ, the Commonwealth Bank, NAB and Westpac, had funded directly or indirectly companies accused of improperly acquiring land from local people, child labor violations and land clearing, according to The Sydney Morning Herald.

Phong Sokit of Kampong Speu province told VOA Khmer that the sugar company had seized about 25 hectares of land he had owned since 1996 in the Oral district. He said he had not heard about the compensation plan. 

Today, each hectare is worth about $10,000, he said. 

“I don’t know how they will solve how much to pay people,” Phong Sokit said. “Some have five hectares, some have 10 hectares that were bulldozed and grabbed. Some people have two or three hectares. … If the plan is to pay each an equal amount, I cannot accept it. Those who have more hectares of land can’t accept it.” 

Phong Sokit added, “It’s not clear yet what’s going to happen because the representatives who went to the meetings have not come back to tell the communities.” 

…

Malaysia’s decades-old political rivals Mahathir Mohamad and Anwar Ibrahim set out claims to lead the Southeast Asian country on Wednesday after Mahathir’s shock resignation as prime minister sparked turmoil.

The struggle between Mahathir, 94, and Anwar, 72, who formed a surprise pact to win a 2018 election, has shaped Malaysian politics for more than two decades and is at the root of the latest crisis.

Mahathir, the world’s oldest head of government in his role as interim prime minister, proposed a unified administration without political party allegiances at a time Malaysia faces a flagging economy and the impact of the new coronavirus.

“Politics and political parties need to be put aside for now,” Mahathir said in a televised message. “I propose a government that is not aligned with any party, but only prioritizes the interests of the country.”

Anwar later said he opposed forming a “backdoor government” and that three parties from the former Pakatan ruling coalition had proposed his name to the king as candidate for prime minister. “We wait for the decision of the king,” he told a news conference.

To try to end the crisis, Sultan Abdullah Sultan Ahmad Shah has been meeting all 222 elected members of parliament over two days.

Those in the meetings said they were asked to name their favored prime minister or whether they wanted fresh elections. Anwar’s Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR), or the People’s Justice Party, has 39 seats and alliance partners could potentially give it another 62.

While some politicians have openly voiced support for Mahathir to stay in office, it was not clear whether enough of them would give him their backing.

Political Tangle

The volatile relationship between Anwar and Mahathir helped prompt the latest crisis after Mahathir resisted pressure to set a date for a promised transfer of power to Anwar made ahead of the 2018 election.

As well as personal relationships, politics in Malaysia is shaped by a tangle of ethnic and religious interests. The largely Muslim country of 32 million is more than half ethnic Malay, but has large ethnic Chinese, Indian and other minorities.

A unity government cutting across party lines could give Mahathir greater authority than during a spell as prime minister from 1981 until his retirement in 2003.

But the idea was rejected on Tuesday by an alliance of four parties including the United Malays National Organization (UMNO), which ruled Malaysia for six decades until being defeated by Mahathir’s coalition in 2018.

The four parties said they had told the king they wanted a new election instead. After their election defeat under former prime minister Najib Razak, those parties’ fortunes have been on the rise while the Pakatan coalition of Mahathir and Anwar has lost five by-elections

Anwar was Mahathir’s deputy and a rising political star when Mahathir was prime minister the first time but they fell out. Anwar was arrested and jailed in the late 1990s for sodomy and corruption, charges that he and his supporters maintain were aimed at ending his political career.

…

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi appealed for calm on Wednesday after days of clashes between Hindus and minority Muslims over a controversial citizenship law in some of the worst sectarian violence in the capital in decades.

Twenty people were killed and nearly 200 wounded in the violence, a doctor said, with many suffering gunshot wounds amid looting and arson attacks that coincided with a visit to India by U.S. President Donald Trump.

Police and paramilitary forces patrolled the streets in far greater numbers on Wednesday. Parts of the riot-hit areas were deserted.

“Peace and harmony are central to our ethos. I appeal to my sisters and brothers of Delhi to maintain peace and brotherhood at all times,” Modi said in a tweet.
Modi’s appeal came after a storm of criticism from opposition parties of the government’s failure to control the violence, despite the use of tear gas, pellets and smoke grenades.

Sonia Gandhi, president of the opposition Congress party, called for the resignation of Home Minister Amit Shah, who is directly responsible for law and order in the capital.

The violence erupted between thousands demonstrating for and against the new citizenship law introduced by Modi’s Hindu nationalist government.

The Citizenship Amendment Act makes it easier for non-Muslims from some neighbouring Muslim-dominated countries to gain Indian citizenship.

Critics say the law is biased against Muslims and undermines India’s secular constitution. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party has denied it has any bias against India’s more than 180 million Muslims.

Reuters witnesses saw mobs wielding sticks and pipes walking down streets in parts of northeast Delhi on Tuesday, amid arson attacks and looting. Thick clouds of black smoke billowed from a tyre market that was set ablaze.

Many of the wounded had suffered gunshot injuries, hospital officials said. At least two mosques in northeast Delhi were set on fire.

On Wednesday, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) said in a tweet that it was alarmed by the violence and it urged the Indian government “to rein in mobs and protect religious minorities and others who have been targeted.”

…

Iran’s growing coronavirus outbreak has triggered more angst in the country, preventing thousands of visiting Pakistanis from returning home and fueling fears of contagion in prisons.

At least 5,000 Pakistanis have been stuck in Iran since authorities in the Pakistani province of Baluchistan closed the border with their western neighbor Sunday, according to a provincial government spokesman who spoke to VOA Deewa. In a Monday phone interview, Liaquat Shahwani said the stranded Pakistanis include Shiite pilgrims, traders and other visitors.

A group of stranded Pakistani traders expressed concern about their plight in several videos that they apparently filmed Monday and sent to VOA Deewa as they were taking a bus toward the Iran-Pakistan border. VOA could not independently verify the authenticity of the clips.

In one video, a Pakistani man who identified himself as Haji Taj Mohammad Malakhel from the city of Quetta said he was among 17 businessmen on the bus ride from Isfahan in central Iran to Zahedan in the southwest. He said they decided to try to go home due to concerns about the coronavirus spreading in Isfahan, where Iranian authorities have confirmed two cases.

Another video of the bus ride showed a view of the road outside. It appeared to have been filmed on an eastbound road in Isfahan province, probably near the town of Toodeshk.

“We appeal to Pakistan’s prime minister and Baluchistan’s chief minister to accommodate us at the border with Iran,” Malakhel said. “Iranian authorities say we can leave [Iran] when Pakistan gives them permission [to let us cross the border], so kindly let us go back to our homes because our children, brothers and sisters are waiting for us in Quetta.”

Baluchistan’s provincial disaster management authority (PDMA) has set up a tent camp in the Pakistani border town of Taftan to accommodate and quarantine more than 200 Pakistanis who crossed the border from Iran before it was closed.

Provincial government spokesman Shahwani said Pakistani officials have asked Iran to not to let any more Pakistanis cross into Taftan unless Iranian authorities issue them a document certifying that those people are free of the virus. Document holders would be allowed through the border crossing and quarantined at the same Taftan tent camp for 14 days, he said.

Visited Taftan today, Area Bordering Iran to review pre-cautionary arrangements made by PDMA,Health depand Distt: Administration against #CoronaVirus. Situation is satisfactory. Pray Almighty to keep our beloved Pakistan ?? safe from every kind of Disaster. pic.twitter.com/iTO2Wj5INo

— Meer Zia ullah Langau (@MeerLangau) February 25, 2020

In a Tuesday visit to Taftan, Baluchistan province’s home affairs minister Meer Zia Ullah Langau said he was satisfied with the safety precautions taken in the area.

One of the Pakistani traders who was on the bus journey from Isfahan later told VOA Deewa that the group had arrived in Zahedan on Tuesday and was staying at a local hotel. “No one tells us what is going on. We are very worried and don’t know how long we will be here,” he said.

There was no word on whether or when Iranian authorities would provide documents to the stranded Pakistanis to certify that they were healthy enough for Pakistan to let them back in.

In another development, Iran’s judiciary faced growing calls to grant prison furloughs to political dissidents due to public fears about the virus spreading quickly inside prisons.

A Tuesday report by the New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) said relatives of prisoners of conscience wrote an open letter to Judiciary Chief Ebrahim Raisi appealing for the furloughs to be granted “as soon as possible to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe.”

تست کرونای من مثبت شد. این پیام را در شرایطی می‌دهم که چندان امیدی به ادامه‌ی حیات در این دنیا را ندارم:
آقای رییسی
خانواده‌های زندانیان امنیتی و سیاسی تقاضا دارند برای جلوگیری از شیوع بیماری به زندانیان امنیتی و سیاسی مرخصی بدهید تا کنار خانواده‌ها این اپیدمی را پشت سر بگذارند.

— محمود صادقی (@mah_sadeghi) February 25, 2020

Outgoing Iranian lawmaker and government critic Mahmoud Sadeghi, who used Twitter on Tuesday to announce that he had contracted the coronavirus, also used his tweet to echo the pleas of political dissidents’ relatives to let the detainees return to their families to avoid potential exposure to the virus in prison.

In Tuesday’s edition of VOA Persian’s Straight Talk call-in show, Iranian global health scholar Kamiar Alaei said there is a high risk of virus contagion in Iranian prisons due to people being kept in closed environments 24 hours a day.

“I would advise eliminating all visitations [to prisons] for two weeks, and if there is a need for someone to make a prison visit, do it from behind glass windows,” said Alaei, co-president of the Institute for International Health and Education in Albany, New York.

He also said it would make sense for Iranian authorities to grant prison furloughs now, because next month’s Persian New Year is approaching and prisoners usually get some time off for the holiday.

“What is important is to reduce the concentrations of people,” Alaei said. “Whenever lower numbers of people are gathered in any environment, the contagion risk is reduced.”

This article originated in VOA’s Persian Service, in collaboration with the VOA News Center and Extremism Watch Desk. Arshad Ali of VOA Deewa and Arash Sigarchi of VOA Persian contributed to the report.
 

…

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov decried what he terms the “double standards” employed at the U.N. Human Rights Council in favor of Western democratic values, at the expense of what he calls the legitimate sovereign rights of nations that do not fall within the Western orbit.

Lavrov did not hide his disdain Tuesday at the so-called country-specific resolutions adopted by the Council, saying the resolutions had become an increasingly popular pretext to interfere in the internal affairs of sovereign states.   

The Russian foreign minister criticized the imposition of unilateral sanctions often used by Western countries to topple governments.

“This harmful practice leads to exacerbating confrontation and ultimately restricts the ability of ordinary citizens to exercise their legitimate rights,” he told the Council. “The reliable securing of rights and freedoms is incompatible with double standards. And in this context, one can wonder at the sight that some Western partners, who declare themselves champions of democracy, deliberately turn a blind eye to the outrageous oppression of human rights in the Ukraine.”    

Lavrov didn’t offer names, though the European Union, the United States and other countries have imposed sanctions on Russia and the Crimea following Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine in February 2014.  

The U.N. Human Rights Office reports the war has resulted in the deaths of some 13,000 people, a quarter of them civilians. Another 30,000 people have been injured, and 1.5 million people have been internally displaced in Ukraine since the start of the conflict and Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.

Lavrov also lashed out at Western powers for their support and justification of military actions committed by what he called “radical” and “terrorist” groups in Idlib in northwestern Syria.

“It is difficult to find any other explanation for calls for peace agreements to be concluded with bandits as we see regarding the situation in Idlib,” he said. “That is not caring for human rights. That is capitulating before terrorists or even encouraging their activities in violation of international treaties and numerous U.N. Security Council resolutions.”  

Lavrov’s observations come just as the United Nations has warned of a potential bloodbath of hundreds of thousands of civilians in Idlib if Russian-backed Syrian government forces do not stop their indiscriminate carpet-bombing of the region.

Lavrov urged the Human Rights Council to resolutely renounce what he called double standards. He said that’s why his government has decided to run for a seat on the 47-member Council for its 2021-2023 term.   

Russia lost its bid to become a member in 2016 after a campaign by rights groups over its bombing of Syria.
 

…

Most Americans say they are likely to participate in the 2020 census, but some doubt that the U.S. Census Bureau will keep their personal information confidential, a new poll shows.
   
The poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds 7 in 10 Americans say it’s extremely or very likely they will participate in the census this year by filling out a questionnaire. Another 2 in 10 say it’s somewhat likely.
   
That’s higher than what the Census Bureau predicts _ a self-response rate of 6 in 10 people. But the bureau’s past research shows that people say they are going to participate in the census at a higher rate than they actually do.
   
“People respond to a survey question as they think they are expected to behave,” Kenneth Prewitt, a former Census Bureau director in the Clinton administration, said in an email.
   
The poll shows that older, white and highly educated adults express greater certainty that they will participate than younger adults, black and Hispanic Americans and those without college degrees.
   
It also shows that the more partisan people are, the more likely they are to participate. At least 7 in 10 Democrats and Republicans are very likely to answer, compared with about half of Americans who don’t identify with or lean toward either party.
   
“It might be that they understand the importance of the census in distributing political representation and want to make sure they get their fair share,” John Thompson, a former director of the U.S. Census Bureau in the Obama administration, said in an email.
    
The 2020 census will help determine how $1.5 trillion in federal spending is distributed. It will also determine how many congressional seats each state gets, as well as the makeup of legislative districts in a process known as redistricting.
   
People can start answering the questions in mid-March, either online, by telephone or by mailing in a paper form.
   
“I think it’s important. It’s a civic duty,” said Quintin Sharpe, a 21-year-old college student, who’s studying business at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.
   
Compared with the share saying they’ll participate, 57%, say it’s highly important to them to be counted in the census. About a quarter say it’s moderately important.
   
The poll shows about a third of Americans are very or extremely confident that the U.S. Census Bureau will keep their personal information confidential, while roughly the same share say they are moderately confident. About another third have little to no confidence in the agency to keep private information private, even though the bureau is legally required to do so.
   
About a quarter of Americans report a great deal of confidence in the people running the U.S. Census Bureau, and roughly two-thirds say they have some confidence.
   
Joe Domas, a 57-year-old carpenter in Paris, Tennessee, said he plans to fill out the census form but won’t answer every question. The questionnaire asks how many people live in a household; whether their home is owned or rented; the age, race and sex of every person living in the home; and how they are related.
   
“I don’t divulge a lot of personal information. I just give them a head count, pretty much,“ Domas said. “I’m not into government intrusion, and the way the internet is, people leak information.”
 
 A majority say they have heard or read about the count of every person living in the U.S., the largest peacetime operation the federal government undertakes, but just 2 in 10 say they know “a lot.” About a third say they have heard or read little or nothing at all.
   
That will likely change after the Census Bureau expanded its advertising campaign last week. The goal of the $500 million education and outreach effort is to reach 99% of the 140 million U.S. households with messages about the importance of participating in the 2020 census.
   
Many of those who say they will take the survey this year think they will complete it online. Close to half say that’s their likely format, with another 2 in 10 saying they expect to fill out and mail in a paper questionnaire. Just 4% say they prefer phone, but 30% say they don’t know yet how they will respond. This is the first decennial census in which most participants are being encouraged to fill out the form online.
   
Gil Parks, a 60-year-old retired financial planner from Stephenville, Texas, said he still hasn’t decided if he will answer questions online or use the paper form. Parks and his wife often drive to a ranch they own an hour south of where they live to keep tabs on building projects and baby calves.
   
“If we have a paper form, my wife could fill it out while we are driving down there and driving back,” Parks said.
   
Majorities across racial and ethnic groups say they are highly likely to participate, but about half of white Americans are “extremely” likely, compared with about 3 in 10 black and Hispanic Americans.
   
About 8 in 10 college-educated Americans, but just about two-thirds of those without a degree, say they are highly likely to participate.
   
Similarly, roughly 8 in 10 adults older than 45 say they are very likely to complete a census questionnaire, compared with just over half of younger adults.
   
There’s also a significant age gap in the preferred form of answering the questions. Just about a quarter of adults ages 60 and older who will participate say they will take the survey online, compared with more than half of those who are younger. Older adults are also somewhat more likely than younger adults to express high confidence in the Census Bureau to keep their information private, 37% among those 45 and older and 25% among younger adults.
   
“Getting accurate data is important,” said Parks, who also is chair of the local Republican Party. “We need to know who is here, and what not.”

…

Spacesuits are extremely difficult to move in, making it challenging for astronauts to do basic tasks like picking up a rock. A NASA partner has teamed with a group of Norwegian engineering students to test a glove that controls equipment with small hand gestures. Matt Dibble has this story

…

The United States wants Afghan President Ashraf Ghani to defer his second-term inauguration over concerns it could inflame an election feud with his political rival and jeopardize U.S.-led peacemaking efforts, two sources familiar with the matter said on Monday.

Ghani claimed victory last week in a disputed Sept. 28 election and plans to take the oath of office on Thursday, an Afghan official said. His opponent, Abdullah Abdullah, Ghani’s former deputy, also proclaimed himself the winner and is planning a parallel inauguration, according to Afghan media reports.

The competing claims, neither of which Washington has recognized, threaten a U.S.-led peace process that got a boost on Saturday with the start of a week-long reduction in violence that is to culminate on Saturday with the signing of a U.S.-Taliban deal on a U.S. troop withdrawal.

The U.S.-Taliban agreement is to be followed by inter-Afghan talks on a political settlement to end decades of war.

But the Ghani-Abdullah feud threatens to further complicate the naming of a delegation to negotiate with the insurgents, a process already mired in delays and disputes.

A source familiar with the matter said that because of those concerns, U.S. Special Representative Zalmay Khalilzad, who has been in Kabul since last week, wants Ghani to delay his planned inauguration to a second five-year term.

The U.S. State Department and White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The Afghan Embassy in Washington declined comment.

President Donald Trump has made the withdrawal of the roughly 13,000 U.S. service members from Afghanistan a major foreign policy objective. An agreement with the Taliban to end America’s longest war could boost Trump’s re-election prospects.

A former senior Afghan official said Khalilzad, an Afghan-born veteran U.S. diplomat, was pressing Ghani to postpone the ceremony and trying to persuade Abdullah to do the same to preserve the peace process.

The sources requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

Vote-rigging allegations

The former senior Afghan official said that even if there was an “inclusive” delegation chosen to talk with the Taliban, the Ghani-Abdullah feud could “spill into the negotiating process.”

U.S. allies also appeared to share U.S. concerns that the dispute could hamper the peace process, with NATO’s civilian representative to Kabul calling on Monday for “calm, dialogue and compromise by all political leaders.”

Writing on Twitter, Nicholas Kay urged “all parties to prioritize the peace process and national unity. NATO does not support actions by any party that increase tensions or the risk of violence.”

There are about 4,000 non-U.S. NATO troops in Afghanistan. China, which has a border with Afghanistan, said it welcomed a “possible” U.S. Taliban deal.

The official Xinhua news agency quoted Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian as saying that foreign forces should be withdrawn in a way that avoids “a security vacuum, which terrorist organizations may take advantage of.”

The Sept. 28 presidential election vote-counting process was beset by allegations of rigging, technical problems with biometric devices used for voting and other irregularities.

The Independent Election Commission said on Feb. 18 that Ghani had won 50.64% of the vote, while Abdullah was named the runner-up with 39.52%.

Abdullah rejected the results, and said he would name his own Cabinet. Last weekend, he named loyalists as governors to two provinces.

U.S. forces invaded Afghanistan in 2001 to topple the Taliban rulers who provided the sanctuary in which the al Qaeda militant group planned the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington that killed almost 3,000 people.

The U.S. troops stationed in Afghanistan are part of a U.S-led NATO mission that is training and assisting Afghan forces and carrying out counterterrorism operations to prop up the Kabul government and prevent an al Qaeda resurgence.

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Technology is finally able to make food appear. With help from a local NGO, hungry kids in Kenya can now get a hot lunch for a few pennies with just a tap of their wrists. It happens using short-range Wi-Fi, as VOA’s Arash Arabasadi reports.

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The Afghanistan health ministry has confirmed the country’s first coronavirus case. Government Health Officials say the victim is from Herat and has recently travelled to Afghanistan from Iran. The ministry announced a state of emergency in Herat Province. VOA’s Khalil Noorzai and Hikmat Sorosh have contributed to this report narrated by Bezhan Hamdard. 

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Vietnam is sharply divided on how long to close schools because of the coronavirus, which has prevented parents from going to work and threatens further economic damage. Supporters want to keep students at home until April, while opponents say the panic is overblown.

The biggest population is in Ho Chi Minh City, where government leaders have proposed extending the public school closures all through March and then continuing the semester into what would usually be a summer break. The city leaders also recommended making this a nation-wide policy.

Le Thanh Liem, Vice Chair of the People’s Committee of Ho Chi Minh City, tasked the city education department with keeping the disease from reaching the schools.

The department will “strictly and fully implement measures to prevent and treat the new coronavirus, preventing the spread of an epidemic in the school environment,” he wrote in an official letter.

Those who agree with the government decision see the coronavirus as a collective action problem, requiring people to keep physical contact at a minimum. Pham Khanh said it is better to be safe than sorry.

“I decided on my own to take my children out of school,” she said. “There is a long incubation period, I will wait two weeks before I do anything.”

She was referring to the two weeks when doctors believe that people, if they have the coronavirus, would show symptoms.

While parents are keeping their children at home, another kind of school is catching on: online classes. After some initial excitement, with foreign governments from the U.S. to Britain promoting e-learning in Vietnam, the trend stalled for years, because of regulatory hurdles and lack of internet access.

“E-learning deployment within the academic system in Vietnam has not really taken off, mostly due to the over-focus on hardware and remaining confusion between digitization of educational contents and online education,” Alice Pham wrote in a 2018 report for the Consumer Unity & Trust Society think tank.

However the coronavirus may be a factor that finally drives e-learning into the mainstream in Vietnam. This month students are increasingly doing homework that their schools send to them over the internet, as well as turning to startup companies such as Yola, Topica, and Mindx, which let Vietnamese learn through smartphone apps or web videos.

Supporters say Vietnam should see the school closures as an opportunity for children to get some experience as self-directed learners, through online lessons.’

“Definitely in Vietnam this model needs to spread as soon as possible,” writer Nguyen Hong wrote in a commentary for the Thanh Nien newspaper.

Besides the benefit to education technology companies, the coronavirus has meant a windfall for some other companies as well. Foreign buyers such as Nintendo and Apple that are struggling to source from China are increasingly turning to suppliers in Vietnam to make their products.

However most companies, and households, are waiting for a return to normal.

After the Lunar New Year holiday ended in late January, most Vietnamese welcomed the school closures as a logical precaution against the coronavirus. However as the weeks drag on, parents now struggle with what to do with their school age children.

Le Hang, a 40-year-old mother, decided to take her children to the hair salon where she works. 

“When there aren’t many customers, I run over to feed and take care of the children,” she said.

However the most vulnerable, such as factory workers, are those who can’t afford babysitters, aren’t allowed to bring children to work, and can’t afford the lost income of skipping work. Some send the children to stay with neighbors or relatives, while others consider the latch-key life.

Nguyen Viet, a tour guide, doesn’t know what to do with his daughter.  “The unexpected break is too much to bear for us,” he told newspaper Vnexpress.

What’s more, some believe the extended school closures are an overreach. Vietnam has had more than a dozen coronavirus cases and no fatalities. Most of the over 2,000 people who died were in China, and most of them were senior citizens or in poor health already. By comparison there have been more than 16,000  flu associated  deaths  reported in the United States  so far this flu season according to estimates of the U.S. based Centers for Disease Control.   “I believe that with the solutions currently being applied, children will be safe at school,” said Le Kien, a father in Hanoi.  

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China and 10 Southeast Asian countries are linking up to fight a deadly coronavirus outbreak that’s threatening tourism and trade ties.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), a negotiating bloc with members that dispute Chinese maritime sovereignty claims and worry about the pace of Chinese investment abroad, signed a healthcare resolution with China February 20. The two sides agreed to accelerate information exchanges, combat any fake virus-related news and support small businesses that are hobbled by the outbreak.

China and ASEAN are “major tourist destinations” for each other with annual travel exceeding 65 million visits, the bloc said in a statement. China is also ASEAN’s largest trading partner. ASEAN is the second largest trading partner of China. 

“This is a good occasion to promote solidarity among countries in the region,” said Eduardo Araral, associate professor at the National University of Singapore’s public policy school. 

“It’s unfortunate that it would have to take a virus to bring ASEAN and China together,” he said, but “that’s a good pause for the politics as usual in the region.”

The coronavirus discovered in December in the central Chinese city Wuhan is spreading world wide.

China is the hardest hit, but ASEAN nations report smaller caseloads, especially in Singapore. The outbreak has led to the cancellation of thousands of flights, flattening tourism in parts of Southeast Asia that depend on foreign travel. Work stoppages in China this month also weakened Chinese manufacturing supply links in Southeast Asia.

Action plan

Foreign ministers from China and the Southeast Asian countries resolved at the February 20 meeting in Laos to step up sharing of information and best practices “in a timely manner” while pressing for common people to get accurate information rather than “fake news,” the parties said in a statement.  

Any discovery in treating the disease, formally called COVID-19, should be shared, the statement adds. “If anything, I think Singapore of course with its medical advances and so on would be in a better position, but of course Singapore itself is also afflicted with the outbreak,” said Oh Ei Sun, senior fellow with the Singapore Institute of International Affairs.  

They further agreed to rely more on cross-border training to stop any new disease threats. Small companies hurt by business losses caused by the outbreak will get ASEAN-China help in doing internet promotions, the resolution says. People are going out less often than usual in much of Asia to avoid catching the disease but still place orders online.

ASEAN and China will add a third formal health forum to their meeting calendar this year in view of the outbreak, the statement says.  

“Hopefully there’s a practical lesson to be learned, which is that China and ASEAN can work out some solutions on communication, control, quarantine standards for the next virus erupts…whatever it is,” Araral said.

Dependent but not unified

The ASEAN region that covers a total population of about 630 million depends on tourism from China, with countries such as Vietnam reporting steady increases in arrivals over the past few years. China exports electronics to Southeast Asia, where foreign-invested factories buy Chinese raw materials and send finished products back to the Chinese market.

Malaysia, to name just one example, is keen to “restore” its tourism industry, said Oh, a Malaysian national. From January to September 2019, China was Malaysia’s third biggest source of foreign tourists with 2.41 million arrivals after Singapore and Indonesia, the New Straits Times website says.  

Before the outbreak, encounters between China and ASEAN this year were expected to be tense.

Vietnam is current chair of the bloc  and leaders in Hanoi particularly resent Beijing’s maritime expansion.

ASEAN is pressing China for a joint code of conduct that would help prevent mishaps in the South China Sea where Beijing’s occupation of contested islets riles association members Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Those four countries have long disputed China’s maritime claims. China had resisted the code before a fresh agreement in 2017 to keep talking.

In Malaysia, the Philippines and Myanmar, people worry separately whether Chinese infrastructure investment will land their countries in debt or force them to accept workers from China instead of employing locals. “

I think China also wants to be seen as cooperative and they want to come out to ASEAN that they can cope and they will recover,” said Termsak Chalermpalanupap, a fellow with the ISEAS Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore.

Joint work with China could pull Southeast Asian countries together too, Chalermpalanupap added. Although the regional economy is suffering, he said, countries within ASEAN “have different responses” to the virus, which “makes us look not so nice.”

Association member Cambodia, for example, saw its prime minister travel to Beijing February 5 to appeal for economic support. In contrast, on January 31 Singapore banned travel from China.

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