Israel’s military says its warplanes struck Islamic Jihad targets in Palestinian-ruled Gaza and near Damascus in Syria after a barrage of rocket fire into Israel from Gaza Sunday.
Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the rocket attacks. The group was infuriated by images of the body of a Palestinian militant dangling from an Israeli military bulldozer. Israeli soldiers shot the militant as he tried to plant a bomb along the Israeli-Gaza border fence.
Israel says at least 20 rockets were fired from Gaza, causing no damage or injuries. Israel’s Iron Dome defense system stopped most of the rockets.
Israel retaliated with airstrikes on Islamic Jihad targets in Gaza and an Islamic Jihad facility near Damascus.
Palestinian medical officials say four were wounded in Gaza. Syria says most of the Israeli missiles were intercepted and has so far not reported any injuries or damage.
Bus drivers in Moscow kept their WhatsApp group chat buzzing with questions this week about what to do if they spotted passengers who might be from China riding with them in the Russian capital.
“Some Asian-looking [people] have just got on. Probably Chinese. Should I call [the police]?” one driver messaged his peers. “How do I figure out if they’re Chinese? Should I ask them?” a colleague wondered.
The befuddlement reflected in screenshots of the group exchanges seen by The Associated Press had a common source — instructions from Moscow’s public transit operator Wednesday for drivers to call a dispatcher if Chinese nationals boarded their buses, Russian media reported.
A leaked email that the media reports said was sent by the state-owned transportation company Mosgortrans told dispatchers who took such calls to notify the police. The email, which the company immediately described on Twitter as fake, carried a one-word subject line: coronavirus.
Since the outbreak of the new virus that has infected more than 76,000 people and killed more than 2,300 in mainland China, Russia has reported two cases. Both patients, Chinese nationals hospitalized in Siberia, recovered quickly. Russian authorities nevertheless are going to significant — some argue discriminatory — lengths to keep the virus from resurfacing and spreading.
Moscow officials ordered police raids of hotels, dormitories, apartment buildings and businesses to track down the shrinking number of Chinese people remaining in the city. They also authorized the use of facial recognition technology to find those suspected of evading a 14-day self-quarantine period upon their arrival in Russia.
“Conducting raids is an unpleasant task, but it is necessary, for the potential carriers of the virus as well,” Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said in a statement outlining various methods to find and track Chinese people the city approved as a virus prevention strategy.
The effort to identify Chinese citizens on public transportation applies not only to buses, but underground trains and street trams in Moscow, Russian media reported Wednesday.
Metro workers were instructed to stop riders from China and ask them to fill out questionnaires asking why they were in Russia and whether they observed the two-week quarantine, the reports said. The forms also ask respondents for their health condition and the address of where they are were staying.
In Yekaterinburg, a city located 1,790 kilometers (1,112 miles) away from Moscow in the Urals Mountains, members of the local Chinese community also are under watch. Self-styled Cossack patrols in the city hand out medical masks along with strong recommendations to visit a health clinic to Chinese residents.
Human rights advocates have condemned the targeting of Chinese nationals as racial profiling, not an effective epidemic control strategy.
“Prevention of any serious virus, be it a flu or the new coronavirus, should involve a proper information campaign and not discrimination of other people,” said Alyona Popova, an activist engaged in a year-long court challenge of Moscow’s use of facial recognition technology.
The containment measures in the capital came as the Russian government instituted an indefinite ban on Chinese nationals entering the country that could block up to 90% of travelers coming to Russia from China. Weeks before, Russia shut down the country’s long land border with China, suspended all trains and most flights between the two countries.
The Moscow Metro confirmed to The Associated Press that the underground system was “actively monitoring the stations” and has a protocol in place for dealing with people who have recently returned from the People’s Republic of China.
“We ask to see their documents and to show us documents [proving] that if they have recently returned from the People’s Republic of China, they have undergone a two-week quarantine period,” Yulia Temnikova, Moscow Metro’s deputy chief of client and passenger services, said.
If an individual does not show proof of completing the quarantine, Metro workers ask the person to fill out the form and call an ambulance, Temnikova said.
Bus and tram drivers contacted their labor union about the instructions to look for Chinese nationals and report them to the dispatch center. The drivers were outraged and didn’t know what to do, Public Transport Workers Union chairman Yuri Dashkov said.
“So he saw a Chinese national, and then what?” Dashkov said. “How can he ascertain that he saw a Chinese national, or a Vietnamese national, or a Japanese, or [someone from the Russian region of] Yakutia?”
Dashkov showed the AP a photo of the email that officials at Mosgortrans were said to have sent out. He also showed three photos of on-bus electronic displays reading, “If Chinese nationals are discovered in the carriage, inform the dispatcher.”
The AP was unable to independently verify the authenticity of the email and the photos. Dashkov shared screenshots of what appeared to be a genuine bus drivers’ group chat in WhatsApp.
While Moscow public transit operator Mosgortrans dismissed the email as phony on its official Twitter account Wednesday, the company told the AP in a statement two days later that it does “conduct monitoring” and “sends data to the medics when necessary.”
Mosgortrans referred additional questions to the detailed statement from Moscow’s mayor, who on Friday acknowledged the sharp focus on Chinese people in the city’s virus-control plan.
Officials ordered everyone arriving from China to isolate themselves for two weeks, and those who skip the quarantine step will be identified through video surveillance and facial recognition technology, Sobyanin said. The systems give authorities the ability to “constantly control compliance with the protocol,” he said in the statement.
The mayor’s office did not respond to a request for comment on the city’s containment approach and the accusation that it’s discriminatory. But rights activist Popova insists the facial recognition program is unlawful whether the searches are seeking Russian or Chinese faces.
“We have a constitutional right to privacy, and citizens of [other countries] have it according to foreign and international legal norms,” she said.
Temnikova from the Moscow Metro rejected accusations of racial profiling. Subway workers “mainly look at the passenger’s [health] condition,” she said, and approach “people who need help.”
Addressing identification questions like the ones that worried the bus drivers, Temnikova said it should be “clear who could have arrived from China” because “it is obvious.”
The Cossacks of Yekaterinburg — men in conservative, often pro-Kremlin groups claiming to be successors of the proud guards who policed the Russian Empire’s frontiers — took fighting the virus into their own hands three weeks ago. They also have a system of sorts for deciding who needs a face mask and advice to see a medical professional.
“Mainly [we approach] people from China because it is from them that the coronavirus came. They are the main source,” Igor Gorbunov, elder of the Ural Volunteer Cossack Corps, told the AP during one such patrol Friday.
“But not only them,” Gorbunov continued. “There are different nationalities, there are many people of Asian appearance, and they seem to be vulnerable to this disease, the coronavirus, because it is them who are most often affected. Europeans are not yet affected much.”
Vietnam and the U.S. have announced that cooperation on cross-border crime has led to a U.S. grand jury indictment of an American teacher accused of traveling to the Southeast Asian nation to have sex with minors.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Northern District of California alleged that the teacher, Paul Marshall Bodner, of San Francisco, California, “met Vietnamese boys as young as 11 or 12 years old and engaged in sex acts with them at a hotel located in Ho Chi Minh City when he traveled to Vietnam” in the period from July 2015 to August 2016. If convicted he faces up to 30 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.
U.S. ambassador to Vietnam, Daniel J. Kritenbrink, said the investigation was aided by close cooperation between the two nations, which normalized relations in 1995, 20 years after the Vietnam War, and have since become partners on security, trade, and cultural issues.
“In this instance, strong collaboration between the Homeland Security Investigations office in Ho Chi Minh City and Vietnam’s Ministry of Public Security have brought multiple child victims one step nearer to finding closure,” said Kritenbrink on Thursday. “This arrest also underscores how the United States and Vietnam can work together effectively to combat child exploitation.”
Human trafficking has become a higher priority for Vietnam since October of last year, when 39 of its citizens were found dead in a container truck in the United Kingdom, believed to have suffocated to death after being trafficked from Vietnam. Trafficking victims from the Southeast Asian nation range from workers tricked into bondage abroad, to young women sold as brides, such as to Chinese or Korean husbands.
The Blue Dragon Children’s Foundation, based in Hanoi, works to help sex trafficking victims, including both those who are sold abroad as well as those forced into sex work domestically. However the new coronavirus has complicated the foundation’s efforts in recent weeks. Vietnam and China have effectively shut down their 1,200 kilometer land border. That makes it harder for traffickers to send Vietnamese to China, but it also makes it harder to rescue victims and return them home.
“Blue Dragon has temporarily suspended rescue operations of human trafficking survivors from China, as the current restrictions to travel within and from China prevent our rescue team from conducting operations as usual,” the organization said in a statement. “On the legal front, Blue Dragon will use this pause to work on child sexual abuse cases and prosecutions of traffickers.”
The foundation usually assists with prosecutions of traffickers and sex offenders in Vietnam.
In contrast, the charges against Bodner, brought by a U.S. federal grand jury, mark a rare instance of joint investigations between Vietnam and the U.S. that lead to an indictment.
The 64-year-old was charged with three counts of travel with intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct, as well as one count of engaging in illicit sexual conduct in a foreign place.
The grand jury indictment was unsealed the day of a pre-trial hearing for Bodner on Feb. 14 but a trial date was not announced.
In addition to law enforcement, Vietnam and the U.S. have also increased their cooperation in defense. Last year the U.S. conducted its first ever joint naval drills with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, a bloc of 10 nations with a rotating chair that is being hosted this year by Vietnam.
The U.S. also gave Vietnam’s Coast Guard six patrol boats worth $12 million in 2019, part of ongoing efforts to shore up Hanoi’s defenses in the South China Sea. Vietnam has territorial claims there that are being challenged by China, whose growing power is also pushing the U.S. and Vietnam closer together.
With power and a prodigious shot, Alex Ovechkin now stands where few in the NHL have been.
He became the eight NHL player to score 700 career goals, reaching the milestone in the third period of the Washington’ Capitals’ 3-2 loss to the New Jersey Devils on Saturday.
The 34-year-old Russian forward one-timed a slap shot from the right circle that went in off the left post 4:50 into the third period, tying the game at 2. It was his 42nd goal of the season, one behind Boston’s David Pastrnak for the league lead, and came on his second shot on goal of the game.
Capitals players rushed onto the ice to congratulate their teammate, and Devils fans gave him a strong ovation.
Wayne Gretzky leads the career list with 894 goals. He is followed by Gordie Howe (801), Jaromir Jagr (766), Brett Hull (741), Marcel Dionne (731), Phil Esposito (717) and Mike Gartner (708).
Ovechkin had not scored in five straight games before getting No. 699 against Montreal on Thursday night. He had 14 goals, including three hat tricks, in his previous seven games before the drought.
He needed 1,144 games to reach the landmark, second fastest behind Gretzky at 886 games. And the player who has been tormenting goalies since joining the league in 2005 moved from 600 goals to 700 in 154 games, the fewest among the eight players to reach the mark.
The first overall pick in the 2004 draft, Ovechkin has 1,270 points since the start of his rookie season, just ahead of Penguins star Sidney Crosby (1,256) since they both debuted that year.
Despite Ovechkin’s climb, Washington lost its fourth straight and fell to 3-7-1 in its past 11 games to remain tied with Pittsburgh atop the Metropolitan Division at 80 points — the Penguins have an edge with a game in hand. Washington hosts Pittsburgh, which lost 5-2 at home to Buffalo, on Sunday.
Damon Severson scored the winning goal for last-place New Jersey with 1:59 left off a cross-ice pass from Nikita Gusev. Wayne Simmonds and Jesper Bratt also scored for the Devils, and Mackenzie Blackwood stopped 33 shots.
Tom Wilson cut New Jersey’s lead to 2-1 late in the second period to set up Ovechkin’s tying score. Ilya Samsonov made 26 saves.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday said he would hold a summit with the leaders of Russia, France and Germany on March 5 to discuss the situation in Syria’s last rebel enclave of Idlib.
“We will come together on March 5 and discuss these issues,” Erdogan said in a televised speech, following a phone call on Friday with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and his tele-conference with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
The Turkish leader did not say where the summit would be held but his announcement comes a day after Macron and Merkel called for a four-party Syria summit also involving the Russian leader.
A months-long offensive by Russia-backed Syrian troops against rebels backed by Turkey in northwest Idlib has seen close to one million civilians flee the violence.
The two European Union heavyweights on Friday “expressed their willingness to meet President Putin and Turkish President Erdogan to find a political solution to the crisis,” the chancellor’s office said.
Russia on Wednesday objected to the U.N. Security Council adopting a statement that would have called for a cease-fire in Idlib, diplomats said, after a tense closed-door meeting.
Turkey, which has threatened an “imminent” operation in Idlib after its troops have come under intense fire from regime forces, has given Damascus until the end of this month to drive back its army positions.
Syrian regime fire has killed 17 Turkish personnel this month alone, sparking a war of words between Ankara and Moscow, a key Damascus ally.
Iranian media is saying that preliminary results of Friday’s parliamentary election are showing conservatives winning 70% of the 290-seat chamber, with independents taking about 20%, and reformists just 10%. Many observers, however, are pointing to extremely low turnout in most parts of the country.
Amateur video broadcast by Arab and Iranian media showed several men outside an Iranian polling station, claiming that electoral officials had “stolen” Friday’s parliamentary election. VOA could not independently confirm the claim, but dozens of video reports by citizen journalists on social media appeared to show extremely low turnout at many polling stations.
There were some reports on social media that turnout was so low, Iranian electoral officials had decided not to announce the exact turnout, region by region, but instead would give the total turnout for the entire country.
Despite the apparently low turnout, Iranian media continued to show video of President Hassan Rouhani asserting that [Friday’s election] was “a glorious event in the history of the country and of the [1979 Islamic] revolution.” He added that polling stations across the country were linked online, and that he was impressed by the Interior Ministry’s electoral “nerve center.”
Iran’s Fars news agency quoted Abbas Ali Khadkhodai, spokesman for the Guardian Council that supervised the election, as thanking the “thousands of members of the council’s observer network across the country” for making sure that the election was “sound and that people’s votes were in good hands.”
Poll workers carry ballot boxes after voting in parliamentary elections ended, in Tehran, Iran, Feb. 22, 2020. (via Wana News Agency)
Photos on social media, however, showed electoral officials at a number of polling stations emptying ballot boxes on the floor and appearing to count them manually.
Former Iranian president Abolhassan Bani Sadr told VOA that according to reports he’s seen, more than 80% of Iranians boycotted the election, and that the government did not expect such a strong reaction from the public.
He said the government is still insisting turnout was high, though the figures they publish show the reality. In the city of Khorramshahr, he noted, authorities are claiming that 47,000 people voted, but they’re also saying that the winner received only 9,000 votes. That probably means only about 17,000 people voted and they multiplied the real figure by a factor of at least three.
Iran’s parliamentary election also appears to coincide with a public scare over a coronavirus outbreak in several cities, including Qom. Social media is reporting one top Tehran municipal official had come down with the virus and was seen Friday shaking hands with other officials and voters.
Arab news channels for the most part ridiculed Iran’s election, and one Lebanese TV station joked that the “only thing Iran does well, is to spread the coronavirus.”
European Union leaders are still seeking a compromise on their next seven-year, trillion-plus-dollar budget. But they ended two days of talks so divided they couldn’t set a date for their next meeting.
European unity over Brexit was nowhere to be seen during this first meeting since Britain’s departure from the EU. Leaders of the 27 remaining members ended budget talks Friday acknowledging the gridlock.
The tone was set by the EU’s most powerful members. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the differences were too big to overcome, while French President Emmanuel Macron said the deadlock was deeply regrettable. “We don’t need Britain to show disunity,” he added.
But inaugurating the annual agricultural fair in Paris Saturday, Macron underscored just why the divisions remain so strong. He told French farmers he remained firm in defending the EU’s biggest budget item — agricultural subsidies — of which France is a top beneficiary.
These kinds of no-go zones are being staked out by other member states. Poorer, mostly eastern European nations and five countries that currently get rebates want a more generous budget. Meanwhile the so-called frugal four, Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden, don’t want the budget to exceed one percent of the bloc’s gross national income.
At the same time, the EU’s new executive arm has outlined ambitious new goals — including achieving zero greenhouse emissions by 2050. Those also will need funding — or risk being scaled down. Then there’s the $65 billion budget hole left by Britain’s departure, which needs filling.
Yet EU leaders say they are confident a compromise will be struck.
European Council President Charles Michel says the bloc has no choice but to reach a decision. The question is when.
Analyst Marta Pilati, of the Brussels-based European Policy Center research group, says the longer talks drag on, the more likely EU-funded programs will be affected next year.
“The first consequence of non-agreement is … that we have a delay in implementation, which in practice means that the EU will not be able to disburse funding to the programs so that they can start in January, but maybe that will happen in March and April next year,” Pilati said.
The current budget expires in December. After EU leaders reach agreement on the next one, the European Parliament will need to ratify it, which also promises to be complicated.
Wells Fargo has agreed to pay U.S. regulators $3 billion to settle three investigations into the bank’s damaging fake accounts scandal, the Department of Justice said Friday.
The fine settles criminal and civil liability in the case in which the nation’s fourth-largest bank between 2002 and 2016 pressured employees to meet unrealistic sales goals that led to creating millions of accounts or credit cards without consent.
Wells Fargo admitted it collected millions of dollars in fees and interest, harmed the credit ratings of certain customers and misused personal information, the Justice Department said in a statement.
“As a result of the wrongful sales practices, which went on for years, Wells Fargo earned millions of dollars in fees and interest that it should not have collected,” Nick Hanna, U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, said at a news conference in Los Angeles.
“Wells Fargo traded its hard-earned reputation for short-term profit and harmed untold numbers of customers along the way,” he added.
Hanna said $2.5 billion of the settlement would go to the federal government while the rest would be returned to investors. He declined to say if future prosecutions would occur in the case, but noted the investigation was continuing.
FILE – Wells Fargo CEO Charles Scharf.
“The conduct at the core of today’s settlements — and the past culture that gave rise to it — are reprehensible and wholly inconsistent with the values on which Wells Fargo was built,” Charlie Scharf, the bank’s chief executive, said in a statement after the settlement’s announcement. “While today’s announcement is a significant step in bringing this chapter to a close, there’s still more work we must do to rebuild the trust we lost.”
Change in strategy
The allegations stem from a shift in Wells Fargo’s strategy in 1998 to emphasize increased sales.
The Justice Department said that move led bank employees to resort to unlawful means to sell financial products, including fraud, identity theft and the falsification of bank records.
Within Wells Fargo, the practice was referred to as “gaming,” the Justice Department said.
Employees went as far as “forging customer signatures to open accounts without authorization, creating PINs to activate unauthorized debit cards, moving money from millions of customer accounts … opening credit cards and bill pay products without authorization,” prosecutors said.
Bank executives were aware that this was going on, and an internal investigator in 2004 referred to it as a “growing plague.” In 2005, another internal investigator said the problem was “spiraling out of control.” Nonetheless, it continued.
“Today’s announcement should serve as a stark reminder that no institution is too big, too powerful, or too well-known to be held accountable and face enforcement action for its wrongdoings,” Andrew Murray, U.S. attorney for the Western District of North Carolina, said in the statement.
Terms of accord
Under the terms of the Justice Department agreement, Wells Fargo acknowledged the allegations and agreed not to commit similar offenses for three years, in exchange for prosecutors waiving filing charges.
The San Francisco-based bank set aside $3.9 billion at the end of June last year to settle legal disputes, including those related to its business practices.
U.S. authorities last month fined John Stumpf, who served as Wells Fargo’s chief executive from 2005 to October 2016, $17.5 million and banned him for life from the banking sector.
Two CEOs and other senior executives at the bank have lost their jobs amid the probe into the scandal and outrage over claims the bank was slow to correct it.
Scharf, who took over as CEO last October, has promised to revive the bank, whose 2019 results were hit by the scandal.
The bank already has paid out $4 billion in financial penalties related to its business practices.
Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama is celebrating the 80th anniversary of his enthronement Saturday.
The 14th Dalai Lama, who was born Lhamo Thondup, was just a toddler when he was identified as the reincarnation of his predecessor. Tibetan Buddhists believe that senior Buddhist monks can after death choose to be reborn in the body of a child.
The Dalai Lama was enthroned as Tibet’s most important spiritual leader on Feb. 22, 1940, at the age of 4.
Since then, he has been a spiritual leader to Tibetans, strongly advocating nonviolence and winning a Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 for his efforts to bring about an autonomous Tibet.
Born in Tibet in 1935, the 85-year-old spiritual leader has spent most of his life in neighboring India. The Dalai Lama fled Tibet following a failed uprising against Chinese rule in 1959 and now lives in the northern Indian hill town of Dharamsala, where his supporters run a government-in-exile.
The Dalai Lama said he is seeking greater autonomy for his remote mountain homeland and not independence, while China accuses him of being a dangerous separatist. China has used its influence on the world stage to urge international leaders not to meet with the spiritual leader.
In April 2019, the Dalai Lama was admitted to the hospital in the Indian capital of New Delhi with a chest infection and has since reduced his public audiences. However, aides said he is doing well.
The question of the next Dalai Lama’s reincarnation has political implications. China has said its leaders have the right to approve the Dalai Lama’s successor, as a legacy inherited from China’s emperors.
However, the Dalai Lama’s own website said that a person who reincarnates has “sole legitimate authority” over where the rebirth takes place and how the reincarnation is recognized.
The Dalai Lama himself has made several statements about his next rebirth, saying he might choose not to be reincarnated at all, and also saying that if he does choose to take rebirth, it will be in a free country.
The last time Raouda Abdul Gadir Bakhit saw her son Fadul was a few days before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
Fadul, 26, was one of thousands of young people joining a monthslong sit-in outside Sudan’s army headquarters in Khartoum, demanding democracy.
When Ramadan ended June 3, though, Sudan’s security forces violently broke up the sit-in, and Fadul disappeared.
Bakhit, 64, said she didn’t know why Fadul was the only one to go missing among his colleagues, friends and neighbors, because a lot of them were going back and forth to the sit-in.
FILE – People take part in a rally condemning the deadly June crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Khartoum, Sudan, July 18, 2019.
The Sudanese Doctors Committee said that as troops cleared the protest area, they killed at least 100 protesters and injured 400.
The group said 40 bodies were pulled from the Nile River, where security forces had dumped them.
Sudanese authorities said 87 people were killed.
Bakhit’s son wasn’t the only protester who went missing. An investigative committee formed by the main protest group, the Sudanese Professional Association, located 15 of the missing, five of whom were dead, SPA spokesman Mohamed Nagi Alasam said.
The other 10 had been tortured, he said, and some have wounds or physiological problems. He said they planned to give testimony but would first undergo intensive treatment.
Eight months later, at least 25 of the missing protesters have not been found. Relatives of the missing fear their bodies may have been lost in the Nile River or disappeared by security services.
FILE – A victim of a gunshot wound sustained in the crackdown on Sudanese protesters is seen inside a ward receiving treatment in a hospital in Khartoum, Sudan, June 7, 2019.
Sudan’s transitional government formed an investigative committee to track down the missing. Fadia Khalaf Allah, a member of that committee, said four more protesters had gone missing since December.
Khalaf said the committee was doing its best to find the missing people. There have been more opportunities recently to enter morgues, she said, and DNA tests are being used to try to identify bodies there.
Relatives of the missing, like Bakhit, can only hope and pray that their loved ones have gone into hiding or are being held by security.
She believes deeply that Fadul is alive but detained, she said. He would never disappear from home this whole time, she said. “If he died, for sure we would know. I pray for him every night.”
Relatives hope to get some answers when the committee releases a report next month.
There will be more than 7,000 candidates contesting Iran’s parliamentary elections — less than half of those who applied to stand in the nationwide vote Friday.
The candidates are mostly conservatives and hard-liners who exhibit absolute loyalty to the country’s supreme leader, but there will be a smattering of lesser-known reformists and moderates who support engagement with the West.
The Guardians Council, which vets all candidates, has provoked controversy by disqualifying about 9,000 of the 16,000 people who registered to run, including 90 current lawmakers, according to the Interior Ministry.
The mass disqualifications, targeting reformist and moderate candidates, is the most since the 1979 Islamic Revolution that ushered in a theocratic system.
Many people frustrated by the poor economic situation in the country and the lack of choice in the elections have said they will boycott the elections in a show of displeasure toward the government.
Below are some of the most prominent figures running, the ones who are not, and the ones who were disqualified.
Running
A man holds a poster of Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf one of parliamentary candidate in Tehran, Iran, Feb. 18, 2020.
Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf
The conservative former mayor of Tehran unsuccessfully ran for the presidency three times. If he wins, the former police chief and air force commander within the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) is seen as a prime candidate to become the next parliament speaker. As mayor, he was accused of incompetence and corruption.
Mostafa Mirsalim
Mirsalim, a conservative, is a former culture minister whose 1994-97 tenure was marked with increased restrictions and censorship. He has criticized President Hassan Rohani’s outreach to the West as ineffectual, saying the result has been new restrictions on Iran and continued sanctions against the country. The French-educated Mirsalim has taught mechanical engineering at Tehran’s Amir Kabir University.
Masud Pezeshkian
He is among the few reformist lawmakers permitted to run for reelection. Pezeshkian, a former health minister, is a reformist lawmaker from the mainly ethnic Azeri-populated city of Tabriz. The deputy parliament speaker, he is expected to battle with Qalibaf for the leadership of the legislature.
Not contesting
Iranian parliament speaker Ali Larijani attends a news conference at the Iranian embassy in Beirut’s southern suburbs, as a picture of late Iran’s Quds Force top commander Qassem Soleimani is seen in the background, Feb. 17, 2020.
Ali Larijani
Iran’s powerful parliamentary speaker, Ali Larijani, decided not to contest the elections. The conservative Larijani has been speaker since 2008. Larijani’s brothers also hold key posts in the country. Ayatollah Sadeq Amoli Larijani is the head of the country’s judiciary and Mohammad Javad Larijani heads the judiciary’s Human Rights Council. There has been speculation that Larijani intends to run for president in 2021.
Mohammad Reza Aref
Aref served as vice president under reformist President Mohammad Khatami. In the 2013 presidential election he withdrew from the race to increase President Hassan Rouhani’s chances of winning. In the 2016 parliamentary elections, Aref won his seat in Tehran. He has headed the reformist faction in parliament.
Saeed Jalili
Jalili was Iran’s former top nuclear negotiator under President Mahmud Ahmadinejad. An ultra-hard-liner, he is said to be loyal to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei and his public remarks closely echo the country’s top leader. In the 2013 presidential election he was known as the establishment’s candidate of choice.
Barred from running
FILE – Ali Motahari, who has been barred as a candidate in the parliamentary elections, attended a campaign gathering of candidates mainly close to the reformist camp, in Tehran, Feb. 23, 2016.
Ali Motahari
Motahari, a moderate, is one of the very few insiders in the Islamic republic who openly criticizes the system. Representing Tehran, he has criticized the house arrest of opposition figures Mir Hossein Musavi; Musavi’s wife, Zahra Rahnavard; and reformist cleric Mehdi Karrubi. Motahari has also suggested he could run for president in 2021.
Mahmud Sadeghi
Sadeghi was an obscure legal expert until his election to parliament in 2016 as one of moderates allied with Rouhani. An outspoken lawmaker, Sadeghi has been an irritant to the conservative establishment ever since. He has aired defiant criticism of state repression and censorship.
Shahindokht Molaverdi
Molaverdi, a special assistant to Rouhani on citizen’s rights, previously served as vice president on women’s affairs. She has expressed commitment to gender equality and angered hard-liners for her efforts to promote women’s rights.
Las Vegas’ popular strip, home to hotels and casinos, is crowded with tourists and crowd-pleasing sites. VOA’s Carolyn Presutti, in Nevada to cover the state’s caucuses Saturday, shares some of the views.
President Donald Trump hinted that Roger Stone deserves exoneration, hours after the former Trump adviser was sentenced to prison Thursday. Earlier this week, Trump granted full pardons to seven people and sentence commutations to four others, but denied that he offered a pardon to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. White House correspondent Patsy Widakuswara has the wrap on a week of presidential clemencies.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Thursday “there are many indications” that the suspect in deadly shootings in the city of Hanau acted on “right-wing, extremist, racist motives.”
“Racism is a poison,” she said. “Hatred is a poison and this poison exists in our society and it is to blame for already far too many crimes.”
Police say a gunman opened fire at two bars in Hanau, where some immigrants gathered, east of Frankfurt, killing nine people and wounding several others.
Forensic officers carry baskets from the hookah bar where several people were killed on Wednesday night in Hanau, Germany, Feb. 20, 2020.
A police spokesman said witnesses identified a vehicle used in the shooting, which led investigators to the home of the suspect. Police say two people were found dead at the apartment, one of them the apparent suspect, the other believed to be the shooter’s mother.
Merkel pledged “everything will be done” to investigate the killings and said it is a “sad day” for the country.
“The German government and all state institutions stand for the rights and the dignity of each individual human being in our country. We do not differentiate citizens based on their origin or religion. We will vehemently and decisively confront all those who are trying to divide in Germany,” she said.
Mike Bloomberg picked up three new congressional endorsements on the heels of his rocky debate performance, underscoring his staying power in the Democratic primary race despite an onslaught of attacks from opponents.
Bloomberg has built extensive political ties to members of both parties on Capitol Hill after years of hefty political contributions to candidates and causes. In recent weeks those ties, and his surprisingly strong support in a number of national polls, seem to be bearing fruit for him on Capitol Hill.
Democratic Reps. Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey, Nita Lowey of New York and Pete Aguilar of California all endorsed Bloomberg Thursday, bringing his total number of congressional endorsements to 15, behind only Joe Biden, who has more than three times that amount.
All three have extensive political, and in some case personal ties, to the former New York mayor.
Bloomberg campaigned for Gottheimer in his district in 2018, and Gottheimer is also brother-in-law to Bloomberg’s campaign manager, Bradley Tusk. Lowey’s former chief of staff, Howard Wolfson, is a longtime Bloomberg aide and now serves as a top adviser to his campaign.
Aguilar, who flipped his district in a tough race in 2014, got support from one of Bloomberg’s political groups that year, Independence USA PAC, through which he funneled millions of his own money to air ads defending centrists of both parties in the midterms. Aguilar’s a former mayor, and in his endorsement, touted Bloomberg’s understanding of issues “at both the national and local levels” and his track record as a former mayor on gun safety and climate.
Aguilar serves in Democratic leadership as Chief Deputy Whip in the House Democratic caucus.
Despite having only a few years’ experience living in a democratic country, an increasing number of North Korean defectors are becoming involved in South Korean politics. For the first time, two North Korean defectors are participating in South Korea’s legislative election, to be held in April. They hope to improve defectors’ status in South Korea and change how South Koreans think of the North.
Around 200 North Korean defectors are meeting in Seoul — singing a folk song about the future unification of North and South Korea.
They’re trying to form the first South Korean political party made up entirely of North Korean defectors.
Kang Chul-hwan is helping set up the party. He says no one represents the people of North Korea and that the approximately 35,000 defectors in South Korea are neglected.
They could start to get a small amount of political clout this April, when South Korea holds parliamentary elections. Two North Korean defectors are running as members of the conservative opposition.
One of them is Ji Seong-ho, a former North Korean street beggar who lost an arm and a leg during what he says was an attempt to steal coal from a train. Ji fled to the South in 2006 and is now a human rights activist.
Ji says he belongs to the younger generation, and as a defector and a disabled person living in Seoul, he hopes to accomplish many things for Korea.
Ji says he was spurred to run for office after South Korea forcibly returned two North Korean fishermen in November. Seoul accused the men of killing their captain and 15 other crewmen but many defectors said the move amounted to sending the men to almost certain death in North Korea.
FILE – Thae Yong-Ho, a former minister at the North Korean Embassy in London, holds up his smartphone during a press conference at the Seoul Foreign Correspondent Club in Seoul, Feb. 19, 2020.
That incident also motivated Thae Yong-ho to enter politics. Thae, a former North Korean diplomat, is one of the highest profile defectors in years. He recently spoke to foreign journalists in Seoul.
“I want to show to the North Korean people how freedom and democracy works in this country, through me… so that is my purpose: to let them be educated,” he said.
Since moving to the South in 2016, Thae has been highly critical of North Korea. More recently, though, Thae has also begun criticizing the South Korean government.
Specifically, he wants better treatment of defectors, many of whom feel discriminated against and are among the poorest group in wealthy South Korea.
Although all North Korean defectors go through a mandatory three-month training to learn how to live on their own in the capitalist South, many still fall through the cracks.
In July, a North Korean defector and her 6-year-old son were found dead in their apartment. apparently having starved to death.
Although the government said this week that average defector monthly income had reached an all-time high, for many it’s not enough.
Thae says he wants to make it easier for defectors to get educational scholarships.
“I want to give more opportunities to those newly arrived middle-aged people who want to continue their education,” he said. “Because I’m absolutely sure that one day Korea will be united. And if we are united again, who will go first to North Korea to do administration? It must be those people who are from North Korea.”
Thae also accuses some in South Korea of “trying to appease” the North by not bringing up its human rights abuses.
Perhaps predictably, North Korea doesn’t think much of Thae. Since he left, North Korean state media gave him the label “human scum.”
It’s also not clear just how much power Thae and other defectors will be able to amass in South Korea. Most of them have aligned themselves with conservatives, who are badly fractured after the 2017 impeachment of conservative President Park Geun-hye, and some analysts have warned that defectors now risk politicizing their message.
Mike Bloomberg will confront the greatest test of his presidential campaign when he faces five Democratic rivals in a debate in Las Vegas that could fundamentally change the direction of the party’s 2020 nomination fight.
The debate debut for the billionaire former mayor of New York is poised to offer fresh insight into whether his unconventional campaign strategy — bypassing early voting states such as Nevada and spending hundreds of millions of dollars to spread his message on the airwaves — is sustainable.
Wednesday night’s debate comes at a pivotal point in the campaign as moderate voters are struggling to unify, with some increasingly looking to Bloomberg to become the clear alternative to progressive Bernie Sanders. And lest there be any doubt, all the participants expect a hostile reception for Bloomberg, who formally registered as a Democrat in 2018 and has faced relatively little national scrutiny in his surprisingly swift rise from nonpartisan megadonor to top-tier presidential contender.
“He is going to have a giant target on his back from all sides,” said Democratic strategist Brian Brokaw. “It’ll either all come together brilliantly or could fall apart very quickly. … The stakes are just incredibly high for him.”
Bloomberg’s campaign released a list of more than a dozen debate guests hours before the 9 p.m. EST event, featuring survivors of gun violence from several states. They include one man present at the 2017 shooting in Las Vegas that left 58 dead and hundreds more injured.
FILE – A cameraman walks across the stage during setup for the Nevada Democratic presidential debate in Las Vegas, Feb. 18, 2020.
The stakes are high for every candidate on stage just days before Nevada’s next-up presidential caucuses, the third contest in the Democrats’ chaotic 2020 primary season. After more than a year of campaigning, there is little clarity in their urgent search for a nominee to run against President Donald Trump in November.
Longtime establishment favorite Joe Biden, a former two-term vice president, is fighting to breathe new life into his flailing campaign, which enters the night at the bottom of a moderate muddle with former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar. Sanders, a Vermont senator, has emerged as the progressive wing’s clear preference after two contests as Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren is struggling to regain energy around her campaign.
Some Democrats fear that the conditions are ripe for a bare-knuckles brawl on national television that could carve new scars into a divided Democratic Party that must ultimately come together this fall if it hopes to deny the Republican president a second term.
Bloomberg’s rivals have already indicated they will lean into his explosive comments on race and gender in addition to their charge that he’s using a fortune earned from a career on Wall Street to buy the presidency. Bloomberg’s rise in national polls has been fueled almost exclusively by an unprecedented national advertising campaign, carefully controlled campaign events and a sprawling national organization that has likely already cost him more than half a billion dollars.
Alexandra Rojas, executive director of the Sanders-allied Justice Democrats, called Wednesday Bloomberg’s first “public moment of accountability.”
“It’s going to be a chance to finally bring scrutiny to Bloomberg’s record as a Republican plutocrat,” she said.
Bloomberg vs. Sanders
Bloomberg has been preparing for the debate behind closed doors for weeks, including prep sessions that feature senior aides playing his leading competitors. They expect him to come under attack early and often from multiple rivals.
FILE – Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., speaks during a campaign event at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Feb. 18, 2020.
His team was working to lower expectations ahead of his performance, suggesting his debate skills are rusty after more than a decade since his last election.
Bloomberg hasn’t been on a debate stage since 2009. His team notes he never faced more than one rival at a time over three elections for New York City mayor.
Despite the challenges, senior adviser Tim O’Brien signaled that Bloomberg welcomed a fight against Sanders, whom the campaign perceives to be the race’s clear front-runner.
“I think you’re going to see us go toe-to-toe with Bernie Sanders on important issues,” O’Brien said in an interview, raising questions about Sanders’ personal wealth, record on criminal justice and gun control.
Sanders welcomed the fight as well.
The Vermont senator railed against Bloomberg and “a system that allows billionaires to buy elections,” while campaigning in Nevada on the eve of the debate.
“Here is the message: Anyone here worth $60 billion, you can run for president, and you can buy the airwaves. My friends, that is called oligarchy, not democracy.”
While the same age and race, Bloomberg and Sanders are ideological opposites.
Bloomberg is one of the world’s richest men, having generated a net worth estimated at $60 billion after a career on Wall Street. He has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to combat climate change and gun violence and promote immigration reform in recent years, yet he takes a decidedly pragmatic approach that celebrates incremental improvement backed by data.
Sanders has a net worth estimated at $2.5 million thanks to book sales and the value of his home, but he has spent a lifetime in politics as an uncompromising democratic socialist demanding a political revolution to transform the nation’s politics and economy. He measures his success largely by the impact he’s had on the public debate, which has warmed to his calls for a $15 minimum wage, universal health care and sweeping action on climate change.
Voters will not formally judge Bloomberg’s performance until next month.
He is not technically competing in Nevada’s Saturday caucuses or any of the four primary contests scheduled for this month, preferring to invest his time and resources in the delegate-rich states that begin voting in March. In the modern era, such a strategy has never worked. Yet it’s never been attempted by someone as wealthy as Bloomberg, who has already invested more than $400 million into a national advertising campaign and hired more than 2,000 campaign staffers.
Other candidates
The focus on Bloomberg on the debate stage, of course, means there will be less oxygen for others at a critical moment.
Buttigieg essentially tied in Iowa with Sanders and was a narrow second-place finisher in New Hampshire, yet many establishment leaders remain skeptical of the 38-year-old’s limited experience and ability to assemble a multiracial coalition to defeat Trump. Buttigieg needs a strong performance to help blunt Bloomberg’s momentum.
FILE – Democratic presidential candidate, former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg speaks as attendees raise their hands to ask questions during a campaign event at Durango Hills Community Center in Las Vegas, Feb. 18, 2020.
Klobuchar surged into the top tier of the race with a strong debate performance in New Hampshire. But with a significantly smaller national brand, she faces lingering questions about the strength of her organization and appeal among minority voters.
Warren may have the most to gain Wednesday night, having been pushed from the top tier after a bad performance in New Hampshire’s primary last week. She remains popular with her party’s far-left wing, though it’s unclear if or when she will win a primary contest.
And Biden is betting everything on a comeback fueled by minority support in Nevada and South Carolina in the next two weeks.
A top Biden official described the former vice president as eager to confront Bloomberg on the debate stage. But Biden is also targeting Sanders.
He previewed one line of attack over the weekend, seizing on Sanders’ support for a 2005 law that granted gun makers civil immunity. Biden also hammered his strength with the powerful Culinary Union, which hasn’t endorsed a candidate but claimed that Sanders’ “Medicare for All” proposal would threaten their current health care coverage.
Amid the infighting, Democratic National Committee member Robert Zimmerman fears that his party may lose sight of its chief mission in 2020: defeating Trump.
“It’s going to get much nastier,” Zimmerman said of Wednesday’s debate. “The candidates have an obligation to unite the party, and they’re not going to get there by throwing around charges of racism and personal slurs.”
A teenager was shot and killed in overnight clashes between Palestinian forces and local gunmen in the West Bank, local media reported Wednesday.
Salah Zakarna, 17, was shot in the chest and later died when Palestinian security forces clashed with armed residents in the northern West Bank town of Qabatiya, the Palestinian Maan news agency reported. It was unclear who shot him.
Maan said Palestinian forces were trying to prevent residents from firing celebratory gunfire into the air to welcome home a local man who had been released from an Israeli prison. It said several people, including members of the security forces, were wounded.
The Palestinian Authority, which has limited self-rule in parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, said it launched an investigation into the teenager’s death and would bring those responsible to justice.
Support for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has plummeted in recent years following his failure to bring about an independent state or mend the rift with the Islamic militant group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian Authority has also faced widespread allegations of corruption.
Abbas has continued to maintain security ties with Israel more than a decade after the last high-level peace talks ended. The security coordination is deeply unpopular among Palestinians, many of whom view it as an extension of the occupation.
The new virus has killed two elderly Iranian citizens, Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency reported Wednesday.
IRNA quoted Alireza Vahabzadeh, an adviser to the country’s health minister, as saying that both of the victims had been carrying the coronavirus and were located in Qom, about 140 kilometers (86 miles) south of the capital Tehran. No additional details were released.
Earlier on Wednesday, Iranian authorities confirmed two cases of the new virus, the first in the country, according to the semi-official ISNA news agency. Officials later said the two patients had died.
ISNA quoted an official in the country’s health ministry, Kiyanoush Jahanpour, as saying that “since last two days, some suspected cases of the new coronavirus were found.”
The virus causes the illness that the World Health Organization recently named COVID-19, referring to its origin late last year and the coronavirus that causes it.
The new virus emerged in China in December. Since then, more than 75,000 people have been infected globally, with more than 2,000 deaths being reported, mostly in China.
The new virus comes from a large family of what are known as coronaviruses, some causing nothing worse than a cold. It causes cold- and flu-like symptoms, including cough and fever, and in more severe cases, shortness of breath. It can worsen to pneumonia, which can be fatal.
First detected in China, the virus is believed to have originated in a type of wild animal sold at a Chinese market to be consumed as food.
Iran has applied safety measures on arrival flights at its airports to control a possible spread of the virus.
Cases elsewhere
Elsewhere in the Middle East, nine cases have been confirmed in the United Arab Emirates, seven of them Chinese nationals, one Indian and one Filipino, while Egypt’s Health Ministry confirmed its first case last Friday.
Egypt’s Health Ministry only identified its sole case as a foreigner who is carrying the virus but not showing any serious symptoms. The ministry said the person was hospitalized and in isolation. It did not specify the person’s nationality or what port of entry he or she arrived at in Egypt.
The case in Egypt was also the first on the African continent. Experts and African leaders have expressed concern that should the virus spread there, it might wreak havoc among less developed countries with fewer health resources.
When avalanches crash down mountainsides, it is a race against time to find those buried in the snow. Rescue teams rush to emergency sites. At that point, they deploy their secret weapon. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi reports rescue dogs dig deep for disaster relief.
President Donald Trump objected on Tuesday to U.S. proposals that would prevent companies from supplying jet engines and other components to China’s aviation industry and suggested he had instructed his administration not to implement them.
In a series of tweets and in comments to reporters Tuesday, Trump said national security concerns, which had been cited as reasoning for the plans, should not be used as an excuse to make it difficult for foreign countries to buy U.S. products.
The president’s comments came after weekend reports by Reuters and other news media that the government was considering whether to stop General Electric Co from further supplying engines for a new Chinese passenger jet.
The president’s intervention illustrated that, at least in this case, he would prioritize economic benefits over potential competitive pitfalls and national security concerns.
FILE – Technicians build engines for jetliners at a General Electric (GE) factory in Lafayette, Indiana, March 29, 2017.
His views on the issue contrasted with the sharp restrictions his administration has placed on U.S. companies trading with Huawei Technologies, the world’s largest telecommunications equipment maker, also for national security reasons.
“We’re not going to be sacrificing our companies … by using a fake term of national security. It’s got to be real national security. And I think people were getting carried away with it,” Trump told reporters at Joint Base Andrews before departing for a trip to California.
“I want our companies to be allowed to do business. I mean, things are put on my desk that have nothing to do with national security, including with chipmakers and various others. So we’re going to give it up, and what will happen? They’ll make those chips in a different country or they’ll make them in China or someplace else,” he said.
The United States has supported American companies’ business with China’s aviation sector for years.
“I want China to buy our jet engines, the best in the World,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “I want to make it EASY to do business with the United States, not difficult. Everyone in my Administration is being so instructed, with no excuses…”
Trade lawyer Doug Jacobson said limitations on jet engines and chip makers would hurt U.S. companies.
“This is ultimately akin to cutting off your nose to spite your face because ultimately you’re hurting U.S. manufacturing companies but you’re not having a material impact on your target,” he said.
U.S.-China trade
The United States and China, the world’s two largest economies, have a complicated and competitive relationship.
Trump signed a first-phase trade deal with China earlier this year after a long trade war in which the countries levied significant tariffs on each others’ products, many of which remain in place.
Washington is also eyeing limits on other components for Chinese commercial aircraft such as flight control systems made by Honeywell International Inc.
Central to the possible crackdown is whether shipments of U.S. parts to China’s aircraft industry could fuel the rise of a serious competitor to U.S.-based Boeing Co or boost China’s military capabilities.
The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) said it welcomed Trump’s comments.
“We applaud President Trump’s tweets supporting U.S. companies being able to sell products to China and opposing proposed regulations that would unduly curtail that ability,” John Neuffer, the group’s president, said in a statement. “As we have discussed with the administration, sales of non-sensitive, commercial products to China drive semiconductor research and innovation, which is critical to America’s economic strength and national security.”
Huawei
Huawei is at the heart of a battle for global technological dominance between the United States and China. Washington placed Huawei on a blacklist in May last year, citing national security concerns. The United States has also been trying to persuade allies to exclude its gear from next generation 5G networks on grounds its equipment could be used by China for spying. Huawei has repeatedly denied the claim.
“So, national security is very important. I’ve been very tough on Huawei, but that doesn’t mean we have to be tough on everybody that does something,” Trump said.
Chinese health officials reported Tuesday the number of confirmed cases from a coronavirus outbreak has surpassed 72,000, with the death toll rising to nearly 1,900.
The latest update included 98 more deaths and 1,886 new cases of the virus that has strained China’s healthcare system and caused authorities to put areas on lockdown to try to stop it from spreading.
The country’s state television reported that one person who died from the virus Tuesday was Liu Zhiming, the director of Wuchang Hospital in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province that is the epicenter of the outbreak.
The head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said Monday that Chinese data from recent days appeared to indicate a decline in new cases. However, he said the trend “must be interpreted very cautiously.”
“Trends can change as new populations are affected. It is too early to tell if this reported decline will continue. Every scenario is still on the table,” he said. He described the outbreak as “very serious” with the “potential to grow” but said it was mostly confined to Hubei province.”
Ghebreyesus also said more than 80% of patients “have mild disease and will recover.”
The WHO said in its latest report on the virus there were 794 confirmed cases outside of China. Some 454 cases have been passengers on a cruise ship under quarantine in Yokohama, Japan.
A woman wearing a mask walks past a quarantine notice about the outbreak of coronavirus in Wuhan, China at an arrival hall of Haneda airport in Tokyo, Japan, January 20, 2020.
The United States said Monday it had evacuated more than 300 of its citizens and their immediate family members who had been on board the Diamond Princess. One flight carrying the passengers arrived early Monday at Travis Air Force Base in California, while another landed hours later at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas.
A group of 14 people who did not show symptoms, but did test positive for the virus, were allowed on the flights in an area isolated from the rest of the passengers. All of the evacuees are being held under quarantine for 14 days.
Australia announced Monday it would also be evacuating its citizens from the ship. Canada, Italy, South Korea and Hong Kong are planning their own evacuation efforts.
The U.S. State Department is also looking into the case of a U.S. citizen who was diagnosed with the coronavirus after departing another cruise ship, the Westerdam, whose passengers tested negative for the virus before disembarking in Cambodia.
Malaysian medical authorities said the passenger, an 83-year-old woman, twice tested positive for the virus upon arriving in Malaysia after showing signs of a viral infection, a State Department spokesperson said Sunday. She is the first person from the Westerdam to test positive. Her husband tested negative.
The spokesperson said U.S. authorities do not have “sufficient evidence to determine when the passenger may have been exposed and where.” The American patient remains in Malaysia where she is receiving treatment.
While China has recently been complimented for the way it has handled the outbreak and its efforts to contain it, the WHO is still asking for more information on how China is making its diagnoses.
Chinese state media Saturday published a speech President Xi Jinping made Feb. 3 that shows Chinese authorities knew more about the seriousness of the coronavirus at least two weeks before it made the dangers known to the public. It wasn’t until late January that officials said the virus could spread among humans.
In a January 7 speech, Xi ordered the shutdown of the cities most affected by the virus. Those lockdowns began January 23.
The U.N humanitarian coordinator for Libya said Monday the impact of the country’s nine-year war on civilians “is incalculable,” pointing to its intensity escalating “exponentially” since a rebel commander launched an offensive last April, casualties rising and almost 900,000 people now needing assistance.
Yacoub El Hillo said a 55-point road map for ending the war in Libya which was agreed to by 12 key leaders at a conference in Berlin on Jan. 19, endorsed last week by the U.N. Security Council, and reaffirmed at a meeting in Munich on Sunday has seen “serious violations” in the last 10 days, with new strikes in and around the capital Tripoli.
El Hillo, who is also the U.N. deputy representative for the oil-rich North African country, said in a briefing to journalists by video from Tripoli that the protracted conflict is “severely impacting civilians in all parts of the country on a scale never seen before.’’
The Berlin peace plan backed a cease-fire, called for compliance with a U.N. arms embargo, and said all countries must refrain from interfering in the conflict between the U.N.-recognized government and the rebel forces of self-styled Gen. Khalifa Hifter, and the country’s internal affairs.
On a potentially positive note, a Joint Military Commission comprising representatives of the warring parties is scheduled to begin a second round of talks Tuesday in Geneva under U.N. auspices, with the aim of agreeing to a lasting cease-fire.
The first meeting of a Libyan Political Forum aimed at forming a new government has also been scheduled for Feb. 26 in Geneva.
Libya has been in turmoil since 2011, when a civil war toppled longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi, who was later killed. In the chaos that followed the country was divided.
A weak U.N.-recognized administration that holds the capital of Tripoli and parts of the country’s west is backed by Turkey, which recently sent thousands of soldiers and military equipment to Libya, and to a lesser degree Qatar and Italy as well as local militias.
On the other side is a rival government in the east that supports self-styled Gen. Khalifa Hifter, whose forces launched an offensive to capture the capital last April 4 and are backed by the United Arab Emirates and Egypt as well as France and Russia.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has decried violations of the U.N. embargo since the Berlin conference by supporters of the warring sides.
El Hillo said “the increasing use of explosive weapons has resulted in unnecessary loss of life.” pointing to attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure, particularly health facilities, that have doubled since 2019, resulting in at least 650 civilians killed or injured.
He cited a U.N. mine expert in Libya who said last week that the country has the world’s largest uncontrolled ammunition stockpile, with an estimated 150,000 to 200,000 tons of uncontrolled munitions across the country.
Libya “is also the largest theater for drone technology,” El Hillo said, stressing that “everyone has something flying in the Libyan sky, it seems.’’
Turkey’s recent move into Libya in “a very heavy way militarily speaking” was to support the government “and create a balance of power so that the capital does not fall,” he said.
On the other side, El Hillo cited reports of the UAE financing Chinese-made drones and the Jordanian government selling six drones to Hifter’s forces.
“Unless we speak so bluntly and openly, … unless we start naming and shaming, we will have the resolutions but the reality on the ground will remain appalling, especially for civilians, and particularly for children and for women,” El Hillo said.
At the end of 2019, he said, more than 345,000 people had fled their homes and become displaced, including 150,000 in and around Tripoli since Hifter’s offensive began last April.
More than half the nearly 900,000 people in need of humanitarian assistance are women and children, he said, and more than 30 percent are migrants and refugees.
El Hillo said the lengthy conflict has degraded services including health care, education an, garbage collection – and he warned that if electricity fails there will soon be “a water crisis” because the water plants require electricity.
Libya is also facing a severe cash shortage, El Hillo said.
With oil exports reduced from 1.2 million barrels per day three weeks ago to almost nothing today, he said, the situation is worsening with two commercial banks on the verge of collapse and people having great difficulty accessing their deposits in the bank. Humanitarian organizations are also facing financial difficulties, he said.
A national association of federal judges will hold an emergency meeting Wednesday after Justice Department officials intervened in the case involving a close confident of U.S. President Donald Trump.
The head of the independent Federal Judges Association, District Judge Cynthia Rufe, tells VOA the judges are “concerned about the attacks on individual judges” and it will be the main issue to be discussed.
Rufe declined to give any more details, but said the jurists “could not wait” until their spring meeting.
The Justice Department stunned the political and legal community last week when it overruled its own prosecutors and recommended a lighter prison sentence for Roger Stone — a longtime friend and confident of Trump who was convicted on lying to Congress, witness tampering, and obstruction of justice stemming from the Russian election meddling probe.
Prosecutors in the case had recommended seven to nine years prison time for Stone — a recommendation based on sentencing guidelines for such crimes.
But the Justice Department recommended a lighter sentence after Trump complained in a tweet that the seven to nine years would be “horrible” and “unfair.”
Three prosecutors in the Stone case withdrew and a fourth quit the agency altogether.
Stone is to be sentenced Thursday and it is up to Judge Amy Berman Jackson to decide how long he is to be locked up.
This courtroom sketch shows former campaign adviser for President Donald Trump, Roger Stone talking from the witness stand as Judge Amy Berman Jackson listens during a court hearing at the U.S. District Courthouse in Washington, Feb. 21, 2019.
Jackson has scheduled a Tuesday conference call with attorneys in the Roger Stone case, two days before the former Trump associate is set to be sentenced.
Former President Barack Obama appointed Judge Jackson and Trump has been notoriously critical of many decisions and policies made by his predecessor. Trump complained last week about Jackson’s decision to jail former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort in solitary confinement and not to try to prosecute former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
Judge Rufe says the Federal Judges’ Association has no interest in getting involved in the Stone case, but does support Jackson.
“We are supportive of any federal judge who does what is required,” she said.
The Roger Stone case has raised questions in Congress about political interference in what is historically suppose to be an independent judiciary.
Trump congratulated Attorney General William Barr last week for “taking charge” of the Stone case. But both deny that Trump asked Barr to intervene.
Barr is scheduled to appear before Congress next month.
More than 2,000 former Justice Department officials have called on Barr to resign, saying his handling of the Stone case “openly and repeatedly flouted” the independence of the judicial branch.
Barr told ABC News last week that Trump’s tweets “make it impossible for him to do his job,” saying he will not be “bullied or influenced by anybody, whether it’s Congress, a newspaper editorial board, or the president.”
A Russian woman aboard the quarantined Diamond Princess cruise ship in Japan has become the first Russian citizen to be diagnosed with COVID-19, Russia said Monday.
The woman on the ship will be transferred to a hospital and receive treatment, the Russian Embassy in Japan said in its Facebook posting. It wasn’t immediately clear whether that would be in Russia or Japan.
The virus, which emerged in central China in December, has infected 454 people on that particular cruise ship. Globally, the virus has infected more than 71,000 people, killing 1,770 patients in mainland China and five others elsewhere. China has instituted strict lockdown measures on over 60 million people in central Hubei province.
In January, Russia reported two confirmed cases of COVID-19 and hospitalized two Chinese citizens, who have since recovered.
Since the start of the coronavirus outbreak, the Russian government has halted most of its air traffic to China. All trains connecting Russia to China and North Korea have been suspended and the Russian land border with China and Mongolia is closed.
Moscow has temporarily stopped issuing work visas to Chinese citizens and Chinese students who had left for the Lunar New Year vacation have been asked not to resume their studies in Russian universities until March 1.
Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin has said that Russia may start deporting foreigners infected with the virus.
Lawyers for Equatorial Guinea told United Nations judges Monday that French authorities illegally seized a mansion in Paris that the African nation insists operated as its embassy. The building was seized as part of a money laundering investigation into the son of the central African nation’s president.
“France has submitted my country to treatment which is totally arbitrary, discriminatory, and consequently contrary to international law,” Carmelo Nvono-Nca, who led Equatorial Guinea’s legal team, told judges as public hearings in the case got underway.
The International Court of Justice case is focused on the diplomatic status of a multimillion-euro (dollar) mansion on one of the French capital’s most prestigious streets, Avenue Foch.
French authorities seized it in 2012 as they investigated Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue for misuse of public funds and money laundering. Equatorial Guinea argues that, under an international treaty governing diplomatic relations, France had no right to seize the building as it had been operating as the country’s embassy since 2011.
Equatorial Guinea filed a case with the world court in 2016 arguing that Obiang, who is his country’s vice president, had immunity from prosecution. However the United Nation’s highest court said in 2018 that it did not have jurisdiction over that issue and narrowed the case down to the status of the mansion.
An appeals court in France a week ago upheld Obiang’s 2017 conviction and three-year suspended sentence for embezzling millions of dollars in public money, and fined him 30 million euros.
The conviction also ordered the Avenue Foch mansion confiscated, but the ruling cannot be carried out pending the outcome of the world court case.
Nvono-Nca told judges that France was continuing “its attacks against the dignity of my country which started almost 10 years ago before the French courts. The French courts where our vice president was accused — and even our head of state was accused — of crimes which in our view, simply never occurred.”
Lawyer Michael Wood told the court that Equatorial Guinea would be seeking compensation for “material and moral” damage caused by France’s actions.
Lawyers representing France are scheduled to present their arguments on Tuesday. Judges will likely take months to issue a ruling.
