A man wounded in the Hanukkah stabbings north of New York City may have permanent brain damage and be partially paralyzed for the rest of his life, his family said.
The Orthodox Jewish Public Affairs Council released a statement from the family of Josef Neumann, 71, and a graphic photograph Wednesday showing severe head injuries he received Saturday at a rabbi’s home in Monsey, New York.
Four other people were injured in the attack, which federal prosecutors say was a hate crime.
The photograph shows an intubated Neumann with a swollen and disfigured face lying in a hospital bed. A gash to his head appears to have been stitched up.
Neumann’s family released the photograph for the world and “the Jewish community to understand the gravity of hate,” Yossi Gestetner, the council’s co-founder, said in an interview. Neumann has seven children.
“These things are vividly and viciously disturbing and have long-term consequences,” Gestetner said.
The 18-inch machete used in the attack penetrated Neumann’s skull, the statement said, adding that Neumann’s “right arm has been shattered.”
“Our father’s status is so dire that no surgery has yet been performed on the right arm,” the statement said. “Doctors are not optimistic about his chances to regain consciousness, and if our father does miraculously recover partially, doctors expect that he will have permanent damage to the brain, leaving him partially paralyzed and speech-impaired for the rest of his life.”
The statement also called on Jewish people around the world to share their own experiences with anti-Semitism on social media using the hashtag (hash)MeJew.
“We shall not let this terrible hate-driven attack be forgotten,” the statement said, “and let us all work to eradicate all sorts of hate.”
FILE – Police officers escort stabbing suspect Grafton Thomas, center, to a police vehicle, in Ramapo, New York, Dec. 29, 2019.
Federal prosecutors have charged Grafton Thomas, 37, with five federal counts of obstructing the free exercise of religious beliefs by attempting to kill with a dangerous weapon. He also has pleaded not guilty to five state counts of attempted murder and one count of burglary.
Authorities have said Thomas had handwritten journals containing anti-Semitic references and had recently used his phone to look up information on Hitler and the location of synagogues.
Thomas’ family has said he was raised in a tolerant home and had a history of mental illness.
The Hanukkah attack came amid a string of violence that has alarmed Jews in the region.
Former New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind said he recently spoke with an Orthodox Jewish man in New York who told him he had taken off his yarmulke out of fear.
“Part of what we’re trying to get across to people is that these attacks are not just statistics,” said Hikind, founder of Americans Against Antisemitism. “These people have to live with this the rest of their life.”
Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Wednesday he has directed the state police to increase patrols in Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods around New York. Mayor and fellow Democrat Bill de Blasio announced a similar heightened police presence in the city last week.
“Everybody feels very upset and disturbed about what happened,” Cuomo said during a New Year’s Day visit to Brooklyn’s heavily Orthodox Williamsburg neighborhood, “and everybody stands in solidarity with you.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday said he will ask parliament to grant him immunity from corruption charges, a step that is expected to delay his trial for months.
The step most likely puts the trial on hold until after elections in March, when he hopes to win a majority coalition that will shield him from prosecution.
The announcement essentially turns the upcoming election campaign into a referendum on whether Netanyahu should be granted immunity and remain in office or step down to stand trial.
A recent poll indicated that a majority of Israelis oppose giving him immunity.
Netanyahu was indicted in November on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust after failing to assemble a governing majority following back-to-back-elections last year. He now gets a third shot at holding onto his office in March.
In a nationally televised address, Netanyahu repeated his assertion that he is the victim of an unfair conspiracy and that he would seek to invoke the law that would protect him from prosecution while he remains in office.
“In order to continue to lead Israel to great achievements, I intend to approach the speaker of the Knesset in accordance with chapter 4C of the law, in order to fulfill my right, my duty and my mission to continue to serve you for the future of Israel,” he said.
The request most likely means that parliament will address the matter after March elections.
The current caretaker government is not empowered to make a decision on granting Netanyahu immunity.
In order to debate the matter, parliament would have to appoint a special committee that needs to study the request. But it remains unclear whether it will be allowed to do so.
The worldwide refugee crisis continues to deepen. According to the United Nations, the world is witnessing “thehighest levels of displacement on record.” Spurred by conflict and persecution, the numbers of displaced are expected to rise further in the future, as climate change pushes people out of their homes. VOA’s Ardita Dunellari reports.
Carol Lee collaborates with University of Montpellier colleagues researching how tiny plankton cope in an ever-saltier Mediterranean sea and a freshwater-infused Baltic one. From the foothills of the French Pyrenees, Camille Parmesan experiments with cutting-edge climate modeling, hoping it may offer clues for future biodiversity conservation.
Both biologists have pulled up stakes from previous posts, counting among U.S. scientists who are responding to the Trump administration’s upcoming withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement with their feet.
“I know quite a lot of really top-notch scientists who have just moved to other countries,” said Lee, citing colleagues who have headed to Europe and China. “And a big, alarming trend is there are a lot of very smart people who are not moving to the U.S.”
“I know quite a lot of really top-notch scientists who have just moved to other countries,” says Lee, pictured with a colleague. “And a big, alarming trend is there are a lot of very smart people who are not moving to the U.S.”
Lee’s assessment follows numerous allegations that the U.S. government is undermining climate and other research on multiple fronts, from shrinking funding and shutting programs to diminishing science’s role in policymaking. Hundreds of scientists have left their jobs, according to a recent New York Times article, although it’s unclear how many have headed overseas.
U.S. officials offer a different picture. A State Department statement issued ahead of December’s climate talks in Madrid, for example, said the government remained committed to research and innovation. It credited advances, ranging from renewables to “transformational” coal technologies, for allowing the United States to simultaneously reduce emissions, protect the environment and grow the economy.
Yet these days Europe is more often seen as the climate leader. Still, it faces its own set of challenges. The European Union’s climate-fighting efforts vary sharply by member state, with countries like Poland still heavily reliant on coal.
Moreover, a recent study by the European Investment Bank finds the EU must invest massively more in research and development to a meet a new and ambitious 2050 goal of zero net emissions. Indeed, it finds Europe lags behind the US and China in climate change mitigation investments as a share of GDP.
French President Emmanuel Macron holds a sign with the slogan ‘Make our planet great again’ as he attends the ‘Tech for Planet’ event at the ‘Station F’ start-up campus ahead of the One Planet Summit in Paris on Dec. 11, 2017.
French grants
In France, Lee and Parmesan count among more than a dozen U.S. scientists benefiting from generous research grants under President Emmanuel Macron’s Make the Planet Great Again program, a direct rebuttal to Washington’s departure from the Paris pact. Yet Macron himself is criticized at home for failing to match climate-fighting rhetoric with action, while experts say French science overall is seriously underfunded.
“It’s very clear there isn’t enough investment in France, and we’ll need to concentrate on this in the years to come,” says Stephane Blanc, who heads the MOPGA initiative, pointing however to upcoming legislation aimed to significantly boost research funding.
Launched in mid-2017, Macron’s initiative — known more prosaically as MOPGA — offers three- to five-year matching grants of up to $1.7 million for cutting-edge environment research on areas that also include biodiversity loss and sustainable agriculture. American and formerly U.S.-based scientists dominate the 41 grantees, who also include French and other Europeans. Germany has rolled out a similar, but more modest initiative.
“When Macron made that announcement, I thought ‘I’m applying for that,'” says Lee, who had previously collaborated with Montpellier University.
Her grant of nearly $900,000 allows her to hire graduate students for research into how plankton can adapt to changes in salinity and temperature. Her two targets are witnessing diametrically opposite climate-affected impacts; while the Mediterranean is increasing in salinity, ice melt is injecting a mass of freshwater into the Baltic Sea that promises to decimate key local species like cod.
“I’m looking at the base of the food chain, because that’s so important for maintaining everything — that’s the little guys, the copepods,” she says of the plankton.
At home in Madison, Wisconsin, Lee launched a more personal climate change fight, going vegetarian and powering her house with wind. But she does not see enough action on a national level.
“I feel like scientists are getting ignored in the United States, that what we say doesn’t matter right now, and that is incredibly distressing,” she says.
In France, by contrast, she is confident her research will be published and widely disseminated.
“Somebody is going to listen to us,” she says. “In Europe and elsewhere.”
FILE – In this Sept.5, 2017 file photo, French President Emmanuel Macron, right, and Environment Minister Nicolas Hulot meet with NGOs to discuss climate and environment at the Elysee Palace in Paris.
Modeling change
For Parmesan, France amounted a Eurostar train ride away from her previous research posting in Britain. During her career, she has given talks at the White House, testified before Congress and collected prestigious awards for her research, which includes helping to solidify the science behind the 2°C-degree global warming cap set by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
“I think I’ve done my thing about the fact we need to reduce carbon emissions,” Parmesan says. “What I’m trying to do now is go more towards what we do about it.”
Today, she works at a French research station in the tiny southwestern commune of Moulis, trying to apply economic-style simulations to biodiversity conservation under a rapidly changing climate.
“It’s really tricky, because there’s a lot of uncertainty,” she says. “How do you come up with a conservation plan? What do you preserve and where to you preserve in the face of all this?”
She describes a recent slew of emissions and global warming records as yet more grim data points on a now-clear trajectory. But she is alarmed the United States is not leading the response.
“A lot of the best science has come out of the United States, but that’s going away,” she says.
While some U.S. colleagues are staying put in their jobs, mindful of family and financial constraints, others are not, she says.
“If they’re old enough they’re retiring, if they’re young enough they’re getting the hell out of there,” Parmesan said, adding a number are asking her about research options in Europe.
She is worried about the future, but energized by the rising tide of youth climate activists.
“Young people will see a tremendous degradation of their lifestyle — everyone who reads the science knows that,” Parmesan says. “So I’m really excited that age group is finally getting charged up, and demanding these older politicians do something.”
The more you give, the richer you become that’s the philosophical idea behine the gift economy. It’s an idea that’s catching on. At the famous Burning Man festival in Nevada for instance money has no worth. In his book “The Gift”, Lewis Hyde described this model in detail. Misha Gutkin looked into the whole idea.
Former Nissan Motor Company chief Carlos Ghosn said Tuesday he had traveled to Lebanon to escape what he called “injustice and political persecution” in Japan where he faces multiple charges of financial misconduct.
Ghosn has been arrested several times since first being detained in November 2018, but was free on bail. The conditions of his latest release required him to remain in Japan, and his statement Tuesday did not explain how he left.
“I am now in Lebanon and will no longer be held hostage by a rigged Japanese justice system where guilt is presumed, discrimination is rampant, and basic human rights are denied, in flagrant disregard of Japan’s legal obligations under international law and treaties it is bound to uphold,” Ghosn said.
Ghosn has denied the charges against him.
Among the allegations are accusations he conspired to understate his Nissan income by about 50 percent between 2010 and 2015, and that a Nissan subsidiary diverted $2.5 million out of $5 million from an Oman dealership to a Ghosn-owned investment company for his private use.
Ghosn was credited for steering Nissan from the brink of bankruptcy to becoming one of the world top-selling automakers. He engineered a three-way alliance with one-time domestic rival Mitsubishi Motors and French-based Renault.
Volunteers are working around the clock preparing flower-decked floats for the annual Rose Parade, a New Year’s Day tradition. Hundreds of thousands of people line the parade route in Pasadena, California, on Wednesday, and millions more will watch on television. Mike O’Sullivan reports on the preparations.
A federal judge on Monday dismissed a lawsuit from a former White House official who had challenged a congressional subpoena in the impeachment inquiry involving President Donald Trump.
Charles Kupperman, a former deputy national security adviser, sued in October after being subpoenaed by House Democrats to testify in their impeachment investigation into Trump’s interactions with Ukraine. He had asked a judge to decide whether he had to comply with that subpoena from Congress or with a conflicting directive from the White House that he not testify.
Both the House of Representatives, which withdrew the subpoena, and the Justice Department, which had said it would not prosecute Kupperman for contempt of Congress for failing to appear, had asked the court to dismiss the case as moot.
U.S. District Judge Richard Leon agreed Monday in throwing out the case. He noted that the House had stated explicitly that it would not reissue a subpoena to Kupperman and had not mentioned him by name in an impeachment article this month that accused Trump of obstructing Congress and its investigation.
“This conduct is of course entirely consistent with the repeated representations that counsel for the House has made to this Court,” Leon wrote. “The House clearly has no intention of pursuing Kupperman, and his claims are thus moot.”
FILE – Former National Security Adviser John Bolton gestures while speaking at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, Sept. 30, 2019.
The lawsuit was closely watched since it was a rare challenge of a congressional subpoena in the impeachment inquiry and because of the potential implications it carried for another witness whose testimony has been highly sought by Democrats: former national security adviser John Bolton.
Kupperman and Bolton have the same lawyer. Bolton was not subpoenaed by the House but, as a senior adviser to the president on matters of national security, had similar arguments at his disposal. Senate Democrats have identified Bolton as among the current and former Trump administration officials they would like to hear from in a trial.
Charles Cooper, a lawyer for Bolton and Kupperman, did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.
Though Leon said he did not need to resolve Kupperman’s case now, he acknowledged that the conflict could potentially resurface.
“Have no doubt though, should the winds of political fortune shift and the House were to reissue a subpoena to Dr. Kupperman, he will face the same conflicting directives that precipitated this suit,” Leon wrote.
“If so, he will undoubtedly be right back before this Court seeking a solution to a Constitutional dilemma that has long-standing political consequences: balancing Congress’s well-established power to investigate with a President’s need to have a small group of national security advisors who have some form of immunity from compelled congressional testimony,” Leon wrote.
Chinese pastor Wang Yi, founder of Early Rain Covenant Church, has been sentenced to nine years in prison on the charges of inciting state subversion and illegal business operation, a court in Sichuan in southwest China said on Monday.
One year after his incommunicado detention and a recent secret trial, Wang has also been deprived of his political rights for three years with 50,000 yuan ($7,157) of his personal property being confiscated, the announcement on the court’s website added.
The court, however, gave no details of its so-called “open” trial, which Wang allegedly faced last week.
Religious rights activists called Wang’s verdict the harshest in a decade, which paints a bleak picture of China’s government-led persecution of religious groups under the leadership of Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Wang was among dozens of the church’s followers and leaders including his wife detained by police in December 2018 although most were subsequently released.
The 46-year-old pastor is also a productive writer, social activist and formerly a legal scholar at Chengdu University before he took up the pastorate.
According to Bob Fu, founder of China Aid, a Texas, U.S.-based Christian human rights group which promotes religious freedom and rule of law in China, Wang’s sentence is the longest against an ethnic Chinese house church leader in a decade, prior to which, Uyghur house church leader Alimujiang Yimiti from Xinjiang was given a 15-year sentence in 2008.
“This demonstrates President Xi’s regime is determined to be the enemy of the universal values and the religious freedom,” Fu said.
“It shows the regime is very afraid of pastor Wang Yi’s national and international impact based on his reformed evangelic movement,” he added.
Under Xi, China has intensified its crackdown on unsupervised religious followers be it Christians, Muslims or even Buddhists.
In the past few years, authorities there have not only jailed pastors, but also closed churches and taken down thousands of crosses and, in some places, there is a push to ensure that anyone under the age of 18 cannot attend church or be under the influence of religion – what Fu called the worst religious persecution since the Cultural Revolution.
China is officially atheist, but says it allows religious freedom.
And Wang’s church is one of China’s best-known unregistered Protestant “house” churches, deemed illegal under Chinese laws, which require all places of worship to register and submit to government oversight.
In other words, criminal charges against Wang can apply to all other unregistered church leaders and goers, which observers say is sending another chilling effect on Chinese religious believers
“He [Wang] is a martyr who suffers the persecution… The chilling effect was there because many people will be deterred, not to speak up. But those who really are fighting hard for their own faith, for their own religion, will not bend,” said Sang Pu, a commentator in Hong Kong.
Sang said that many church goers are finding new places or new ways to worship in spite of the Chinese government’s crackdown.
Analysts have long argued that China’s Communist Party will have a hard time suppressing Christians in China as Yang Feggang of Purdue University once estimated that the country’s population of Christians has unstoppably grown ten-fold from six millions in 1980 to more than 67 million in 2010.
Yang estimated that China will turn out to have the world’s largest population of more than 247 million Christians in 2030.
Rights activists, in addition, denounced Wang’s trial, saying that the pastor has been deprived of due legal proceedings and representation.
They said that Wang likely stood trial secretly on December 26th when no one from his family was notified or present at the court.
His former lawyer Zhang Peihong, originally hired by Wang’s parents to represent him, had been replaced by two government-appointed lawyers in November.
“Those who do evil will be in trouble. You’re not keeping a criminal behind bars. Instead, you’re crowning a righteous man!” Zhang posted Monday on Facebook, which is banned in China, apparently writing about Wang’s case.
Since June, Wang’s wife Jiang Rong has been out on “bail” after being detained alongside her husband during the initial raid on the church.
But both she, their son and Wang’s parents are still under close surveillance by state security police, according to Fu.
“Jiang Rong is staying in a public security-arranged apartment and their 13-year-old son is not allowed even to have freedom to meet with his own mom and grandparents,” Fu said, adding that “every day, he has to take a police car to go to school and being picked up by the police. No freedom at all.”
A court in Sudan on Monday sentenced 27 members of the country’s security forces to death for torturing and killing a detained protester during the uprising against Sudan’s longtime autocrat Omar al-Bashir earlier this year.
The death of protester Ahmed al-Khair, a school teacher, while in detention in February was a key point — and a symbol — in the uprising that eventually led to the military’s ouster of al-Bashir. Monday’s convictions and sentences, which can be appealed, were the first connected to the killings of protesters in the revolt.
FILE – Protesters rally against police violence in Khartoum, Sudan, Sept. 23, 2019.
Last December, the first rally was held in Sudan to protest the soaring cost of bread, marking the beginning of a pro-democracy movement that convulsed the large African country. That led, in April, to the toppling by the military of al-Bashir, and ultimately to the creation of a joint military-civilian Sovereign Council that has committed to rebuilding the country and promises elections in three years.
The anniversary of that protest this month drew teeming crowds to the streets in several cities and towns across the country, with people singing, dancing and carrying flags. A train packed with exuberant demonstrators, clapping and chanting, arrived in the northern city of Atbara, the birthplace of the uprising, from the capital, Khartoum.
Monday’s verdict in the trial of the security forces took place in a court in Omdurman, Khartoum’s twin city, where dozens of protesters had gathered outside the courtroom, demanding justice for al-Khair.
Al-Khair was detained on Jan. 31 in the eastern province of Kassala and was reported dead two days later. His body was taken to a local hospital where his family said it was covered in bruises. At the time, police denied any police wrongdoing and blamed his death on an “illness,” without providing any details.
The court, however, said on Monday that the teacher was beaten and tortured while in detention. The 27 sentenced were policemen who were working in the jail where al-Khair was held or intelligence agents in the region.
FILE – Sudan’s former president Omar Hassan al-Bashir stands guarded inside a cage at the courthouse where he is facing corruption charges, in Khartoum, Sudan, Aug. 19, 2019.
Also this month, a court in Khartoum convicted al-Bashir of money laundering and corruption, sentencing him to two years in a minimum security lockup. The image of the former dictator in a defendant’s cage sent a strong message, on live TV for all of Sudan.
The deposed ruler is under indictment by the International Criminal Court on far more serious charges of war crimes and genocide linked to his brutal suppression of the insurgency in the western province of Darfur in the early 2000s. The military has refused to extradite him to stand trial in The Hague.
Amnesty International and other rights groups have called on the new government to hold security forces accountable for killing scores of people in their efforts to stifle protests against military rule, especially those behind a deadly crackdown on a huge sit-in outside the military headquarters in Khartoum last June.
Since last December, nearly 200 protesters have been killed in Sudan. The government recently appointed independent judges to oversee investigations into the killings, a major achievement for the protest movement.
Sudan is under heavy international and regional pressure to reform. With the economy on the brink, the new government has made it a mission to get Sudan removed from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism so that it can attract badly needed foreign aid.
Police in Turkey detained at least 124 people suspected of links to the Islamic State group, the state-run news agency reported Monday, in an apparent sweep against the militant group ahead of New Year celebrations.
At least 33 foreign nationals were detained in the capital Ankara in a joint operation by anti-terrorism police and the national intelligence agency, according to the Anadolu Agency. In Istanbul, police raided 31 houses, detaining 24 suspects, including four foreign nationals.
Police conducted simultaneous, pre-dawn raids in the city of Batman, in southeast Turkey, where 22 suspects were detained, it said in a separate report. Raids were also conducted in the cities of Adana, Kayseri, Samsun and Bursa where 45 people, including six foreign nationals were detained.
Anadolu said the IS suspects apprehended in Ankara were from Iraq, Syria and Morocco. Police were searching for some 17 other suspects, the report said.
The country was hit by a wave of attacks in 2015 and 2016 blamed on IS and Kurdish militants that killed over 300 people.
The IS group also claimed responsibility for an attack at an Istanbul nightclub during New Year celebrations in the early hours of 2017. The attack killed 39 people, most of them foreigners.
Meanwhile, Turkey deported a total of 778 IS or other jihadists back to their home countries in 2019, Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said Sunday.
Turkey has stepped up its efforts to expel foreign fighters back to their countries of origin in recent months, accusing many European countries of not taking responsibility for their nationals and saying Turkey was “not a hotel” for foreign fighters.
The U.S. carried out military strikes in Iraq and Syria targeting a militia blamed for an attack that killed an American contractor, a Defense Department spokesman said Sunday.
U.S. forces conducted “precision defensive strikes” against five sites of Kataeb Hezbollah, or Hezbollah Brigades, an Iran-backed Iraqi militia, spokesman Jonathan Hoffman said in a statement.
The U.S. blames the militia for a rocket barrage Friday that killed a U.S. defense contractor at a military compound near Kirkuk, in northern Iraq.
Officials said attackers fired as many as 30 rockets in Friday’s assault.
The Defense Department gave no details immediately on how the strikes were conducted. It said the U.S. hit three of the militia’s sites in Iraq and two in Syria, including weapon caches and the militia’s command and control bases.
Hoffman said the U.S. strikes will weaken the group’s ability to carry out future attacks on Americans and their Iraqi government allies.
Iraq’s Hezbollah Brigades, a separate force from the Lebanese group Hezbollah, operate under the umbrella of the state-sanctioned militias known collectively as the Popular Mobilization Forces. Many of them are supported by Iran.
A senior member of the Popular Mobilization Forces, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the news media, said at at least 12 fighters with the Hezbollah Brigades had died in U.S. strikes along the Iraq and Syria border. His account could not immediately be independently confirmed.
White House national security adviser Robert O’Brien said Sunday he did not want to speculate about North Korea and its threat of “Christmas gift,” but added the U.S. would be “very disappointed” if Pyongyang tested a long-range or nuclear missile.
During an interview with ABC’s “This Week,” O’Brien said the country would take appropriate action as a leading military and economic power if North Korea went ahead with such a test.
O’Brien added Washington has many “tools in its tool kit” to respond.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un speaks during the 5th Plenary Meeting of the 7th Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) in this undated photo released on Dec. 28, 2019 by North Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).
“We’ll reserve judgment but the United States will take action as we do in these situations,” he said. “If Kim Jong Un takes that approach we’ll be extraordinarily disappointed and we’ll demonstrate that disappointment.”
North Korea had warned of a “Christmas gift” if the U.S. didn’t meet an end of year deadline to soften its stance on nuclear talks that have been stalled since February
U.S. officials have been on alert for a potential long-range missile test since the North Korean warning.
Though Christmas holiday has passed and North Korea did not deliver the so-called “Christmas gift” to the United States, U.S.-North Korea tensions appear far from resolved.
North Korea’s nuclear program was the “most difficult challenge in the world” when President Donald Trump took office in January 2017, O’Brien told ABC News.
He also suggested that Trump’s strategy of “face-to-face” diplomacy may have forced North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to reconsider.
Talks about North Korea’s denuclearization have been largely deadlocked since a second summit between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Hanoi collapsed at the start of this year.
The Kremlin says Russian President Vladimir Putin, in a telephone conversation initiated by the Russian side, has thanked U.S. President Donald Trump “for information transmitted via the special services that helped prevent the commission of terrorist acts in Russia.”
There was no immediate confirmation from the U.S. side.
The call also reportedly included discussion of “a set of issues of mutual interest,” according to the official Kremlin website.
Both leaders, Putin’s office said, agreed “to continue bilateral cooperation in the fight against terrorism.”
The Australian government announced Sunday that it would compensate volunteer firefighters in the state of New South Wales (NSW), as the country’s intense bushfire season rages on.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said payments of up to A$6,000 would be available for eligible firefighters who had spent more than 10 days in the field this fire season.
“I know that our volunteer firefighters in NSW are doing it tough, especially in rural and regional areas,” Morrison said in a statement. “The early and prolonged nature of this fire season has made a call beyond what is typically made on our volunteer firefighters.”
The conservative leader has previously said compensation for volunteers was not a priority, but he has faced increasing political pressure as widespread fires continue to burn.
On Tuesday, he announced government workers could receive additional paid leave for volunteering.
While there are different rules across Australia’s states, volunteers tend to negotiate time off directly with their employers.
Eight fatalities
Bushfires have destroyed more than 4 million hectares (9.9 million acres) in five states since September, and eight deaths have been linked to the blazes.
Cooler conditions in many areas during Christmas week helped contain some blazes, but the fire risk has increased in parts of the country in the final few days of 2019.
On Sunday, organizers of a major music festival in the state of Victoria canceled the event, citing extreme weather conditions expected Monday.
“After consultation with local and regional fire authorities and other emergency stakeholders, it is clear that we have no other option,” the organizers wrote on Facebook.
The event was meant to run until New Year’s Eve, and 9,000 people were already camping at the site when the announcement was made.
A total fire ban is in place for all of Victoria on Monday because of forecast high temperatures and strong winds creating an “extreme” fire risk across most of the state.
Austria’s Greens, who are in coalition talks with conservatives led by Sebastian Kurz, on Saturday summoned a meeting of their party’s top decision-making body next week to sign off on a deal, indicating an agreement is close.
The Greens’ Federal Congress, comprising various groups within the party, including its national, local and European lawmakers, must sign off on any coalition deal, and it requires a week’s notice to meet.
The meeting has been called for January 4 and invitations were sent shortly before midnight, a Greens spokeswoman said. Although a deal has not yet been struck between the Greens and Kurz’s People’s Party (OVP), which won the last parliamentary election on September 29, calling the meeting indicates the Greens believe an agreement will be reached before then.
Kurz said on Friday as talks resumed after a short Christmas break that he aimed to have a government sworn in by “early to mid-January.” In contrast to the Greens, Kurz can sign off on the deal himself on behalf of his party.
Given the difficulty in keeping the deal confidential once it is put to the more than 250 members of the Federal Congress, the details are likely to be announced before it meets. Media reports said presentation was likely to happen on January 2 or January 3.
Few details have emerged so far, but Greens leader Werner Kogler has said he wants an investment package in environmental measures, and Kurz has said his priorities include continuing his hard line on illegal immigration and keeping a balanced budget.
There have also been reports the deal includes large investments in expanding Austria’s rail network.
A deal would bring Kurz back to power as chancellor after his coalition with the far-right Freedom Party (FPO) collapsed in May over a video sting that felled FPO leader Heinz-Christian Strache. A provisional government of civil servants is in place for the time being until a coalition is formed.
Former Ivory Coast rebel leader Guillaume Soro dismissed an arrest warrant issued against him as baseless and said he would pursue his campaign as a presidential candidate from overseas, according to comments published Sunday in a French newspaper.
Ivory Coast’s public prosecutor issued the warrant for Soro on Monday as part of an investigation into an alleged coup plot, forcing him to call off a planned homecoming ahead of the October 2020 election.
Soro — who gave the interview Thursday to the Journal du Dimanche in Paris and has been based in France for the past six months, according to the newspaper — said the warrant was politically motivated.
This warrant is not based on the law, but has simply been issued to stop a candidate from trying to win office,” Soro said.
He added that an audio recording being cited by prosecutors in their allegations was a manipulation and the result of a setup.
The warrant was issued for breaches of state security, receiving stolen public resources and money laundering.
Still has allies
The case involving Soro, who retains the loyalty of many former rebel commanders who now hold senior positions in the army, could significantly increase tensions ahead of the election, which is seen as a test of Ivory Coast’s stability.
On Saturday, Ivory Coast President Alassane Ouattara said Soro was not above the law and would face justice for allegedly seeking to destabilize the country.
That came after a group of Ivory Coast opposition parties accused state authorities on Friday of trying to intimidate them before the presidential election, and denounced the warrant against Soro.
Soro said he had not had any contact with French President Emmanuel Macron’s office during his time in France and had not sought protection. Macron visited Ivory Coast in late December, before the warrant emerged.
Soro said he would work on a form of political resistance from overseas for now.
“I am and remain a candidate for the presidency,” he said.
Somali officials say dozens of people were killed and wounded when a huge car bomb exploded at a busy junction on the southwestern side of Mogadishu.
Witnesses say the blast occurred at a security checkpoint at an intersection used by vehicles leaving and entering Mogadishu from Afgoye town. An officer said it was a truck bomb.
Early reports indicated the vehicle filled with explosives was targeting a busy taxation office at the junction where vehicles stop to pay their road taxes.
A witness who went to the scene told VOA Somali that he saw blood and pieces of bodies scattered throughout the scene.
“It’s hard to quantify, but many people died,” he said.
A senior government official said he was told a significant number of people were killed. Pictures taken show at least 15 dead bodies lying on the ground.
Civilians help a woman injured in a car bombing at a security checkpoint as she arrives to a hospital in Mogadishu, Somalia, Dec. 28, 2019.
A U.S. military base in South Korea accidentally blared an alert siren instead of a bugle call, causing a brief scare as the U.S. and its allies are monitoring for signs of provocation from North Korea, which has warned it could send a “Christmas gift” over deadlocked nuclear negotiations.
The siren at Camp Casey, which is near the border with North Korea, went off by “human error” around 10 p.m. Thursday, said Lt. Col. Martyn Crighton, a public affairs officer for the 2nd Infantry Division.
The operator immediately identified the mistake and alerted all units at the base of the false alarm, which did not interfere with any operations, Crighton said in an email Saturday.
False alarm in Japan
The incident came a day before Japanese broadcaster NHK caused panic by mistakenly sending a news alert saying North Korea fired a missile over Japan that landed in the sea off the country’s northeastern island of Hokkaido early Friday. The broadcaster apologized, saying the alert was for media training purposes.
North Korea has been dialing up pressure on Washington ahead of an end-of-year deadline issued by leader Kim Jong Un for the Trump administration to offer mutually acceptable terms for a nuclear deal. There are concerns that Pyongyang could do something provocative if Washington doesn’t back down and relieve sanctions imposed on the North’s broken economy.
The North fired two missiles over Japan during a provocative run in weapons tests in 2017, which also included three flight tests of developmental intercontinental ballistic missiles that demonstrated potential capabilities to reach the U.S. mainland.
Tensions eased briefly
Tensions eased after Kim initiated diplomacy with Washington and Seoul in 2018 while looking to leverage his nukes for economic and security benefits.
But negotiations have faltered since a February summit between Kim and President Donald Trump broke down after the U.S. side rejected North Korean demands for broad sanctions relief in exchange for a partial surrender of its nuclear capabilities.
In a statement issued earlier this month, North Korean senior diplomat Ri Thae Song asserted that the Trump administration was running out of time to salvage faltering nuclear negotiations, and said it’s entirely up to the United States to choose what “Christmas gift” it gets from the North.
The North also in recent weeks said it conducted two “crucial” tests at a long-range rocket facility it said would strengthen its nuclear deterrent, prompting speculation that it’s developing a new ICBM or preparing a satellite launch.
A Thai navy SEAL who was part of the dramatic rescue of 12 boys and their soccer coach from a flooded cave has died of a blood infection contracted during the risky operation, the Royal Thai Navy said.
Petty Officer 1st Class Bayroot Pakbara was receiving treatment, but his condition worsened after the infection spread into his blood, according to an announcement on the Thai navy SEAL’s Facebook page.
He is the second navy diver who lost his life in the high-profile operation that saw the boys and the coach extracted from deep inside the northern cave complex, where they were trapped for two weeks in June-July last year.
Lt. Cmdr. Saman Gunan died while resupplying oxygen tanks July 6, 2019.
According to the Bangkok Post, Pakbara was buried Friday at the Talosai mosque in southern Satun province. Local media quoted his mother as saying her son had been in and out of the hospital since the cave rescue.
The boys and their coach entered the Tham Luang cave complex after soccer practice and were quickly trapped inside by rising floodwater. Despite a massive search, the boys spent nine nights lost in the cave before they were spotted by an expert diver. It would take another eight days before they were all safely removed from the cave.
A team of expert divers guided each of the boys out of the cave on special stretchers. The operation required placing oxygen canisters along the path where the divers maneuvered dark, tight and twisting passageways filled with muddy water and strong currents.
Singer-songwriter, record producer, philanthropist, and actor, Jon Bon Jovi the founder and front man of the Grammy Award-winning rock band Bon Jovi, which was formed in 1983. Bon Jovi has released 14 studio albums and has sold over 130 million albums worldwide and he has released two solo albums. Earlier this month Bon Jovi released their latest song, “Unbroken” which will be featured in the forthcoming documentary “To Be of Service.” The song is a compelling anthem that shines a spotlight on the thousands of veterans living with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Thursday won a resounding victory over Likud challenger Gideon Saar, winning more than 72% of the vote. The vote gives Netanyahu a boost going into Israel’s third general election in a year, scheduled for early March.
“This is a huge victory! Thank you Likud members for your trust, support and love,” Netanyahu said in a message to supporters, vowing to lead Likud “to a great victory in the upcoming [national] elections and continue to lead the State of Israel to unprecedented achievements.”
Saar called Netanyahu to concede defeat and said he would continue to support Likud in the coming election campaign. Saar’s supporters had said that if he reached 30% of the vote, it would be a big victory. He fell short, but not my much.
“The contest was vital to the Likud and its democratic character,” said Saar. “My decision to run was right and necessary. Whoever isn’t prepared to take a chance for the path he believes in, will never win.”
Saar was seen as the first serious challenger to Netanyahu in the 10 years that he has led the ruling Likud party. Netanyahu also recently became Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, overtaking the first prime minister, David Ben Gurion. The overwhelming victory seemed to show that the fact that Netanyahu has been indicted in three corruption cases has not dampened his Likud support.
In the last two election campaigns, Netanyahu has run a campaign in the style of U.S. President Donald Trump, denigrating the media and the justice system as making up “fake-news” allegations against him. He described investigations against him as ridiculous, repeating “there will be nothing (no indictment) because there is nothing.”
Since the November indictment, he has continued to insist he is innocent, and most analysts say it is Netanyahu who dragged Israel into an unprecedented third election in a year because he wants to gain strength before trying to get immunity.
“All Netanyahu is concerned about is his personal interest – it’s why we went through elections in April and September, and why we are going to a third election,” Gayil Talshir, a political science professor at Hebrew University said in an interview. “He needs 61 hands in the Knesset (the parliament) to vote for immunity for him. He needs each and every one of the right-wing members of the Knesset.”
In the past two elections, neither Netanyahu nor his former army chief Benny Gantz, who started a new party called Blue and White, was able to put together a coalition of 61 seats. Gantz had said he would not join a national unity coalition with Netanyahu at the head, although he is open to another Likud leader.
During negotiations after the September election, Netanyahu offered to step down after six months, but Gantz reportedly did not trust him to keep his promise.
Latest polls show that Blue and White has gained some strength but that neither Likud nor Blue and White can form a coalition. Netanyahu is also hoping that the next election will strengthen some of the right-wing parties who would be his natural coalition partners.
According to the Israeli electoral system, a party needs a minimum of four seats to enter the Knesset. The law was passed to prevent small one- and two-seat parties from entering the Knesset. In last April’s election, the Jewish Home party of Defense Minister Naftali Bennet and former Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked fell just 1,500 votes short of the threshold number. For Netanyahu, it was four potential seats lost to the right wing.
Beyond strengthening his own base, Netanyahu hopes to encourage right-wing voters to come out and vote. In the Likud party primary, just under 50% of registered Likud voters came out, partly because of stormy weather. Netanyahu is worried that the third election in a year has left the Israeli public, which traditionally has high rates of voting, apathetic and voter turnout will decrease.
Although Netanyahu trounced Gideon Saar, the fact that anyone was willing to challenge Netanyahu may be the first chink in his armor. For the past 10 years, Netanyahu has completely dominated Likud.
It is not yet clear when Netanyahu’s corruption trial will begin. He has insisted that he can both be prime minister and defend himself in court at the same time.
Tony Award-winning composer Jerry Herman, who wrote the cheerful, good-natured music and lyrics for such classic shows as “Mame,” “Hello, Dolly!” and “La Cage aux Folles,” died Thursday. He was 88.
His goddaughter Jane Dorian confirmed his death to The Associated Press early Friday. He died of pulmonary complications in Miami, where he had been living with his partner, real estate broker Terry Marler.
The creator of 10 Broadway shows and contributor to several more, Herman won two Tony Awards for best musical: “Hello, Dolly!” in 1964 and “La Cage aux Folles” in 1983. He also won two Grammys — for the “Mame” cast album and “Hello, Dolly!” as song of the year — and was a Kennedy Center honoree.
Herman wrote in the Rodgers and Hammerstein tradition, an optimistic composer at a time when others in his profession were exploring darker feelings and material. Just a few of his song titles revealed his depth of hope: “I’ll Be Here Tomorrow,” “The Best of Times,” “Tap Your Troubles Away,” “It’s Today,” “We Need a Little Christmas” and “Before the Parade Passes By.” Even the title song to “Hello, Dolly!” is an advertisement to enjoy life.
Herman also had a direct, simple sense of melody and his lyrics had a natural, unforced quality. Over the years, he told the AP in 1995, “critics have sort of tossed me off as the popular and not the cerebral writer, and that was fine with me. That was exactly what I aimed at.”
In accepting the Tony in 1984 for “La Cage Aux Folles,” Herman said, “This award forever shatters a myth about the musical theater. There’s been a rumor around for a couple of years that the simple, hummable show tune was no longer welcome on Broadway. Well, it’s alive and well at the Palace” Theatre.
Some saw that phrase — “the simple, hummable show tune” — as a subtle dig at Stephen Sondheim, known for challenging and complex songs and whose “Sunday in the Park with George” Herman had just bested. But Herman rejected any tension between the two musical theater giants.
“Only a small group of ‘showbiz gossips’ have constantly tried to create a feud between Mr. Sondheim and myself. I am as much of a Sondheim fan as you and everybody else in the world, and I believe that my comments upon winning the Tony for ‘La Cage’ clearly came from my delight with the show business community’s endorsement of the simple melodic showtune which had been criticized by a few hard-nosed critics as being old fashioned,” he said in a 2004 Q&A session with readers of Broadway.com.
Herman was born in New York in 1931 and raised in Jersey City. His parents ran a children’s summer camp in the Catskills and he taught himself the piano. He noted that when he was born, his mother had a view of Broadway’s Winter Garden Theatre marquee from her hospital bed.
Herman dated his intention to write musicals to the time his parents took him to “Annie Get Your Gun” and he went home and played five of Irving Berlin’s songs on the piano.
“I thought what a gift this man has given a stranger. I wanted to give that gift to other people. That was my great inspiration, that night,” he told The Associated Press in 1996.
After graduating from the University of Miami, Herman headed back to New York, writing and playing piano in a jazz club. He made his Broadway debut in 1960 contributing songs to the review “From A to Z” — alongside material by Fred Ebb and Woody Allen — and the next year tackled the entire score to a musical about the founding of the state of Israel, “Milk and Honey.” It earned him his first Tony nomination.
“Hello, Dolly!” starring Carol Channing opened in 1964 and ran for 2,844 performances, becoming Broadway’s longest-running musical at the time. It won 10 Tonys and has been revived many times, most recently in 2017 with Bette Midler in the title role, a 19th-century widowed matchmaker who learns to live again.
“Mame” followed in 1966, starring Angela Lansbury, and went on to run for over 1,500 performances. She handed him his Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2009, saying he created songs like him: “bouncy, buoyant and optimistic.”
In 1983 he had another hit with “La Cage aux Folles,” a sweetly radical musical of its age, decades before the fight for marriage equality. It was a lavish adaptation of the successful French film about two gay men who own a splashy, drag nightclub on the Riviera. It contained the gay anthem “I Am What I Am” and ran for some 1,760 performances. Three of his shows, “Dear World,” “The Grand Tour” and “Mack and Mabel,” failed on Broadway.
Many of his songs have outlasted their vehicles: British ice skaters Torvill and Dean used the overture from “Mack and Mabel” to accompany a gold medal-winning routine in 1982. Writer-director Andrew Stanton used the Herman tunes “Put on Your Sunday Clothes” and “It Only Takes a Moment” to express the psyche of a love-starved, trash-compacting robot in the film “WALL-E.”
Later in life, Herman composed a song for “Barney’s Great Adventure,” contributed the score for the 1996 made-for-TV movie “Mrs. Santa Claus” — earning Herman an Emmy nomination — and wrote his autobiography, “Showtune,” published by Donald I. Fine.
He is survived by his partner, Marler, and his goddaughters — Dorian and Dorian’s own daughter, Sarah Haspel. Dorian said plans for a memorial service are still in the works for the man whose songs she said “are always on our lips and in our hearts.”
As Uganda’s presidential nominations draw closer, opposition politician Robert Kyagulanyi, better known as the musician Bobi Wine, has vowed to rock the halls of power with a run for the top job. Wine describes President Yoweri Museveni’s 33 years in power as a dictatorship. Museveni, meanwhile, has described Wine as an enemy of prosperity, and in November called for more riot police to deal with his opponent. Halima Athumani reports from Kampala.
A Moroccan YouTuber was sentenced Thursday to four years in prison for “insulting the king” in a video broadcast on social networks, his lawyer said.
In a separate case, a Moroccan journalist and activist was charged and detained over a tweet that had criticized a court decision, his defense council told AFP.
The cases come after the Moroccan Human Rights Association had deplored in July an “escalation of violations of human rights and public and individual freedoms” in Morocco.
The YouTuber Mohamed Sekkaki, known as “Moul Kaskita”, was sentenced by a court in the western city of Settat to four years in prison, his lawyer Mohamed Ziane told AFP.
Sekkaki, whose videos usually exceed 100,000 views, was arrested in early December after posting a video in which he insulted Moroccans as “donkeys” and criticized King Mohammed VI, whose is considered “inviolable” under the constitution.
Ziani said his client would appeal the verdict.
The conviction of the YouTuber came less than a month after a Moroccan rapper was sentenced to a year in prison for “insulting a public official”.
Also on Thursday, journalist Omar Radi, 33, was detained in Casablanca and now faces trial, his lawyer Said Benhammani told AFP.
He is being prosecuted for a tweet published nine months ago criticizing the judge in charge of the case against the leaders of the Hirak protest movement, he said.
Morocco’s criminal code punishes “insulting magistrates” with imprisonment of between one month and one year.
The group Reporters Without Borders in its latest annual press freedom index ranked Morocco 135th out of 180 countries.
U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday called for the governments in Moscow, Damascus and Tehran to stop the violence in Syria’s rebel-held province of Idlib.
“Russia, Syria, and Iran are killing, or on their way to killing, thousands” of civilians in the northwestern province, Trump tweeted, adding: “Don’t do it!”
Heightened regime and Russian bombardment has hit jihadist-held Idlib — the country’s last major opposition bastion — since mid-December, as regime forces make steady advances on the ground despite an August ceasefire and U.N. calls for a de-escalation.
Nearly 80 civilians have been killed by airstrikes and artillery attacks over the same period, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which estimates that more than 40,000 people have been displaced in recent weeks.
Turkey called Tuesday for the attacks to “come to an end immediately,” after sending a delegation to Moscow to discuss the flare-up.
Presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said Ankara was pressing for a new ceasefire to replace the August agreement.
Trump on Thursday praised Turkey’s efforts, tweeting that Ankara “is working hard to stop this carnage.”
