Tunisia’s Coast Guard recovered on Saturday the bodies of 14 African migrants who drowned when their boat carrying more than 80 people sank after setting off for Europe from neighboring Libya, the Tunisian Red Crescent said.
Tunisian fishermen rescued four people but one later died at a hospital, the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said Thursday. The others on the overcrowded boat were feared drowned.
At least 65 migrants heading for Europe from Libya drowned last May when their boat capsized off Tunisia.
Libya’s west coast is a main departure point for African migrants hoping to reach Europe, though numbers have dropped because of an Italian-led effort to disrupt smuggling networks and support the Libyan Coast Guard.
Although the fighting in Libya has made the situation more difficult for human smugglers, international aid officials have warned it could also prompt more Libyans to flee their country.
Libyans who are picked up by the Libyan Coast Guard are routinely taken back to Libya and detained. The United Nations has pleaded with Libya’s government to free the detainees, some of whom have been locked up for years.
In May, 108 migrants and refugees were sent to the Tajoura detention center near Tripoli, which was hit by airstrikes on Tuesday night that killed at least 53 people.
Officials in Southern California expressed relief Saturday that damage and injuries weren’t worse after the largest earthquake the region has seen in nearly 20 years, while voicing concerns about the possibility of major aftershocks in the days and even months to come.
No fatalities or major injuries were reported after Friday night’s 7.1-magnitude earthquake, which jolted an area from Sacramento to Mexico and prompted the evacuation of the Navy’s largest single landholding, Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake in the Mojave Desert.
The Hope family, afraid to sleep inside, spends the night outdoors, July 6, 2019, after an earthquake in Ridgecrest, Calif. The Friday evening quake with a magnitude of about 7.1 jolted much of California.
The quake struck at 8:19 p.m. Friday and was centered 11 miles (18 kilometers) from Ridgecrest, the same area of the desert where a 6.4-magnitude temblor hit just a day earlier. It left behind cracked and burning buildings, broken roads, obstructed railroad tracks and leaking water and gas lines.
The light damage was largely because of the remoteness of the area where the earthquake occurred, but Gov. Gavin Newsom cautioned after touring Ridgecrest that “it’s deceiving, earthquake damage. You don’t notice it at first.”
He estimated more than $100 million in economic damages and said President Donald Trump called him to offer federal support in the rebuilding effort.
“He’s committed in the long haul, the long run, to help support the rebuilding efforts,” Newsom said of Trump.
Ridgecrest Police Chief Jed McLaughlin, right, speaks as California Gov. Gavin Newsom listens, July 6, 2019, in Ridgecrest, Calif. Crews in Southern California assessed damage Saturday after the largest earthquake the region has seen in 20 years.
City of 28,000
About 28,000 people live in the Ridgecrest area, which is sandwiched between more populated areas of Southern California and Las Vegas’ Clark County. But seismologists warned that the area could see up to 30,000 aftershocks over the next six months.
April Hamlin said she was “already on edge” when the second quake rattled her Ridgecrest home. She and her three kids initially thought it was another aftershock.
“But it just kept on intensifying,” she said. “The TV went over, hanging by the cord. We heard it break. We heard glass breakage in the other rooms, but all we could do was stay where we were until it stopped.”
With the possibility of aftershocks and temperatures forecast to reach 100 degrees (38 Celsius) over the next several days, officials were taking precautions.
Emergency aid
The California National Guard was sending 200 troops, logistical support and aircraft, Maj. Gen. David Baldwin said. The Pentagon had been notified, and the entire California Military Department was put on alert, he said.
Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake said in a Facebook post that nonessential workers were evacuated and operations halted. The epicenters of both quakes were on the base, and officials said they are continuing to assess damage. Officials said most employees live off the base and in Ridgecrest, but they authorized the evacuation so those who live on base can be eligible for reimbursements.
The California Office of Emergency Services brought in cots, water and meals and set up cooling centers in the region, Director Mark Ghilarducci said.
State highway officials shut down a 30-mile (48-kilometer) section of State Route 178 between Ridgecrest and the town of Trona southwest of Death Valley because of a rockslide and severe cracking. The move left Trona temporarily cut off. California Department of Transportation spokeswoman Christine Knadler said crews worked through the night to patch the roadway, but it remained rough and uneven.
Ron Mikulaco, right, and his nephew, Brad Fernandez, examine a crack caused by an earthquake on Highway 178, July 6, 2019, outside of Ridgecrest, Calif.
Ron Mikulaco, 51, and his nephew, 23-year-old Brad Fernandez, stood on the road Saturday looking at the cracks. The pair drove from Huntington Beach, about 170 miles (274 kilometers) southwest of Ridgecrest. Mikulaco, an amateur geologist, wanted to show his nephew “the power of Mother Nature,” and they had the epicenter’s latitude and longitude coordinates ready.
“We put that in the GPS, and we’ll get as close as we can,” Fernandez said.
In Ridgecrest, local fire and police officials said they were initially swamped by calls for medical and ambulance service. But police Chief Jed McLaughlin said there was “nothing but minor injuries such as cuts and bruises, by the grace of God.”
Two building fires, one involving a mobile home, were quickly doused, McLaughlin said, and natural gas lines where leaks were reported were shut off.
When asked to describe what he has been going through in the past two days, the chief said: “Grief, shock and then, for me, pride in what I’ve seen from here, my people. It’s been a vast range of emotions, and I think the whole community’s going through that.”
Town cut off
In Trona, a town of about 2,000 people considered the gateway to Death Valley, fire officials said up to 50 structures were damaged. San Bernardino County Supervisor Robert Lovingood said FEMA delivered a tractor-trailer full of bottled water because of damage to water lines. Newsom declared a state of emergency for the county.
Julia Doss, who maintains the Trona Neighborhood Watch page on Facebook, said the only food store in town is a Family Dollar store that was shuttered Saturday.
“The only way to get food is to drive to Ridgecrest, and with only three gas stations in town I’m worried we may soon run out of fuel,” Doss said.
Bottles of wine are strewn in the middle of an aisle as Victor Abdullatif, background center, mops inside of the Eastridge Market, his family’s store, July 6, 2019, in Ridgecrest, Calif.
Antoun Abdullatif, 59, owns liquor stores and other businesses in Ridgecrest and Trona.
“I would say 70% of my inventory is on the floor, broken,” he said. “Every time you sweep and you put stuff in the dust bin, you’re putting $200 in the trash.”
But he has stopped cleaning up, believing another earthquake is on the way.
Lucy Jones, a seismologist at the California Institute of Technology and a former science adviser at the U.S. Geological Survey, said the new quake probably ruptured along about 25 miles (40 kilometers) of fault line and was part of a continuing sequence. The seismic activity is unlikely to affect fault lines outside of the area, Jones said, noting that the gigantic San Andreas Fault is far away.
Egill Hauksson, another Caltech seismologist, said later in the day that scientists believe the continuing sequence could produce more than 30,000 quakes of magnitude 1 or greater over six months. He said the probability of a magnitude 7 over the next week is about 3%, but one or two magnitude 6 quakes are expected.
Turkey fired its central bank governor Saturday and replaced him with the bank’s deputy governor, a presidential decree published on the official gazette showed.
Murat Cetinkaya, who had been serving as the governor since April 2016, was removed from the role and was replaced by his deputy Murat Uysal, the order showed.
No official reason was given for the sacking, but markets have speculated over recent weeks that Cetinkaya may be pushed out by the government because of his reluctance to cut rates.
The central bank has faced pressure in the past from President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to lower interest rates to boost economic growth.
Two government sources told Reuters that differences between the government and the governor over the conduct of monetary policy have deepened in the past few months.
“The difference of opinions between the governor and the ministers in charge of the economy has deepened in the recent period,” said one of the sources.
“The president and the finance minister demanded his resignation, but Cetinkaya reminded of the bank’s independence and declined to resign,” the other source said.
In a statement Saturday, the central bank said it will continue to operate independently and that the new governor will focus on maintaining price stability as its key goal.
Data earlier in the week showed Turkey’s consumer inflation slowed to its lowest level in a year in June, mainly because of a high base effect from the prior year and a drop in food prices, potentially paving the way for the country’s first interest rate cut since last year’s currency crisis.
Analysts expect the central bank could ease monetary policy at a July 25 meeting if the lira is not hit this month by threatened U.S. sanctions over Turkey’s purchase of a Russian missile defense system.
President Donald Trump said Friday that mass deportation roundups would begin “fairly soon” as U.S. migrant advocates vowed their communities would be ready when immigration officers come.
Trump, who has made a hard-line immigration stance a key issue of his presidency and his 2020 re-election bid, postponed the operation last month after the planned date was leaked to the press, but Monday he said the roundups would take place after the July 4 holiday.
“They’ll be starting fairly soon, but I don’t call them raids, we’re removing people, all of these people who have come in over the years illegally,” he told reporters at the White House Friday.
Targeting the recently arrived
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) last month said raids would target undocumented migrants who had recently arrived in the United States so as to discourage a surge of Central American families at the southwest border.
ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Trump’s statement. ICE operations are expected to involve “collateral arrests” in which undocumented migrants not directly targeted by officers are picked up in raids.
Government documents published this week by migrant rights groups showed some past ICE raids had more collateral arrests than apprehensions of targeted migrants. Migrant rights groups say this general, looming threat to undocumented migrants is harmful to communities and the U.S. economy, as it forces adults to miss work and children to skip school out of fear they may be picked up and separated.
“We have to be ready, not just when Trump announces it, because there are arrests every day and they have been increasing,” said Elsa Lopez, an organizer for New Mexico immigrant and workers’ rights group Somos Un Pueblo Unido.
Situation at the border
Migrant apprehensions on the southwest border hit a 13-year high in May but eased in June as Mexico increased immigration enforcement.
An increasing number of migrants are coming from countries outside Central America, including India, Cuba and Africa. The Del Rio, Texas, Border Patrol sector Friday reported the arrest of more than 1,000 Haitians since June 10.
Democratic lawmakers visited an El Paso, Texas, Border Patrol station on Monday and said migrants were being held in atrocious conditions, with women told to drink out of a toilet.
To dispel what he called “the misinformation,” Chief Border Patrol Agent Roy Villareal put out a video showing fresh water available from a cooler and a faucet in a cell at a Tucson, Arizona, sector migrant processing center.
“We’re not forcing aliens to drink out of the toilet,” said Villareal, head of an area that in May apprehended nearly six times fewer people than the El Paso sector, a stretch of border that has borne the brunt of the migrant surge.
A quake with a magnitude of 7.1 jolted much of California, cracked buildings, set fires, broke roads and caused several injuries while seismologists warned that large aftershocks were expected to continue.
The quake, preceded by Thursday’s 6.4-magnitude temblor in the Mojave Desert, was the largest Southern California quake in at least 20 years and was followed by a series of large and small aftershocks, including a handful above magnitude 5.0.
There is about a 1-in-10 chance that another 7.0 quake could hit within the next week, said Lucy Jones, a seismologist at the California Institute of Technology and a former science adviser at the U.S. Geological Survey.
The chance of a 5.0-magnitude quake “is approaching certainty,” she added.
However, the quake was unlikely to affect fault lines outside of the area, Jones said, noting that the gigantic San Andreas Fault was far away.
The quake struck at 8:19 p.m. and was centered 11 miles from Ridgecrest in the same areas where the previous quake hit.
“These earthquakes are related,” Jones said, adding that the new quake probably ruptured along about 25 miles of fault line.
The quake was felt as far north as Sacramento, as far east as Las Vegas and as far south as Mexico.
Early magnitude estimates from the U.S. Geological Survey wavered between 6.9 and 7.1. It was measured at 7.1 by the
European-Mediterranean Seismological Agency.
Multiple injuries, fires
The area in and around Ridgecrest, trying to recover from the previous temblor, took the brunt of damage.
Megan Person, director of communications for the Kern County Fire Department, said there were reports of multiple injuries and multiple fires, but she didn’t have details.
The county opened an emergency shelter. Meanwhile, a rockslide closed State Route 178 in Kern River Canyon, where photos from witnesses also showed that a stretch of roadway had sunk.
San Bernardino County firefighters reported cracked buildings and one minor injury.
In downtown Los Angeles, 150 miles away, offices in skyscrapers rolled and rocked for at least 30 seconds.
Gov. Gavin Newsom activated the state Office of Emergency Services operations center “to its highest level.”
“The state is coordinating mutual aid to local first responders,” he said.
Lucy Jones, a seismologist at the California Institute of Technology and a former science adviser at the Geological Survey, tweeted that Thursday’s earthquake was a “foreshock” and that Friday’s quake was on the same fault system as the earlier quake.
This is the same sequence. You know we say we 1 in 20 chance that an earthquake will be followed by something bigger? This is that 1 in 20 time
“You know we say we have a 1 in 20 chance that an earthquake will be followed by something bigger? This is that 1 in 20 time,” she tweeted.
Firefighters around Southern California were mobilized to check for damage.
An NBA Summer League game in Las Vegas was stopped after the quake. Speakers over the court at the Thomas & Mack Center continued swaying more than 10 minutes after the quake.
In Los Angeles, the quake rattled Dodger Stadium in the fourth inning of the team’s game against the San Diego Padres.
The quake Friday night happened when Dodgers second baseman Enrique Hernandez was batting. It didn’t appear to affect him or Padres pitcher Eric Lauer.
Like any quake, today’s M7.1 has a 1 in 20 of being followed by something even bigger. Smaller quakes – M5s are likely and a M6 is quite possible.
Hours earlier, seismologists had said that quake had been followed by more than 1,700 aftershocks and that they might continue for years.
Jones said aftershocks from the new main quake could occur for three years.
Changes to alert system
Earlier Friday, Los Angeles had revealed plans to lower slightly the threshold for public alerts from its earthquake early warning app. But officials said the change was in the works before the quake, which gave scientists at the California Institute of Technology’s seismology lab 48 seconds of warning but did not trigger a public notification.
“Our goal is to alert people who might experience potentially damaging shaking, not just feel the shaking,” said Robert de Groot, a spokesman for the USGS’s ShakeAlert system, which is being developed for California, Oregon and Washington.
A mobile phone customer looks at an earthquake warning application on their phone in Los Angeles, Jan. 3, 2019. The app, called ShakeAlertLA, is available for download on Android and Apple phones.
Construction of a network of seismic-monitoring stations for the West Coast is just over half complete, with most coverage in Southern California, San Francisco Bay Area and the Seattle-Tacoma area. Eventually, the system will send out alerts over the same system used for Amber Alerts to defined areas that are expected to be affected by a quake, de Groot said.
California is partnering with the federal government to build the statewide earthquake warning system, with the goal of turning it on by June 2021. The state has spent at least $25 million building it, including installing hundreds of seismic stations throughout the state.
This year, Newsom said the state needed $16.3 million to finish the project, which included money for stations to monitor seismic activity, plus nearly $7 million for “outreach and education.” The state Legislature approved the funding last month, and Newsom signed it into law.
Marilyne Tatang, 23, crossed nine borders in two months to reach Mexico from the West African nation of Cameroon, fleeing political violence after police torched her house, she said.
She plans soon to take a bus north for four days and then cross a 10th border, into the United States. She is not alone, a record number of fellow Africans are flying to South America and then traversing thousands of miles of highway and a treacherous tropical rainforest to reach the United States.
Tatang, who is eight months pregnant, took a raft across a river into Mexico on June 8, a day after Mexico struck a deal with U.S. President Donald Trump to do more to control the biggest flows of migrants heading north to the U.S. border in more than a decade.
Trump threats encourage migrants
The migrants vying for entry at the U.S. southern border are mainly Central Americans. But growing numbers from a handful of African countries are joining them, prompting calls from Trump and Mexico for other countries in Latin America to do their part to slow the overall flood of migrants.
As more Africans learn from relatives and friends who have made the trip that crossing Latin America to the United States is tough but not impossible, more are making the journey, and in turn are helping others follow in their footsteps, migration experts say.
Trump’s threats to clamp down on migrants have ricocheted around the globe, paradoxically spurring some to exploit what they see as a narrowing window of opportunity, said Michelle Mittelstadt, communications director for the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington-based think tank.
“This message is being heard not just in Central America, but in other parts of the world,” she said.
Record breaking numbers from Africa
Data from Mexico’s interior ministry suggests that migration from Africa this year will break records.
The number of Africans registered by Mexican authorities tripled in the first four months of 2019 compared with the same period a year ago, reaching about 1,900 people, mostly from Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), which remains deeply unstable years after the end of a bloody regional conflict with its neighbors that led to the deaths of millions of people.
‘They would have killed me’
Tatang, a grade school teacher, said she left northwest Cameroon because of worsening violence in the English-speaking region, where separatists are battling the mostly French-speaking government for autonomy.
“It was so bad that they burned the house where I was living … they would have killed me,” she said, referring to government forces who tried to capture her.
At first, Tatang planned only to cross the border into Nigeria. Then she heard that some people had made it to the United States.
“Someone would say, ‘You can do this,’” she said. “So I asked if it was possible for someone like me too, because I’m pregnant. They said, ‘Do this, do that.’“
Tatang begged her family for money for the journey, which she said so far has cost $5,000.
Epic journey
She said her route began with a flight to Ecuador, where Cameroonians don’t need visas. Tatang went by bus and on foot through Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala until reaching Mexico.
She was still deciding what to do once she got to Mexico’s northern border city of Tijuana, she said, cradling her belly while seated on a concrete bench outside migration offices in the southern Mexican city of Tapachula.
“I will just ask,” she said. “I can’t say, ‘When I get there, I will do this.’ I don’t know. I’ve never been there.”
FILE – A migrant from Cameroon holds his baby while trying to enter the Siglo XXI immigrant detention center to request humanitarian visas, issued by the Mexican government, to continue to the U.S., in Tapachula, Mexico, July 5, 2019.
Reuters spoke recently with five migrants in Tapachula who were from Cameroon, DRC and Angola. Several said they traveled to Brazil as a jumping-off point.
They were a small sampling of the hundreds of people, including Haitians, Cubans, Indians and Bangladeshis, clustered outside migration offices.
Political volatility in Cameroon and the DRC in recent years has displaced hundreds of thousands of people.
People from the DRC made up the third largest group of new refugees globally last year with about 123,000 people, according to the U.N. Refugee Agency, while Cameroon’s internally displaced population grew by 447,000 people.
The number of undocumented African migrants found by authorities in Mexico quadrupled compared with five years ago, reaching nearly 3,000 people in 2018.
Most obtain a visa that allows them free passage through Mexico for 20 days, after which they cross into the United States and ask for asylum.
More families coming, too
Few choose to seek asylum in Mexico, in part because they don’t speak Spanish. Tatang said the language barrier was especially frustrating because she speaks only English, making communication difficult both with Mexican migration officials and even other Africans, such as migrants from DRC who speak primarily French.
Those who reach the United States often send advice back home, helping make the journey easier for others, said Florence Kim, spokeswoman for the International Organization for Migration in West and Central Africa.
Like their Central American migrant counterparts, some Africans are also showing up with families hoping for easier entries than as individuals, said Mittelstadt of the Migration Policy Institute.
U.S. data shows a huge spike in the number of families from countries other than Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras at the U.S. southern border. Between last October and May 16,000 members of families were registered, up from 1,000 for the whole of 2018, according to an analysis by the MPI.
Regional approach
The grueling Latin America trek forces migrants to spend at least a week trudging across swampland and hiking through mountainous rainforests in the lawless Darien Gap that is the only link between Panama and Colombia.
Still, the route has a key advantage: Countries in the region typically do not deport migrants from other continents partly because of the steep costs and lack of repatriation agreements with their home countries.
That relaxed attitude could change, however.
Under a deal struck with United States last month, Mexico may start a process later this month to become a safe third country, making asylum-seekers apply for refuge in Mexico and not the United States.
To lessen the load on Mexico, Mexico and the United States plan to put pressure on Central American nations to do more to prevent asylum-seekers, including African migrants, from moving north.
For the moment, however, more Africans can be expected to attempt the journey, said IOM’s Kim.
“They want to do something with their life. They feel they lack a future in their country,” she said.
Coal tycoon Chris Cline, who worked his way out of West Virginia’s underground mines to amass a fortune and become a major Republican donor, has died in a helicopter crash outside a string of islands he owned in the Bahamas.
Cline and his daughter Kameron, 22, were on board the aircraft with five others when it went down Thursday, a spokesman for his attorney Brian Glasser said Friday.
The death of the 60-year-old magnate led to eulogies from industry leaders, government officials and academics, who described Cline as a visionary who was generous with his $1.8 billion fortune.
“He was a very farsighted entrepreneur,” said Bill Raney, president of the West Virginia Coal Association. “Chris was just one of those folks who had the Midas touch.”
Raney said Cline began toiling in the mines of southern West Virginia at a young age, rising through the ranks of his father’s company quickly with a reserved demeanor and savvy business moves.
He formed his own energy development business, the Cline Group, which grew into one of the country’s top coal producers.
Investment switch
When he thought mining in the Appalachian region was drying up, he started buying reserves in the Illinois Basin in what turned out to be a smart investment in high-sulfur coal, according to the website of Missouri-based Foresight Energy, a company he formed.
Cline sold most of his interest in Foresight for $1.4 billion and then dropped $150 million into a metallurgical coal mine in Nova Scotia, according to a 2017 Forbes article titled “Chris Cline Could Be The Last Coal Tycoon Standing.”
The piece captured his opulence: A mansion in West Virginia with a man-made lake big enough to ski on and a pasture that included a while stallion stud name Fabio. A gun collection so deep that federal officials would take stock once a month. A 200-foot (61-meter) yacht called Mine Games.
His deep pockets eventually opened to politics: He donated heavily to President Donald Trump and other Republicans. Cline gave the president’s inaugural committee $1 million in 2017 and shared thousands more with conservative groups as well as committees representing GOP figures such as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, according to federal records.
He also gave to academia, bestowing at least $8.5 million on Marshall University in West Virginia.
“Our hearts are heavy,” said Marshall University President Jerome A. Gilbert. “Chris’s generosity to our research and athletics programs has made a mark on Marshall University and our students for many years to come.”
In this photo released by the Bahamas ZNS Network, employees oversee the arrival of the bodies of four women and three men, including billionaire coal entrepreneur Chris Cline and his daughter, at the airport in Nassau, Bahamas, July 5, 2019.
Authorities began searching for the helicopter after police received a report from Florida that Cline’s aircraft failed to arrive in Fort Lauderdale as expected on Thursday, Bahamas Police Supt. Shanta Knowles told The Associated Press.
The bodies of the four women and three men were recovered Thursday and taken to the Bahamian capital of Nassau to be officially identified, said Delvin Major, chief investigator for the Bahamas’ Air Accident Investigation Department. The Augusta AW139 helicopter was still in the water on Friday, and based on preliminary information, she did not believe there had been a distress call before the helicopter went down. The cause of the crash is still undetermined, officials said.
A Royal Bahamas Police Force statement said authorities and locals found the site 2 miles (3 kilometers) off Big Grand Cay, a group of private islands Cline bought in 2014 for less than the $11.5 million asking price.
Bahamas real estate agent John Christie, who sold the land, said Big Grand Cay was developed by the late Robert Abplanalp, inventor of the modern aerosol spray valve and a friend of President Richard Nixon. The property became known as an escape for Nixon in the 1970s.
Big Grand Cay comprises about 213 acres (86 hectares) distributed over about half a dozen narrow islands. At the time of its sale, the property’s mansion sat on a bluff overlooking the ocean and had five bedrooms and four bathrooms.
Governor mourns
West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice mourned Cline’s loss, first in a tweet he sent out Thursday in which he noted that his and Cline’s families had been very close for years.
“Today we lost a WV superstar and I lost a very close friend,” Justice wrote in the tweet. “Chris Cline built an empire and on every occasion was always there to give. What a wonderful, loving, and giving man.”
Cline, in his Forbes profile, defended coal and waved off some of the scientific evidence of climate change when he wasn’t posing for photos in front of tall pyramids of the black stuff.
“People deserve the cheapest energy they can get,” he said. “Tell the poor in India and China that they don’t deserve to have reliable, affordable electricity.”
And to that effect, he also spoke about solar panels, wind turbines and Tesla batteries on Big Grand Cay, saying “Where it makes sense, I’m absolutely for it.”
America’s annual Independence Day is celebrated a bit differently in Washington, D.C., this year, with a display of military might and a speech about patriotism by U.S. President Donald Trump. The event draws Trump supporters, as well as protesters who accuse the president of politicizing a nonpartisan holiday and wasting taxpayer money. White House Correspondent Patsy Widakuswara has the story.
A single cigarette may have started the April fire that destroyed much of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. Flames tore through the global tourist destination as firefighters struggled to find and extinguish their source. German authorities want to make sure what happened in France, doesn’t happen there. Arash Arabasadi has more.
The amount of sea ice around Antarctica has plunged from a record high to a record low in just three years, according to a new report released this week by the U.S. space agency NASA. Faith Lapidus reports scientists are not sure why.
India said on Thursday it needs $330 billion in investments over the next decade to power its renewable energy dream, but coal would remain central to its electricity generation.
The energy guzzling country wants to raise its renewable energy capacity to 500 Gigawatts (GW), or 40% of total capacity, by 2030. Renewables currently account for 22% of India’s total installed capacity of about 357 GW.
“Additional investments in renewable plants up to year 2022 would be about $80 billion at today’s prices and an investment of around $250 billion would be required for the period 2023-2030,” according to the government’s economic survey presented to parliament on Thursday.
India wants to have 175 GW of renewable-based installed power capacity by 2022.
The investment estimate reflects the magnitude of financial challenges facing one of the world’s most important growth markets for renewable energy, with government data indicating a growth slowdown in private and capital investments in the year ended March 2019.
India, which receives twice as much sunshine as European countries, wants to make solar a cornerstone of its renewable expansion, but also wants to make use of its cheap and abundant coal reserves, the fifth-largest in the world.
The annual economic survey warned India against abruptly halting coal-based utilities, citing risks to its banking sector and the stability of the electricity grid.
“It may not be advisable to effect a sudden abandonment of coal based power plants without complete utilization of their useful lifetimes as it would lead to stranding of assets that can have further adverse impact on the banking sector,” the survey said.
Thermal power plants account for 80% of all industrial emissions of particulate matter, sulfur and nitrous oxides in India. India, one of the world’s largest coal producers and greenhouse gas emitters, estimates coal to be its energy mainstay for at least the next three decades. The country’s coal use rose 9.1% to nearly a billion tons in 2018-19.
The survey said it would be difficult for a growing economy like India to migrate to renewable power supply unless “sufficient technological breakthrough in energy storage happens in the near future”.
Environmentalists worry that India’s rising use of coal at a time when many Western nations are rejecting the dirty fossil fuel will hamper the global fight against climate change, despite the country’s commitment to renewable energy.
Thirty-seven Cambodian deported by the United States arrived in Phnom Penh on Thursday, 32 of them refugees who fled during the rule of the genocidal Khmer Rouge in the 1970s or war that followed their ouster, an aid group said.
Thousands of Cambodian refugees started new lives in the United States after fleeing the Khmer Rouge’s 1975-1979 reign of terror, in which up to 2 million people are believed to have been killed or died of overwork and starvation, and subsequent chaos.
Some of them, after spending most of their lives in the United States, are sent back to a homeland they hardly know after running afoul of U.S. law.
“They — their families, actually — fled the terrors of the Khmer Rouge era and post — Khmer Rouge chaos. Many were born in Thai refugee camps,” said Bill Herod, spokesman for the Khmer Vulnerability Aid Organization (KVAO), a group that helps Cambodian deportees adjust after being sent back from the United States.
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen has in the past criticized the United States over the deportations and accused it of breaking up the families of those forced to leave.
Thirty-five of the 37 deportees were convicted criminals who were sent back to Cambodia via a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) flight from Dallas, ICE said in a statement on
its website.
ICE said it had increased the number of Cambodian immigrants it had deported from 2017 to 2018 by 279%. There are still about 1,900 Cambodians in the United States who are subject to deportation, of which 1,400 are convicted criminals, according to ICE.
“All of them have served time in prison for felony convictions. Some come directly from prison, but most completed their sentences long ago and were living freely at the time they were detained for deportation,” Herod said of the deportees who arrived on Thursday.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has already deported thousands of people from Vietnam and Cambodia with criminal records as part of broader attempts to limit immigration to the United States.
The United States has been seeking to send thousands of immigrants from Vietnam back to the communist-ruled country despite a bilateral agreement that should protect most from deportation.
Trump has made illegal immigration a centerpiece of his administration and is highlighting the issue as he aims for re-election in 2020.
The Indian government on Thursday warned in a study that its population is going to start to age and it needs to be prepared to merge schools and raise the retirement age.
While India should be set to benefit from the so-called “demographic dividend” over the next decade as its working population is set to increase by about 9.7 million a year between 2021-31, that will quickly fade as the nation’s fertility rate plunges below replacement level.
The conclusions in the study, “India’s Demography at 2040: Planning Public Good Provision for the 21st Century,” will have major implications for many companies, particularly those that have been eyeing consumer demand from India’s young population.
It said the number of children in the 5-14 age bracket will decline significantly, leading to the need for school mergers and less focus on building new ones.
Already states such as Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh have fewer than 50 students enrolled in more than 40 percent of their elementary schools, according to the study, which was included in the government’s annual Economic Survey.
It also said that policymakers need to prepare for an increasing number of elderly people, estimating there will be 239.4 million Indians over the age of 60 in 2041 against 104.2 million in 2011.
“This will need investments in health care as well as a plan for increasing the retirement age in a phased manner,” concluded the study, which was authored by India’s Chief Economic Adviser Krishnamurthy Subramanian and his team of economists.
The current retirement age for most government workers in India is 60.
Meanwhile, the number of Indians aged between 0-19 has already started to decline and the proportion of the population in that age group is projected to fall to 25 percent by 2041 from 41 percent in 2011.
The demographic dividend that is talked about in India refers to the current situation where the nation’s labor force is growing quicker than the rest of the population it supports.
If the newcomers to the labor market get well-paid jobs it boosts consumption and economic growth.
Scientists, government officials and conservationists are calling for a swift response to protect North Atlantic right whales after a half-dozen died in the past month.
All six of the dead endangered species have been found in the Gulf of St. Lawrence off Canada. At least three appear to have died after being hit by ships.
There are only a little more than 400 of the endangered species left.
The deaths have led scientists to sound the alarm about a potentially catastrophic loss to the population.
Some say the whales are traveling in different areas than usual because of food availability. That change has apparently brought whales outside of protected zones and left them vulnerable.
President Donald Trump’s administration on Tuesday pushed back against mounting criticism of its migrant detention centers on the U.S.-Mexico border, even as the Department of Homeland Security’s internal watchdog issued a report detailing serious overcrowding at some facilities in Texas.
Conditions at these detention centers have become a flashpoint since May when an internal DHS watchdog warned of dangerous overcrowding at a facility in El Paso, Texas.
In a follow-up report issued on Tuesday after visits to five U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency facilities and two ports of entry, the watchdog said “serious overcrowding” and “prolonged detention” of children, families and single adults had been observed.
Members of a visiting congressional group on Monday said the migrants, many coming from Central America, were being kept in deplorable conditions and, according to U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, told to drink out of toilets.
U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez leaves the El Paso border patrol station during a tour of two facilities with other members of Congress in El Paso, Texas, July 1, 2019.
“I don’t know what Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is talking about,” White House spokesman Hogan Gidley said in an interview with Fox Business Network, calling members of CPB “some of the bravest men and women on the planet.”
“They put their lives in danger every single day. They provided three meals a day to people who are here illegally and unlawfully, two snacks in between,” Gidley said.
The Democratic chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Reform announced that the panel has invited the acting heads of the Department of Homeland Security and CPB to testify on July 12 on the administration’s border policies including the conditions at detention centers.
“The Trump administration’s actions at the southern border are grotesque and dehumanizing,” Elijah Cummings said in a statement. “There seems to be open contempt for the rule of law and for basic human decency.”
Trump has made a crackdown on illegal immigration a centerpiece of his domestic policy agenda and 2020 re-election bid. But his efforts to build a wall on the southern border have been blocked in Congress, and he was forced last year to backtrack after his “zero tolerance” border policy of separating migrant children from their parents provoked widespread outrage.
The detention facilities have become an issue among Democratic candidates vying to face Trump in the 2020 presidential election.
U.S. Senator Cory Booker would “virtually eliminate immigration detention” if he wins the White House, his campaign said Tuesday, including ending the use of for-profit detention facilities and minimizing the time unaccompanied children were in custody.
Migrant rights protests
Dr. Lisa Ayoub-Rodriguez, a Texas pediatrician who has been providing health care to migrant families, said she recently saw a mother suffering from dehydration with a baby whose fingers and toes were still blue after time in a detention center.
Pediatrician Lisa Ayoub-Rodriguez speaks at a shelter in El Paso, Texas, July 2, 2019, about treating migrant children released from Border Patrol detention centers along the Southwest border.
“I asked her if in CBP custody she had been given water. She said no. I asked her if she asked. … She said no. She didn’t want to be a bother or a burden, she said,” Ayoub-Rodriguez told a news briefing in El Paso alongside other doctors who help migrants.
“I see this often in the population. This is a population that’s afraid to ask for help,” Ayoub-Rodriguez said.
Several hundred people gathered Tuesday in New York City to demonstrate against the Trump administration’s treatment of migrants, part of a planned nationwide day of protests by rights groups targeting members of the U.S. Congress.
The demonstrations were fueled by fears that Trump’s administration is preparing to move forward with a round-up of illegal immigrants in U.S. cities. Last month, Trump delayed the raids by two weeks.
Criticism of the CPB intensified after a report Monday by the nonprofit news site ProPublica detailing offensive content posted on a private Facebook group for current and former CBP officers that included jokes about the deaths of migrants and sexually explicit references to Ocasio-Cortez.
Senator Bernie Sanders, a top Democratic presidential candidate, on Twitter called the report was “horrific” and said the dehumanization of immigrants must end.
Ocasio-Cortez, a first-term New York Democrat who was part of a Congressional Hispanic Caucus visit to the border Monday, suggested in a Twitter post Tuesday that the CBP was a “rogue agency.”
CBP condemned the Facebook group and acknowledged that the group may include a number of the agency’s employees.
Reuters did not independently confirm the report.
Migration levels
The migration flows from Central America have dropped sharply since hitting their highest level in more than a decade in May, as Mexico deployed thousands of militarized police as part of a June 7 deal with the United States to avoid U.S. tariffs on Mexican goods and other enforcement measures.
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Tuesday touted his country’s success in curbing the migrant crush, three days after Trump praised Mexican efforts.
“I am grateful that even President Trump is making it known that Mexico is fulfilling its commitment and that there are no threats of tariffs,” Lopez Obrador told reporters in Mexico City.
Ethiopia’s mediator in the Sudan crisis urged the military rulers and the opposition coalition to hold direct talks on Wednesday to strike a deal on handing over power to civilians.
The Transitional Military Council, which has ruled Sudan since President Omar al-Bashir was ousted in April, and the Forces of Freedom and Change opposition coalition have agreed on proposals presented by the Ethiopian and African Union mediators to solve the crisis, said Mahmud Dirir, the Ethiopian mediator.
But they still disagree over the structure of a sovereign council meant to lead the country during the transitional period, Dirir told reporters in Khartoum on Tuesday, urging the two sides to engage in face-to-face talks to clinch a deal.
Meeting place a secret
A time and a place for the meeting are set but will not be disclosed for security reasons, and both sides have already received invitations, he added.
“The two sides are just around the corner to reach an agreement but one issue remains disagreeable,” Mohamed El Hacen Lebatt, the African Union mediator to Sudan, told the press conference. “We call the two parties to reach a compromise on this remaining issue.”
Sudan’s military overthrew Bashir on April 11 after months of demonstrations against his three decades in office.
Opposition groups kept up protests as they pressed the military to relinquish power, but talks collapsed after members of the security services raided a sit-in protest camp outside the defense ministry on June 3.
Raid left 100 dead
A doctors’ group linked to the opposition said that more than 100 people were killed in the raid and ensuing crackdown.
The opposition alliance organized a major show of force on Sunday when tens of thousands of people took to the streets.
It said it was calling for another mass march on July 13 and a day of civil disobedience on July 14. Nine people were killed during Sunday’s protests and some 200 were injured, it said.
The military council has accused the opposition groups of being responsible for the violence and said at least three members of the security forces were injured by live fire.
Both the Ethiopian and African Union mediators urged both sides on Tuesday to avoid escalation to help reaching an agreement.
UAE calls for dialogue
Earlier on Tuesday, United Arab Emirates said it is important to continue dialogue in Sudan and avoid an escalation.
“Dialogue should continue without antagonism and towards an agreement on transition … It is necessary to avoid conflict and escalation,” UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash wrote on Twitter.
Sudan is strategically positioned between the Middle East and Africa and its stability is seen as crucial in a volatile region. Various powers including wealthy Gulf states are vying for influence in the nation of 40 million.
Egypt, which deems security and stability in its southern neighbor as important for its own stability, said on Tuesday its ambassador to Khartoum met a leader in the opposition coalition on Monday. Cairo is seen as a supporter of the army rulers.
“The ambassador stressed during the meeting that Egypt stands at the same distance from all the Sudanese parties,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.
An airstrike late on Tuesday hit a detention center for mainly African migrants in the Tajoura suburb of the Libyan capital of Tripoli, killing at least 40 people and wounding 80, a health official said.
Pictures published by Libyan officials showed African migrants undergoing surgery in a hospital after the strike.
Libya is a main departure point for migrants from Africa and Arab countries trying to reach Italy by boat, but many get picked up by the Libyan coast guard supported by the European Union. Thousands are held in government-run detention centers in what human rights groups say are often inhuman conditions.
Tajoura, east of Tripoli’s center, is home to several military camps of forces allied to Libya’s internationally recognised government, which for three months has been battling eastern forces trying to take Tripoli.
On Monday, the eastern-based Libyan National Army (LNA) said it would start heavy airstrikes on targets in Tripoli after “traditional means” of war had been exhausted.
The LNA denied it had hit the detention center, saying militias allied to Tripoli had shelled it after a precision airstrike by the LNA on a camp.
The LNA has failed to take Tripoli in three months of fighting and last week lost its main forward base in Gharyan, which was taken back by Tripoli forces.
In Malawi, a young albino man is using music to fight discrimination and misconceptions about the genetic condition in a country where more than 100 people with albinism have been attacked since 2014. Lazarus Chigwandali has long been performing on the streets of Lilongwe. But after catching the eye of a Swedish producer, he began work on an album that is due out in August. He’s also about to embark on a nationwide tour to promote a documentary, produced by American pop star Madonna, about the plight of albinos in Malawi. Lameck Masina reports from Lilongwe.
In Malawi, a young albino man is using music to fight discrimination and misconceptions about the genetic condition in a country where more than 100 people with albinism have been attacked since 2014.
As teens, Lazarus Chigwandali and his late brother, who also had albinism, played on the streets of Lilongwe, mostly to raise money to buy protective skin lotion.
He says in those days it was difficult to find skin lotion that would protect them from the sun, so they had sores all over their bodies. As a result many people discriminated against them because of the way their bodies looked.
Attacks continue
Discrimination and attacks against albinos like Chigwandali continue. Some Africans believe their body parts, used in so-called magic potions, will bring good luck.
At 39, Chigwandali began composing songs about the myths and misperceptions about people with albinism.
Then he heard music producers from abroad wanted to meet him at his home village to record his music, something that worried his wife, Gertrude Levison.
She says she was afraid that maybe they wanted to kidnap them all. But she realized that it was a peaceful move when she heard her husband talking with a friend of his on the phone.
The recording deal enabled Chigwandali to produce a 30-track music album, Stomp on the Devil, which denounces attacks on albinos. It is due out in August
Esau Mwamwaya, is Chigwandali’s manager.
“With the challenge which people with albinism face in Malawi we felt like, with his powerful voice, he can be an instrument to send the message across the world that you know, people born with albinism, are just like anybody else,” Mwamwaya said.
Much work to be done
While some of his songs are playing on local radio stations, Chigwandali says there is still a long way to go before the attacks end.
He says there are still others who ignore the messages in his songs. This means a lot of work. But, he says, “We will soon start a nationwide tour to screen my documentary which shows attacks on people with albinism in Malawi.”
The documentary, produced by American pop star Madonna, is about the plight of albinos in Malawi.
His wife worries that Chigwandali’s growing fame could expose him and their two albino sons to potential attackers.
To ease their concerns, Chigwandali’s managers have launched a fundraising initiative to build a house for the family that will provide greater security.
Iran announced Monday that it has exceeded its low-enriched uranium stockpile limit, violating the amount it agreed to hold in the 2015 international deal. The move is aimed at forcing the signatories of the nuclear deal to give Iran relief from U.S. sanctions. VOA’s Kurdish Service discussed the consequences of Iran’s action with two experts on Iranian issues. Zlatica Hoke has a summary of what they said.
The U.S. military says it has struck an al-Qaida leadership and training facility in northern Syria where attacks threatening Americans and others were being planned.
The U.S. Central Command said in a statement that the strike occurred on Sunday near the northern province of Aleppo.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition-linked war monitor, said Monday that the strike killed eight members of the al-Qaida-linked Horas al-Din, which is Arabic for “Guardians of Religion.”
The Observatory says the dead included six commanders: two Algerians, two Tunisians, an Egyptian and a Syrian.
Al-Qaida-linked militants control wide parts of northern Syria, mostly in Idlib province, the last major rebel stronghold in the war-torn country.
India spends billions of dollars on social welfare support for the poor but corruption, fraud and inefficiencies often prevent the benefits from reaching them. But now, the government is starting to transform the way it gets welfare to the poor by linking welfare programs to the world’s biggest biometric identity project under which more than one billion people have been given biometric cards. Anjana Pasricha reports on how residents of a rural hamlet in the northern Himalayan state of Himachal Pradesh are benefiting after it switched from cash to digital payments.
A powerful car bomb-and-gun attack in the Afghan capital of Kabul is reported to have killed and wounded dozens of people. Officials said the ensuing clashes between the assailants and Afghan security forces were raging six hours into the siege.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for plotting the suicide raid against what it said was the logistics and engineering center of the Afghan Defense Ministry.
Residents said Monday’s blast occurred in a central part of the city during morning rush hour, sending a plume of black smoke over Kabul.
Wounded people receive treatment in a hospital after a powerful bomb blast in Kabul, Afghanistan, July 1, 2019.
Interior Ministry spokesman Nasrat Rahimi said in a statement that several gunmen later took positions in a nearby under construction multi-story building following the blast and started firing at Afghan police forces on duty.
Rahimi added that Afghan special forces reached the site and an operation was underway to neutralize the assailants. He said two attackers had already been killed while the rest were currently holed up in “civilian homes” around the site of the attack. Rahimi noted that security forces have rescued more than 200 people to safety.
Afghan Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah condemned the Taliban attack, saying it “showcases the group’s inherent criminal nature” and vowed the violence will not deter security forces from pursuing and punishing the “miscreants.”
Ambulances rushed to the scene and ferried one dead and around 100 injured people to hospitals, including children, the Afghan health ministry spokesman said. The education ministry announced in a statement that 52 students were among those injured.
Staff at the nearby office building of the Afghanistan Football Federation (AFF) were also among the casualties. Television footage showed the AFF’s acting chief was among those who suffered injuries.
A security forces soldier arrives at the site of an explosion in Kabul, Afghanistan, July 1, 2019.
A senior Afghan journalist, Bilal Sarwary, tweeted the massive blast killed at least 40 people and wounded 80 others, quoting Afghan intelligence, police and government officials.
Authorities in Kabul, however, have not immediately offered any details about whether the blast caused fatalities.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a statement that a vehicle-born bomb was detonated before “multiple” suicide attackers entered the Defense Ministry-related compounded and engaged Afghan security forces.
Mujahid said the raid killed “tens of officers and workers of the Defense Ministry, though the insurgent group often releases inflated claims for such attacks.
The violence coincided with intensified Taliban battlefield attacks across Afghanistan that officials said have killed nearly 100 Afghan security forces over the past two days.
Monday’s attack comes as the Taliban and the United States are engaged in a fresh round of talks in Qatar aimed at finding a political settlement to the war in Afghanistan.
Washington says it is trying through the dialogue to lay the ground for inter-Afghan talks for a sustainable peace in Afghanistan.
But a Taliban spokesman on Monday reiterated it will participate in talks with Afghan stakeholders only after a timetable for withdrawal of U.S.-led foreign troops from Afghanistan in the presence of “international guarantors.”
Suhail Shaheen, who speaks for the Taliban’s negotiating team, however, ruled out peace talks with the government in Kabul “as government.” The insurgent group dismisses the Afghan administration as an American “puppet” with no decision-making authority.
The Senate’s top Democrat called on the U.S. government Sunday to step up its efforts to investigate the deaths of Americans who traveled to the Dominican Republic and is asking the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to get involved.
Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said the agency should step in to lend investigative support to the FBI and local law enforcement officials after at least eight Americans died in the Dominican Republic this year. Family members of the tourists have called on authorities to investigate whether there’s any connection between the deaths and have raised the possibility the deaths may have been caused by adulterated alcohol or misused pesticides.
The ATF – the agency primarily investigates firearms-related crimes but is also charged with regulating alcohol and tobacco – is uniquely positioned to provide technical and forensic expertise in the investigation, Schumer said. The agency also has offices in the Caribbean.
“Given that we still have a whole lot of questions and very few answers into just what, if anything, is cause for the recent spate of sicknesses and several deaths of Americans in the Dominican Republic, the feds should double their efforts on helping get to the bottom of things,” Schumer said in a statement to The Associated Press.
An ATF spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Francisco Javier Garcia, the tourism minister in the Dominican Republic, said earlier this month that the deaths are not part of any mysterious wave of fatalities but instead are a statistically normal phenomenon that has been lumped together by the U.S. media. He said autopsies show the tourists died of natural causes.
Five of the autopsies were complete as of last week, while three were undergoing further toxicological analysis with the help from the FBI because of the circumstances of the deaths.
Israel’s prime minister says the Palestinians are “determined to continue the conflict at any price.”
Speaking at his weekly Cabinet meeting Sunday, Benjamin Netanyahu was referring to the Palestinian leadership’s rejection of last week’s Mideast peace conference in Bahrain aimed at providing economic assistance.
Netanyahu says while Israel welcomed the U.S.’s $50 billion Palestinian development plan, the Palestinians themselves denounced it and even arrested a Palestinian businessman who participated in it.
Netanyahu says, “This is not how those who want to promote peace act.”
Palestinian forces have since released businessman Saleh Abu Mayala.
The Palestinian Authority accuses the Trump administration of being biased toward Israel and has boycotted it since it recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in 2017. They accuse the U.S. of trying to replace Palestinian statehood with money.
Cambodia’s recent deportation of four indigenous Montagnard asylum-seekers back to their home country has raised concerns about the safety of returnees and the plight of the indigenous group in Vietnam.
The Cambodian government deported the four in mid-June after one of them requested to return to Vietnam to be with his family and the others were deemed to be ineligible for asylum status.
But there is concern among rights activists that the Montagnards, a mostly Christian ethnic minority from Vietnam’s Central Highlands, could face harsh treatment upon their return. Rights activists say the mistreatment stems from the indigenous group’s historic alliance with the United States military during the Vietnam War, its fight for land rights and protest against communist rule, and its religious beliefs.
Vietnam’s government “systematically harasses and abuses the rights of those they believed to be leaders in a community or religion,” said Human Rights Watch Asia director Phil Robertson. As the areas they lived in were remote, it was difficult for independent organizations to monitor the situation, he said.
“There’s no doubt that all four will face very serious interrogation by Vietnam authorities when they return,” he said. “These Montagnards are not just at risk of persecution, they are just about certain to face persecution when they return. The only question will be how rough the Vietnam authorities get with them.”
Robertson said the harassment could take the form of restrictions of movement, potential physical abuse, interrogations, and surveillance. It is a concern shared by some refugees.
“l’m feeling very worried about facing pressure threat from the Vietnamese government,” a refugee in Cambodia, who requested anonymity due to security concerns, told VOA. He had fled Vietnam after he was arrested for having protested religious discrimination and being persecuted on religious grounds. He said he was under constant surveillance in Vietnam before he fled the country. “When I want to go somewhere they follow me,” he said. “So l’m very afraid.”
Hundreds of Montagnards are estimated to have fled to Cambodia since 2015 for alleged religious and political persecution. Since then, some have been sent to other countries, such as the Philippines, while others were deported.
Grace Bui, executive director of Bangkok-based Montagnard Assistance Project, said that losing contact with returnees posed a real risk. “Many Montagnards were sent back from Cambodia and we haven’t heard from many of them,” she said in a message. “For example, one guy who was returned last year tried to contact the U.N. to let them know how the police abused him upon his return. The police took his phone away. Many got beaten up, some were being harassed every day and some went to prison,” she said.
The Vietnamese government was unavailable for comment.
But Vietnam is not alone in contributing to human rights breaches, Robertson said. With the United Nations refugee organization UNHCR having found third countries that would accept the Montagnards, Cambodia would just have to issue exit permits, he said — something he said Cambodia refused to do due to pressure from Vietnam.
“UNHCR is working with the Cambodian authorities to seek solutions for them. Resettlement under the auspices of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees involves the selection and transfer of refugees from a State in which they have sought protection to a third State that has agreed to admit them as refugees with permanent residence status,” said Caroline Gluck, UNHCR senior regional public information officer.
The refugee interviewed by VOA said he is worried about being deported to Vietnam soon. Yet, he hasn’t given up hope that he and the others would be allowed to move to another country after years in limbo.
A leader in the fight for health benefits for emergency personnel who responded to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the U.S. has died.
Former New York City Police detective Luis Alvarez died from colorectal cancer Saturday, his family announced in a post On Facebook.
The 53-year-old Alvarez appeared with American comedian and political activist Jon Stewart before a House Judiciary subcommittee on June 11 to appeal for an extension of the September 11 Victims Compensation Fund.
A frail Alvarez told the panel, “This fund is not a ticket to paradise, it’s to provide our families with care.” He went on to say “You all said you would never forget. Well, I’m here to make sure that you don’t.”
Alvarez was diagnosed with cancer in 2016. His illness was traced to the three months he spent searching for survivors in the toxic rubble of the World Trade Center’s twin towers that were destroyed in the terrorist attacks.
He was admitted to a hospice on Long Island, New York within a few days of his testimony in Washington.
Legislation to replenish the $7.3 billion compensation fund that provides health benefits to police officers, firefighters and other emergency responders passed the full committee unanimously.
The federal government opened the fund in 2011 to compensate responders and their families for deaths and illnesses that were linked to exposure to toxins. Current projections indicate the fund will be depleted at the end of 2020.
Other responders who spent weeks at the site have also been diagnosed with A variety of cancers and other illnesses.
The World Trade Center Health Program, a separate program associated with a fund run by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said more than 12,000 related cases of cancer had also been diagnosed as of May.
U.S. President Donald Trump on Saturday vowed to appeal a U.S. judge’s ruling blocking his administration from using $2.5 billion in funds intended for anti-drug activities to construct a wall along the southern border with Mexico.
“[W]e’re immediately appealing it, and we think we’ll win the appeal,” Trump said during a press conference on Saturday at a summit of leaders of the Group of 20 (G20) major economies in Osaka, western Japan.
“There was no reason that that should’ve happened,” Trump said.
Trump has sought to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, but has so far proven unsuccessful at receiving congressional approval to do so.
In February, the Trump administration declared a national emergency to reprogram $6.7 billion in funds that Congress had allocated for other purposes to build the wall, which groups and states including California had challenged.
U.S. District Court Judge Haywood Gilliam in Oakland, California said in a pair of court decisions on Friday that the Trump administration’s proposal to transfer Defense Department funds intended for anti-drug activities was unlawful.
One of Gilliam’s rulings was in a lawsuit filed by California on behalf of 20 states, while the other was in a case brought by the American Civil Liberties Union in coordination with the Sierra Club and the Southern Border Communities Coalition.
“These rulings critically stop President Trump’s illegal money grab to divert $2.5 billion of unauthorized funding for his pet project,” California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said in a statement. “All President Trump has succeeded in building is a constitutional crisis, threatening immediate harm to our state.”
