Hong Kong police opened fire on protesters early on Monday, Cable TV reported, as chaos erupted across the city, a day after officers fired tear gas to break up rallies as activists blocked roads and trashed shopping malls in the financial hub.
Chancellor Angela Merkel led a series of commemorations in the German capital over weekend to mark the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, which divided the city during the Cold War until 1989. The wall was built by Communist East Germany to prevent its citizens fleeing to the capitalist west. As Henry Ridgwell reports, the hope and optimism in the years following the wall’s destruction have been replaced with fears over the resurgent tensions between Russia and the West
Australian officials are warning of “catastrophic fire danger” as dozens of bushfires blazed in the state of New South Wales.
As of early Monday, 64 fires were burning the New South Wales Rural Fire Service said in a tweet. Of those, more than 40 were out of control.
At 6am there’s 64 bush and grass fires across NSW, 40 not yet contained. Many of these fires won’t be contained ahead of tomorrow’s dangerous fire weather. Catastrophic fire danger has been declared for Tuesday in Sydney and Hunter areas. Use today to get ready. #nswrfspic.twitter.com/Qto5IF8PUH
It warned residents in the area to expect conditions to get worse as high temperatures and gusting winds are forecast for Tuesday.
“Don’t wait for the last minute and ring for a firetruck because it may not get there,” said Jeremy Fewtrell, deputy commissioner of New South Wales Fire and Rescue. “We just don’t want to lose more people.”
Three people have been confirmed dead and more than 150 homes have been destroyed.
New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian declared a state of emergency Monday. It will stay in place for at least a week.
A strong cyclone made landfall early Sunday in Bangladesh, where hundreds of thousands of people have moved to shelters across the low-lying delta nation’s vast coastal region.
Packing winds of up to 120 kilometers (75 miles) per hour and gusts of up to 130 kph (80 mph), Cyclone Bulbul weakened when it started crossing Bangladesh’s southwestern coastal region, dumping incessant rains across the country. No casualties were reported immediately.
The weather office said the cyclone slammed ashore at Sagar Island in the southern part of India’s West Bengal state. Its path included the southwestern Khulna region, which has the world’s largest mangrove forest, the Sundarbans, which straddles the Bangladesh-India border.
Up to 1.8 million people were expected to be evacuated by Saturday evening, said Enamur Rahman, Bangladesh’s junior disaster management minister. More than 5,000 shelters had been prepared.
The weather office said coastal districts were likely to be inundated by storm surges of 1{-2 meters (5-7 feet) above normal tide because of the impact of the cyclone.
Several ships from Bangladesh’s navy and coast guard were kept ready in parts of the region for an emergency response, the TV station Independent reported.
The storm is also expected to impact parts of northeastern India, where precautions were being taken.
Rahman said the government suspended weekend leave for government officials in 13 coastal districts.
On Saturday, volunteers used loudspeakers to ask people to move to shelters in Chittagong and other regions, according to the Disaster Management Ministry. In the Cox’s Bazar coastal district, tourists were alerted to stay in their hotels, while a few hundred visitors were stuck on Saint Martins Island.
Authorities suspended all activities in the country’s main seaports, including in Chittagong, which handles almost 80% of Bangladesh’s exports and imports. All vessels and fishing boats were told to stop operating.
Local authorities ordered school buildings and mosques to be used as shelters in addition to dedicated cyclone shelters — raised concrete buildings that have been built over the past decades.
Bangladesh, a nation of 160 million people, has a history of violent cyclones. But disaster preparedness programs in recent decades have upgraded the country’s capacity to deal with natural disasters, resulting in fewer casualties.
Hong Kong protesters suggested they could hold rallies at a several major shopping malls on Sunday, a week after similar gatherings resulted in violent clashes with police.
Last weekend, anti-government protesters crowded into a shopping mall when a man slashed people with a knife and bit off part of the ear of a politician.
Several other gatherings are planned for elsewhere in the city, to protest against police behaviour and perceived meddling by Beijing in the politics of the Asian financial hub.
China denies interfering in Hong Kong, but the protests have become the worst political crisis in the former British colony since it returned to Chinese rule in 1997.
Thousands of people gathered on Saturday night at a vigil for “martyrs”, after a student died in hospital this week following a high fall.
Though the vigil ended peacefully, many attendees called for revenge after the student’s death from injuries sustained during a protest.
Protesters have also called for a general strike on Monday and for people to block public transport, although when such calls have been made in the past they have come to nothing.
As they departed Saturday’s vigil, a number of people shouted “strike on Monday” and “see you on Monday.”
Scattered vigils on Friday night descended into chaos as some protesters vandalised metro stations and blocked streets.
Riot police responded with tear gas, pepper spray, and at least one round of live ammunition fired as a warning shot to protesters who had barricaded a street.
When a coal company contractor working under federal oversight used a backhoe to dig up one of the largest known Native American bison killing grounds and make way for mining, investigators concluded the damage on the Crow Indian Reservation broke federal law and would cost $10 million to repair, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.
Eight years later, Colorado-based Westmoreland Coal has not made the repairs and is still mining in the area, under an agreement with former Crow leaders that some tribal members said has caused more damage to a site considered hallowed ground.
The U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs issued a civil violation notice in the case last year, according to agency spokeswoman Genevieve Giaccardo. A Westmoreland executive said no penalty was involved. No charges were filed by federal prosecutors who investigated potential criminal violations.
Burton Pretty On Top, a 73-year-old tribal adviser and spiritual leader, and other Crow members said they were frustrated no one had been held accountable for “desecrating” the 2,000-year-old southeastern Montana site. It held countless bison bones and more than 3,300 stone tools and projectile points in an area known as Sarpy Creek.
“It was a shrine or temple to us,” Pretty On Top said. “We wanted to preserve the whole area … No amount of money in the world is enough to replace what has been lost here. The spirituality of our people has been broken.”
This undated aerial photo from the Montana State Library shows an area of a Westmoreland Energy coal mine near Sarpy Creek in eastern Montana. The graphics show the general area of excavation, framed in red, and a bison bone pile, framed in yellow.
The mining company plans to repair the damage but has not reached agreement with the tribe and government on how that should be done, said Westmoreland executive Joe Micheletti.
Crow Chairman Alvin “A.J.” Not Afraid said the tribe, too, bears responsibility, for signing off when Westmoreland first proposed excavating the site a decade ago. The mine generates about $13 million to $15 million annually in revenue for the Crow, which makes up the bulk of the tribe’s budget, Not Afraid said.
“How can we hold them accountable when we approved them to do something?” he asked.
The large number of artifacts found suggest various tribes killed bison there for centuries before the Crow arrived — butchering animals for meat and turning the hides into clothing, according to experts who examined the site. The number of bison bones found makes it the largest kill site of its time ever discovered, said Lawrence Todd, an archaeologist from Colorado State University who participated in the investigation.
“The magnitude of the destruction done there, from the perspective of the archaeology of the northwest Plains, is probably unprecedented,” Todd said.
Since the investigation, Westmoreland has mined around the killing ground while avoiding the massive “bonebed” of more than 2,000 bison.
Tribal officials and archaeologists said the company compounded the original damage by destroying nearby artifacts including teepee rings and the remnants of a sweat lodge. Pretty On Top said some of the bones excavated in 2011 were piled in a heap, with grass growing over it, when he recently visited.
The excavation was part of a cultural resources survey required under federal law before the mine could expand onto the reservation. The use of a backhoe instead of hand shovels saved the company money but largely destroyed the site, documents and interviews show.
A Crow cultural official later convicted in a corruption case oversaw the work. At least two Interior Department officials, took part in the decision to use the backhoe, according to the documents obtained by AP and interviews with investigators.
The agency, which must protect the tribe’s interests under federal law, declined to answer questions about its involvement.
Giaccardo said the matter was under litigation but would not provide details. Micheletti and tribal officials said they were unaware of any litigation.
Neither the company nor government would release the violation notice or the company’s repair plan.
“I’m not going to look in the rear-view mirror. We’re trying to go forward,” Micheletti said. “From our point of view, it’s pretty much all said and done and agreed to on what needs to happen there. The ruling basically concluded that there was no penalty…We did nothing wrong.”
Many bones and other artifacts that were excavated were put into off-site storage until a decision is made about what to do with them, he added. There are no plans to pay the tribe compensation.
Former Crow Chairman Darrin Old Coyote said the company originally planned to mine the entire area and warned the tribe that it would lose revenue if it avoided the killing ground. Old Coyote said that after the 2011 excavation work, his administration insisted on a buffer zone to protect the site from further damage.
Archaeological investigators brought in by federal prosecutors said the bison kill site’s potential scientific value was obvious long before the backhoe was used.
A preliminary survey in 2004 and 2005 revealed artifacts at the site and suggested more might lie beneath the ground. It was enough for it to be considered eligible for a historic designation and meant further damage had to be avoided, minimized or mitigated.
“The real culprits in this in my mind are the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Office of Surface mining. They should have said, `This site has to be avoided, period,”‘ said Martin McAllister with Archaeological Damage Investigation and Assessment, an archaeology firm that led the investigation.
In June 2010, after Westmoreland obtained approval from state and federal regulators to mine in the area, representatives of the company, tribe, BIA and Interior’s Office of Surface Mining gathered at the bison killing ground to decide what to do about the site.
To save on the high cost of excavating by hand — the accepted practice among archaeologists when working on high-value finds — they agreed to use “mass excavation with mechanical equipment,” according to records of the meeting.
The Crow tribal official at that meeting was Dale Old Horn, at the time director of the tribe’s Historic Preservation Office. He was later convicted in a corruption scheme in which preservation office staff who were supposed to be monitoring sites — including the bison killing grounds — took money from both the tribe and the companies they oversaw.
By the time the backhoe work was finished, enough soil, bones, artifacts and other material had been removed to fill more than 300 dump trucks, investigators determined.
Although the preliminary survey work was done under a permit, that permit expired in 2010 and was not renewed. That meant the backhoe excavation violated the federal Archaeological Resource Protection Act, investigators concluded.
In their 2013 damage assessment, they called the loss of archaeological information “incalculable” and said repairing it would cost $10.4 million.
“The damage that was present when we did the assessment has been amplified by having it just sit there since then — uncovered, unprotected and unanalyzed,” said Todd, the bison bonebed expert.
Iran defended on Saturday its decision to block an U.N. inspector from a nuclear site last week.
A spokesman for Iran’s atomic agency, Behrouz Kamalvandi, said that the Iranian government “legally speaking” had done nothing wrong in stopping the female inspector from touring its Natanz nuclear facility on Oct. 28.
Iran alleges the inspector tested positive for suspected traces of explosive nitrates. The U.N.’s nuclear watchdog has disputed the claim.
“The reason that this lady was denied entrance was that she was suspected of carrying some material,” said Kamlavandi, referring to the allegations.
He added that Iran was exercising its “rights” under its agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency when it revoked “her entrance and accreditation.”
It marked the first known instance of Iran blocking an inspector amid tensions over its collapsing nuclear deal with world powers. The U.S. unilaterally withdrew from the deal over a year ago.
Kamalvandi said Iran hasn’t imposed any restriction on inspections.
“We welcome the inspections,” he said, while warning against using them for “sabotage and leaking information.”
State TV carried Kamalvandi’s remarks from the Fordo nuclear site where Iran Thursday injected uranium gas into centrifuges aimed at producing low-enriched uranium as fuel for nuclear power plants.
Under the 2015 deal, Iran was not supposed to enrich uranium at the site until 2030.
Germany marked the 30th anniversary Saturday of the opening of the Berlin Wall, a pivotal moment in the events that brought down Communism in eastern Europe.
Leaders from Germany, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic attended a ceremony at Bernauer Strasse — where one of the last parts of the Berlin Wall remains — before placing roses in gaps in the once-fearsome barrier that divided the city for 28 years.
Axel Klausmeier, head of the Berlin Wall memorial site, recalled the images of delirious Berliners from East and West crying tears of joy as they hugged each other on the evening of Nov. 9, 1989.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel arrives with a rose at a ceremony marking the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, in Berlin, Germany, Nov. 9, 2019.
Klausmeier paid tribute to the peaceful protesters in East Germany and neighboring Warsaw Pact countries who took to the streets demanding freedom and democracy, and to then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s policy of reforms.
The protests and a stream of people fleeing East Germany piled pressure on the country’s Communist government to open its borders to the West and ultimately end the nation’s post-war division.
Thirty years on, Germany has become the most powerful economic and political force on the continent, but there remain deep misgivings among some in the country about how the transition from socialism to capitalism was managed.
From right, the presidents of Germany Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Hungary Janos Ader, Poland Andrzej Duda, Slovakia Zuzana Caputova and of the Czech Republic Milos Zeman, are seen at Berlin Wall ceremony, in Berlin, Germany, Nov. 9, 2019.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel acknowledged this in a recent interview with daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung, saying that “with some things, where one might have thought that East and West would have aligned, one can see today that it might rather take half a century or more.”
Speaking at a memorial service in a small chapel near where the Wall once stood, Merkel commemorated those who were killed or imprisoned for trying to flee from East to West Germany and insisted that the fight for freedom worldwide isn’t over.
“The Berlin Wall, ladies and gentlemen, is history and it teaches us: No wall that keeps people out and restricts freedom is so high or so wide that it can’t be broken down,” she said.
Merkel also recalled that Nov. 9 remains a fraught date in German history, as it also marks the anniversary of the so-called Night of Broken Glass, an anti-Jewish pogrom in 1938 that foreshadowed the Nazi’s Holocaust.
Light installations, concerts and public debates were planned throughout the city and other parts of Germany to mark the fall of the Wall, including a concert at Berlin’s iconic Brandenburg Gate.
Self-exiled Cambodian opposition figure Sam Rainsy landed in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur on Saturday after promising to return home to rally opponents of authoritarian ruler Hun Sen.
“Keep up the hope. We are on the right track,” Rainsy said on arrival at Kuala Lumpur International Airport in a message to supporters. “Democracy will prevail. Democracy has prevailed in Malaysia. Democracy will prevail in Cambodia.”
Asked whether he planned to return to Cambodia he said: “I cannot say anything. I do not deny, I do not confirm.”
The veteran opposition figure had planned to return to Cambodia on Saturday, Independence Day, in what Prime Minister Hun Sen characterized as an attempted coup against his rule of more than three decades.
But Sam Rainsy was blocked from boarding a Thai Airways flight to Bangkok in Paris on Thursday. He and other leaders of his banned opposition party have said they want to return to Cambodia by crossing the land border with Thailand.
An official of Rainsy’s banned Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) in Thailand said that nobody would be returning Saturday.
“We will be returning as soon as possible,” Saory Pon, general secretary of the Cambodia National Rescue Party Overseas told Reuters, complaining that some party officials in Thailand had been harassed and followed by security services.
Cambodian government spokesman Phay Siphan said that if Sam Rainsy did return he would face outstanding charges against him in court.
“If he comes to cause instability and chaos, we will destroy him,” he said.
Opposition activists arrested
Some 50 opposition activists have been arrested in recent weeks.
In Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh, security forces patrolled in pickup trucks on Saturday, which marks Cambodia’s 66th anniversary of independence from France. On Sunday and Monday, Cambodia celebrates an annual water festival.
Police armed with assault rifles lined up at Cambodia’s Poipet border crossing with Thailand, where Sam Rainsy had said he planned to cross, pictures posted on Twitter by the independent Cambodian Center for Human Rights showed.
Rainsy, a founder of the CNRP, fled four years ago following a conviction for criminal defamation. He also faces a five-year sentence in a separate case. He says the charges were politically motivated.
The 70-year-old former finance minister, who usually sports large, rimmed spectacles, has been an opponent of Hun Sen since the 1990s. He also vowed to return home in 2015 in spite of threats to arrest him, but did not.
FILE – Kem Sokha, former chairman of the Cambodian parliament’s human rights commission, center, greets the press as he leaves the Phnom Penh Municipal Court in Cambodia, Dec. 15,1998.
The CNRP’s leader, Kem Sokha, is under house arrest in Cambodia after being arrested more than two years ago and charged with treason ahead of a 2018 election that was condemned by Western countries as a farce.
Before Sam Rainsy’s failed attempt to fly to Thailand, Malaysia detained Mu Sochua, his party’s U.S.-based vice president, at an airport before releasing her 24 hours later along with two other Cambodian opposition leaders detained earlier.
“We will continue our journey home,” Mu Sochua said on Twitter Saturday morning. “9 November is marked in history as our struggle for democracy.”
Rights groups have accused Malaysia, Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand of detaining and returning critics of neighboring governments, even those with United Nations refugee status.
Two Somali-American women who won local elections this week are calling for full participation of women in Somalia’s politics, peace and development efforts.
Voters on Tuesday elected Nadia Mohamed for an at-large seat in St. Louis Park, a western suburb of Minneapolis, in the Midwestern state of Minnesota, and chose Safiya Khalid to represent a ward in Lewiston, in the northeastern state of Maine.
Both ran as Democrats and will be the first Somali immigrants on their respective councils. Both also are 23 and are black, hijab-wearing Muslims.
The two new city council members are urging women in Somalia to follow their path.
“I was elected with respect being a woman, a young, a Muslim, and hijab-wearing. So that, I would like to see Somalia doing the same because a woman can do sometimes better what a man can do,” said Mohamed.
“I would like to send a call to Somali women in Somalia, saying that they can do whatever they want, regardless of the challenges they face from the men who hold the country’s politics in monopoly,” Khalid told VOA Somali.
In Somalia’s conservative society, women’s participation in politics has have traditionally been low, and a controversial topic.
Khadiijo Mohamed Dirie, Somalia’s minister of youth and sports, said the success of young Somali politicians in the United States and Europe is a reminder of how women can be empowered in Somali society.
Right now, she says, female politicians as young as Mohamed and Khalid would have zero chance of being elected to public office in Somalia.
“Women rarely envision a position of a higher political leadership in our male-dominated social system,” Dirie told VOA. “Those who are successful in the U.S and Europe politics got an opportunity of living with a developed society in a political maturity.”
Somalia’s provisional constitution gives women 30 percent quota in both houses of the parliament. However, women currently make up less than a quarter of parliamentarians.
Lebanon’s national news agency says the country’s banks will be closed for two extra days over the weekend amid deepening turmoil and public anxiety over liquidity and sustained anti-government protests.
The National News Agency says the banks will be closed both on Saturday and Monday, along with the regular Sunday closure for the weekend.
The report says this will allow for the observation of the holiday celebrating Prophet Mohammad’s birthday, which is set for Monday in Lebanon.
Earlier, banks were closed for two weeks amid nationwide protests calling for the government to resign. After reopening last week, individual banks imposed irregular capital controls to protect deposits and prevent a run on the banks.
Lebanon is one of the world’s most heavily indebted countries.
Editor’s note: We want you to know what’s happening, and why and how it could impact your life, family or business, so we created a weekly digest of the top original immigration, migration and refugee reporting from across VOA. Questions? Tips? Comments? Email the VOA immigration team: ImmigrationUnit@voanews.com.
Refugee restart
The U.S. refugee program resumed this week, after more than a month delay while the White House and Congress faced off over a dramatic cut to the number of refugees who will be admitted in the coming year. The final result? Largely what the Trump administration wanted.
If three’s a trend, then U.S. Representative Ilhan Omar started it — two Somali-American women won local elections in separate U.S. cities this week, both of whom — like Omar — came to the country as refugees.
The head of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees resigned during an internal investigation into how he was running the organization. Pierre Krähenbühl stepped down as UNRWA also faces a funding struggle following a cut to contributions from the United States last year.
People are cutting through Trump’s “virtually impenetrable” border wall, prying the metal rods enough to allow humans to pass through. These are parts of the barrier that replaced previous construction.
Polish nationals now have streamlined access to U.S. travel after being included in the Visa Waiver Program.
Two men were indicted this week in an alleged visa fraud ring that focused on South Koreans. More than 100 people paid the California-based suspects between $30,000 and $70,000 to come to the U.S., often with falsified documents.
The U.S. House of Representatives has begun an impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump over his efforts to push Ukraine to investigate a political rival. Many of the words and phrases used in the impeachment process are particular to U.S. law and clauses in the U.S. Constitution that govern the impeachment process.
Here are some of the common terms used in an impeachment inquiry and what they mean:
Articles of impeachment: A formal document listing the charges against an official and the reasons why that person should be removed from office. In the United States, the House of Representatives drafts the articles of impeachment, which are then voted on by all members of the House. If a majority of House members vote in favor, the official is impeached — essentially, the equivalent of an indictment — and the articles of impeachment move to the Senate, which then holds a trial.
Bribery: The second offense listed in the Constitution as worthy of impeachment, following treason. Bribery takes place when one person gives something of value to someone in a position of authority in order to influence his or her actions. It often involves cash gifts, although the inducements need not be money and could include, gifts, services or favors.
FILE – House Rules Committee Chairman Jim McGovern, D-Mass., presides over a markup of the resolution to formalize the next steps in the impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump, at the Capitol in Washington, Oct. 30, 2019.
Censure: A formal statement of condemnation of a president, Cabinet member, judge or lawmaker passed by a chamber of Congress. Unlike impeachment, censure is not mentioned in the Constitution and would not trigger a trial and possible expulsion. Only one president has ever been censured: Andrew Jackson, by the Senate in 1834.
Civil officers of the United States: The Constitution says that any civil officer of the United States is eligible for impeachment. Civil officers are officials in the U.S. government who are appointed to their positions and serve in any of the branches of government — executive, legislative or judicial.
High crimes and misdemeanors: One of the categories of offenses listed in the Constitution worthy of impeachment. The framers of the Constitution did not define high crimes and misdemeanors, but the phrase has been interpreted to include both violations of criminal statues as well as noncriminal actions that are deemed an abuse of power.
Impeachment: This refers to the U.S. House bringing charges against a government official for alleged wrongdoing. A common misconception is that impeachment means removal from office, but it is more akin to an indictment. If a majority of lawmakers in the House vote in favor of impeachment, the process then moves to the Senate, which holds a trial to determine whether to remove the official from office.
Pardon: Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution grants the president the “power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment.” The question of whether a president can pardon himself was raised during the Watergate scandal in the 1970s. At the time, a Justice Department memo sent to President Richard Nixon said: “Under the fundamental rule that no one may be a judge in his own case,” the president cannot pardon himself. However, the Constitution does not expressly prevent a president from pardoning himself.
FILE – Supporters of President Donald Trump rally outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington to protest his impeachment inquiry, Oct. 17, 2019. (Diaa Bekheet/VOA)
Quid pro quo: The most literal translation of the Latin phrase is “something for something,” and in everyday terms it refers to an exchange of services or things of value. It has meaning in the legal system, finance and politics. It can describe perfectly legal transactions, but it can also apply to shady deals, where something improper or illegal is exchanged for something of value.
Removal vs. disqualification: Once the impeachment proceedings move from the House to the Senate, a trial is held to determine whether to convict the defendant. If the Senate votes to convict, the defendant is removed from office. The Senate may then choose to vote to further punish the defendant by barring him or her from holding future federal office, known as disqualification. The Constitution states that removal and disqualification are the only punishments the Senate can issue. However, a defendant may also be subjected to punishment in regular state or federal courts.
Standard vs. burden of proof: The Constitution says any officer of the executive or judicial branch can be removed from office for “treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” However, it does not define “high crimes and misdemeanors.” The determination is left to the members of the House and Senate. The Constitution also leaves it to lawmakers to determine whether there is enough evidence for impeachment. Unlike in criminal cases, there is no need for proof of misconduct “beyond a reasonable doubt.”
FILE – A Senate gallery pass from the impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson in 1868.
Supermajority: The Constitution requires two-thirds of the Senate to vote to convict an official facing impeachment and removal from office.
Treason: The first offense listed in the Constitution as worthy of impeachment. It is also the only crime specifically defined in the Constitution, which states a person is guilty of treason if he or she goes to war against the United States or gives “aid or comfort” to an enemy. The Constitution says that no one can be convicted of treason “unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act or on confession in open court.”
U.S. Constitution: The document that defines the fundamentals of the government, laws and basic rights granted Americans. It was written in 1787 and ratified the next year by the 13 original states.
An 89-year-old Holocaust survivor in Italy has been placed under police protection after receiving hundreds of threats on social media.
Liliana Segre, who was sent to the Auschwitz death camp at age 13, has been receiving as many as 200 threats daily, many against her life.
In response to the attacks, Segre, who is senator for life, called for the creation of a parliamentary committee to combat hate, racism and anti-Semitism.
The motion was approved by Italy’s Parliament, even without the support of Italy’s right-wing parties, including former Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini’s Euroskeptic League Party and former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia.
Since then, the attacks against Segre have amplified.
The Milan-based Center of Contemporary Jewish Documents’ Observatory on Anti-Jewish Prejudice says anti-Semitic attacks are on the rise in Italy, particularly online.
In the first nine months of this year, 190 anti-Semitic incidents were reported to the observatory, compared with 153 incidents for all of 2018, and 91 for all of 2017.
“An 89-year-old Holocaust survivor under guard symbolizes the danger that Jewish communities still face in Europe today,” Israel’s ambassador to Italy, Dror Eydar, tweeted Thursday.
The United States imposed sanctions Thursday on a senior jihadist leader and preacher from Mali for his membership in Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), an al-Qaida affiliate active in the Sahel region of Africa.
Amadou Kouffa led Mali’s Macina Liberation Front militant group before announcing its merger with JNIM and three other Islamist groups in March 2017. The U.S. State Department designated JNIM as a terrorist organization in September 2018.
Since its formation, JNIM has targeted Malian and French troops, as well as U.N. peacekeepers. The group has been blamed for the deaths of more than 500 civilians and the kidnapping of dozens of others in attacks in the Sahel region, including the June 2017 attack at a resort frequented by Westerners outside Bamako, Mali, and the March 2018 attacks in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.
“Earlier this year, Kouffa led an attack against the Malian army in which more than 20 soldiers were killed,” the State Department said in a statement.
The State Department said the terrorist designation aims to deny Kouffa the resources to plan and carry out more terrorist attacks. Among other consequences, it prohibits U.S. nationals from engaging in any transactions with him.
“Today’s designation notifies the U.S. public and the international community that Amadou Kouffa has committed, or poses a significant risk of committing, acts of terrorism,” the department added.
Who is Kouffa?
A radical preacher from the central Malian town of Mopti, Kouffa has worked to exploit the rivalry between Muslim Fulanis and the Bambara ethnic group in the country to advance his agenda. In his messages to supporters, he has often called for rebuilding the 19th-century Massina Empire extending from Mali to Senegal and Nigeria.
The French Defense Ministry and Malian army officials reported Kouffa killed in a French raid in Mali’s Mopti Region in November 2018.
In February 2019, Kouffa reappeared in a 19-minute video in which he mocked news of his demise and called on his supporters to continue targeting the Malian and French military forces.
France, the former colonial power in the region, has fought JNIM and other radical groups in Mali and other countries of the Sahel region for years. It intervened in Operation Serval in 2013 to help the Malian government push back against advancing Islamist militants from the north. The intervention has reportedly helped contain the jihadist threat but has failed to eliminate it.
France’s Defense Ministry announced this week that its forces in Mali killed Ali Maychou last month. Maychou was second-in-command of JNIM, behind leader Iyad Ag Ghaly.
A Chinese court Thursday jailed nine people, one with a suspended death sentence, for smuggling fentanyl into the United States, saying this was the first such case the two countries had worked together on.
China has faced U.S. criticism for not doing enough to prevent the flow of fentanyl into the United States, and the issue has become another irritant in ties already strained by a bruising trade war the two are now working to end.
The announcement of the successful action against the smugglers comes as the two countries are expected to sign an interim trade deal.
Fentanyl is a highly addictive synthetic opioid, 50 times more potent than heroin. It is often used to make counterfeit narcotics because of its relatively cheap price, and it has played an increasingly central role in an opioid crisis in the United States.
US-China teamwork
Yu Haibin, a senior official with China’s National Narcotics Control Commission, told reporters in the northern city of Xingtai where the court case was heard, that Chinese and U.S. law enforcement had worked together to break up the ring, which smuggled fentanyl and other opioids to the United States via courier.
One of the people sentenced by the court was given a suspended death sentence, which in practice is normally commuted to life in jail, and two got life sentences, Yu said.
More than 28,000 synthetic opioid-related overdose deaths, mostly from fentanyl-related substances, were recorded in the United States in 2017, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
U.S. drug enforcement has pointed to China as the source of fentanyl and its related supplies. China denies that most of the illicit fentanyl entering the United States originates in China, and says the United States must do more to reduce demand.
Issue of demand
Yu said that the issue of fentanyl was not something any one country could resolve.
“If illegal demand cannot be effectively reduced, it is very difficult to fundamentally tackle the fentanyl issue,” Yu said.
In August, U.S. President Donald Trump accused Chinese President Xi Jinping of not fulfilling a promise to crack down on fentanyl and its analogs.
Yu said China was willing to work with U.S. law enforcement authorities and all other international colleagues to fight narcotics and “continue to contribute China’s wisdom and power for the global management of narcotics.”
A Bolivian protest leader who has become a symbol of opposition to President Evo Morales arrived on Wednesday in the nation’s capital, La Paz, where he plans to formally demand the leftist leader step down after a contentious election last month.
Luis Fernando Camacho, a civic leader from the eastern city of Santa Cruz, was whisked away in a convoy from the city’s main airport in nearby El Alto in the midst of a huge security presence and with rival protest groups massing outside.
The gambit, after he was blocked from leaving the airport on Tuesday, has sparked a fierce backlash from government supporters, while seemingly helping rally a split opposition. Camacho plans to march to the presidential palace to deliver a pre-written letter of resignation for Morales to sign.
The new attempt is likely to fan tensions following weeks of protests and strikes since the Oct. 20 vote. Hostilities have ramped up since Tuesday night in La Paz and Cochabamba, with clashes between Morales supporters and the opposition.
Government supporters and anti-Morales protesters clashed outside the El Alto airport late into Wednesday night. Carlos Mesa, the runner-up in the October election, had been at the airport waiting for Camacho to arrive, along with ex-President Jorge Quiroga.
“I think this is a fundamental moment for the opposition that believes in a democratic response and a peaceful way out,” said Mesa, who has repeatedly raised allegations of fraud against Morales and called for new elections.
Morales, a socialist leader who has been in power since 2006, has defended his election win and said that the opposition is trying to lead a “coup” against him and that his rivals were inciting violence.
Bolivians vs Bolivians
With little sign of a political solution, the standoff has worsened. On Wednesday, newspaper headlines decried the violence and pointed to an economic cost of $167 million. “Bolivians against Bolivians” read the front page of one local daily.
Local media reported the death of one young man in his twenties in the city of Cochabamba on Wednesday. In a tweet, Camacho blamed the death on Morales, and in a separate video message called for unity and calm.
Morales confirmed the death, saying the youngster was an “innocent victim of violence provoked by political groups encouraging racial hatred amongst our Bolivian brothers”.
“I hope Camacho and the people who follow him understand that the route they are taking simply leads to disaster,” state media reported defense minister Javier Zavaleta as saying.
Morales won last month’s vote with a lead of just over 10 points over Mesa, handing the former coca grower an outright win and avoiding a second-round runoff. The victory, however, was marred by a near 24-hour halt in the count, which, when resumed, showed a sharp and unexplained shift in Morales’ favor.
International governments have called for calm and are backing an audit of the election by the Organization of American States (OAS), which has recommended that a second round vote go ahead. Morales has agreed the audit will be “binding.”
The OAS on Wednesday called for calm while it completed its audit.
Since the vote, cities have gone into lockdown, with daily marches and road blocks. Camacho earlier this week called for people to blockade public institutions and the country’s borders in order to hit government incomes.
BenjamÃn Blanco, a senior trade official, said on Wednesday that borders with Peru, Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil had been affected, with hundreds of trucks being stopped.
Britain’s Parliament dissolved Wednesday for a five-week election campaign. Rising inequality is expected to be one of the central issues in Britain’s pre-holiday general election, as conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson faces off with leftist leader Jeremy Corbyn. Johnson has called for the snap election to gain more parliamentary support for his Brexit plan. But for some British voters, employment, health care, the environment and other issues are more important than how soon and under what conditions Britain can leave the European Union. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports.
The Berlin Wall’s demise 30 years ago brought an end to a divided Berlin — and symbolized the eventual liberation of East Germany, and later the rest of Eastern Europe, from Soviet communist rule. Yet the wall’s anniversary comes as the politics of east and west continue to reverberate through German society. In former communist East Germany, a democratic slogan from the revolution of 1989 rebounds – and resonates – among the present day nationalist far right. Charles Maynes reports from Thuringia in eastern Germany.
A lone attacker on Wednesday stabbed three foreign tourists and their tour guide at a popular archaeological site in northern Jordan, the official Petra news agency reported.
The agency said the attacker also wounded a policeman before he was subdued and arrested. The wounded were taken to a hospital.
Amateur video showed a bloody scene next to the Jerash archaeological site, an ancient city whose ruins, including a Roman amphitheater and a columned road, are one of the country’s top tourist destinations.
In one video, a woman can be heard screaming in Spanish. “It’s a dagger, it’s a dagger, there is a knife. Please, help him now!”
One woman is seen lying on the ground, with much blood around her, as someone presses a towel to her back. Another man sits nearby with an apparent leg wound.
There were no further details, but the al-Ghad newspaper said the tourists were Mexican and suffered serious wounds.
Suspected separatist insurgents stormed a security checkpoint in Thailand’s Muslim-majority south and killed at least 15 people, including a police officer and many village defense volunteers, security officials said on Wednesday.
It was the worst single attack in years in a region where a Muslim separatist insurgency has killed thousands.
The attackers, in the province of Yala, also used explosives and scattered nails on roads to delay pursuers late on Tuesday night.
“This is likely the work of the insurgents,” Colonel Pramote Prom-in, a regional security spokesman, told Reuters. “This is one of the biggest attack in recent times.”
There was no immediate claim of responsibility, however, as is common with such attacks.
A decade-old separatist insurgency in predominantly Buddhist Thailand’s largely ethnic Malay-Muslim provinces of Yala, Pattani, and Narathiwat has killed nearly 7,000 people since 2004, says Deep South Watch, a group that monitors the violence.
The population of the provinces, which belonged to an independent Malay Muslim sultanate before Thailand annexed them in 1909, is 80 percent Muslim, while the rest of the country is overwhelmingly Buddhist.
Some rebel groups in the south have said they are fighting to establish an independent state.
Authorities arrested several suspects from the region in August over a series of small bombs detonated in Bangkok, the capital, although they have not directly blamed any insurgent group.
The main insurgency group, the Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN), denied responsibility for the Bangkok bombings, which wounded four people.
In August, the group told Reuters it had held a secret preliminary meeting with the government, but any step towards a peace process appeared to wither after the deputy prime minister rejected a key demand for the release of prisoners.
A trade war between the world’s top two economies cut U.S. imports of Chinese goods by more than a quarter, or $35 billion, in the first half of this year and drove up prices for American consumers, a U.N. study showed on Tuesday.
Beijing and Washington have been locked in a trade feud for the past 16 months although there are hopes that an initial deal offering some relief may be signed this month.
If that fails, nearly all Chinese goods imports into the United States — worth more than $500 billion — could be affected.
U.S. imports from China subject to tariffs fell to $95 billion between January and June from $130 billion during the same period of 2018, the study released by the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) showed.
“Overall, the results indicate that the United States tariffs on China are economically hurting both countries,” the report said. “United States losses are largely related to the higher prices for consumers, while China’s losses are related to significant export losses.”
Over time, Chinese companies began absorbing some of the extra costs of the tariffs through an 8% dip in export prices in the second quarter of 2019, but that still left 17% “on the shoulders of U.S. consumers”, said the report’s author Alessandro Nicita, an economist at UNCTAD.
The sector hit hardest by the U.S. tariffs are U.S. imports of Chinese office machinery and communication equipment, which fell by $15 billion. Over time, the scale of Chinese export losses increased alongside mounting tariffs, the study said.
Other countries stepped up to fill most of the gap left by China, the study found. It named Taiwan as the largest beneficiary of “trade diversion”, with $4.2 billion in additional exports to the United States in the first half of 2019. They were mostly office and communication equipment.
Mexico increased exports to the United States by $3.5 billion, mostly agriculture and transport equipment and electrical machinery. The European Union boosted deliveries by $2.7 billion, mostly via additional machinery exports, it found.
“The longer the trade war goes on, the more likely these losses and gains will be permanent,” Nicita said. Not all of Chinese trade losses were picked up by other economies and billions of dollars in trade were lost entirely.
The paper did not analyse the effect of Chinese tariffs on U.S. imports into China because detailed data was not yet available.
It also does not capture the most recent phase of the trade war — including 10% tariffs on about $125 billion worth of additional Chinese goods imported into the United States that took effect on Sept. 1 — beyond noting that it is likely to add to existing trade losses.
Nigerian police have freed 259 people from an Islamic rehabilitation center in the southwestern city of Ibadan, police said on Tuesday, taking the number rescued from abusive institutions since September to nearly 1,500.
Images from local TV station TVC taken after the captives were released showed a group of mostly young men and teenage boys. Many were emaciated. An infant was also among the group.
“We eat one meal a day,” freed captive Olalekan Ayoola, told TVC, saying the food wasn’t fit for a dog to eat.
Nigeria launched a crackdown on informal Islamic schools and rehabilitation centers in late September after a man was refused permission to see his nephews at one institution and complained
to police.
Many captives have said they were physically and sexually abused and chained up to prevent them escaping. Other sites raided in major police operations have been in the mostly Muslim north of the country. Ibadan is in the southwestern state of Oyo, which is predominantly Christian. Oyo state police spokesman Fadeyi Olugbenga said the facility was raided on Monday at about 2 p.m. (1300 GMT).
“Yesterday, 259 persons were released. We had women, men and teenagers,” Olugbenga said. Some people were locked inside a building and some were chained.
Olugbenga said nine people, including the owner of the center, had been arrested and were under investigation. Oyo’s commissioner of police, Shina Olukolu, told reporters on Monday that anyone found culpable would be prosecuted to “serve as a warning to others who may want to operate such houses that serve as illegal detention centers.”
Spokesmen for President Muhammadu Buhari, who ordered the crackdown, and the vice president both declined to comment. The president’s office issued a statement in October that said: “No responsible democratic government would tolerate the existence of the torture chambers and physical abuses of inmates in the name of rehabilitation of the victims.”
Islamic schools, known as Almajiris, are common across the north of the West African country. Such schools have been dogged by allegations of abuse and accusations that some children have
been forced to beg on the streets.
At other raided facilities, some parents thought their children were there to be educated and even paid tuition fees. Others sent misbehaving relatives to Islamic institutions to
instill discipline.
Muftau Adamu told TVC his parents came to collect him from the center in Ibadan but were told they must pay 1 million naira ($3,270) first – and never came back.
El-Sissi thanked Trump late Monday for his “generous concern” for helping revive Egypt’s deadlocked dispute with Ethiopia over its construction of a massive upstream Nile dam.
A former army general who seized power in 2013 coup, el-Sissi has carried out a widespread crackdown on dissent, silencing critics and jailing thousands.
The main candidates to become Spain’s next prime minister clashed Monday over how to handle Catalonia’s independence drive, ahead of a repeat election that opinion polls show could be as inconclusive as the one in April.
Opinion polls suggest a third of voters are still unsure who they will vote for Sunday, meaning Monday’s televised debate could be decisive. At this stage, polls point to a stalemate, with no party or bloc of parties having a majority.
FILE – People’s Party (PP) candidate Pablo Casado speaks in Madrid, Spain, April 28, 2019.
Catalonia’s regional capital, Barcelona, has been rocked by weeks of sometimes violent protests since nine separatist leaders were sentenced to jail in mid-October for their role in a failed independence bid.
“You don’t believe in the Spanish nation,” the leader of the conservative People’s Party (PP), Pablo Casado, told acting Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, accusing him of being too soft on the Catalan separatists.
Sanchez, a Socialist, is leading in opinion polls but has lost support, while right-wing parties have grown more popular since last month’s rallies in Catalonia saw some protesters wreak havoc and throw Molotov cocktails at police.
Leader of VOX party, Santiago Abascal, arrives at a televised debate ahead of general elections in Madrid, Spain, Nov. 4, 2019.
Right-wing parties are now competing on which would take a harder line on the restive region, hoping to attract more votes Sunday.
“There’s a permanent coup d’etat in Catalonia,” said the leader of the far-right Vox party, Santiago Abascal, saying PP and the Socialists, which have dominated Spanish politics for decades, were both to blame.
Vox won its first parliamentary seats in April and opinion polls show that, boosted by anger over Catalonia protests, it can now hope to win more than 40 seats, up from 24 in the previous ballot. There are 350 seats up for grabs.
Poll results
FILE – Spain’s Socialist leader and acting Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez attends a rally to mark the kick off his campaign ahead of the general election in Seville, Spain, Oct. 31, 2019.
Sunday’s parliamentary election will be the fourth in four years for Spain. New parties have emerged after the financial crisis, fragmenting the political landscape and making it much harder to form governments with stable majorities.
Polls carried out by GAD3, Sigma Dos and NC Report and published Monday pointed to the Socialists winning but falling short of a majority, with their numbers dropping to about 120 seats from the 123 they won in April. Vox was projected to become the third-biggest party.
PP would get more seats than in April, while the liberal Ciudadanos would be the most damaged by the repeat election.
All possible scenarios for deals to form a government are fraught with difficulties. Sanchez on Friday ruled out forming a “grand coalition” with PP.
Debating Catalonia
Leader of Ciudadanos’ party Albert Rivera and debate moderator Maria Casado arrive at a televised debate ahead of general elections in Madrid, Spain, Nov. 4, 2019.
Challenged by his rivals on Catalonia, Sanchez said he had tackled the protests with a firm and proportional response. He added that, if elected prime minister, he would amend the country’s laws to make clear that organizing an illegal independence referendum, like Catalonia’s regional leaders did in 2017, is a crime.
Sanchez, who became prime minister in June last year after parliament ousted the conservatives in a corruption scandal, has been acting prime minister since the April election.
He also hit back at Casado and at Ciudadanos leader Albert Rivera, saying they were “the two representative of the cowardly right in front of an aggressive far-right,” condemning their deals at local and regional levels with Vox.
FILE – Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias speaks during a plenary session at Parliament in Madrid, Spain, Sept. 11, 2019.
The leader of far-left Unidas Podemos, Pablo Iglesias, with whom Sanchez failed to strike a deal to form a government after the April ballot, told Sanchez he “was wrong” if he thought the right would help solve the Catalan problem, saying dialogue with the separatists was the only solution.
While all agreed that a slowing down of Spain’s economic growth will be a major issue for who becomes prime minister, the candidates also clashed on economic policies, and in particular on taxation, with Casado saying: “In order for the Spaniards not to lose their jobs, Sanchez must lose his.”
Vox’s Abascal had not focused much on immigration in the April ballot — unlike many far-right party leaders facing elections in Europe — but took a harder line Monday, accusing Sanchez of not controlling who enters Spain.
More than 400 inmates across the state of Oklahoma were released from prison Monday in accordance to reforms approved by voters in 2016 to downgrade many crimes from felonies to misdemeanors.
The reforms were signed into law earlier this year and retroactively made simple drug possession a misdemeanor. It also made any theft, vandalism, shoplifting and robbery worth less than $1,000 a misdemeanor rather than a felony.
Under the changes, Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board approved the commutation of 462 inmates unanimously and it was made official by the Republican Governor Kevin Stitt, who has made reducing Oklahoma’s highest-in-the-nation incarceration rate one of his top priorities
According to Stitt’s office, releasing the prisoners will save the state an estimated $11.9 million annually.
Officials in California say fierce winds that have fueled fires across the state have subsided, allowing firefighters to mostly contain blazes that raged in the north and south.
The largest fire, in the northern wine county, was 80% contained on Monday, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. Cal Fire said the fire in Sonoma County, dubbed the Kincade Fire, burned more than 32,000 hectares and destroyed more than 370 structures since it began Oct. 23.
In Southern California, a blaze that erupted outside of Los Angeles on Thursday was 70% contained. The so-called Maria Fire destroyed 3,800 hectares and destroyed two structures near the community of Santa Paula, according to the Ventura County Fire Department.
A new study published Monday said invasive grasses may be contributing to more wildfires in the United States, especially in California. In the study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, ecologists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, along with colleagues at the University of Colorado-Boulder, show that locations where common Mediterranean grass invades, fires ignite three times more often. The scientists found eight species of non-native grass that correlated with increased fire risk.
The recent fires in California sparked Twitter comments on Sunday by President Donald Trump and California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Trump tweeted that Newsom had done a “terrible job of forest management.”
“Every year, as the fire’s rage & California burns, it is the same thing-and then he comes to the Federal Government for $$$ help. No more,” Trump wrote.
..Every year, as the fire’s rage & California burns, it is the same thing-and then he comes to the Federal Government for $$$ help. No more. Get your act together Governor. You don’t see close to the level of burn in other states…But our teams are working well together in…..
Newsom replied on Twitter: “You don’t believe in climate change. You are excused from this conversation.”
The wildfires across California forced nearly 200,000 people to evacuate. The fires have been fueled by seasonal Santa Ana winds, hot dry winds that blow in from the desert.
Last week, Southern California Edison said that 13 minutes before the Maria Fire broke out, the utility began to re-energize a power line in the same area where the fire erupted.
Another utility company, Pacific Gas & Electric acknowledged last week that one of its live power lines might have sparked the Kincade blaze. It said a transmission tower malfunctioned around the same time and place that the fire is believed to have begun.
California authorities blame PG&E lines for sparking last year’s wildfires that killed 85 people and destroyed entire towns. The utility, facing billions of dollars in lawsuits, was forced to declare bankruptcy earlier this year.
Protesters in Lebanon rallied Sunday to call for President Michel Aoun’s ouster as part of a push for sweeping changes that have already brought the resignation of the country’s prime minister.
The protests in Beirut came hours after supporters of Aoun turned out to show their support for the president.
Aoun gave an address near the presidential palace in southeastern Beirut in which he said his supporters and the anti-government protesters should work together on anti-corruption efforts.
But in their later demonstration, the protesters rejected Aoun as a leader to deliver reforms, saying all of Lebanon’s political establishment needs to go.
The protests began last month in support of a complete overhaul of Lebanon’s sectarian-based politics. Under the current system, the president must be a Maronite Christian, the prime minister a Sunni Muslim and the parliament speaker a Shi’ite Muslim.
The demonstrators have also blamed the political establishment for rampant corruption and poor public services.
