The World Health Organization said Friday that the deadly Ebola virus had spread to new areas in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. The number of cases was 2,934, including 1,965 deaths, it said.
Since mid-June, the WHO has reported an average of 80 new Ebola cases every week. It said, though, that these numbers have been falling in recent weeks.
Michael Ryan, executive director of WHO’s Health Emergencies Program, said two new health zones, Mwenga in South Kivu and Pinga in North Kivu, had reported cases in the past week, and that the risk of further spread remained high.
“The geographic extension of the virus has increased while the intensity of transmission has reduced in that time,” he said. “So we are winning against the virus in the intense transmission areas, but still failing to prevent the further extension of the virus into other areas before the disease is properly extinguished.”
Ryan noted progress in containing the disease was being made in some areas. He said some powerful tools were being put to good use in tackling the disease. He said a vaccine now is available that is protecting people from becoming infected, which wasn’t the case in previous outbreaks. Also, two new therapeutics are successfully saving the lives of people with Ebola who seek early treatment.
FILE – A health worker injects a man with Ebola vaccine in Goma, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Aug. 5, 2019.
Community mistrust
But Ryan said pockets of community mistrust continued to hinder efforts to stop the epidemic. He said negative social media campaigns that have spread false information were creating difficulties in gaining community confidence.
He said, for instance, that some messages have said the vaccine is used to infect people, not protect them, and treatments are used to finish victims off. “And there are WhatsApp groups and many social media conversations that are going on at that level,” he said. “And populations, like in every country in the world, are exposed to both the positive and negative media around any intervention like this.”
Ryan said WHO must be smarter, quicker and more effective in getting communities to hear its messages about pathways to good health. He said the way to counter bad information is not by blocking it, but by putting out good information. Then, he said, it is up to the communities to choose the messages they believe will best ensure their own future.
China and Russia believe they can behave as they want and have impunity to crush dissent because Western states are at odds with themselves and have lost confidence in their ability to shape the world around them, warn analysts.
“There is a danger that we in the West are becoming bystanders to the great events swirling around the globe. Our inability to articulate a clear response that generates a change in behavior means a sense of impunity dominates,” argued Rafaello Pantucci, director of international security studies at Britain’s Royal United Services Institute.
Writing in Britain’s The Times newspaper, Pantucci said, “Our responses to the current protests going on in Hong Kong and Moscow are the clearest articulations of this problem. Beijing and Moscow have largely behaved as they would like.”
Anti-G-7 activists march along a road near a tent camp near Hendaye, France, Aug. 23, 2019.
Western diplomats and analysts fear this week’s three-day G-7 summit in the French resort town of Biarritz will demonstrate again the lack of unity among Western leaders over a series of issues, including climate change, relations with Russia, rising nationalism, and the trade war between the United States and China, whose fallout is hurting Europe far more than America. The G-7 comprises the world’s largest advanced democracies.
In order to try to reduce a display of disunity, the summit host, French President Emmanuel Macron, is lobbying for the gathering not to issue a joint communique for the first time in the G-7’s history. He hopes to avoid a repeat of last year when U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew his endorsement of the joint statement 10 minutes after it was released. Macron wants instead to replace the communique by delivering as G-7 chairman a summary of the main discussions.
Divisions feared
Whether that papers over disputes remains in doubt. Some analysts say the summit risks becoming explosive.
“There is huge scope for the Western world to look more divided by the end of the meeting than it did at the beginning,” said William Hague, a former British foreign secretary. He says the G-7 leaders are “desperately short of ideas around which they can coalesce,” ones they need in order “to address the main threats that will overcome them unless they look far enough ahead now.”
French President Emmanuel Macron delivers a speech on environment and social equality to business leaders on the eve of the G-7 summit, in Paris, Aug. 23, 2019.
On the eve of the meeting, Macron set out an ambitious plan to challenge fellow leaders to rethink their approach to global leadership. He will urge them to rescue democracy from nationalist populists, to temper capitalism, to lessen social inequality and to boost biodiversity, and to re-embrace multilateralism — all of which risks strong pushback from Trump.
The U.S. leader is skeptical of multilateralism and frustrated with the lack of European support for his “maximum pressure” aggressive stance toward Iran. He is also pressing the Europeans to back his trade confrontation with China, arguing that short-term pain is necessary in order to “take on” Beijing, otherwise the West, in the long term, will be the losers.
Blaming China, Russia
Some Western commentators blame Trump and other nationalist populists for Western disunity, but others see the fraying of Western-shaped global leadership as a consequence of a deeper, historical malaise amid the rise of an aggressive China, which uses commerce as a tool of statecraft and diplomacy, and an assertive Russia that increasingly voices disdain for the West and is eager to develop a partnership with China.
Asked whether he would welcome Moscow being readmitted to the G-7, Russian President Vladmir Putin scoffed at the idea, saying, “The G-7 doesn’t exist. How can I come back to an organization that doesn’t exist?” Putin said he prefers the G-20 format because it includes countries like India and China. The G-20 refers to the group of 20 major economies.
Investing heavily in the West and the developing world, Beijing isn’t shy about demanding a political quid pro quo and the Hong Kong protests have placed the Europeans, especially the British, in a dilemma. Should they champion the rights and freedoms the people of Hong Kong enshrined in a joint declaration signed with Beijing before the British handed the territory back to the Chinese in 1997, or muffle their complaints about Chinese heavy-handedness in order to ingratiate themselves with Beijing and reap commercial benefits?
FILE – Hong Kong protesters gather outside the subway station in Sheung Wan district participate the “823 Road for Hong Kong” human chain rally (Photo: Iris Tong / VOA Cantonese)
That dilemma is only going to become sharper as anti-government protests in Hong Kong continue, risking Chinese military intervention in the former British colony. Beijing has made it clear, with thinly-disguised threats, that British criticism needs to be tempered, otherwise London, which is desperate to boost its trade with China post-Brexit, will lose out financially.
Hague argues that the G-7 “should be restating the case for freedom.” He says that the end of the Cold War “has deprived democratic nations of their automatic unity, and the global financial crisis has rocked their self-confidence.”
The financial shock came amid a longer-term trend: the hollowing out of the West’s industrial base with manufacturing shifting eastward, prompting the anger of the working classes in the West, who resent losing out on the benefits of globalism, making them question the whole basis of multilateralism.
According to Antonio Barroso, an analyst with the geostrategic risk consulting group Teneo, “We have passed from a world that was certainly much more multilateral than the one that we have now.”
The U.S. government’s final management plan for lands in and around a Utah national monument that President Donald Trump downsized doesn’t include many new protections for the cliffs, canyons, waterfalls and arches found there, but it does include a few more safeguards than were in a proposal issued last year.
The Bureau of Land Management’s plan for the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southwestern Utah codifies that the lands cut out of the monument will be open to mineral extraction such as oil, gas and coal as expected, according to a plan summary the agency provided to The Associated Press.
The agency chose an option that doesn’t add any areas of critical environmental concern, increases lands open to cattle grazing and could raise the potential for “adverse effects” on lands and resources in the monument, the document shows.
At the same time, the agency tweaked the plan from last year to call for new recreation management plans to address impacts on several highly visited areas, opens fewer acres to ATVs and nixes a plan that would have allowed people to collect some non-dinosaur fossils in certain areas inside the monument.
The agency also determined that no land will be sold from the 1,345 square miles (3,488 square kilometers) cut from the monument. Last year, Interior Department leaders rescinded a plan to sell 2.5 square miles (6.5 square kilometers) of that land after it was included in the draft management proposal and drew backlash from environmentalists.
Conservation and paleontology groups have vehemently opposed the downsizing of the monument and have lawsuits pending challenging the move.
The Upper Gulch section of the Escalante Canyons within Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument features sheer sandstone walls, broken occasionally by tributary canyons, shown in an undated photo.
‘Not a free-for-all’
Harry Barber, the acting manager at Grand Staircase, said in an interview with the AP that the plan reflects changes made after considering input from the public, an assessment that enough protections are in place already, and the voices of all different groups who use the lands.
“There are people who graze livestock, people that like to hunt, people that like to hike, people that like to trail run,” said Barber, who has worked at the monument since it was created. “We’re trying to be fair.”
He pushed back against the notion that the lands now outside the monument will be left abandoned, saying the lands are still subject to rules and polices like all federally managed land.
Interest in oil, gas and coal has been limited so far and no project has been approved, Barber said. The lands are home to a major coal reserve but there’s little market demand.
“It’s not a free-for-all,” Barber said. “That seems to be what I hear a lot, people feeling like now anybody can go out and do anything they want to do on these lands. But, they need to realize that we still have our rules and policies.”
‘Destroying this place’
But to Steve Bloch, legal director at the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance conservation group, it’s unforgivable to cut the monument in half and downgrade the excluded lands into what he calls “garden variety public lands.”
“Grand Staircase-Escalante is one of the nation’s public land crown jewels and from the outset the Trump administration was hell-bent on destroying this place,” Bloch said.
To Bloch’s organization and other conservation groups that have lawsuits pending challenging the Trump administration’s decision to shrink Grand Staircase and Bears Ears National Monument, also in Utah, spending time on the plans is a waste of taxpayer resources. They think the government should have waited to see how the courts rule.
President Bill Clinton created the monument in 1996 using the Antiquities Act, which sets guidelines calling for the “smallest area compatible with proper care and management of the objects to be protected.”
In 2017, Trump shrunk the monument from nearly 3,000 square miles (7,770 square kilometers) to 1,569 square miles (4,064 square kilometers) after a review of 27 national monuments by then-Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke. Trump downsized the Bears Ears National Monument, created by President Barack Obama in 2016, by about 85%.
Trump said scaling back the two monuments reversed federal overreach and earned cheers from Republican leaders in Utah who lobbied him to undo protections by Democratic presidents that they considered overly broad.
Conservation groups have called Trump’s decision the largest elimination of protected land in American history and believe they will prevail in their legal challenge.
Past presidents have trimmed national monuments 18 times, but there’s never been a court ruling on whether the Antiquities Act also lets them reduce one.
David Polly, a paleontologist at Indiana University and past president of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, said he’s relieved no fossil collection will be allowed inside the monument but worries that allowing people to take non-dinosaur fossils in many areas of the lands cut could lead to problems. The fossils in the area are rare because it’s an ancient river bed and not an ocean bed and some items like petrified wood can be hard to distinguish from a dinosaur bone.
“It may be accidentally encouraging people to end up breaking the rules,” Polly said.
The State Department says it will assess its programming and redirect all funding on foreign aid, after U.S. President Donald Trump abandoned plans to cut $4 billion in spending on the grounds that it was wasteful and unnecessary.
“As part of this discussion, we agreed to continue to assess our programming and redirect all funding that does not directly support our priorities,” said a State Department spokesperson on Friday.
“This effort will ensure every foreign assistance program funded by U.S. taxpayers is both effective and supports our foreign policy priorities,” added the spokesperson.
One of the programs under assessment is U.S. foreign assistance to the Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. The State Department said those nations are not taking concrete actions to reduce the number of illegal migrants coming to the U.S. border.
Trump had considered cutting the spending on grounds that it was wasteful and unnecessary, but retreated when it became apparent that some key lawmakers were opposed.
The Trump Administration officials briefly suspended State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development spending, eyeing a budget process known as “rescission” to cut up to $4.3 billion in spending already authorized and appropriated by the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives.
FILE – A man walks past boxes of USAID humanitarian aid at a warehouse at the Tienditas International Bridge on the outskirts of Cucuta, Colombia, Feb. 21, 2019, on the border with Venezuela.
“The president has been clear that there is waste and abuse in our foreign assistance, and we need to be wise about where U.S. money is going,” a senior White House official told VOA. “Which is why he asked his administration to look into options to doing just that.”
But after both Republican and Democratic lawmakers objected to the White House effort to freeze the foreign aid already approved by Congress, the Trump administration gave in.
“It’s clear that there are many (in Congress) who aren’t willing to join in curbing wasteful spending,” the White House aide said.
Some of Trump’s top budget cutters wanted him to trim the foreign aid as a show of fiscal restraint after Trump recently signed a two-year, $2.7 trillion spending plan.
But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who oversees the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives, said that withholding the money would have violated “the good faith” of reaching agreement on the long-term budget.
Two Republicans, Sen. Lindsey Graham and Congressman Hal Rogers, said freezing the foreign aid spending would hurt “significant” national security and counterterrorism efforts while also complicating spending negotiations between the White House and Congress in the future.
Trump had expressed some ambivalence over the funding.
“We give billions and billions of dollars to countries that don’t like us — don’t like us even a little bit,” the president told reporters last weekend. “And I’ve been cutting that. And we just put a package of about $4 billion additional dollars in. And in some cases, you know, in some cases, I could see it both ways. In some cases, these are countries that we should not be giving to.”
President Donald Trump speaks with reporters on the South Lawn of the White House, Aug. 21, 2019, in Washington.
Former USAID officials had denounced the White House’s plan to cut U.S. foreign assistance, which is a tool to advance U.S. interests.
In a tweet, former USAID Administrator Gayle Smith said the plan to “rescind billions in development funding is as ineffective as it is shameless.”
She added that the development funding “isn’t just charity,” but a way to foster U.S. values, foreign policy, national security and economic interests.
A quick thread on why OMB’s plan to rescind billions in development funding is as ineffective as it is shameless.
For years, Republicans & Dems have agreed development isn’t just charity, it’s a tool to advance US values, foreign policy, nat security & economic interests. 1/15
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration said on Thursday it would invite Boeing 737 Max pilots from across the world to participate in simulator tests as part of the process to recertify the aircraft for flight following two fatal crashes.
Earlier, Reuters reported that the agency had asked the three U.S. airlines that operate the Max to provide the names of some pilots who had only flown the 737 for around a year, including at least one Max flight.
In a statement, the FAA said it had not specified the number of required hours of flight experience, but said the candidates would be a cross-section of line pilots and must have experience at the controls of the Max.
Boeing Co’s latest 737 narrow-body model, the Max, was grounded worldwide in March after two crashes within five months in Indonesia and Ethiopia that killed 346 people.
Boeing has been reprogramming software for a stall-prevention system at the center of both crashes, which the FAA must approve before the plane flies again commercially.
The FAA said it has not yet specified a firm schedule for the tests.
Social media users are fueling a burgeoning appetite for acquiring wild otters and other endangered animals as pets, conservationists say, warning the trend could push species toward extinction.
Popular Instagrammers posting selfies with their pet otter may simply be seeking to warm the hearts of their sometimes hundreds of thousands of followers, but animal protection groups say the trend is posing an existential threat to the silky mammal.
“The illegal trade in otters has suddenly increased exponentially,” Nicole Duplaix, who co-chairs the Otter Specialist Group at the International Union for Conservation of Nature, told AFP.
An Asian small-clawed otter, the smallest otter species in the world, feeds on fish in its enclosure at the Singapore Zoo, Jan. 11, 2018, in Singapore.
All Asian otter species have long been listed as vulnerable or endangered after facing decades of shrinking habitats and illegal trade in their pelts.
But conservationists say the recent surge in social media hype around the creatures has sparked such a frenzied demand for baby otters in Asian countries, Japan in particular, that it could drive entire species toward extinction.
Parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), currently in Geneva to evaluate and fine-tune the treaty that manages trade in more than 35,000 species of plants and animals, will consider proposals to hike protection of two particularly imperiled otter species.
Dangerous cute factor
The Asian small-clawed otter and the smooth-coated otter are already listed as threatened under CITES Appendix II, but India, Nepal, Bangladesh and the Philippines are asking that they are moved to Appendix I, which would mean a full international trade ban.
Conservationists insist the move is vital, after both species have seen their numbers plunge at least 30% in three decades, and with the decline believed to have accelerated significantly in the past few years.
“This is especially being fueled by the desire to have otters as an exotic pet, and social media is really driving that,” Cassandra Koenen, who heads the Wildlife Not Pets campaign at World Animal Protection, told AFP.
Paul Todd of the Natural Resource Defense Council (NRDC) agreed.
“It is really remarkable to see how the latest trends in social media and social influencing have a direct correlation with the demise of species on the ground,” he told AFP.
Popular figures on Instagram and Facebook often rake in thousands of gushing comments about their otter pictures, such as “cuteness overload,” “otterly adorable,” and “want one!”
Duplaix acknowledged that otters are “very charismatic creatures,” saying “it is the cute factor that is causing their demise.”
Unseen suffering
The pictures mask the suffering of the naturally social mammals taken from the wild when they are held in captivity and isolation.
Koenen pointed to the numerous “funny videos” posted of pet otters turning in circles, saying that to a trained eye, it is obvious: “The reason the animal is spinning around is that it is in huge distress.”
Amid the growing demand for pet otters, hunters and fishermen in Indonesia and Thailand especially are increasingly killing adult otters and snatching the babies, which are caged and shipped off to become exotic pets.
The main destination is Japan, where one otter pup can fetch up to $10,000 (about 9,000 euros).
Promotional signboards for pet cafes featuring exotic animals, including otters, right, on display in the Harajuku district in Tokyo, Aug. 21, 2019.
Otter cafes
Several “otter cafes” have also popped up in the country, with patrons urged to buy small pieces of food to feed the caged mammals and to snap a selfie with them while drinking a coffee.
“It is a very unnatural environment for them,” Koenen said, maintaining that they are often isolated in individual cages, given poor nutrition and little access to water.
Pet otters may have it better, but they still suffer from being far from their natural environment and away from the large family groups they lived with in the wild, she said.
Koenen also warned that smiling selfies with pet otters provide a “false narrative” about what it is like to live with the wild creatures, which smell and are prone to biting.
“They make very unsuitable pets,” she said.
Social media platforms have meanwhile made it too easy to purchase exotic pets like otters, she said, sparking impulse buys with little reflection over the implications of bringing a wild animal into one’s home.
Otters are not the only species suffering from a booming and often social-media fueled interest in exotic pets.
Among the 56 proposals on the table in Geneva for increased protection listings, 22 involve species, including lizards, geckos, tortoises and spiders, which suffer because of the multibillion-dollar exotic pet trade.
Todd said there was mounting evidence that “a species can go from completely fine to utterly gone in the matter of a few years because of this drive in desire for images.”
“Baby otters are dying, and for what? A selfie,” he said. “We have to stop this.”
Thirty-eight former students of an Orthodox Jewish school in New York City operated by Yeshiva University sued Thursday over claims they were molested by two prominent rabbis in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s.
The suit, filed in state Supreme Court in Manhattan, alleges that the university failed to protect students at Yeshiva University High School for Boys and promoted one of the rabbis to principal even after receiving abuse reports.
A Yeshiva University spokesperson declined to comment, citing a school policy against speaking publicly about litigation.
The lawsuit is one of hundreds that have been filed over child sexual abuse allegations since last week, when New York state opened a one-year window for suits previously barred by the state’s statute of limitations.
During a news conference Thursday, three of the alleged victims, flanked by their lawyers, spoke about disturbing behavior they say went on for decades.
“I didn’t even understand at the time that this was sexual abuse; I just knew that this guy was putting his hands all over me,” said Barry Singer, 61, speaking of one of the rabbis he said kept reaching into the boy’s pants, even in school hallways.
The Associated Press doesn’t typically identify people who say they are victims of sexual abuse unless they choose to be named.
Accused rabbis
One of the accused rabbis, George Finkelstein, targeted children of Holocaust survivors, according to the lawsuit, telling them they would increase their parents’ suffering if they spoke about the abuse. The other, Rabbi Macy Gordon, who taught Jewish studies, allegedly sodomized boys in a “vicious and sadistic” manner using objects, the lawsuit says. Gordon died in 2017 in Israel. Both he and Finkelstein have denied the allegations in the past.
David Bressler listens during a press conference in New York, Aug. 22, 2019.
Finkelstein was promoted from the school’s assistant principal to principal even after some of the boys’ parents reported the alleged abuse to school officials, the plaintiffs said. Gordon eventually moved to Israel, where he worked at Jerusalem’s Great Synagogue. Calls to the synagogue rang unanswered Thursday.
Thirty-four of the plaintiffs attempted to sue Yeshiva University for sexual abuse and facilitating sexual abuse in 2013 but the case went nowhere because it was barred by the statute of limitations at the time. On Thursday, one of their attorneys, Kevin Mulhearn, called the plaintiffs “trailblazers.”
Alleged victim
David Bressler, 51, said the abuse he suffered while a student in the early ’80s led him to abandon his religion that now rekindles memories of the abuse. He has no contact with his parents and other relatives who are observant Jews. When he married his Jewish wife a decade ago, he made her promise not to raise their children in the Jewish faith.
He said he still doesn’t tuck in his shirt, a habit he started in high school to make it more difficult for his abuser to put his hand down his pants. Bressler once punched Finkelstein while he says the rabbi was sexually “wrestling” with him.
Now there are days he can’t bear being on a crowded subway because “I can’t stand being touched by people.”
“So you don’t even realize what the long-term impact is,” said Bressler, a father of two.
Yeshiva University, which calls itself “the world’s premier Jewish institution for higher learning,” has trained both secular and religious leaders for the past century. With four campuses in Manhattan, the university operates the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, the Benjamin Cardozo School of Law and other schools that attract a mix of Jewish and non-Jewish students.
The high school, also known as the Marsha Stern Talmudical Academy, has taught boys since 1916. It’s considered the first academic Jewish high school in the U.S. and the first to offer both Jewish and secular studies.
Walmart plans to reopen the El Paso store where 22 people were killed in a shooting earlier this month, the retail giant said Thursday, but the entire interior of the building will first be rebuilt.
The renovated store will include an on-site memorial honoring the victims of the shooting, many of whom were Latino, and recognizing the “binational relationship between El Paso and Ciudad Juarez” just across the border in Mexico, Walmart spokesman Randy Hargrove said. The project is expected to take three to four months.
Nearly all of the 400 employees at the El Paso store have been reassigned to other nearby locations, Hargrove said, and the Arkansas-based company believes reopening the store is “an important step in healing from this tragedy.”
“Nothing will erase the pain of Aug. 3 and we’re hopeful that reopening the store will be another testament to the strength and resiliency that has characterized the El Paso community in the wake of this tragedy,” Hargrove said.
Flowers, crosses and handwritten messages now adorn a makeshift memorial outside one of the store’s entrances. Hundreds of residents have visited in the wake of the shooting, where social workers hand out bottled water and offer counseling services.
“If we close it, they win,” said Laura Lopez, 59, who brought her gardening gloves from home to help clear dead flowers from the memorial site Thursday. “Life goes on and you’ve got to go on.”
FILE – Mourners visit the makeshift memorial near the Walmart in El Paso, Texas, Aug. 12, 2019, where 22 people were killed in a mass shooting.
Many shoppers from Ciudad Juarez went there because it is the closest Walmart to the four border bridges that connect to El Paso. Eight of the people killed in the shooting were Mexican citizens. The vast majority had Hispanic names.
Authorities took more than 10 days to finish processing evidence before returning control of the property to Walmart. It was less time than officials initially anticipated given the scope of the carnage, plus the size of the crime scene where police said up to 3,000 shoppers had gathered. The FBI has returned most of the 230 vehicles that had been in limbo behind crime scene tape for days after the attack.
“It was very meticulous work and certainly not rushed, but working around the clock with our counterparts in the FBI, investigators were able to complete the task sooner than initially anticipated,” El Paso Police Department spokesman Enrique Carrillo.
Confession
Police said the suspected gunman, Patrick Crusius, confessed to targeting Mexicans in the attack. They’ve also said that the suspected shooter is the likely author of an anti-Latino screed published online shortly before the shooting. It criticized race-mixing and called Hispanics “invaders.”
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott met Thursday in Austin with officials from tech giants Google, Facebook and Twitter to discuss ways of combating extremism. Abbott hasn’t proposed any new major gun-control measures but called for a crackdown on internet sites used by violent extremists in the immediate aftermath of the shooting.
Police are still preparing their investigation for the local prosecutor, Jaime Esparza, who has said he will seek the death penalty. The Department of Justice has said it will bring federal capital murder charges, and is investigating the shooting as domestic terrorism.
Suicide watch
Crusius has been on a suicide watch in an El Paso jail since Aug. 7, according to El Paso County Sheriff’s office spokeswoman Chris Acosta. Crusius has been separated from other inmates, Acosta said Wednesday.
In the days after the shooting, Hargrove said the company was reviewing security protocols. Walmart launched computer-based active shooter training in 2015 and has since increased frequency of its instruction and added a virtual reality component.
The El Paso City Council has been researching the possibility of requiring armed security guards for large stores, and of requiring certain additional security features at store entrances.
“People are not picking on Walmart in particular but, they used to have off-duty officers hired there all the time. And then for some reason, it went away,” police chief Greg Allen told city council members in an Aug. 8 briefing.
A police spokesman declined to elaborate on the chief’s comments and referred questions to Walmart.
WASHINGTON – The United States will aggressively enforce its sanctions to prevent the private sector from assisting an Iranian oil tanker that is traveling through the Mediterranean and that Washington wants seized, a State Department official said Thursday.
“The shipping sector is on notice that we will aggressively enforce U.S. sanctions,” the official told Reuters days after warning countries not to allow the tanker to dock.
Ship tracking data have shown the ship, the Adrian Darya, formerly called Grace 1, last heading toward Greece, although Greece’s prime minister said it was not heading to his country.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, warned that the United States would act against anyone who directly or indirectly helped the tanker.
“All parties in the shipping sector should conduct appropriate due diligence to ensure that they are not doing business with nor facilitating business for, directly or indirectly, sanctioned parties or with sanctioned cargo,” the official warned.
The ship was released from detention off Gibraltar after a five-week standoff over whether it was carrying Iranian oil to Syria in violation of European Union sanctions.
Soon after the detention order was lifted, a U.S. federal court ordered the seizure of the vessel on different grounds, but Gibraltar rejected that petition.
Tehran said any U.S. move to seize the vessel again would have “heavy consequences.”
A fresh push to repatriate Rohingya refugees to Myanmar appeared Thursday to fall flat, with no one turning up to hop on five buses and 10 trucks laid on by Bangladesh.
“We have been waiting since 9:00 am (0300 GMT) to take any willing refugees for repatriation,” Khaled Hossain, a Bangladesh official in charge of the Teknaf refugee camp, told AFP after over an hour of waiting. “Nobody has yet turned up.”
Nearly 1 million Rohingya
About 740,000 of the long-oppressed mostly Muslim Rohingya minority fled a military offensive in 2017 in Myanmar’s Rakhine state that the United Nations has likened to ethnic cleansing, joining 200,000 already in Bangladesh.
Demanding that Buddhist-majority Myanmar guarantee their safety and citizenship, only a handful have returned from the vast camps in southeast Bangladesh where they have now lived for two years.
The latest repatriation attempt — a previous push failed in November — follows a visit last month to the camps by high-ranking officials from Myanmar led by Permanent Foreign Secretary Myint Thu.
Bangladesh’s foreign ministry forwarded a list of more than 22,000 refugees to Myanmar for verification and Naypyidaw cleared 3,450 individuals for “return.”
Safety and citizenship
Rohingya Nur Islam talks to AFP after UN officials and Bangladesh refugee commission interviewed him at a refugee camp in Teknaf on August 21, 2019. Rohingya refugees said on August 21 they did not want to return to their homeland in Myanmar,…
But Wednesday, several Rohingya refugees whose names were listed told AFP they did not want to return unless their safety was ensured and they were granted citizenship.
“It is not safe to return to Myanmar,” one of them, Nur Islam, told AFP.
Officials from the U.N. and Bangladesh’s refugee commission have also been interviewing Rohingya families in the settlements to find out if they wanted to return.
“We have yet to get consent from any refugee family,” a U.N. official said Wednesday.
Rohingya community leader Jafar Alam told AFP the refugees had been gripped by fear since authorities announced the fresh repatriation process.
They also feared being sent to camps for internally displaced people (IDP) if they went back to Myanmar.
Second anniversary
Bangladesh refugee commissioner Mohammad Abul Kalam said they were “fully prepared” for the repatriation with security tightened across the refugee settlements to prevent any violence or protests.
Officials said they would wait for a few more hours before deciding whether to postpone the repatriation move.
In New York, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Wednesday that repatriations had to be “voluntary.”
“Any return should be voluntary and sustainable and in safety and in dignity to their place of origin and choice,” Dujarric told reporters.
The U.N. Security Council met behind closed doors on the issue Wednesday.
Sunday will mark the second anniversary of the crackdown that sparked the mass exodus to the Bangladesh camps.
The Rohingya are not recognized as an official minority by the Myanmar government, which considers them Bengali interlopers despite many families having lived in Rakhine for generations.
The controversy over U.S. President Donald Trump abruptly postponing his trip to Copenhagen continues, as he criticized Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, calling her “nasty” and “inappropriate.” The Danish leader had rebuffed Trump’s overture to buy Greenland, the Arctic country that is part of the kingdom of Denmark. White House correspondent Patsy Widakuswara has the story.
In South Sudan, a group of men and boys is trying to break cultural taboos on a topic that often drives young girls out of school — menstruation. Men4Women is distributing menstrual pads to girls while also encouraging boys and men to engage in conversations and advocate policies that make sanitary hygiene products more accessible to girls. Sheila Ponnie reports from Juba.
The controversy over U.S. President Donald Trump abruptly postponing his trip to Copenhagen continues, as he criticized Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, calling her “nasty” and “inappropriate.” The Danish leader had rebuffed Trump’s overture to buy Greenland, the Arctic country that is part of the kingdom of Denmark. White House correspondent Patsy Widakuswara has the story.
Coal has powered progress since the Industrial Revolution. While coal-fired power is on the rise in Asia, it’s declining in the United States and much of Europe as cheaper alternatives and climate concerns push it out of the market. While the fall has hit coal towns hard in the Appalachian region of the eastern United States, the Western state of Wyoming is the nation’s leading coal producer. Now, coal’s troubles have arrived in this energy-rich state, too. VOA’s Steve Baragona has a look.
Seven environmental and animal rights groups are suing the Trump administration for its regulations that would make drastic changes to the implementation of the Endangered Species Act.
The environmental law group Earthjustice filed the joint suit Wednesday in San Francisco.
They charge the administration with breaking the law by announcing changes to the implementation of the landmark act without first analyzing the effects the changes would have.
“In the midst of an unprecedented extinction crisis, the Trump administration is eviscerating our most effective wildlife protection law,” the National Resources Defense Council said. “These regulatory changes will place vulnerable species in immediate danger – all to line the pockets of industry. We are counting on the courts to step in before it is too late.”
An Interior Department spokesman responded by saying “We will see them in court and we will be steadfast in our implementation of this important act with the unchanging goal of conserving and recovering species.”
Attorneys general from two states — California and Massachusetts — also say they will sue.
Environmentalists credit the 1973 Endangered Species Act with saving numerous animals, plants and other species from extinction.
About 1,600 species are currently protected by the act and the administration says streamlining regulations is the best way to ensure they will stay protected.
“The revisions finalized with this rule-making fit squarely within the president’s mandate of easing the regulatory burden on the American public without sacrificing our species’ protection and recovery goals,” Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said last week.
The finalized changes include requiring consideration of economic cost when deciding whether to save a species from extinction. The law currently says the cost to logging or oil interests will have no bearing on whether an animal or other species deserves protection.
The revised regulations would also end blanket protection for a species listed as threatened, a designation that is one step away from declaring it endangered, and reduce some wildlife habitat.
Conservation and wildlife groups call the changes U.S. President Donald Trump’s gift to logging, ranching, and oil industries, saying they take a bulldozer through protections for America’s most vulnerable wildlife.
A number of congressional Democrats have also denounced the changes, including New York Senator Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi,
Republican President Richard Nixon signed the act into law in 1973 as part of the response to the new environmental awareness sweeping the country in the early 1970s, which included Earth Day and the Clear Water and Air acts.
President Donald Trump acknowledged his aggressive China trade policies may mean economic pain for Americans but insisted they’re needed for more important long-term benefits. He contended he does not fear a recession but is nonetheless considering new tax cuts to promote growth.
Asked if his trade war with China could tip the country into recession, he brushed off the idea as “irrelevant” and said it was imperative to “take China on.”
“It’s about time, whether it’s good for our country or bad for our country short term,” Trump said on Tuesday.
Paraphrasing a reporter’s question, Trump said, “Your statement about, ‘Oh, will we fall into a recession for two months?’ OK? The fact is somebody had to take China on.”
The Republican president indicated that he had no choice but to impose the tariffs that have been a drag on U.S. manufacturers, financial markets and, by some measures, American consumers.
China, though, said trade with the U.S. has been “mutually beneficial” and appealed to Washington to “get along with us.” A foreign ministry spokesman, Geng Shuang, on Wednesday expressed hope Washington can “meet China halfway” in settling disagreements.
Trump was clear that he didn’t think the U.S. is at risk of a recession and that a boom was possible if the Federal Reserve would slash its benchmark interest rate.
“We’re very far from a recession,” Trump said. “In fact, if the Fed would do its job, I think we’d have a tremendous spurt of growth, a tremendous spurt.”
Yet he also said he is considering a temporary payroll tax cut and indexing to inflation the federal taxes on profits made on investments, moves designed to stimulate faster growth. He downplayed any idea that these thoughts indicate a weakening economy and said, “I’m looking at that all the time anyway.”
Asked about his remarks, White House spokesman Judd Deere said, “The president does not believe we are headed for a recession. The economy is strong because of his policies.”
Trump faces something of an inflection point on a U.S. economy that appears to be showing vulnerabilities after more than 10 years of growth. Factory output has fallen and consumer confidence has waned as he has ramped up his trade war with China. In private, Trump and his advisers have shown concern that a broader slowdown, if not an outright recession, could arrive just as he is seeking reelection based on his economic record.
Trump rattled the stock and bond markets this month when he announced plans to put a 10% tax on $300 billion worth of Chinese imports. The market reaction suggested a recession might be on the horizon and led Trump to delay some of the tariffs that were slated to begin in September, though 25% tariffs are already in place for $250 million in other Chinese goods.
The president has long maintained that the burden of the tariffs is falling solely on China, yet that message was undermined by his statements to reporters Tuesday prior to a meeting in the Oval Office with the president of Romania.
“My life would be a lot easier if I didn’t take China on,” Trump said. “But I like doing it because I have to do it.”
The world economy has been slowing in recent months, and recent stock market swings have added to concerns that the U.S. economy is not immune. A new survey Monday showed a big majority of economists expect a downturn to hit by 2021.
Addressing that possibility, Trump focused anew on pressuring the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates. Presidents have generally avoided criticizing the Federal Reserve publicly, but Trump has shown no inclination to follow that lead. Rather, he’s positioning Fed Chairman Jerome Powell to take the fall if the economy swoons.
“I think that we actually are set for a tremendous surge of growth, if the Fed would do its job,” Trump said. “That’s a big if.”
Trump recommended a minimum cut of a full percentage point in the coming months.
