Month: January 2020

Russian authorities Thursday pardoned and released an American-Israeli citizen jailed on drug charges, in a gesture timed with a visit by embattled Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Moscow intended to focus on a new U.S.-backed peace plan for the Middle East.Naama Issachar, 27, a native of New Jersey who had moved to Israel, was serving 7½ years in prison for drug possession after border guards found 9 grams of hash in her bag during a changeover at a Moscow airport on her way from India to Israel.While the case instantly became a cause celebre in Israel — widely seen as an overly harsh sentence for a minor crime — it was only recently that Russian President Vladimir Putin signaled her release was imminent.“Everything will be OK,” Putin told Issachar’s mother, Yaffa, during a sideline meeting in Israel last week to mark the 75th anniversary of the liberation of a key Nazi death camp in World War II.Yet the timing of Putin’s decision to grant a pardon was riven with political implications.Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife, Sara, walk with Naama Issachar and her mother, Yaffa, after Russian President Vladimir Putin granted Naama a pardon, at Vnukovo International Airport in Moscow, Jan. 30, 2020.Netanyahu visitIssachar’s release comes as Netanyahu is locked in a bitter yearlong struggle to maintain his hold on power while facing charges of criminal corruption. The Israeli leader was formally charged with bribery, fraud and breach of trust by prosecutors this week.It also follows the White House’s unveiling of a new peace plan for the long-standing Israeli-Palestinian conflict that U.S. President Donald Trump has controversially billed as “the deal of the century.”Israel’s Netanyahu has enthusiastically endorsed the proposal. The Palestinian leadership has rejected the deal outright.While Putin has yet to personally weigh in on the American proposal, initial reactions in Moscow underscored how the Kremlin is eager to build on its recent rise as a key power broker in Mideast regional politics.“We confirm our readiness to further constructive work towards the collective strengthening of efforts towards a complete resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict,” said Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, in underscoring Russia’ delicate balance of alliances throughout the region.Situational leverageFrom the beginning, Issachar was seen as a bargaining chip in a larger political game involving Washington, Moscow and Tel Aviv.Her initial arrest came as Russia was seeking extradition of Aleksei Burkov, an alleged Russian hacker accused of computer fraud by the U.S. government.Israel ultimately chose to turn over Burkov to U.S. authorities last November — a decision that seemed to have soured any chance of Issachar’s early release.Indeed, even among the celebrations of Issachar’s freedom Thursday, questions lingered: What might have prompted the exchange now? What changed? And what had Putin gained?For it was undoubtedly a boon to Netanyahu’s latest reelection bid, with Israelis headed to the polls again March 2 after three previous votes that ended in stalemate.Netanyahu thanked Putin for a “swift” decision to free Issachar. Further underlining the political timing of the pardon, Issachar joined Netanyahu on his government plane back to Israel.“We’re excited to see you. Now we go back home,” Netanyahu told the former prisoner, in a video posted to his official Twitter account.❤️?? pic.twitter.com/58UZwWaje3— Benjamin Netanyahu (@netanyahu) January 30, 2020Back in Israel, media pundits suggested Netanyahu had secured Issachar’s release by granting Russia ownership of a Jerusalem site of importance to the Russian Orthodox Church, a key base of support for the Russian president.Fueling curiosity, the Kremlin released a statement in which Putin suggested the lead Orthodox Patriarch in Jerusalem had played a role, passing along a letter from Issachar’s mother.Meanwhile, in Russia, attention focused on the Kremlin leader’s other justifications for Issachar’s release.“She hadn’t even crossed the Russian border,” said Putin, a reference to the fact the small amount of hashish had been discovered while she was in an International airport transit zone.Despite the Kremlin insisting Issachar admit her guilt to gain pardon, the Russian leader seemed to back her lawyers view that no crime had actually been committed.“And so, was it a violation of the law or no?” political commentator Arkady Dubnov asked in a post to Facebook. К вопросу о милосердии президента РФ

https://echo.msk.ru/blog/dubnov/2579662-echo/

Пресс-служба Кремля опубликовала…Posted by Аркадий Дубнов on Thursday, January 30, 2020Meanwhile, there remained little clarity over Putin’s views on President Trump’s grand bargain aimed at settling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — the supposed reason for the trip.“In the end, who cares about this small stuff,” joked Matvei Ganapolsky, a commentator on the Echo of Moscow radio.He then stated the obvious.“Issachar needed to be freed, because she had become a drag on Russian-Israeli relations,” Ganapolsky said.
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An hour’s train ride from the European Union’s headquarters, where the bloc’s British lawmakers and staffers packed up to leave, businesswoman Meriela Masson pondered Brexit during a quick smoke outside her Paris office.Parisian businesswoman Meriela Masson says she hasn’t had time to think of Brexit. (Lisa Bryant/VOA)”Unfortunately, I don’t have time to think of it,” Masson said of Britain’s departure from the EU, which becomes reality at midnight Friday in Brussels. “I don’t follow the news regarding Brexit, so I have no clue what to think about it.”If Britain’s departure from the EU amounts to a political earthquake in Brussels, the aftershock is less intense in other European capitals.Europeans feel sadness, but they are also watching Brexit unfold with “a sort of fatigue,” said analyst Elvire Fabry of the Jacques Delores Institute, a Paris research group.”It was more perceived as a deep political crisis within the U.K., than a real negotiation between the U.K. and EU,” she said, as the protracted talks wound out.  Now, as Europe moves from saying goodbye to Britain to carving out a new and potentially rocky post-Brexit relationship, ordinary Europeans face many unknowns.   Student Adolphine Nsimba exits a Paris M&S food store, one of Britain’s many marks on Europe. (Lisa Bryant/VOA)Will fishermen and farmers lose out on a lucrative British market? Will drivers and passengers be stuck in unending customs lines?”I hope it won’t penalize France,” said student Adolphine Nsimba, 25, as she exited an M&S food market in Paris — another sign of Britain’s imprint on Europe, along with craft beer and afternoon tea. “I have friends and family in England, and I don’t want to apply for a visa to go there.”Outside the Gare du Nord station, where London-bound Eurostar trains depart every 30 minutes, truck driver Pierre Weillart voiced similar fears. He spends many workdays moving refrigerated goods by road through the Channel Tunnel to Britain.”We’re worried about customs,” he said. “It could lose a lot of time.”Soul-searchingBrexit is also sparking soul-searching among some Europeans about what is broken in a political and economic union born from the ashes of World War II.”We European decision-makers must realize that if an increasing number of our fellow citizens have turned their back on the European project, it’s for a reason,” said Philippe Lamberts, an EU Greens Party lawmaker from Belgium. “It’s because many believe that too often, policies adopted at the European level have served the few rather than the many.”A Paris kiosok bears a magazine cover bidding farewell to Britain. (Lisa Bryant/VOA)Lamberts’ remarks came as the European Parliament voted to formally approve Brexit on Wednesday. As many lamented Britain’s departure from the bloc, euroskeptic parties cheered it on. “Brexit is the victory of the common people against multinational corporations, special interests and other elites,” populist Finns Party lawmaker Laura Huhtasaari said. “The 2020s is the decade where the national state makes the ultimate comeback in Europe.”Euroskeptic parties gained ground during last year’s European Parliament elections. In France, the far-right National Rally party led the overall vote with 23%, ahead of the ruling Centrist Party of President Emmanuel Macron.  A comeback for Europe?Pro-EU parties still won the majority of votes, and overall turnout hit a record high of more than 50%. Promises of a French-style Frexit or Italexit in Italy have faded.Analyst Elvire Fabry of the Jacques Delors Institute, named after a former European Commission president whose photo is to her left, says there is a feeling of fatigue regarding Brexit. (Lisa Bryant/VOA)”All the parties that are really critical toward the EU have changed their strategy a little,” Fabry said. “Instead of calling for a similar move out of the EU, they now want to change the EU from the inside.”Recent polls also show an uptick in citizen support. A 2019 Eurobarometer survey found Europeans view the bloc in a more positive light than at any other point in the last decade.”Brexit is a failure of Britain, not the European Union,” former European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said.  Others see it as a failure of both.  Fabry, for one, disagrees. She believes Brexit has delivered a powerful and positive message that might prove useful for other tricky negotiations, including with China and the United States.”We happened to see a new kind of cohesion among the Europeans,” she said, describing the unity in Brexit negotiations that member states have not found on issues like immigration and defense. “We were expecting divisions and increasing criticism of the EU — but on the contrary.”
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The border was drawn in 1921, splitting communities and sometimes property, as the British government sought to create a home for the majority Protestant population of Northern Ireland at a time when the largely Catholic Republic of Ireland won its independence.Today, that 310-mile (500-kilometer) frontier is largely invisible. The only way motorists know they have crossed into Northern Ireland is from the speed limit signs, which use miles per hour measurements, rather than the metric system used in the south. Keen observers might notice a slight change in the pavement as well.As Brexit takes effect Friday, residents on both sides of the border are concerned about protecting the relative peace and prosperity after the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. That accord helped end three decades of sectarian violence between paramilitary groups that wanted to reunify Ireland and those who insisted the six counties of Northern Ireland should remain part of the UK.FILE – Lisa Partridge, 28, who grew up with the Protestant Loyal Orange Institution, is reflected in a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II at the Orange Hall, in Portadown, Northern Ireland, Dec. 19, 2019.Lisa Partridge, a 28-year-old tour operator raised in a British military family, remembers how it was “completely normal to check under the family car for a bomb every morning before you went to school.””Nobody would want to go back to that life,” she said.Central to the deal was the fact that both the U.K. and the Republic of Ireland were EU members, which allowed authorities to tear down hated border posts that had slowed the passage of people and goods as police and soldiers tried to halt the flow of arms and militants. With the end of onerous border controls, trade flowed freely between north and south spurring economic development in both communities.The British and Irish governments have promised to preserve those gains, but people on both sides of the border are concerned that Brexit may re-ignite tensions.”Who’s to know what way it’s going to go?” said Gary Ferguson, 27, as he milked the cows on his father’s farm. “It’ll make us or break us.”Signs of the conflict, known here as “The Troubles,” are still evident, even if rust and moss have softened their hard edges.In the village of Belcoo in Northern Ireland, an old railway bridge blown up by the British army sits partially submerged in the river that separates Northern Ireland from the town of Blacklion in the Irish Republic. An old customs post splits the small village of Pettigo between north and south. In Belfast, “peace walls” still seek to prevent violence by separating Protestant and Catholic neighborhoods.FILE – An old railway bridge blown up by the British Army in the 1970s is partially submerged in the Belcoo River that separates Northern Ireland from the town of Blacklion, Republic of Ireland, Dec. 23, 2019.To ensure there would be no hard border between north and south, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson agreed to different rules for trade between Northern Ireland and the EU than those that apply to the rest of the UK.Unionists see this as weakening the ties between Northern Ireland and the rest of the U.K., raising concerns that the reunification of Ireland is now more likely.In Portadown, the Protestant Orange Order still holds weekly protests to assert its British identity.”This is Britain. (It) says so on the map,” said David Reid, 33, walking in Belfast with his 1-year-old son in the shadow of a peace wall that separates his Protestant community from a Catholic one. “Me personally, it just doesn’t feel like it. It feels like you’re down in Ireland.”On the other side of the border in Castlefinn, in Ireland’s County Donegal, Tom Murray runs three pharmacies and says his primary goal is to protect the economic gains of the last two decades.FILE – Pharmacist Tom Murray, 46, stocks shelves at his pharmacy in Castlefinn, Ireland, just over the border from Northern Ireland, Dec. 23, 2019.”I think Ireland should always be a united country and should be free of the shackles of Britain,” said Murray, 46. “But at the same time, we have to accept that there’s 1 million people living a mile away who identify as British. I think we have to protect their identity, their culture, their Britishness every bit as much as we have to protect my Irishness. Otherwise it just won’t work.”Gerry Storey, 83, of the Holy Family Boxing Club in Belfast has been working to bridge the divide by bringing Protestant and Catholic youths together in the boxing ring.”When you come in here, you don’t talk politics. You don’t swear. And there’s no football jerseys,” Storey said. “In here everybody is treated fairly and squarely. And it doesn’t care who or what you are.”Ferguson, a fifth-generation Protestant dairy farmer in Stewartstown, Northern Ireland, agrees: “Irish, British, it doesn’t matter.””As long as the farming stays OK, that’s all,” he said. “And no wars start.”
 
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A man who tried to steal an original copy of the 1215 Magna Carta, considered to be one of the most important documents in the history of democracy, from an English cathedral was found guilty Thursday of criminal damage and attempted theft.Mark Royden, 47, had denied smashing a glass box housing the priceless manuscript in Salisbury Cathedral in southern England in 2018.Salisbury Crown Court heard he had set off a fire alarm in the cathedral cloisters before stunning visitors by hitting the glass case with a hammer, causing three holes in it and damage estimated at 14,000 pounds ($18,400).Failing to break through the safety glass, he tried to run out of the cathedral but was grabbed by maintenance workers and visitors, including an American tourist.The parchment, one of only four original copies still surviving, was not damaged.A key manuscript in English history, the Magna Carta is a charter of citizens’ rights curbing the arbitrary power of medieval kings which among other things guaranteed the right to a fair trial.King John agreed to place his seal on the document in June 1215 at Runnymede near Windsor, west of London, as a means of ending an uprising by rebel barons.Prosecutors said when questioned by police Royden had appeared to question the authenticity of the document.”The historical importance of the Magna Carta in establishing the right to justice cannot be overstated – which is somewhat ironic given Mark Royden’s repeated denials of his crime in the face of overwhelming evidence,” said Rob Welling of the Crown Prosecution Service.”Had he succeeded in taking it, Royden would have deprived the nation of what is said to be the most beautiful surviving copy from 1215.”Royden was released on bail and will be sentenced at a later date. The charter is back on display in Salisbury cathedral.
 
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As Europe’s political establishment bids farewell to Britain and its EU membership with a mix of sorrow and some jubilation, many Europeans are not paying much attention this latest chapter of the very long process popularly known as “Brexit.” Lisa Bryant took the pulse of some Parisians, and filed this report for VOA from the French capital.
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In an effort to contain the coronavirus, Wuhan, the Chinese city of about 11 million people, has locked down thousands of foreigners, including African students, most on scholarships. They are now trapped in the city where the virus was first detected and continues to spread.Twenty-eight-year-old Michael Njomo arrived in Wuhan city last September.
He applied for a competitive scholarship to study administrative management and was awarded it after several attempts.
The new coronavirus emerged just when he was settling in at Huazhong University of Science and Technology. The WhatsApp group for Kenyan students in China stopped talking about academics, and started checking on each other and sharing information about the disease.
He says the death toll kept rising and before he knew it, the city was under lockdown.  He says he and his colleagues are afraid to circulate in the city.
“Some of them are very scared here in their rooms, like the whole day they remain indoors,” he said. “Those are the directions we have been given by the authorities here, to avoid much interaction.  If you pay much attention on that [the death toll], I don’t know what will happen to you because there is so much information from different people.  The more you listen to them, the more you pay attention, the more scared you become.”People wearing face masks walk down a deserted street in Wuhan in central China’s Hubei Province, Jan. 28, 2020.Njomo and his colleagues spoke to VOA via a WhatsApp call from a room they said they shared.
Some countries have started evacuating their many thousands of citizens stranded in Wuhan. Njomo and other Kenyans are still not sure of their fate but are hopeful.
“If a situation comes that we can be evacuated from Wuhan to a safer place, everybody will accept that. Maybe somewhere like the embassy, somewhere like Beijing is ok.  It’s not that far from Wuhan to Beijing, but I don’t know what plans our ambassador has for us,” he said.
John (not his real name), a final year student of engineering at Huazhong University, was meant to come home in the next couple of months.He questions Kenya’s capacity to deal with the virus if it made its way to the country and said he preferred they stay in China.”Of course everyone would love to go back home, but again you look at where your home is, and you are also not sure of your status regarding the disease,” he said. “To me, I think its better just to stay here and ensure that I am safe wherever I am because you might go back home and take it to everyone and as you know, at home, facilities are not that good to handle the situation.”Kenya’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs says 85 Kenyans are stuck in Wuhan.
In a press statement, the ministry said the Kenyan Embassy in Beijing is in touch with the Kenyan citizens who have been affected by the lockdown in Wuhan.FILE – Kenya Airways planes are seen parked at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport near Nairobi, Kenya, Nov. 6, 2019.The Foreign Ministry warned Kenyans not to travel to China unless it was absolutely necessary.  
As some airlines suspended flights to China, Kenya Airways, the national carrier, said it will not suspend its flights to China.  The announcement came just after Kenyan Ambassador to China Sarah Serem called on the airline to stop flights to the country until the virus is contained.
At a briefing for journalists this week, Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director John Nkengasong said that if the virus makes its way to African countries, it would be hard to contain.
“The surveillance system is as good as the health system in member states, and we all know that we are at very different levels of strength in the member states. Some countries have very strong surveillance systems, some have weak surveillance systems and some, we are working with them to strengthen their systems there,” he said.Kenya reported Tuesday the first suspected case of coronavirus infection in January. The Ministry of Health said Thursday it sent samples to South Africa for further tests.
Sudan, Ethiopia and Ivory Coast are the other African countries that reported suspected cases.
 
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