Month: July 2019

Emergency workers in Ridgecrest, Calif., are assessing the damage after a second major earthquake struck the desert community northeast of Los Angeles on Friday night. No deaths or major injuries have been reported from either the Thursday or Friday quake, but as Mike O’Sullivan reports, Friday’s magnitude-7.1 temblor caused additional damage and left residents shaken.

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Hong Kong has long been seen as a good place to do business, thanks to its proximity to China and the one-country, two systems policy that provides a wide degree of economic freedom. But as Beijing expands its control, that reputation is at risk, as VOA’s Bill Gallo reports.

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Afghan officials say the Taliban has detonated a vehicle bomb near the Afghan spy agency’s office in the central eastern Ghazni city.

A provincial government spokesman, Arif Noori told VOA that the attack killed 12 people, including civilians and injured more than 50 others, including students.

A Taliban spokesman, while claiming responsibility for the bombing, said the powerful blast destroyed an important facility of the National Directorate of Security (NDS), inflicting heavy casualties.

The insurgent group has reportedly killed around 300 pro government forces in redent days.

The attack occurred as delegates from Afghanistan are set to open a two-day conference Sunday in Qatar to engage in peace discussions with Taliban envoys. 

…

The largest Southern California quake in nearly 20 years jolted an area stretching from Sacramento to Las Vegas to Mexico as it cracked buildings, set fires, wrecked roads but only caused minor injuries.

Seismologists warned that large aftershocks were expected to continue for days, if not weeks.

The 7.1-magnitude quake struck at 8:19 p.m. Friday and was centered 11 miles (18 kilometers) from Ridgecrest, the same area of the Mojave Desert where a 6.4-magnitude temblor hit just a day earlier.

Research Offers New Insights on Boxers’ Brain Injuries

Anyone who’s watched a boxing match knows the sight of a fighter staggering after receiving a blow to the head. Neurologists call this phenomenon dementia pugilistica. Boxers call it being ‘punch drunk.’ Those repeated hits to the head can cause short-term disorientation, putting boxers at greater risk for long-term brain damage.

Dr. Max Albert Hietala from the Sahlgrenska University Hospital in Sweden, says doctors know that boxers suffer neurological damage, but no one’s been able to explain precisely how this happens.

Ridgecrest, already trying to recover from Thursday’s earthquake, took the brunt of the damage. Several thousand people there were without power, and there were reports of cracked buildings.

Ridgecrest Police Chief Jed McLaughlin said two building fires — one involving a mobile home — were quickly doused. There were several reports of natural gas leaks, but the lines were shut off. Mark Ghilarducci, director of the California Office of Emergency Services, said daybreak Saturday could show even more serious damage.

Local fire and police officials said they were initially swamped by calls for medical and ambulance service. But the police chief said there was “nothing but minor injuries such as cuts and bruises, by the grace of God.”

For the second time in as many days, Ridgecrest Regional Hospital wheeled patients out of the building, some still hooked to IVs, CNN reported.

Nearby, the tiny town of Trona, with about 2,000 residents, was reported to have at least one collapsed building. Roads were buckled or blocked, and police put out a call for bottled water for residents.

State Route 178 in Kern County was closed by a rockslide and had severe cracking.

In downtown Los Angeles, 150 miles (241 kilometers) away, offices in skyscrapers rolled and rocked for at least 30 seconds.

Andrew Lippman, who lives in suburban South Pasadena, was sitting outside and reading a newspaper when Friday’s quake hit. He calculated it lasted 45 seconds.

“I could see power lines swaying,” he said.

Disneyland in Orange County and Six Flags Magic Mountain in Santa Clarita closed their rides. At the New York-New York hotel in Las Vegas, the Big Apple Coaster swayed as the earth moved.

An NBA Summer League game in Las Vegas was stopped after the quake. Speakers over the court at the Thomas & Mack Center continued swaying more than 10 minutes after it was over.

In Los Angeles, the earthquake rattled Dodger Stadium in the fourth inning of the team’s game against the San Diego Padres. But the game went on, and the Padres won, 3-2.

“Not many people can say they threw a strike during an earthquake,” Eric Lauer, who was on the mound at the time, said later. “My ball, my pitch, started an earthquake.”

“Everyone was jumping over us to leave,” said Daniel Earle, 52, of Playa del Rey, who was sitting with his wife in the stadium’s reserve level. “My wife was holding us, like squeezing. I’m surprised my arm is still here.”

Friday’s quake was followed by a series of large and small aftershocks, including a few above magnitude 5.0.

Southern California can expect more significant shaking in the near future, said Lucy Jones, a seismologist at the California Institute of Technology and a former science adviser at the U.S. Geological Survey.

There is about a 1-in-10 chance that another 7.0 quake could hit within the next week, and chance of a 5.0-magnitude quake “is approaching certainty,” she added.

She said the new quake probably ruptured along about 25 miles (40 kilometers) of fault line and was part of a continuing sequence. The seismic activity is unlikely to affect fault lines outside of the area, Jones said, noting that the gigantic San Andreas Fault is far away.

Gov. Gavin Newsom activated the state Office of Emergency Services operations center “to its highest level” and announced he had requested that President Donald Trump issue an emergency declaration so the state could receive federal aid.

Earlier Friday, Los Angeles had revealed plans to lower slightly the threshold for public alerts from its earthquake early warning app. But officials said the change was in the works before the Thursday quake, which gave scientists at the California Institute of Technology’s seismology lab 48 seconds of warning but did not trigger a public notification.

“Our goal is to alert people who might experience potentially damaging shaking, not just feel the shaking,” said Robert de Groot, a spokesman for the USGS’s ShakeAlert system, which is being developed for California, Oregon and Washington.

The West Coast ShakeAlert system has provided non-public earthquake notifications on a daily basis to many test users, including emergency agencies, industries, transportation systems and schools.

Construction of a network of seismic-monitoring stations for the West Coast is just over half complete, with most coverage in Southern California, San Francisco Bay Area and the Seattle-Tacoma area. Eventually, the system will send out alerts over the same system used for Amber Alerts to defined areas that are expected to be affected by a quake, de Groot said.

California is partnering with the federal government to build the statewide earthquake warning system, with the goal of turning it on by June 2021. The state has already spent at least $25 million building it, including installing hundreds of seismic stations throughout the state.

This year, Newsom said the state needed $16.3 million to finish the project, which included money for stations to monitor seismic activity, plus nearly $7 million for “outreach and education.” The state Legislature approved the funding last month, and Newsom signed it into law.

…

President Donald Trump roused a political tempest when he decided to plant himself squarely in Independence Day observances with a speech from the Lincoln Memorial. His words from that platform, though, were strikingly measured, except for some befuddlement over American military history.

The unscripted Trump — the one the world sees day to day — was to be found on Twitter and in other venues. It was in such places that the president misrepresented his record on care for veterans, the health of the economy, the state of the auto industry and more.

Some rhetoric in review:

MARS

TRUMP: “Someday soon, we will plant the American flag on Mars.” — July 4 speech.

THE FACTS: This is not happening soon; almost certainly not while he is president even if he wins a second term.

The Trump administration has a placed a priority on the moon over Mars for human exploration (President Barack Obama favored Mars) and hopes to accelerate NASA’s plan for returning people to the lunar surface. It has asked Congress to approve enough money to make a moon mission possible by 2024, instead of 2028. But even if that happens, Mars would come years after that.

International space agencies have made aspirational statements about possibly landing humans on Mars during the 2030s.

Trump’s speech was almost entirely free of exaggerations about his agenda; this was an exception.

HISTORY

TRUMP: “The Continental Army suffered a bitter winter of Valley Forge, found glory across the waters of the Delaware and seized victory from Cornwallis of Yorktown. Our army manned the air (unintelligible), it rammed the ramparts. It took over the airports. It did everything it had to do. And at Fort McHenry, under the rockets’ red glare, it had nothing but victory. And when dawn came, their star-spangled banner waved defiant.” — July 4 speech.

THE FACTS: Trump said the teleprompter stopped working during this passage: “I knew the speech very well so I was able to do it without a teleprompter.”

There were, of course, no airplanes during the War of Independence, and the Battle of Fort McHenry took place during the War of 1812, not the revolution. Trump segued from colonial times to modern times and back to the War of 1812 so fast that it seemed he was conflating wars and misstating aviation history. But the confusion apparently came from his need to wing it when the script went down.

ECONOMY

TRUMP: “The Economy is the BEST IT HAS EVER BEEN!” — tweet Tuesday.

THE FACTS: The economy is not one of the best in the country’s history. It expanded at an annual rate of 3.2 percent in the first quarter of this year. That growth was the highest in just four years for the first quarter.

In the late 1990s, growth topped 4 percent for four straight years, a level it has not yet reached on an annual basis under Trump. Growth even reached 7.2 percent in 1984.

In fact, there are many signs that growth is slowing, partly because of Trump’s trade fights with China and Europe. Factory activity has decelerated for three straight months as global growth has slowed and companies are reining in their spending on large equipment.

Most economists forecast the economy will expand at just a 2% annual rate in the April-June period.

Trump is pushing the Federal Reserve chairman, Jerome Powell, to cut short-term interest rates to shore up the economy. That isn’t something a president would do amid the strongest economy in history.

Economists mostly expect the Fed will cut rates, either at its next meeting in July or in September. Lower rates make it easier for people to borrow and buy new homes and cars.

Powell said last week the economy is facing growing uncertainties and he indicated the Fed would take the necessary steps to sustain the expansion, a sign that the Fed could cut rates soon.

The economy is now in its 121st month of growth, making it the longest expansion in history. But most of that took place under Obama.

The economy grew 2.9% in 2018 — the same pace it reached in 2015 under Obama — and simply hasn’t hit historically high growth rates.

NORTH KOREA

TRUMP, on North Korea’s help in returning the remains of U.S. troops from the Korean War: “The remains are coming back as they get them, as they find them. The remains of our great heroes from the war. And we really appreciate that.” — remarks Sunday to Korean business leaders in Seoul.

TRUMP: “We’re very happy about the remains having come back. And they’re bringing back — in fact, we were notified they have additional remains of our great heroes from many years ago.” — remarks June 28 in Japan.

THE FACTS: His account is at odds with developments.

No remains of U.S. service members have been returned since last summer and the U.S. suspended efforts in May to get negotiations on the remains back on track in time to have more repatriated this year. It hopes more remains may be brought home next year.

The Pentagon’s Defense POW-MIA Accounting Agency, which is the outfit responsible for recovering U.S. war remains and returning them to families, “has not received any new information from (North Korean) officials regarding the turn over or recovery of remains,” spokesman Charles Prichard said Wednesday.

He said his agency is “still working to communicate” with the North Korean army “as it is our intent to find common ground on resuming recovery missions” in 2020.

Last summer, in line with the first summit between Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un that June, the North turned over 55 boxes of what it said were the remains of an undetermined number of U.S service members killed in the North during the 1950-53 war. So far, six Americans have been identified from the 55 boxes.

U.S. officials have said the North has suggested in recent years that it holds perhaps 200 sets of American war remains. Thousands more are unrecovered from battlefields and former POW camps.

The Pentagon estimates that 5,300 Americans were lost in North Korea.

VETERANS

TRUMP, on approving private-sector health care for veterans: “I actually came up with the idea. I said, ‘Why don’t we just have the veterans go out and see a private doctor and we’ll pay the cost of the doctor and that will solve the problem?’ Some veterans were waiting for two weeks, three weeks, four weeks, they couldn’t get any service at all. I said, ‘We’ll just send them out.’ And what I thought it was a genius idea, brilliant idea. I came back and met with the board and a lot of the people that handled the VA. … They said, ‘Actually sir, we’ve been trying to get that passed for 40 years, and we haven’t been able to get it.’ I’m good at getting things done. … It’s really cut down big on the waits.” — call on June 25 with military veterans.

TRUMP: “We passed VA Choice and VA Accountability to give our veterans the care that they deserve and they have been trying to pass these things for 45 years.” — Montoursville, Pennsylvania, rally on May 20.

THE FACTS: Trump did not invent the idea of giving veterans the option to see private doctors outside the Department of Veterans Affairs medical system at government expense. Nor is he the first president in 40 years to pass the program.

Congress approved the private-sector Veterans Choice health program in 2014 and Obama signed it into law. Trump expanded it.

Under the expansion which took effect last month, veterans still may have to wait weeks to see a doctor. They program allows veterans to see a private doctor if their VA wait is 20 days (28 for specialty care) or their drive is only 30 minutes.

Indeed, the VA says it does not expect a major increase in veterans seeking care outside the VA under Trump’s expanded program, partly because wait times in the private sector are typically longer than at VA. “The care in the private sector, nine times out of 10, is probably not as good as care in VA,” VA Secretary Robert Wilkie told Congress in March.

TRUMP: “On average, 20 veterans and members take their own lives every day. … We’re working very very hard on that. In fact, the first time I heard the number was 23, and now it’s down somewhat. But it’s such an unacceptable number.” — call on June 25 with military veterans.

THE FACTS: Trump incorrectly suggests that he helped reduce veterans’ suicide, noting that his administration was working “very, very hard” on the problem and that in fact the figure had come down. But no decline has been registered during his administration. There was a drop during the Obama administration but that might be due to the way veterans’ suicides are counted.

The VA estimated in 2013 that 22 veterans were taking their lives each day on average (not 23, as Trump put it). The estimate was based on data submitted from fewer than half the states. In 2016, VA released an estimate of 20 suicides per day, based on 2014 data from all 50 states as well as the Pentagon.

The estimated average has not budged since.

Trump has pledged additional money for suicide prevention and created in March a Cabinet-level task force that will seek to develop a national roadmap for suicide prevention, part of a campaign pledge to improve health care for veterans.

Still, a report by the Government Accountability Office in December found that the VA had left millions of dollars unspent that were available for suicide prevention efforts. The report said the VA had spent just $57,000 out of $6.2 million available for paid media, such as social-media postings, due in part to leadership turmoil at the agency.

MILITARY PAY

TRUMP: “You also got very nice pay raises for the last couple of years. Congratulations. Oh, you care about that. They care about that. I didn’t think you noticed. Yeah, you were entitled. You know, it was close to 10 years before you had an increase. Ten years. And we said, ‘It’s time.’ And you got a couple of good ones, big ones, nice ones.” — remarks June 30 to service members at Osan Air Base, South Korea.

THE FACTS: He’s been spreading this falsehood for more than a year, soaking up cheers from crowds for something he didn’t do. In May 2018, for example, he declared to graduates of the United States Naval Academy: “We just got you a big pay raise. First time in 10 years.”

U.S. military members have received a pay raise every year for decades .

Trump also boasts about the size of the military pay raises under his administration, but there’s nothing extraordinary about them.

Several raises in the past decade have been larger than service members are getting under Trump — 2.6% this year, 2.4% last year, 2.1% in 2017.

Raises in 2008, 2009 and 2010, for example, were all 3.4% or more.

Pay increases shrank after that because of congressionally mandated budget caps. Trump and Congress did break a trend that began in 2011 of pay raises that hovered between 1% and 2%.

AUTOS

TRUMP: “We have many, many companies that left our country and they’re now coming back. Especially the automobile business. We have auto plants being built all over the country. We went decades and no plant was built. No plant was even expanded.” — remarks Monday in Oval Office.

THE FACTS: There’s no evidence that car companies are flooding back to the U.S. He’s also incorrect in saying that auto plants haven’t been built in decades. A number of automakers — Toyota, BMW, Honda, Hyundai, Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen among them — opened plants in recent decades, mostly in the South.

Government statistics show that jobs in auto and parts manufacturing grew at a slower rate in the two-plus years since Trump took office than in the two prior years.

Between January of 2017, when Trump was inaugurated, and May of this year, the latest figures available, U.S. auto and parts makers added 44,000 jobs, or a 4.6 percent increase, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But in the two years before Trump took office, the industry added 63,600 manufacturing jobs, a 7.1 percent increase.

The only automaker announcing plans to reopen a plant in Michigan is Fiat Chrysler, which is restarting an old engine plant to build three-row SUVs. It’s been planning to do so since before Trump was elected. GM is even closing two Detroit-area factories: One builds cars and the other builds transmissions. Toyota is building a new factory in Alabama with Mazda, and Volvo opened a plant in South Carolina last year, but in each case, that was in the works before Trump took office.

Automakers have made announcements about new models being built in Michigan, but no other factories have been reopened. Ford stopped building the Focus compact car in the Detroit suburb of Wayne last year, but it’s being replaced by the manufacture of a small pickup and a new SUV. That announcement was made in December 2016, before Trump took office.

GM, meantime, is closing factories in Ohio and Maryland.

RUSSIA INVESTIGATION

TRUMP: “Robert Mueller is being asked to testify yet again. He said he could only stick to the Report, & that is what he would and must do. After so much testimony & total transparency, this Witch Hunt must now end. No more Do Overs.” — tweet Tuesday.

THE FACTS: It’s highly questionable to say Trump was fully cooperative in the Russia investigation.

Trump declined to sit for an interview with the special counsel’s team, gave written answers that investigators described as “inadequate” and “incomplete,” said more than 30 times that he could not remember something he was asked about in writing, and — according to the report — tried to get aides to fire Mueller or otherwise shut or limit the inquiry.

In the end, the Mueller report found no criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia but left open the question of whether Trump obstructed justice.

According to the report, Mueller’s team declined to make a prosecutorial judgment on whether to charge partly because of a Justice Department legal opinion that said sitting presidents shouldn’t be indicted. The report instead factually laid out instances in which Trump might have obstructed justice, specifically leaving it open for Congress to take up the matter.

IRAN

TRUMP: “Iran was violating the 150 Billion Dollar (plus 1.8 Billion Dollar in CASH) Nuclear Deal with the United States, and others who paid NOTHING, long before I became President – and they have now breached their stockpile limit. Not good!” — tweet Wednesday.

THE FACTS: To be clear, there was no $150 billion payout from the U.S. treasury. The money he refers to represents Iranian assets held abroad that were frozen until the international deal was reached and Tehran was allowed to access its funds.

The payout of about $1.8 billion is a separate matter. That dates to the 1970s, when Iran paid the U.S. $400 million for military equipment that was never delivered because the government was overthrown and diplomatic relations ruptured.

That left people, businesses and governments in each country indebted to partners in the other, and these complex claims took decades to sort out in tribunals and arbitration. For its part, Iran paid settlements of more than $2.5 billion to U.S. citizens and businesses.

The day after the nuclear deal was implemented, the U.S. and Iran announced they had settled the claim over the 1970s military equipment order, with the U.S. agreeing to pay the $400 million principal along with about $1.3 billion in interest. The $400 million was paid in cash and flown to Tehran on a cargo plane, which gave rise to Trump’s dramatic accounts of money stuffed in barrels or boxes and delivered in the dead of night. The arrangement provided for the interest to be paid later, not crammed into containers.

…

Federal agents descended on the suburban Maryland house with the flash and bang of a stun grenade, blocked off the street and spent hours questioning the homeowner about a theft of government documents that prosecutors would later describe as “breathtaking” in its scale.

The suspect, Harold Martin, was a contractor for the National Security Agency. His arrest followed news of a devastating disclosure of government hacking tools by a mysterious internet group calling itself the Shadow Brokers . It seemed to some that the United States might have found another Edward Snowden, who also had been a contractor for the agency.

“You’re a bad man. There’s no way around that,” one law enforcement official conducting the raid told Martin, court papers say. “You’re a bad man.”

Later this month, about three years after that raid, the case against Martin is scheduled to be resolved in Baltimore’s federal court. But the identity of the Shadow Brokers, and whoever was responsible for a leak with extraordinary national security implications, will remain a public mystery even as the case concludes.

Authorities have established that Martin walked off with thousands of pages of secret documents over a two-decade career in national security, most recently with the NSA, whose headquarters is about 15 miles from his home in Glen Burnie, Maryland. He pleaded guilty to a single count of willful retention of national defense information and faces a nine-year prison sentence under a plea deal.

Investigators found in his home and car detailed description of computer infrastructure and classified technical operations in a raid that took place two weeks after the Shadow Brokers surfaced online to advertise the sale of some of the NSA’s closely guarded hacking tools. Yet authorities have never publicly linked Martin or anyone else to the Shadow Brokers and the U.S. has not announced whether it suspects government insiders, Russian intelligence or someone else entirely.

The question is important because the U.S. believes North Korea and Russia relied on the stolen tools, which provide the means to exploit software vulnerabilities in critical infrastructure, in unleashing punishing global cyberattacks on businesses, hospitals and cities. The release, which occurred while the NSA was already under scrutiny because of Snowden’s 2013 disclosures, raised questions about the government’s ability to maintain secrets .

“It was extraordinarily damaging, probably more damaging than Snowden,” cybersecurity expert Bruce Schneier said of the Shadow Brokers leaks. “Those tools were a lot of money to design and create.”

Yet none of that is likely to be mentioned at Martin’s July 17 sentencing. The hearing instead will turn on dramatically different depictions of the enigmatic Martin, a Navy veteran, longtime government contractor — most recently at Booz Allen Hamilton — and doctoral candidate at the time of his arrest.

Prosecutors allege Martin jeopardized national security by bringing home reams of classified information even as, they say, he once castigated colleagues as “clowns” for lax security measures. Soon after his arrest, they cast aspersions on his character and motives, citing a binge-drinking habit, his arsenal of unregistered weapons and online communication in Russian and other languages.

The agents who searched his home that August 2016 afternoon found a trove of documents in his car, home and a dusty, unlocked shed. The 50 terabytes of information from 1996 to 2016 included personal details of government employees and “Top Secret” email chains, handwritten notes describing the NSA’s classified computer infrastructure, and descriptions of classified technical operations.

Defense lawyers paint him as a compulsive hoarder whose quirky tendencies may have led him astray but who never betrayed his country.

“What began as an effort by Mr. Martin to be good at his job, to be better at his job, to be as good as he could be, to see the whole picture at his job, became something more complicated than that,” public defender James Wyda said at a 2016 detention hearing. “It became a compulsion.

“This was not Spycraft behavior,” he added. “This is not how a Russian spy or something like that would ever conduct business.”

It’s unclear how Martin came to the FBI’s attention, but a redacted court order from a judge suggests agents may have been looking for a Shadow Brokers link when they obtained search warrants for his Twitter account and property before the raid.

The December 2018 ruling from U.S. District Judge Richard Bennett notes that the FBI was investigating the online disclosure of stolen government property. It cites a Twitter message from an account allegedly belonging to Martin — @HAL_999999999 — that requested a meeting with someone whose name is blacked out and stated “shelf life, three weeks.”

In a likely reference to the Shadow Brokers disclosures, investigators said tweets from Martin’s account were sent hours before stolen government records were advertised and posted online. Investigators also alleged that Martin would have had access to the same classified information as what appeared online.

The recipient of the message is redacted, although Politico reported it went to the Moscow-based cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab, which in turn notified the U.S. Kaspersky declined to discuss the Martin case.

The roughly 20 officers who stormed Martin’s home did so with dramatic force, arriving with a battering ram and a “flash bang” device meant to cause temporary disorientation. State troopers shut down the road as agents interrogated Martin for four hours.

Martin was never charged with disclosing information and was accused only of unlawfully retaining defense information. The Shadow Brokers, which two weeks before Martin’s arrest surfaced on Twitter with the warning that it would auction off NSA hacking tools online, continued trickling out disclosures after Martin was in custody, a seeming indication that someone else may have been responsible.

Even so, his case refocused public attention on repeated government failures to safeguard some of the nation’s most highly classified information, with Martin one of several contractors accused of mishandling or spilling government secrets. Most notable is Snowden, a fellow Booz Allen contractor facing U.S. charges and living in Russia.

The NSA has since done more to protect its network and security and increased the monitoring of its employees, said security and counterintelligence director Marlisa Smith.

“I won’t tell you we’ve erased the risk of insider threat, it will never be down to zero, but we’ve worked very hard to mitigate and minimize the risk,” Smith said.

Booz Allen scrambled to respond to Martin’s arrest, hiring ex-FBI director Robert Mueller to investigate. Since Martin’s arrest, the company said it has added policies to improve its review process of employees at hiring and to ensure managers are more in touch with their subordinates.

As for the mystery of who or what is behind the Shadow Brokers, there’s little certainty that the government will ever publicly resolve that lingering question, especially given the classified nature of the theft and the embarrassment it caused the U.S.

“I don’t know if anybody knows other than the Russians,” said former NSA computer scientist Dave Aitel. “And we don’t even know if it’s the Russians. We don’t know at this point; anything could be true.”

…

The International Organization for Migration warns massive displacement from renewed inter-ethnic fighting in DR Congo’s Ebola-affected Ituri province poses a serious health hazard.  

At least 160 people were killed during renewed clashes early last month between Lendu farmers and Hema herders in Ituri province.  U.N. agencies report the violence has displaced hundreds of thousands of people and sent more than 7,500 refugees fleeing for their lives into neighboring Uganda.

The International Organization for Migration reports people who have fled the frontline of the conflict are living in abysmal conditions that create a fertile ground for the spread of disease, most worryingly Ebola.  

The latest World Health Organization figures put the number of Ebola cases at 2,382, including 1,606 deaths.  The bulk of these cases and deaths are in conflict-ridden North Kivu province   About 10 percent are in Ituri.

DRC Violence Threatens Lifesaving Ebola Operation

It is important to break the vicious cycle of violence to contain the spread of the deadly virus in conflict-ridden North Kivu and Ituri provinces

The inter-communal fighting has displaced an estimated 400,000 people.  IOM spokesman, Joel Millman, says his agency manages 12 displacement sites in Ituri’s Djugu Territory.  Thousands of people unable to cram into these overcrowded camps, he says, are sheltering in spontaneous sites.

“Poor hygiene conditions in displacement sites severely increase the risk that Ebola, as well as cholera, measles and acute respiratory diseases, will spread,” Millman said. “Many of these people are seeking assistance in Ebola-affected Bunia, where the displacement site officially called “General Hospital Site” has received more than 5,000 new Internally Displaced Persons, increasing the site’s population to 10,000 or twice its capacity.”

Millman says plans are underway to relocate many of the IDPs to a new improved settlement on land owned by Bunia’s Catholic Diocese.  

He says IOM also is reinforcing its Ebola surveillance and disease prevention activities at Ituri’s Points of Entry at International borders.  Measures include hand washing, hygiene promotion, and screening travelers for possible Ebola infections.

On June 11, the first case of Ebola spread across the border from DRC to Uganda.  A five-year old boy and his grandmother subsequently died from the deadly virus.

Millman says IOM is working to reduce disease transmission to new areas and across borders by expanding its preparedness measures to include Uganda, South Sudan and Burundi.

…

A top aide to Iran’s supreme leader says the Islamic Republic is ready to enrich uranium beyond the level set by Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal, just ahead of a deadline it set Sunday for Europe to offer new terms to the accord.

A video message by Ali Akbar Velayati included him saying that “Americans directly and Europeans indirectly violated the deal,” part of Tehran’s hardening tone with Europe. European parties to the deal have yet to offer a way for Iran to avoid the sweeping economic sanctions imposed by President Donald Trump since he pulled the U.S. out of the accord a year ago, especially those targeting its crucial oil sales.

All this comes as America has rushed thousands of troops, an aircraft carrier, nuclear-capable B-52 bombers and advanced fighter jets to the Mideast. Mysterious oil tanker attacks near the Strait of Hormuz, attacks by Iranian-backed rebels in Yemen on Saudi Arabia and Iran shooting down a U.S. military drone have raised fears of a wider conflict engulfing the region.

In the video, available Saturday on a website for Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Velayati said that increasing enrichment closers to weapons-grade levels was “unanimously agreed upon by every component of the establishment.”

“We will show reaction exponentially as much as they violate it. We reduce our commitments as much as they reduce it,” said Velayati, Khamenei’s adviser on international affairs. “If they go back to fulfilling their commitments, we will do so as well.”

Under the atomic accord, Iran agreed to enrich uranium to no more than 3.67%, which is enough for peaceful pursuits but is far below weapons-grade levels of 90%. Iran denies it seeks nuclear weapons, but the nuclear deal sought to prevent that as a possibility by limiting enrichment and Iran’s stockpile of uranium to 300 kilograms (661 pounds).

On Monday, Iran and United Nations inspectors acknowledged it had broken the stockpile limit. Combining that with increasing its enrichment levels narrows the one-year window experts believe Iran would need to have enough material to build a nuclear weapon, if it chose to do so.

“This would be a very worrisome step that could substantially shorten the time Iran would need to produce the material needed for nuclear weapons,” said Miles Pomper, a senior fellow at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies’ James Marin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. “Both Iran and the Trump administration should be looking for ways to de-escalate the crisis, rather than exacerbate it.”

It remains unclear to what level Iran will choose to up its uranium enrichment. However, Velayati in his remarks made reference to 5% enrichment.

“For Bushehr nuclear reactor we need 5% of enrichment and it is a completely peaceful goal,” he said. Bushehr, Iran’s only nuclear power plant, is now running on imported fuel from Russia that’s closely monitored by the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency.

Iran stopped producing uranium enriched above 5% in January 2014 amid negotiations for the nuclear deal.

Outside of Bushehr, higher-enriched uranium could be used for naval ships and submarines, something Iran has said it would want to pursue. Iran’s nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi said in 2016 that nuclear power plants for naval vessels need uranium enriched to at least 5%.

The U.S. said its ambassador to international organizations in Vienna, Jackie Wolcott, had requested a special meeting of the IAEA to discuss its “latest, concerning report on the Iran regime’s nuclear program.” That meeting is planned for Wednesday.

Iran’s diplomatic mission to Vienna, where the IAEA is based, called the U.S. move “a sad irony” as America had unilaterally withdrawn from the deal a year ago.

Meanwhile Saturday, the hard-line Kayhan newspaper demanded revenge over the seizure of an Iranian oil tanker off Gibraltar that had been heading to Syria.

Authorities in Gibraltar said they seized the Grace 1, believed to be carrying over 2 million barrels of oil, over European Union sanctions on Syria — though Spain said the seizure came at the request of the U.S.

“Seizure of U.K. oil tanker is the only way to confront pirates of the Queen,” Kayhan blared in a front-page headline, echoing a suggestion Friday by a former Revolutionary Guard chief.

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Chinese Premier Li Keqiang recently announced a major economic reform move, saying China would scrap ownership controls on foreign companies investing in the financial sector next year, ahead of schedule.

“We will achieve the goal of abolishing ownership limits in securities, futures, life insurance for foreign investors by 2020, a year earlier than the original schedule of 2021,” Li said while speaking at the Summer Davos in the Chinese seaside city of Dalian.

His government also will reduce restrictions next year on market access for foreign investors in the value-added telecoms services and transport sectors, according to the premier.

The announcements appear to be a response to a much discussed need for widening economic reforms and aligning the Chinese financial industry more closely with the international market. Some analysts contend, though, this may be part of Beijing’s effort to counter U.S. President Donald Trump’s criticism of China’s opaque markets and move toward a settlement to end a trade war.

“The timing of the announcement suggests that it has more to do with the trade negotiations than anything else,” said Julian Evans-Pritchard, China economist at consulting firm Capital Economics. “China is expecting some kind of concessions in tariffs.”

Li was speaking soon after talks between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping at the G-20 meeting last month in Japan, which revived hopes of an early settlement in the trade dispute.

Lourdes Casanova, director at Cornell University’s Emerging Markets Institute, attended the Summer Davos where Li made the announcement. She has taken a somewhat different view.

“China is coherent with their plan to be an open economy and its belief in the power of globalization, as Premier Li said at the Summer Davos in Dalian,” she said.

She also pointed out that Li appeared to be equally tough as he indicated that China is going to blacklist certain foreign companies. “This seems to be in retaliation to possible blacklisting by the U.S.,” she said.

Casanova warned it would be wrong to assume the year-long trade war has proven to be devastating to the Chinese economy, giving the U.S. an additional lever in trade negotiations.

“The Chinese economy is still growing at 6.2% and the forecasts are between 6 and 6.5%. This is very high growth for an economy of that size. So far, there is no sign of the weakening yet,” she pointed out.

Crucial question

There also is the question about how international players in financial and other sectors would respond in terms of making preparations for what may be a game-changing move for many companies seeking to enter the world’s second-biggest economy.

Evans-Pritchard is skeptical. “Being able to enter a sector is one thing and being able to compete with the existing players is another thing. This is going to be an area of contention.”

He noted that foreign companies have eagerly entered other industry sectors once officials allowed it, though they later learned it is very difficult to survive and compete with local players receiving government support either directly or indirectly.

Regardless, it would be difficult for Beijing to show it was providing a level playing field to foreign investors. A recent survey by the American Chamber of Commerce in China showed that a majority of their members found themselves less welcome in the Chinese market in recent months than they had been in the past.

“At the moment, it is easier for Chinese companies to sell in the U.S. than it is for the U.S. companies to sell in China. It is still quite difficult for the Chinese to argue the U.S. needs to reduce its market barriers as compared to China,” said Evans-Pritchard.

Changing relations

China recently cut the number of sectors subject to foreign investment restrictions, a widely expected move, to 40 from 48 in June 2018. This is seen as another move by Beijing, which is acting under U.S. pressure in the midst of the trade war.

Different views are being expressed about the possible outcome of the trade talks, which now are back on track after the recent Trump-Xi meeting.

“More generally, with talks now back on track, we’re still hoping that a strong enforceable deal can be reached that addresses the structural issues that our members have long raised,” said Tim Stratford, chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in China, before making a significant observation.

“Both sides now realize that U.S.-China economic ties are not going to be the same as they were in the past; however, we have confidence that it can still be a very robust relationship,” he said.

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Protesters in Malawi have wrapped up two days of demonstrations aimed at forcing the head of the country’s electoral commission to resign.  

The protests followed other nationwide demonstrations on June 20 calling for the resignation of Jane Ansah as well as the rest of the Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC). Ansah is accused of mismanaging the recent election in which President Peter Mutharika won a second term.  

The protests turned violent in three cities, and demonstrators said they would hold vigils outside Ansah’s house unless she stepped down. 

In Lilongwe this week, former President Saulos Chilima, leader of the United Transformation Movement, joined the protests.  

“We are continuing from where we stopped last time,” Chilima said. “I am here as a Malawian to join fellow Malawians in seeking justice. We would like Justice Jane Ansah to leave office because as everybody is aware, the elections didn’t go well and we are not happy at all.” 
 
Lazarus Chakwera, leader of the opposition Malawi Congress Party, also took part in the demonstrations. 

The MEC declared that Mutharika won re-election with 39 percent of the vote. Chakwera was second with 35 percent, followed by Chilima with 20 percent.  

Chakwera and Chilima are challenging the election results in court, alleging ballot box stuffing and the use of correction fluid to change votes.  

Violence 

In this week’s demonstrations in Lilongwe and the northern city of Mzuzu, the protesters looted shops and burned government offices.  

In the commercial capital, Blantyre, there were clashes between the protesters and members of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party trying to protect the party’s offices. 

The confrontations forced the government to deploy the military to bring order. 

“It is really unfortunate that [protesters] are disturbing the business of people, lives of people,” government spokesman Mark Botoman said. “And this cannot go unchecked. Obviously, anyone who is found torching offices, breaking shops and the like, they will be apprehended.”  

Timothy Mtambo, chairman of the Human Rights Defenders Coalition, which organized the protests, said those who perpetrated violence were not the demonstrators, but were hooligans who took advantage of the peaceful protests. 

“We condemn that in the strongest terms possible, and we disown those people because the demonstrations that we have are peaceful demonstrations,” he said. “We called for peaceful demonstrations.” 

Ansah, who maintains her innocence, told local radio last week that she would resign only if the court ruled that the elections were fraudulent. 

A hearing on the election dispute is expected to begin July 29. 

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VOA Connect Episode 77 – Stories about people who are on a path they didn’t foresee, the career of a successful musician and the benefits of vinyl records

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The average monthly student loan payment is about $400 a month in the United States.  Eddy Encinales, who used student loans to pay for college, talks to us about the effects of the debt and toll it takes trying to make her monthly payments and plan for her future.  

Reporter/Camera: Deepak Dobhal.  

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Find out why records are staging a comeback! Insert record scratching sound effect.  

VOA Ukrainian; Reporter: Alina Golinata; Camera: Konstantin Golubchik; Adapted by: Zdenko Novacki.

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Sudan’s ruling military council and a coalition of opposition and protest groups reached an agreement to share power during a transition period leading to elections, setting off street celebrations by thousands of people.

The two sides, which have held talks in Khartoum for the past two days, agreed to “establish a sovereign council by rotation between the military and civilians for a period of three years or slightly more,” African Union mediator Mohamed Hassan Lebatt said at a news conference.

They also agreed to form an independent technocratic government and to launch a transparent, independent investigation into violent events in recent weeks.

The two sides agreed to postpone the establishment of a legislative council. They had previously agreed that the Forces for Freedom and Change (FFC) coalition would take two-thirds of a legislative council’s seats before security forces crushed a sit-in protest June 3, killing dozens, and talks collapsed.

Joy in the streets

The streets of Omdurman, Khartoum’s twin city across the Nile River, erupted in celebration when the news broke, a Reuters witness said. Thousands of people of all ages took to the streets, chanting “Civilian! Civilian! Civilian!”

Young men banged drums, people honked their car horns, and women carrying Sudanese flags ululated in jubilation.

“This agreement opens the way for the formation of the institutions of the transitional authority, and we hope that this is the beginning of a new era,” said Omar al-Degair, a leader of the FFC.

“We would like to reassure all political forces, armed movements and all those who participated in the change from young men and women — that this agreement will be comprehensive and will not exclude anyone,” said General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, deputy head of the Transitional Military Council.

“We thank the African and Ethiopian mediators for their efforts and patience. We also thank our brothers in the Forces for Freedom and Change for the good spirit,” said Dagalo, who heads the Rapid Support Forces accused by the FFC of crushing the sit-in.

Opposition medics say more than 100 people were killed in the dispersal and subsequent violence. The government put the death toll at 62.

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Australia’s government warned a student on Friday not to return to North Korea a day after he was released from detention by Pyongyang under mysterious circumstances.

Alek Sigley, who flew to Tokyo on Thursday to join his Japanese wife, had been studying in the North Korean capital and had been missing since June 25.

“My advice would be pretty clear, I would stay in Japan. I would go back to South Korea … I would come back to Australia,” Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton told the Nine network.

“All of those would have to be better options before he returns to North Korea,” Dutton said. “I don’t think he will put himself back in that situation … it could have ended up very differently.”

Sigley left North Korea on Thursday and flew to Beijing, where he was met by Australian officials for the flight to Tokyo. He declined to comment to a throng of reporters at Haneda Airport, only making a peace sign before being taken away.

It is still not clear why he was detained by the secretive North. The details of his release were also not known.

Swedish authorities helped secure Sigley’s release because Australia has no diplomatic presence in North Korea and relies on other countries to act on its behalf.

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More than two dozen countries Thursday formally called for a United Nations investigation into thousands of killings in Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs, activists said.

Iceland submitted the draft resolution backed by mainly European states, they said. The text urges the government to prevent extrajudicial executions and marks the first time that the Human Rights Council is being asked to address the crisis.

The Duterte government has insisted the more than 5,000 suspected drug dealers killed by police in anti-narcotics operations all put up a fight.

At least 27,000 killed

But activists say that at least 27,000 have been killed since Duterte was elected in 2016 on a platform of crushing crime and that Myka, a 3-year-old shot during a police raid last weekend, is among the latest victims.

“Here we are three years later with 27,000 killed, among the most impoverished, in a massive crackdown. That is a conservative estimate,” Ellecer “Budit” Carlos of the Manila-based group iDefend told Reuters.

“In a non-armed conflict context, this is the worst case of extrajudicial killings globally,” he said after urging the council to act.

The Geneva forum is to vote on the resolution before ending its three-week session July 12. The Philippines is among its current 47 members.

‘There are worse things’

Carlos conceded that Asian countries are unlikely to vote in favor of the text, adding: “I think it will be a close shave.”

One Asian ambassador, speaking on condition of anonymity, indicated that his country would not support it, telling Reuters: “There are worse things happening in the world.”

But activists say the Council and the office of U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet must shine a light on the situation.

“For us a primary priority for this session is the situation in the Philippines,” said Laila Matar of Human Rights Watch.

“Bodies continue to pile up in Manila and other urban areas, again in the context of the war on drugs which we have seen is very much a war against the poor, impoverished and marginalized communities, which are the biggest victims,” she said.

It occurs in a wider context of “attacks on human rights defenders, media activists, journalists, anyone who really dares to speak up against the killings,” she added.

“Police accounts of drug raids are not reliable — the officers enforcing the ‘drug war’ have been shown to plant weapons and drugs to justify the killings,” Matar told the Council this week.

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Government ministers from some European Union nations sought Thursday to reassure their partners in the Western Balkans during a meeting in Poland that their aspirations to join the EU have full backing in the club, despite symptoms of a loss of momentum.

German Minister of State for Europe, Michael Roth, said Berlin stands firmly by the accession process of all Western Balkans nations “because for us the Western Balkans is not the backyard of the European Union, but the inner courtyard. We are all responsible for ensuring that the prospect of EU accession remains concrete.”

Speaking in the Polish city of Poznan, which is hosting the meeting, Roth urged much more effort in that direction and the opening of accession negotiations with North Macedonia and Albania. 

Foreign, interior and economy ministers from membership candidates Montenegro, Serbia, North Macedonia and Albania, as well as potential candidates Bosnia and Kosovo, are seeking such reassurance after some European leaders raised doubts about the EU’s openness to expanding.

French President Emmanuel Macron reiterated Monday that he thinks the EU has internal work to do that takes priority over taking in new members. He said he would “refuse any kind of enlargement before a deep reform of our institutional functioning.”

Speaking Thursday in Poland, Serbia’s Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic reacted to Macron’s comments by questioning the purpose of holding such meetings “especially when some of the top European leaders are saying there’s no chance of any enlargement.”

Roth said Thursday that “only a concrete perspective that is credible and that motivates the people locally, that involves civil society, will ultimately make the necessary reforms possible” and will pave the accession road.

He said the process will stimulate development in various walks of life in the region, but that above all “it is also about regional cooperation and reconciliation,” like in the case of difficult dialogue between Serbia and Kosovo, whose relations are marked by bloodshed.

“There is still a great deal to be done,” Roth said.

Arguments for enlargement

Bulgaria’s Foreign Minister Ekaterina Sachariewa pointed to huge improvement in the strained relations her EU member country achieved with North Macedonia thanks to the accession efforts. That should serve as an inspiration and an example for overcoming other problems among Western Balkan nations.   
 
Polish Foreign Minister Jacek Czaputowicz said that including Western Balkans nations in the EU would increase regional stability and development and spread the EU’s values to more of Europe.  
 
He pledged 500,000 euros from Poland for a fund developing investment in the region.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, British Prime Minister Theresa May, Polish President Andrzej Duda and Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki plan to join the gathering Friday.

Poland is hosting the summit in Poznan because it currently presides over the so-called Berlin Process that brings the Western Balkan nations together with EU member states. Initiated by Germany, the process is meant to promote EU membership for the Western Balkans although there is no set time frame.
 

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Eva Mozes Kor, a Romanian Holocaust survivor who spent four decades advocating forgiveness, has died at age 85 — during an annual trip to the site of the Nazi regime’s most notorious death camp.

Kor was sent to Auschwitz, in German-occupied Poland, in 1944 with her twin sister. Both girls survived the camp, but Kor’s sister died in 1993 of health problems blamed on the medical experiments they were forced to undergo while imprisoned.

Kor began lecturing about her experiences in the camp in 1978. Her advocacy of forgiveness — in her words, “forgiveness is the best revenge” — made her an enemy to some, who labeled her a traitor to her people. But her supporters praised her as a visionary. 

Kor’s advocacy group, known as CANDLES, announced Thursday that she had died “peacefully” during her annual pilgrimage to Auschwitz.

CANDLES — a group for people who had suffered medical experiments in the death camps — said in a statement, “We hope Eva’s story continues to change the lives of those who hear it for many years to come.”

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