Police in Britain have arrested a second man in connection with the theft of a solid-gold toilet that was part of an art exhibit at the birthplace and home of former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
The 18-carat toilet, titled “America,” was created by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan. It was part of a larger exhibit of Cattelan’s work at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, England.
Police said 36-year-old man, from Cheltenham, was arrested and later released pending an investigation. Police also arrested and released on bail a 66-year-old man suspected of being part of the gang responsible for the theft.
The toilet was previously on display at New York’s Guggenheim Museum where “more than 100,000 people have waited patiently in line for the opportunity to commune with art and with nature” museum officials said at the time.
Last year, the chief curator at the Guggenheim offered to lend the golden toilet to U.S. President Donald Trump and his wife Melania Trump when they asked to borrow a Van Gogh painting for their private White House quarters.
Cattelan has said the toilet is meant to be a satirical piece on excess wealth. “Whatever you eat, a $200 lunch or a $2 hot dog, the results are the same, toilet-wise,” he has said.
The Cambodian government summoned three human rights organizations to meetings in Phnom Penh to examine research they published and comments one of them gave to the media, a move the NGOs described as attempts at intimidation.
The organizations are Sahmakum Teang Tnaut (STT), Licadho and Transparency International (TI).
TI director Preap Kol was summoned separately for separate comments.
In their report Collateral Damage: Land Loss and Abuses in Cambodia’s Microfinance Sector, Licadho and STT highlight cases of Cambodians having lost their land when their land titles were used as collateral for taking up a loan. The report tells of Cambodian citizens being left deep in debt.
Following the publication of the report, Licadho and STT were asked to meet Council of Ministers spokesman Phay Siphan on September 4.
Licadho director Naly Pilorge said that most of the meeting was spent on pushing both organizations to sign a pre-written statement that implied that the results found in their research were not accurate. “Of course, Licadho and STT refused to sign this joint statement,” she said. “So most of the meeting was to push, to coerce, to threaten both organizations to sign on.”
She said she assumed that they were called to meet because the report concentrated upon the issue of debt and raised issues that investors should be wary of.
The government has repeatedly stressed that Cambodia’s economy was growing at a steady rate.
The two organizations were called in for a second meeting, an invitation both organizations declined.
Government spokesman Phay Siphan said he had called the meeting with the two organizations because he said the “fake report is biased” and was “misrepresenting the reality.”
Chak Sopheap, executive director of the Cambodian Center for Human Rights, condemned the move by the Council of Ministers. “The questioning of STT, Licadho and TI representatives sends a clear message to other human rights defenders and government critics that dissent is not tolerated in Cambodia,” she said in an email to VOA. “The intimidation of these NGOs formulates part of a wider, systemic attack on free speech and peaceful dissent. …. The severe curtailment of the abilities of citizens to exercise their fundamental freedoms has caused a chilling rise in self-censorship, illustrating that Cambodian’s feel unable or are unwilling to speak freely.”
Spokesman Siphan rejected that criticism. “I don’t condemn them… I invite them,” he said, rejecting allegations that he had pressured them. “I do not put pressure on them.”
Preap Kol, country director of Transparency International, had also been called for a meeting with Phay Siphan for comments he gave to the Southeast Asia Globe.
“Cambodia applies ‘free market economy’ ideology and, as far as I know, does not yet have a policy that ensures an equitable share of profit to local people,” Kol told the Southeast Asia Globe. “Therefore, the majority of Cambodian people, especially those who are poor or disadvantaged, are not ideally benefiting from the impressive economic growth.”
Kol excused himself, saying that he was out of the country currently.
Siphan said he would keep inviting Kol to meet.
Kol said the move to call him in for a meeting was unusual and a first-off. “I have never been invited to a meeting of this nature to clarify my comments in the media,” he said in a message to Voice of America from Sweden. “This appears to make people feel intimidated to speak to the media but this would not stop me from continuing to speak the truth… I am open to meet and discuss with any concerned as necessary, preferably in an environment that is free of intimidation and oppression.”
Living conditions have improved greatly since 2000 even for the world’s poorest people, but billions remain mired in “layers of inequality.”
That is the assessment from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s third annual report on progress toward U.N. Sustainable Development Goals – 17 measures that most countries have pledged to try to reach by 2030. Those efforts are falling short, says Bill Gates.
“As much progress as we’re making, a child in many countries still over 10% are dying before the age of five. And in richer countries it is less than 1%. So the idea that any place in the world is still 10%, some almost 15%, that’s outrageous, and it should galvanize us to do a better job,” Gates told VOA.
The 63-year-old Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist sat down with VOA at the foundation’s offices in advance of the report, which was released to coincide with the opening of the United Nations General Assembly.
This year’s report uses geography and gender as lenses for examining progress, particularly in terms of health and education.
It finds “an increasing concentration of high mortality and low educational attainment levels” in Africa’s Sahel region as well as in parts of Pakistan, Afghanistan and northern India. People in those regions experience “multiple deprivations, including some of the highest fertility rates in the world, high levels of stunting and low vaccine coverage,” the report says.
Disadvantages fall more heavily on women than on men. Girls generally get less formal education than boys; those in sub-Saharan Africa average two fewer years of education. And even when girls obtain a good education, they’re less likely to parlay it into paid work.
“Globally, there is a 26 percentage point gap between men’s and women’s labor force participation,” according to the report.
Monitoring progress on these fronts aligns with the Gates Foundation’s commitments, which include improving global health and aiding development in low-income countries. Since its start in 2000, the foundation has spent billions on efforts such as improving vaccines and nutrition, combatting malaria and other diseases, supporting innovative toilet designs to improve sanitation, and ensuring good data collection to identify problems.
As the news site Vox has pointed out, the Gates Foundation each year outspends the World Health Organization and most individual countries on global health. It has built the world’s largest trust — $46.8 billion as of December, according to its website.
That has led some to question philanthropy’s role in development.
“The billions of dollars available to Gates, Rockefeller and Wellcome might be spent with benevolent intent, but they confer extensive power. A power without much accountability,” Wellcome communications director Mark Henderson wrote last week in Inside Philanthropy, announcing that the London-based health charity – second in spending after Gates – would increase its transparency.
Israelis are voting Tuesday in general elections as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces a challenge from former military chief Benny Gantz.
Polls show Tuesday’s contest too close to call, with Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party tied with Gantz’s centrist Blue and White party, with neither predicted to win a majority of seats in the 120-member Knesset, Israel’s parliament. Ten parties could win seats in the legislature.
That could possibly leave Avigdor Lieberman, a former defense minister and one-time Netanyahu ally but now a rival, as the kingmaker to form a coalition government. Lieberman, the head of the Israel Beitenu party, could double his seats in parliament from five to 10. His campaign slogan is to “make Israel normal again,” a motto aimed at combating what he says is the undue influence of Israel’s ultra-Orthodox parties on political life in the country.
Netanyahu made a last-day nationalist campaign pitch Monday saying if he wins re-election, he would annex all the Jewish settlements in the West Bank over the protests of Palestinian leaders.
He told Israeli Army Radio, “I intend to extend sovereignty on all the settlements and the (settlement) blocs,” including “sites that have security importance or are important to Israel’s heritage.”
Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving leader, is facing his toughest political fight to win a record fifth term to stay in power even as he is confronting possible corruption charges. Israel is staging its second national vote in less than six months, with Netanyahu unable to cobble together a parliamentary majority to form a government after the April vote.
A man hangs up an Israeli flag at a polling station as Israelis begin to vote in a parliamentary election in Rosh Ha’ayin, Israel September 17, 2019.
Gantz has presented himself as an honorable alternative to Netanyahu.
“Blue and White under my leadership will change the direction of the ship of state of Israeli democracy,” he wrote in the Maariv newspaper. “No more instigating rifts in an attempt to divide and conquer, but rather quick action to form a unity government.”
In the run-up to the election, Netanyahu has tried to bolster his nationalist support, along with an assist from his long-time friend, U.S. President Donald Trump, who last weekend floated the possibility of a mutual defense pact between the decades-long allies.
Trump said such a treaty “would further anchor the tremendous alliance between our two countries.”
The U.S. also has another link to the Israeli election, with the Trump administration expected to release its long-delayed Israeli-Palestinian peace plan soon after the vote. The U.S. in June unveiled a $50 billion plan to boost Palestinian economic fortunes, but neither the Palestinians nor Israelis attended the announcement in Bahrain.
Netanyahu has made several campaign pledges in an attempt to win over nationalist voters. He vowed to annex the Jordan Valley, an area Palestinians consider as key farmland in any future Palestinian state. In protest, the Palestinian Authority held a cabinet meeting in the Jordan Valley village of Fasayil on Monday, a day after Israel’s Cabinet met elsewhere in the valley.
“The Jordan Valley is part of Palestinian lands and any settlement or annexation is illegal,” Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh said at the start of the meeting. “We will sue Israel in international courts for exploiting our land and we will continue our struggle against the occupation on the ground and in international forums.”
China and Russia clashed with the U.S. and other Security Council members Monday over China’s insistence on including a reference to Beijing’s $1 trillion “belt and road” global infrastructure program in a resolution on the U.N. political mission in Afghanistan.
The mission’s six-month mandate expires Tuesday and council members met behind closed doors for over 2 1/2 hours Monday, unable to agree on a text because of China’s demand.
Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia, the current council president, told reporters afterward that diplomats were working on a new text and “we’re in the process of reaching a compromise.”
He said the council would meet again late Tuesday morning in hopes of reaching unanimous agreement.
This is the second time in six months that the resolution to keep the U.N. political mission in Afghanistan operating has become embroiled in controversy over “belt and road” language.
Resolutions extending the mandate of the Afghan mission for a year in 2016, 2017 and 2018 had language welcoming and urging further efforts to strengthen regional economic cooperation involving Afghanistan, including through the huge “belt and road” initiative to link China to other parts of Asia as well as Europe and Africa.
But in March, when the mandate renewal came up, U.S. Deputy Ambassador Jonathan Cohen objected, saying Beijing was insisting on making the resolution “about Chinese national political priorities rather than the people of Afghanistan.”
He said the Trump administration opposed China’s demand “that the resolution highlight its belt and road initiative, despite its tenuous ties to Afghanistan and known problems with corruption, debt distress, environmental damage, and lack of transparency.”
FILE – China’s Deputy Permanent Representative Wu Haitao addresses the United Nations Security Council, Aug. 29, 2018, at U.N. headquarters.
China’s deputy ambassador, Wu Haitao, countered at the time that one council member — almost certainly referring to the U.S. — “poisoned the atmosphere.” He said the “belt and road” initiative was “conducive to Afghanistan’s reconstruction and economic development,” saying that since it was launched six years ago 123 countries and 29 international organizations had signed agreements with China on joint development programs.
The result of the standoff was that instead of a one-year mandate renewal for the Afghan mission, the mandate was renewed in March for just six months in a simple text, without any substance.
Ahead of this month’s mandate expiration, Germany and Indonesia drafted a substantive resolution that would extend the mandate for a year. It focused on U.N. support for an Afghan-led and Afghan-controlled peace process, U.N. assistance in the Sept. 28 presidential election and strong backing for Afghan security forces “in their fight against terrorism.” It made no reference to China’s “belt and road” initiative.
So China and close ally Russia circulated a rival draft resolution that removes all the substantive language and simply extends the mission for a year.
Council diplomats said after Monday’s meeting that China and Russia would likely veto the German-Indonesian draft resolution, and the China-Russia draft would fail to get the required nine “yes” votes. So diplomats were meeting Monday night to draft a new resolution.
South Africa’s U.N. ambassador, Jerry Matjila, said, “I think there is a chance of a compromise.”
A minority group of opposition parties in Venezuela agreed Monday to enter negotiations with President Nicolas Maduro’s government without the participation of U.S.-backed opposition leader Juan Guaido, eroding his efforts to hold together a coalition to confront the socialist administration.
The agreement was signed by representatives of several opposition parties alongside Maduro’s top aides in a nationally televised event attended by foreign diplomats.
It marks the first significant split in the anti-Maduro camp since Guaido, as head of the opposition-controlled congress, declared himself interim president in January, citing what was seen as Maduro’s fraudulent re-election last year. Guaido quickly drew recognition from the U.S. and more than 50 nations.
“Everyone who wants to join and sign this agreement is welcome,” Maduro said later Monday. “The starting point is to accept our difference and seek peace.”
Lawmaker Timoteo Zambrano, an opposition lawmaker who signed the agreement, was critical of the efforts led by the larger anti-Maduro parties. He didn’t directly mention Guaido.
Zambrano said he and the others seek to recover time lost due to the “ambition of some and the mistakes of us all.” He urged support from the international community.
“We ask the governments of the region and the world to listen, value and support this path,” Zambrano said.
The talks will focus on reforming Venezuela’s electoral board as well as finding a solution to the impasse caused by the creation of a pro-government constitutional assembly to rival the opposition-controlled congress.
At least four opposition leaders appeared on state TV to sign the agreement launching the negotiations, though they represent less than one-tenth of seats in the National Assembly. They wield far less power than parties like Guaido’s Popular Will, experts said.
Guaido appeared at a separate event Monday, saying he considered the announcement of sideline negotiations with the minority opposition parties a “maneuver” that Maduro’s government has employed before to split the opposition.
“We already know what the conclusion was,” Guaido told The Associated Press, noting that those attempts failed to reach solutions.
Guaido a day earlier said that negotiations with the government brokered by Norway had been exhausted, saying Maduro and his allies “have blocked a political solution” to the crisis by “refusing to discuss and agree on a sensible proposal.” Until recently, the talks held on the Caribbean island of Barbados had been seen as the best chance at resolving Venezuela’s crisis. Leaders in Oslo, however, said they left open the possibility of talks.
Despite Guaido’s brave face, some in the opposition acknowledged that by absorbing the attention the new dialogue attempt would muddle efforts both inside and outside Venezuela to secure Maduro’s removal.
Geoff Ramsey, a researcher at the Washington Office on Latin America think tank, said this division will complicate negotiations such as those in Barbados. Maduro will be able to claim he’s made meaningful concessions, while doing the bare minimum, Ramsey said.
FILE – Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro leads a rally condemning U.S. economic sanctions imposed on Venezuela, in Caracas, Aug. 10, 2019.
“The opposition formally announcing the end of talks provided the regime with an opening,” Ramsey said. “There are plenty of opportunists among the fringes of the opposition that are happy to steal the limelight.”
The international community will never endorse agreements from the new negotiations, he said, because democracies around the world have been denouncing Maduro’s government as illegitimate for the past eight months, and any deal that doesn’t lead to new presidential elections is going to be a “non-starter.”
Many of the same issues, such as reforming the electoral board, had also been raised by Guaido’s envoys in the Barbados talks. So the government can legitimately claim that it is at least partially addressing longstanding opposition demands.
Venezuelan Communications Minister Jorge Rodriguez said that agreements have already been reached on some issues. Both sides are working on an agenda to continue negotiations on further agreements, he said.
“We have not closed, nor will we close, any doors to any initiative that will allow Venezuelans to resolve our troubles,” Rodriguez said, urging other countries not to interfere. “These issues only concern us as Venezuelans.”
Rodriguez also said members of the ruling socialist party would soon return to the opposition-controlled National Assembly, having abandoned the body in 2016 and then forming their own legislative body.
Even with the defections by a few lawmakers representing the opposition parties who signed Monday’s accord, forces aligned with Guaido would still hold a solid congressional majority despite the arrest and exile of several lawmakers. Guaido is counting on a majority to thwart any attempts to have him removed as head of congress when his one-year term expires in January.
It remained to be seen how Guaido’s international backers would react. But there was no indication the U.S. — the first of some now 50 countries to recognize Guaido as Venezuela’s rightful leader — would ease pressure on Maduro.
