Estonian police said Wednesday they found the body of the former head of Danske Bank in Estonia who was at the center of a 200 billion-euro ($220 billion) money laundering scandal and had disappeared two days ago.
Police said Aivar Rehe, 56, went missing Monday, fueling speculation it might be related to the 2007-2015 money laundering scheme that had engulfed the Danish bank.
The executive was found Wednesday after a search involving dogs, drones and volunteers near his home in the capital, Tallinn.
Police had said earlier that no third parties were suspected in Rehe’s disappearance and suggested the possibility of a suicide. According to Estonian media, Rehe’s body was found in his house’s back yard and everything at the scene pointed toward death by suicide.
Rehe, who was head of Danske Bank in Estonia from 2006 to 2015, said in an interview with the Estonian newspaper Postimees in March that he feels responsible but also believes Danske Bank’s anti-money laundering mechanisms at that time were adequate.
Rehe wasn’t considered a suspect in the case. Prosecutor Marek Vahing of the Estonian state prosecutors’ office in charge of investigating the case in Tallinn told the Estonian public broadcaster ERR on Tuesday that Rehe was last questioned about a year ago, and said his disappearance wouldn’t affect the ongoing probe.
In 2018, ten former employees at Danske Bank’s Estonia branch were briefly detained and are currently being investigated in connection with the massive money laundering scandal – one of the largest of its kind ever in which dirty money mainly from Russia and former Soviet republics was channeled through its client accounts.
The ten Estonian employees are mainly Danske Bank client managers suspected of knowingly assisting large-scale money laundering that involved Azerbaijan and Georgia, two former Soviet republics.
The scandal has had far-reaching consequences for the Estonian financial sector, which has become dominated by Nordic banks, and led to major criminal probes in Denmark, France and the United States along with Estonia.
A 23-year-old law student who accused a leader of India’s governing party of sexual assault was arrested Wednesday on charges of extortion, police said.
Naveen Arora, a police officer handling the case, said the woman is accused of demanding nearly $700,000 from the lawmaker, Chinmayanand, who uses one name, and “was arrested from her residence and will be produced before a court.”
In August, the student accused Chinmayanand, a Bharatiya Janata Party leader and president of the college where she studies, of sexual assault, harassment and intimidation. She first mentioned his alleged harassment in a video clip posted on social media last month.
His lawyer has denied the allegations.
Chinmayanand, who was was arrested on Sept. 20, has been shifted from a jail to a hospital in Lucknow, the capital of the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, where he is being treated for cardiac problems.
The 72-year-old is a former minister from Uttar Pradesh and had previously faced charges in a rape case filed in 2011. Those charges were withdrawn in 2017.
The law student had said earlier that the case of extortion against her had been slapped to weaken her case against Chinmayanand.
The Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, has a checkered history of its leaders being accused of sexual assault. In August, lawmaker Kuldeep Singh Sengar was sacked from the party after being accused of raping a 17-year-old girl in 2017.
In January 2018, two BJP lawmakers attended protest rallies held by Hindu organizations defending the accused in the rape and murder of an 8-year-old inside a Hindu temple. It was only after a national uproar that the BJP made the two ministers resign.
A Zimbabwean doctor desperate to leave the country for medical treatment after his recent abduction has been blocked after police approached the High Court asserting he is “unfit to travel.”
The head of the Zimbabwe Hospital Doctors Association, Dr. Peter Magombeyi, was freed last week after disappearing for several days. His alleged abduction after leading a pay strike led to days of protests by health workers and expressions of concern by diplomats and rights groups, who said more than 50 government critics and activists in Zimbabwe have been abducted this year alone.
Peter Gabriel Magombeyi, acting president of the Zimbabwe Hospital Doctors Association, pictured in Harare in Sept. 3, 2019, had been reportedly abducted from his home over the weekend. (C. Mavhunga/VOA)
Police stopped Magombeyi from leaving for treatment in neighboring South Africa on Tuesday even after a judge ruled he could travel outside Zimbabwe as he is not under arrest. He has been recuperating in a local hospital, and lawyers have said preliminary medical assessments show possible physical harm and psychological trauma.
Magombeyi’s lawyers now say police are violating the court order, and they worry his condition will deteriorate as the drama plays out. The doctor must stay in Zimbabwe until the police application to the court is resolved.
Police dismissed accusations that they are preventing the doctor from traveling, saying they are providing him with protection “for his own personal safety.”
In the court application filed Tuesday night, police said Magombeyi should remain at the hospital until he is fit to travel, adding that they also want to sort out his security while in South Africa.
Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights, a non-governmental group helping the doctor, described the police assertions as “shocking.”
The government has bristled at the accusations of abductions, with President Emmerson Mnangagwa and other officials over the weekend warning against so-called “false” abductions they assert are meant to make the government look bad. Mnangagwa is attending the United Nations annual gathering of world leaders this week.
Zimbabwe’s health sector, like its economy, is in crisis. Many services are unavailable due to collapsed infrastructure, lack of medicines or unavailability of doctors and nurses who say they can no longer afford transport to return to work.
Due to climate change, the world’s oceans are getting warmer, rising higher, losing oxygen and becoming more acidic at an ever-faster pace and melting even more ice and snow, a grim international science assessment concludes.
But that’s nothing compared to what Wednesday’s special United Nations-affiliated oceans and ice report says is coming if global warming doesn’t slow down: three feet of sea rise by the end of the century, many fewer fish, weakening ocean currents, even less snow and ice, stronger and wetter hurricanes and nastier El Nino weather systems.
“The oceans and the icy parts of the world are in big trouble and that means we’re all in big trouble too,” said one of the report’s lead authors, Michael Oppenheimer, professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton University. “The changes are accelerating.”
These changes will not just hurt the 71% of the world covered by the oceans or the 10% covered in ice and snow, but it will harm people, plants, animals, food, societies, infrastructure and the global economy, according to the special report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The oceans absorb more than 90% of the excess heat from carbon pollution in the air, as well as much of the carbon dioxide itself. The seas warm more slowly than the air but trap the heat longer with bigger side effects — and the report links these waters with Earth’s snow and ice, called the cryosphere, because their futures are interconnected.
“The world’s oceans and cryosphere have been taking the heat for climate change for decades. The consequences for nature and humanity are sweeping and severe,” said Ko Barrett, vice chair of the IPCC and a deputy assistant administrator for research at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
—Seas are now rising at one-seventh of an inch (3.66 millimeters) a year, which is 2.5 times faster than the rate from 1900 to 1990.
—The world’s oceans have already lost 1% to 3% of the oxygen in their upper levels since 1970 and will lose more as warming continues.
—From 2006 to 2015, the ice melting from Greenland, Antarctica and the world’s mountain glaciers has accelerated and is now losing 720 billion tons (653 billion metric tons) of ice a year.
—Arctic June snow cover has shrunk more than half since 1967, down nearly 1 million square miles (2.5 million square kilometers).
—Arctic sea ice in September, the annual minimum, is down almost 13% per decade since 1979. This year’s low, reported Monday, tied for the second-lowest on record. If carbon pollution continues unabated, by the end of the century there will be a 10% to 35% chance each year that sea ice will disappear in the Arctic in September.
—Marine animals are likely to decrease 15%, and catches by fisheries in general are expected to decline 21% to 24% by the end of century because of climate change.
And for the first time, the international team of scientists is projecting that “some island nations are likely to become uninhabitable due to climate-related ocean and cryosphere change.”
“Climate change is already irreversible,” French climate scientist Valérie Masson-Delmotte, a report lead author, said in a Wednesday news conference in Monaco. “Due to the heat uptake in the ocean, we can’t go back. ”
But many of the worst-case projections in the report can still be avoided depending on how the world handles the emissions of heat-trapping gases, the report’s authors said.
The IPCC increased its projected end-of-century sea level rise in the worst-case scenario by nearly four inches (10 centimeters) from its 2013 projections because of the increased recent melting of ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica.
The new report projects that, under the business-as-usual scenario for carbon emissions, seas by the end of the century will rise between two feet (61 centimeters) and 43 inches (110 centimeters) with a most likely amount of 33 inches (84 centimeters). This is slightly less than the traditional 1 meter (39 inches) that scientists often use.
“Sea level continues to rise at an increasing rate,” the report said. “Extreme sea level events that are historically rare (once per century in the recent past) are projected to occur frequently (at least once per year) at many locations by 2050.”
And sea level will rise two to three times as much over the centuries to come if warming continues, so the world is looking at a “future that certainly looks completely different than what we currently have,” said report co-author Hans-Otto Portner, a German climate scientist.
The Nobel Prize-winning IPCC requires nations meeting this week in Monaco to unanimously approve the report, and because of that the group’s reports tend to show less sea level rise and smaller harms than other scientific studies, outside experts said.
“Like many of the past reports, this one is conservative in the projections, especially in how much ice can be lost in Greenland and Antarctica,” said NASA oceanographer Josh Willis, who studies Greenland ice melt and wasn’t part of the report. “We’re not done revising our sea level rise projections and we won’t be for a while.”
Willis said people should be prepared for a rise in sea levels to be twice these IPCC projections.
The oceans have become slightly more acidic, but that will accelerate with warming. In the worst case scenario, the world is looking at a “95% increase in total acidity of the oceans,” said study co-author Nathan Bindoff of the University of Tasmania.
Even if warming is limited to just another couple of tenths of a degree, the world’s warm water coral reefs will go extinct in some places and be dramatically different in others, the report said.
“We are already seeing the demise of the warm water coral reefs,” Portner said. “That is one of the strongest warning signals that we have available.”
The report gives projections based on different scenarios for emissions of heat-trapping carbon dioxide. One is a world that dramatically decreases carbon pollution — and the worst case is where little has been done. We are closer to the worst-case situation, scientists said.
Outside scientists praised the work but were disturbed by it.
“It is alarming to read such a thorough cataloging of all of the serious changes in the planet that we’re driving,” said Texas A&M University climate scientist Andrew Dessler, who wasn’t part of the report. “What’s particularly disturbing as a scientist is that virtually all of these changes were predicted years or decades ago.”
The report’s authors emphasized that it doesn’t doom Earth to this gloomy outlook.
“We indicate we have a choice. Whether we go into a grim future depends on the decisions that are being made,” Portner said. “We have a better future ahead of us once we make the right choice.”
“These far-reaching consequences can only be brought under control by acute emissions reductions,” Portner said.
German prosecutors dealt a blow to Volkswagen’s efforts to put the 2015 emissions-cheating case behind it, charging the automaker’s chief executive, chairman and former CEO with stock manipulation for not telling investors at the time that the scandal was about to break.
The charges announced Tuesday could pose a major distraction for CEO Herbert Diess as he pushes ahead with the company’s shift toward zero-emissions vehicles and a new, more environmentally friendly image.
FILE – Hans Dieter Poetsch, chairman of the board of directors of the Volkswagen car maker company, attends the annual shareholders meeting in Hanover, Germany, May 10, 2017.
Diess, Chairman Hans Dieter Poetsch and former CEO Martin Winterkorn were accused of deliberately informing markets too late about the huge costs to VW that would result from the scandal, which erupted when regulators discovered that millions of diesel cars had been fitted with software designed to thwart pollution tests.
Winterkorn was previously charged in the scandal itself. Poetsch and Diess had not faced charges until now.
Volkswagen called the new allegations “groundless” and threw its support behind Poetsch and Diess. But the case could require Diess to spend time on his defense at a crucial time for the company.
FILE – CEO of Volkswagen Herbert Diess introduces the new VW ID.3 at the IAA Auto Show in Frankfurt, Germany, Sept. 9, 2019.
Just days ago, Diess stood on stage at the Frankfurt Motor Show with the company’s new battery-powered vehicle, the ID.3, and showed off a new version of the VW logo to underscore the automaker’s transformation.
The new car is aimed at bringing zero-emissions driving to the masses. The vehicle is supposed to be carbon-dioxide neutral throughout its production chain.
Tido Park, a lawyer for Diess, told German news agency dpa that the indictment won’t prevent Diess from performing his duties as CEO.
It is not unprecedented for a German CEO to continue while fending off charges. Deutsche Bank’s Josef Ackermann had to spend two days a week in 2004 defending himself against breach-of-trust charges in connection with his duties as a board member at mobile phone company Mannesmann. He was acquitted.
Prosecutors said Winterkorn knew of the impending scandal and the potential financial damage since at least May 2015, Poetsch since late June of that year, and Diess since late July, less than a month after he became head of the company’s VW brand.
The scandal broke when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency went public with it in mid-September 2015. That led to a drop in the automaker’s stock.
The charges could bring up to five years in prison, authorities said.
FILE – Martin Winterkorn is seen prior a presentation at the IAA Frankfurt Auto Show in Frankfurt, Germany, Sept. 17, 2015.
Winterkorn resigned shortly after the scandal erupted. Poetsch was chief financial officer at the time and became chairman in late 2015. Winterkorn was succeeded as CEO by Matthias Mueller, who was then replaced by Diess in April 2018.
Volkswagen’s board said that based on expert legal advice, it had anticipated a negotiated settlement with the EPA and did not expect the agency to announce a violation. VW said that before the EPA announcement, “management had no concrete evidence that would have made immediate notification of the capital markets necessary.”
As a result, the board said, “the successful work with the chairman and the CEO should be continued.”
Ferdinand Dudenhoeffer, director of the Center for Automotive Research at the University of Duisburg-Essen, said the charges could be more of a concern for Poetsch, since he was finance chief, while Diess was “only indirectly involved.”
Volkswagen stock fell 1.9 percent after the news.
Illegal software
Volkswagen admitted installing software that turned on pollution controls when vehicles were being tested and switched them off during everyday driving. That made it look as if the cars met tough U.S. limits on pollutants known as nitrogen oxides.
In all, some 11 million cars worldwide were equipped with the illegal software.
The scandal has cost Volkswagen more than 30 billion euros ($33 billion) in fines, recall costs and civil settlements. The automaker apologized and pleaded guilty in the U.S., where two executives were sentenced to prison and six others, including Winterkorn, were charged, though they could not be extradited.
Separately, German prosecutors in April charged Winterkorn and four others with fraud in the emissions scandal. Prosecutors alleged that Winterkorn knew about the software since at least May 2015. Legal proceedings are still going on.
VOA Ukrainian service reporter Myroslava Gongadze contributed to this report
Democratic lawmakers are considering formally launching an impeachment investigation into President Donald Trump Tuesday, following news reports that he froze Congressionally-approved funding for Ukraine while pushing the country to investigate one of his political rivals.
Facing mounting pressure, the president pledged Wednesday to release the “complete, fully declassified and unredacted” transcript of his phone call with Ukraine’s leader that is at the center of a debate between Congress and the White House over a whistleblower complaint.
News reports had said Trump pressured Ukraine’s president to investigate leading Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, who served for years on the board of a Ukrainian gas company.
“You will see it was a very friendly and totally appropriate call. No pressure and, unlike (former Vice President) Joe Biden and his son, NO quid pro quo! This is nothing more than a continuation of the Greatest and most Destructive Witch Hunt of all time!,” Trump said on Twitter Tuesday.
VOA’s Ukrainian Service spoke to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky before his meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday at the United Nations General Assembly where he said, “We want the U.S. to always support Ukraine.”#UNGAhttps://t.co/aYiYjxY1H0pic.twitter.com/pLs6S3QBXX
Earlier he confirmed he had told his staff to withhold about $400 million in aid to Ukraine days before a phone call with the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
“As far as withholding funds, those funds were paid,” Trump said. “But my complaint has always been, and I’d withhold again and I’ll continue to withhold until such time as Europe and other nations contribute to Ukraine.”
Trump has insisted he did nothing wrong during the phone call but also acknowledged, “there was pressure put on with respect to Joe Biden. What Joe Biden did for his son, that’s something they should be looking at.”
Biden to call on Congress to impeach Trump
Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden puts on a Beau Biden Foundation hat while speaking at the Polk County Democrats Steak Fry, in Des Moines, Iowa, Sept. 21, 2019.
Shortly after Trump spoke Tuesday, Biden’s campaign said the former vice president planned to call on Congress to begin impeachment proceedings against Trump if his administration does not begin fully cooperating with ongoing congressional investigations and subpoenas.
Democratic Congressman and civil rights icon John Lewis also endorsed impeachment proceedings against Trump, telling colleagues on the House floor Tuesday he has been “patient while we have tried every other path” and warning “the future of our democracy is at stake.”
The leaders of three House of Representatives committees have demanded Secretary of State Mike Pompeo turn over all documents related to the call Trump made to Zelenskiy.
The Democratic chairmen of the House Foreign Affairs, Intelligence, and Oversight committees — Elliot Engel, Adam Schiff, and Elijah Cummings — set a Thursday deadline, the same day the intelligence committee is set to hear testimony from acting director national intelligence Joseph Maguire about the whistleblower complaint linked to the call.
Zelenskiy and Trump are scheduled to meet Wednesday on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly. Zelenskiy told VOA’s Ukrainian service Tuesday “we expect support from the U.S.” and “We just want the U.S. to always support Ukraine and Ukraine’s course in its fight against aggression and war.” Zelensky added “I think the meeting will be very warm.”
Sen. Chris Murphy told reporters Monday that he met several weeks ago with Zelenskiy, and that the Ukranian administration worried the aid cutoff “was a consequence for their unwillingness, at the time, to investigate the Bidens.”
“They were unwilling to conduct this investigation because there was no merit to it,” Murphy said.
‘Impeachable offense’
Also Monday, a group of first-term Democratic members of the House of Representatives with backgrounds in national security wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post saying if the allegations of Trump’s actions are true, the lawmakers believe they “represent an impeachable offense.”
The group includes Reps. Gil Cisneros, Jason Crow, Chrissy Houlahan, Elaine Luria, Mikie Sherrill, Elissa Slotkin and Abigail Spanberger.
Trump on Monday dismissed the Democratic drumbeat for impeachment, saying he does not take such threats “at all seriously.” He insisted his call with Zelenskiy was a “very nice call,” congratulating him on becoming Ukrainian president.
Trump said he could very easily release a transcript of the call, and the press would be disappointed. But he refused to commit to doing so, saying it would be a bad precedent.
Whistleblower
FILE – Retired Vice Adm. Joseph Maguire appears at a hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, July 25, 2018. President Donald Trump has named Maguire acting national intelligence director.
The controversy began last week when reports emerged that an unidentified whistleblower in the national intelligence community became alarmed about a series of actions inside the Trump administration. They include what is now known to be Trump’s telephone call with Zelenskiy.
This person contacted the intelligence inspector general, who called the complaint “serious” and “urgent.”
Maguire has refused to turn over the inspector’s report to Congress, which the law requires him to do.
As vice president under Barack Obama, Joe Biden went to Ukraine in 2016 and threatened to withhold billions of dollars in U.S. loan guarantees unless the government cracked down on corruption. Biden also demanded that Ukraine’s chief prosecutor Viktor Shokin be fired.
Shokin had previously investigated the gas company on which Hunter Biden served on the board. But the probe had been inactive for a year before Joe Biden’s visit. Hunter Biden has said he was not the target of any investigation and no evidence of any wrongdoing by the Bidens has surfaced.
WASHINGTON / PORT-AU-PRINCE – Businesses and schools were closed Tuesday in Port-au-Prince as Haiti’s private sector protests the insecurity and chaos that has overwhelmed the nation.
Meanwhile, AP photojournalist Dieu Nalio Chery is recovering from a bullet wound in his jaw that he sustained when a Haitian ruling party senator fired his gun in the parliament yard. A parliament security guard also sustained a bullet wound in the stomach. He is recovering after being treated at a nearby hospital.
Senator Ralph Fethiere pulled out his gun and fired when opposition supporters began yelling at him and approached him aggressively as he was getting into his vehicle.
Ruling party Senator Ralph Fethiere fires his gun outside parliament in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Sept. 23, 2019.
The senator, one of two ruling party lawmakers who were photographed with guns in hand Monday as members of the Senate gathered for a confirmation vote on Prime Minister designate Fritz William Michel, was not arrested. He issued a statement condemning the incident and defended his actions, claiming he was the victim.
“(I) vehemently blame certain ill-intentioned armed individuals who did not hesitate to open the door of (my) vehicle to physically aggress (me). The impact of the bullets on (my) car were duly noted by an officer of justice,” the statement said.
In an interview with local radio station Scoop FM, Senate Leader Carl Murat Cantave said he too was hit by supporters of opposition lawmakers at the parliament.
“Violence has no place in Haiti’s political process,” a spokesperson with the State Department Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs told VOA, “even as we recognize the importance of forming a government to address Haiti’s urgent priorities.”
Looting, attacks
The condemnation follows a day of looting and attacks after angry protesters took to the streets, reacting to news of the Senate shooting. The Banque de L’Union Haitienne (BUH) in the upscale suburb of Juvena was looted of rice, corn meal and other items stored on its upper level floors, then later set on fire.
FILE – Demonstrators chant anti-government slogans during a protest in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Sept. 20, 2019.
Haiti’s sports minister-designate told reporters she was carjacked as she left the Karibe hotel, also in Juvena, where Michel and members of his cabinet gathered to await news about the Senate vote. She was unharmed after leaving her car to the assailants and returning to the hotel.
Haiti has struggled to end chaos since March of this year, when Prime Minister Jean Henry Ceant was forced to resign in a no-confidence vote.
President Jovenel Moise’s current choice for the prime minister position is accused of corruption, prompting attempts by the opposition to block his confirmation vote by vandalizing parliament. While the lower chamber of deputies approved Michel’s nomination on Sept. 3, the Senate has tried and failed five times to approve him.
UNGA
Some observers question if the country’s current leaders are fit to lead.
Moise, who at first delayed a trip to New York to speak at the United Nations General Assembly, canceled his visit late Monday. He said Foreign Minister Bocchit Edmond would represent Haiti at the UNGA and deliver the speech in his stead.
The president has remained silent about protester demands and criticism, as well as the chaos and violence at the parliament.
The New York Times said it turned to the Irish government to rescue a reporter threatened with arrest in Egypt two years ago out of concern that the Trump administration wouldn’t help.
Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger revealed the incident during a speech at Brown University and in an op-ed published Tuesday. He criticized President Donald Trump for seeding a “worldwide assault on journalists and journalism” and said it’s time for the U.S. to again champion the rights of a free press.
There was no immediate response from the White House.
In August 2017, the Times was contacted by a U.S. government official who warned that Declan Walsh, a reporter based in Egypt, was going to be arrested, Sulzberger said. The Times magazine had just published Walsh’s story about Giulio Regini, an Italian student found dead in Cairo and the subject of a dispute between Italy and Egypt about whether the Egyptian government was involved.
The U.S. official who contacted the Times operated on the belief that the Trump administration would sit on the information and not help the reporter, Sulzberger said. The official feared being punished for alerting the Times.
Walsh, who is an Irish citizen, tweeted that he called the U.S. government press office in Cairo upon getting the warning and was directed to the Irish embassy. Within an hour, an Irish diplomat drove him to the airport and Walsh left for Europe. He has since returned to work in Egypt.
“I owe a belated thanks to (an) Irish diplomat who rushed to help in a tight spot,” Walsh said. “He was cool, swift and fearless.” He said he was also grateful to the Washington tipster.
Sulzberger said that 18 months later, Times reporter David Kirkpatrick was detained and deported in apparent retaliation for reporting information that embarrassed the Egyptian government. When the Times protested, an official at the U.S. embassy said, “What did you expect would happen to him? His reporting made the government look bad.”
For years, when sending reporters into dangerous situations, the Times always felt that the U.S. government, “the world’s greatest champion of the free press,” would have its back, the publisher said.
Now, the paper sees how Trump’s favorite descriptor of stories he doesn’t like, “fake news,” has spread to governments beyond the United States, he said.
“This is a worldwide assault on journalists and journalism,” Sulzberger said. “But even more important, it’s an assault on the public’s right to know, on core democratic values, on the concept of truth itself. And perhaps most troubling, the seeds of this campaign were planted right here.”
Sulzberger said he has raised his concerns directly with Trump, who “listened politely and expressed concern.” Still, the president has escalated his rhetoric against the press, he said.
The publisher took pains to say the Times wasn’t perfect. In fact, a series of mistakes the newspaper made last week in reporting on allegations against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh triggered some of the president’s most bitter attacks against it.
Sulzberger’s timing seemed pointed: His column was published on the day Trump was in New York to speak to world leaders gathered at the United Nations.
At the United Nations, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson came to the press’ defense during a news conference with Trump. After Reuters’ Jeff Mason asked Johnson to respond to critics who suggest he resign, Trump interjected that it was “a very nasty question.”
Johnson said, “I think he was asking a question, to be fair, that a lot of British reporters would have asked me.”
In his column, Sulzberger also said it’s time for others to stand up for the free press. He said Facebook, Twitter, Google and Apple have a “spotty at best” record of standing up to governments, have turned a blind eye to disinformation and permitted the suppression of real journalism.
“As they move even deeper into making, commissioning and distributing journalism, they also have a responsibility to start defending journalism,” he said.
Airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition fighting Yemen’s rebels on Tuesday killed at least 13 civilians, including children, when they hit a residential building in southern Dhale province, tribal leaders and health officials said.
The airstrikes in the district of Qataba also wounded at least 10 others, they said. The casualties were from two families.
The officials and tribal leaders said the area hit by the airstrikes is controlled by the rebels, known as Houthis, and is about 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the frontline of fighting with forces of the internationally recognized government of President Abed Rabu Mansour Hadi, backed by the Saudi-led coalition.
The rebels’ health ministry said at least 13 people, including six children and four women, were killed. Earlier on Tuesday the Houthi-run al-Masirah satellite TV put the death toll at 16.
A spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition did not answer phone calls seeking comment.
Elsewhere in Dhale, Houthi forces shot dead three people during a raid in the mountainous Awd area, the tribal leaders said.
Another four people were wounded and at least two dozen people were detained in the past three days for their criticism of Houthi rule, they said.
The health officials spoke on condition of anonymity ecause they were not authorized to brief the media, while the tribal leaders did so for fear of reprisals.
The Houthis said another Saudi-led coalition airstrike killed at least seven people, including children, on Monday in northwestern Amran province.
Tuesday’s airstrikes came four days after the Houthis said they were halting drone and missile attacks against Saudi Arabia, one week after they claimed responsibility for a strike that crippled a key oil facility in the kingdom. The U.S. and the Saudis blamed the Sept. 14 attack on Iran, which backs the Houthis. Iran denies any responsibility for the attack.
The Saudi-led coalition has been battling the Houthi rebels on behalf of an internationally recognized government since 2015.
The conflict has killed tens of thousands of people and sparked what the U.N. describes as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
Two dozen mainly European countries voiced concern Monday at alleged torture, unlawful detentions and unfair trials of critics, including women activists and journalists, in Saudi Arabia.
It was the second joint statement criticizing the kingdom read out at the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva in six months, following the first censure of Saudi Arabia at the forum in March.
FILE – A protester holds a poster with a picture of slain Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, outside Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, Oct. 25, 2018.
The new statement urged Saudi authorities to establish the truth about the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul in October and ensure the perpetrators were held to account.
Fifteen European Union members, including Britain and Germany, were among the signatories, as well as Canada, New Zealand, and Peru, diplomats said. France, Italy and Spain did not sign.
There was no immediate response from the Saudi delegation, which is among the U.N. rights council’s 47 member states but was absent when the statement was read out.
The kingdom has regularly denied allegations of torture and unfair detention.
The joint statement acknowledged Saudi reforms, including the announcement last month that restrictions on the rights of women to travel will be lifted.
“However, we remain deeply concerned at the human rights situation in Saudi Arabia. Civil society actors in Saudi Arabia still face persecution and intimidation,” Australia’s ambassador Sally Mansfield said, reading out the statement.
“We are concerned at reports of torture, arbitrary detention, enforced disappearances, unfair trials and harassment of individuals engaged in promoting and defending human rights, their families and colleagues,” she said.
Jailed activist
Lina al-Hathloul later appealed for the release of her sister Loujain, a prominent women’s rights activist who had campaigned for an end to a ban on women driving. Loujain was jailed in May 2018, weeks before the kingdom lifted the ban.
“She was eager to engage with the government to improve the rights of fellow women citizens. Yet instead of considering her as a partner they labeled her a traitor, tortured her,” Lina told the Geneva forum.
“I am here today despite the high risk of reprisals to Loujain, our family and myself to call on all states and this Council to demand the Saudi government immediately and unconditionally release my sister,” she said.
Jamal Khashoggi
Agnes Callamard, the U.N. expert on extrajudicial executions worldwide, said in a report last June that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and other senior officials should be investigated over Khashoggi’s murder given what she called credible evidence against them.
In Riyadh, a minister rejected the report at the time as having nothing new and containing “baseless allegations.”
The Saudi public prosecutor has indicted 11 suspects for the crime, including five who could face the death penalty.
The Trump administration is doing away with so-called “catch and release” for Central American immigrants who illegally cross into the United States.
Acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan announced the move Monday. He says it is part of the administration’s plans to ease what he calls the “pull factor” that attracts migrants to try to cross the border.
Except for some humanitarian and medical exceptions, McAleenan says immigrants who cannot successfully claim their lives would be in danger would be sent back to their home countries. Those who can prove a genuine fear would be returned to Mexico while their asylum requests are processed.
Under catch and release, border patrol agents who catch illegal migrants temporarily detain them until they are assigned a court date for an immigration hearing and then release them.
U.S. President Donald Trump has said only a small fraction of migrants show up for their hearings.
But the Justice Department says as many as 75% have kept their assigned court date.
U.S. President Donald Trump told Poland’s president he expected to announce Polish entry into the U.S. visa waiver program in coming weeks as the two held talks on defense, security, energy and other issues, the White House said on Monday.
Speaking as he began a meeting with Andrzej Duda, Trump also confirmed his plans to move an unspecified number of U.S. troops to Poland from elsewhere in Europe and said the Polish government had agreed to pay for building facilities for them.
In June, Trump pledged to Duda that he would deploy 1,000 U.S. troops to Poland, a step sought by Warsaw to deter potential aggression from Russia. Duda has previously said he is considering naming the planned U.S. installation “Fort Trump.”
Poland has long sought access to the State Department’s Visa Waiver Program under which most citizens of participating countries can travel to the United States for tourism or business for up to 90 days without obtaining a U.S. visa.
“President Trump informed President Duda that he expects to announce Poland’s entry into the Visa Waiver Program in the coming weeks,” the White House said in a brief statement about the talks on the sidelines of the annual U.N. General Assembly.
Trump, who canceled a trip to Poland for Labor Day weekend to deal with Hurricane Dorian, said he would reschedule it “fairly soon.”
It’s a 21st century space race: Amazon, SpaceX and others are competing to get into orbit and provide internet to the Earth’s most remote places.
And like the last century’s battle for space supremacy that was triggered by the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik 1, this one involves satellites. Thousands of them.
More than a dozen companies have asked U.S. regulators for permission to operate constellations of satellites that provide internet service. Not all are aimed at connecting consumers, but some have grand and global ambitions.
FILE – Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos speaks during a news conference at the National Press Club in Washington, Sept. 19, 2019.
“The goal here is broadband everywhere,” Amazon founder Jeff Bezos said at a conference in June.
With half the world’s population — more than 3 billion people — not using the internet, it’s a huge potential market. And there’s the obvious benefit on the ground: Not having internet access makes it difficult or impossible to apply for many jobs, for kids to do homework, for people in remote areas to get medical care, and to participate in the global economy.
But this new wave of spaced-based internet faces hurdles. It is expensive to launch, technologically complex and could prove too costly for the very people it hopes to reach.
And then there’s space junk. More on that in a moment.
Satellite systems
Satellite internet already exists, dominated by a handful of companies like HughesNet and Viasat that have huge, expensive satellites sitting 22,000 miles (35,000 kilometers) from Earth and covering big territories on the ground. But the service is expensive and limited, comes with data caps and lags, and doesn’t have many users.
The new satellites are smaller, cheaper, and closer to Earth, so theoretically signals travel faster and applications like online gaming that need instant responses would work better. And they have some heavyweight backers. In addition to Amazon and SpaceX — the company of eccentric billionaire and Tesla founder Elon Musk — the race has also been joined by OneWeb, which is backed by investors including Virgin founder Richard Branson, U.S. chipmaker Qualcomm and Japanese tech conglomerate SoftBank.
FILE – Tesla CEO Elon Musk speaks at the company’s design studio in Hawthorne, California, March 14, 2019.
But the industry is still in its infancy, and at least three years away from widespread commercial service, said Kerri Cahoy, professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT, and even further from making any money.
“I would be surprised if something were profitable in 10 years,” she said. There are also competing efforts at extending connectivity, including Google with its Loon balloons, which are solar-powered cell towers made of plastic sheets that float on the winds, and others working on solar-powered drones.
The satellite companies need to build dishes and antennas that are more complicated and costlier than those for traditional satellites that don’t move. SpaceX, for example, has filed for permission with U.S. regulators to build 1 million “earth stations” that would help connect customers to the internet.
There’s no way to have a viable mass service unless the cost of this type of equipment drops, said Caleb Williams, economic analyst at aerospace engineering company SpaceWorks Enterprises.
Launches have already been pushed back: OneWeb had once said it would be operating in Alaska this year. But service is now expected to start in late 2020.
The logistics of becoming an internet service provider also aren’t easy. The new crop of space-internet companies are more likely to set up arrangements with existing telecom companies than try to sell internet service directly, Williams said, because it’s easier than setting up a sales and marketing operation of their own.
Those same telecom companies don’t want to build in remote areas because it’s too expensive. A Federal Communications Commission official in 2017 estimated that extending fiber to the roughly 20 million U.S. homes and businesses that lacked broadband would cost $80 billion. And in developing countries, where the underlying infrastructure is worse, internet is primarily available through a cellphone.
The new satellite companies may have an infrastructure alternative that’s cheaper for companies to build than wires on the ground. A telecom company needs to pay to build out to a handful of customers in a large area, with huge per-customer costs. With satellite, costs can be shared out over a bigger pool of potential customers all over the world. A SpaceX executive in 2018 predicted that it would cost $10 billion to deploy a constellation of mini-satellites. Bezos predicted that Amazon’s satellite-internet arm will cost “multiple billions of dollars” to build.
Affordability
Making sure that people have access to internet is just one step to getting them online, however. People also need to be able to afford internet, and those in rural areas are more likely to be poor.
It’s not clear what the pricing will be but high costs swamped satellite phone service two decades ago. It could do so again with internet.
“If you would have to pay 20% or more of your income to go on the internet, in a situation where you make a few dollars per day, you don’t, because it’s too expensive,” said Martin Schaaper, an analyst at the United Nations’ information and communications technology agency.
Space junk
Then there are concerns about the growth of space junk, or “orbital debris,” which could crash into each other and even potentially set off a chain reaction of collisions that make orbit “no longer usable,” according to NASA.
SpaceX, for one, says it’s trying to avoid adding to the junk layer by moving satellites to avoid crashes and designing them to burn up in atmosphere when they’re used up. The space companies have laid out their plans to avoid debris with U.S. regulators, but critics say more needs to be done, like setting up an air traffic control system for space.
Iraqi security officials say at least two rockets have been fired into the capital’s fortified Green Zone, landing around one kilometer (a half-mile) from the U.S. Embassy.
Residents heard the explosions followed by alert sirens that sounded briefly Monday night.
The attack comes amid heightened tensions in the region following an attack on Saudi oil installations that the U.S. and Britain have blamed on Iran. There also has been a series of airstrikes on bases belonging to Iran-backed militias in Iraq that the militias have blamed on Israel.
The attack Monday night was the second since May, when a rocket was fired into the Green Zone, landing near the sprawling U.S. Embassy compound.
Officials said there was no word of casualties from Monday’s nights attack. They spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.
A powerful typhoon battered southern South Korea, injuring 26 people and knocking out power to about 27,790 houses, officials said Monday.
Typhoon Tapah earlier lashed parts of Japan’s southern islands with heavy rains and winds that caused flooding and some minor injuries.
South Korea’s interior ministry said Monday the typhoon also caused strong winds and heavy rainfall in southern South Korean cities and towns on Sunday and Monday. The storm did not make landfall on the peninsula as it moved northeast and weakened Monday.
The ministry said one person was hurt seriously and the 25 others had minor injuries. Some South Korean media had reported three deaths, but the ministry said none of those deaths was caused by the typhoon.
It flooded streets, damaged houses, and led to about 250 flight cancellations in 11 airports in South Korea, according to the ministry report.
South Korean weather officials said the typhoon likely caused light rain in eastern coastal towns in North Korea but won’t likely cause damage there.
Typhoon Tapah hit the southern Japanese island of Okinawa on Friday and Saturday and left 18 people with minor injuries. The storm disrupted air and train travel in the region during what is a three-day holiday weekend.
“Game of Thrones” resurrected the Iron Throne at Sunday’s Emmy ceremony, ruling as top drama on a night of surprises in which “Pose” star Billy Porter made history and the comedy series “Fleabag” led a British invasion that overturned expectations.
“This all started in the demented mind of George R.R. Martin,” said “Game of Thrones” producer David Benioff, thanking the author whose novels were the basis of HBO’s fantasy saga.
Porter, who stars in the FX drama set in the LGBTQ ball scene of the late 20th century, became the first openly gay man to win a best drama series acting Emmy.
“God bless you all. The category is love, you all, love. I’m so overjoyed and so overwhelmed to have lived to see this day,” said an exuberant Porter, resplendent in a sparkling suit and swooping hat.
Amazon’s “Fleabag,” a dark comedy about a dysfunctional woman, was honored as best comedy and earned top acting honors for its British creator and star, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, and a best director trophy.
Phoebe Waller-Bridge, winner of the awards for outstanding lead actress in a comedy series, outstanding comedy series and outstanding writing for a comedy series for “Fleabag.”
“This is getting ridiculous,” Waller-Bridge said in her third trip to the stage to collect the top trophy.
Her acting win blocked “Veep” star Julia Louis-Dreyfus from setting a record as the most-honored performer in Emmy history.
“Nooooo!” a shocked-looking Waller-Bridge said as Louis-Dreyfus smiled for the cameras. “Oh, my God, no. Thank you. I find acting really hard and really painful. But it’s all about this,” she said, her acting trophy firmly in hand.
In accepting the writing award earlier, she called the Emmy recognition proof that “a dirty, pervy, messed-up woman can make it to the Emmys.”
Porter, a Tony and Grammy Award winning actor, relished his groundbreaking moment, quoting the late writer James Baldwin, Porter said it took him many years to believe he has the right to exist.
“I have the right, you have the right, we all have the right,” he said.
English actress Jodie Comer was honored as best drama actress for “Killing Eve.” She competed with co-star Sandra Oh, who received a Golden Globe for her role and would have been the first actress of Asian descent to win an Emmy in the category.
“My mum and dad are in Liverpool (England) and I didn’t invite them because I didn’t think this was going to be my time. One, I’m sorry, two I love you,” Comer said after saluting Oh.
Bill Hader won his second consecutive best comedy actor award for the hitman comedy “Barry.”
Peter Dinklage, named best supporting actor for “Game of Thrones,” set a record for most wins for the same role, four, breaking a tie with Aaron Paul of “Breaking Bad.”
“I count myself so fortunate to be a member of a community that is about nothing but tolerance and diversity, because in no other place I could be standing on a stage like this,” said Dinklage, a little person.
“Ozark” star Julia Garner won the best supporting drama actress trophy.
The auditorium erupted in cheers when Jharrel Jerome of “When They See Us,” about the Central Park Five case, won the best actor award for a limited series movie.
“Most important, this is for the men that we know as the Exonerated Five,” said Jerome, naming the five wrongly convicted men who were in the audience. They stood and saluted the actor as the crowd applauded them.
It was the only honor for the acclaimed Netflix series of the evening; “Chernobyl” won the best limited series honor.
HBO retained its durable front-runner status, with a total of 34 awards from Sunday and last weekend’s creative arts ceremony.
Alex Borstein accepts the award for outstanding supporting actress in a comedy series for “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” at the 71st Primetime Emmy Awards on Sunday, Sept. 22, 2019, at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles.
But streaming hit new Emmy heights, powered by Amazon Prime winners “Fleabag,” “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” and a “Very English Scandal,” and Netflix’s “Bandersnatch (Black Mirror),” honored as best movie. Netflix collected 27 awards and Amazon nabbed 15.
Michelle Williams, honored as best actress for her portrayal of dancer Gwen Verdon in FX’s limited series “Fosse/Verdon,” issued a call to arms for gender and ethnic equality.
She thanked the network and studio behind the project for “supporting me completely and paying me equally because they understood … when you put value into a person, it empowers that person to get in touch with their own inherent value. And where do they put that value, they put it into their work.”
“And so the next time a woman and, especially a woman of color, because she stands to make 52 cents on the dollar compared to her white male counterpart, tells you what she needs in order to do her job, listen to her,” Williams said.
Patricia Arquette won the trophy best supporting limited-series or movie actress for “The Act.” She paid emotional tribute to her late trans sister, Alexis Arquette, and called for an end to prejudice against trans people, including in the workplace.
Ben Whishaw took the category’s supporting actor trophy for “A Very English Scandal,” admitting in charming British fashion to a hangover.
Alex Borstein and Tony Shalhoub of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” won best supporting acting awards at the ceremony, which included early and varied messages of female empowerment after the hostless ceremony.
“I want to dedicate this to the strength of a woman, to (series creator) Amy Sherman-Palladino, to every woman on the ‘Maisel’ cast and crew,” Borstein said, and to her mother and grandmother. Her grandmother survived because she was courageous enough to step out of a line that, Borstein intimated, would have led to her death at the hands of Nazi Germany.
“She stepped out of line. And for that, I am here and my children are here, so step out of line, ladies. Step out of line,” said Borstein, who won the award last year.
Shalhoub added to his three Emmys which he earned for his signature role in “Monk.”
The awards opened without a host as promised, with an early exchange pitting Ben Stiller against Bob Newhart.
“I’m still alive,” Newhart told Stiller, who introduced him as part of a wax museum comedy hall of fame that included Lucille Ball and George Burns.
Kim Kardashian West and Kendall Jenner drew some mocking laughter in the audience when they presented their award after Kardashian West said their family “knows firsthand how truly compelling television comes from real people just being themselves.”
An animated Homer made a brief appearance on stage until he was abruptly crushed, with Anderson of “black-ish” rushing in to, as he vowed, rescue the evening. He called “Breaking Bad” star Cranston on stage to tout the power of television from its beginning to the current golden age.
“Television has never been bigger. Television has never mattered more. And television has never been this damn good,” Cranston said.
British tour operator Thomas Cook collapsed after failing to secure rescue funding, and travel bookings for its more than 600,000 global vacationers were canceled early Monday.
The British government said the return of the firm’s 150,000 British customers now abroad would be its largest repatriation in peacetime history.
The Civil Aviation Authority said Thomas Cook has ceased trading, its four airlines will be grounded, and its 21,000 employees in 16 countries, including 9,000 in the UK, will be left unemployed.
The debt-laden company had said Friday it was seeking 200 million pounds ($250 million) to avoid going bust, was in talks with shareholders and creditors to stave off failure. The 178-year-old firm also operated around 600 UK stores.
CAA said it had arranged an aircraft fleet for the British repatriation effort lasting two weeks beginning Monday.
“Due to the significant scale of the situation, some disruption is inevitable, but the Civil Aviation Authority will endeavor to get people home as close as possible to their planned dates,” it said in a statement.
Most of Thomas Cook’s British customers are protected by the government-run travel insurance program, which makes sure vacationers can get home if a British-based tour operator goes under while they are abroad.
Thomas Cook, which began in 1841 with a one-day train excursion in England and now operates in 16 countries, has been struggling over the past few years. It only recently raised 900 million pounds ($1.12 billion), including from leading Chinese shareholder Fosun.
In May, the company reported a debt burden of 1.25 billion pounds and cautioned that political uncertainty related to Britain’s departure from the European Union had hurt demand for summer holiday travel. Heat waves over the past couple of summers in Europe have also led many people to stay at home, while higher fuel and hotel costs have weighed on the travel business.
The company’s troubles were already affecting those traveling under the Thomas Cook banner.
A British vacationer told BBC radio on Sunday that the Les Orangers beach resort in the Tunisian town of Hammamet, near Tunis, demanded that guests who were about to leave pay extra money for fear it wouldn’t be paid what it is owed by Thomas Cook.
Ryan Farmer, of Leicestershire, said many tourists refused the demand, since they had already paid Thomas Cook, so security guards shut the hotel’s gates and “were not allowing anyone to leave.”
It was like “being held hostage,” said Farmer, who is due to leave Tuesday. He said he would also refuse to pay if the hotel asked him.
The Associated Press called the hotel, as well as the British Embassy in Tunis, but no officials or managers were available for comment.
A group of prominent opposition Haitian senators sat outside the Senate doors early Sunday morning, a day when parliament is normally not in session.
“Over the weekend there were rumors that the Senate leader was organizing a special session Sunday. Such a vote would be considered out of the ordinary,” Senator Antonio Cheramy told VOA Creole. “We called around and tried to find out what was going on, but we’ve had absolute silence (from the Senate leader).”
Senator Cheramy said he and fellow opposition colleagues decided to stake out the Senate because they can’t allow such a vote to be held behind their backs.
Antonio Cheramy in front of the Senatè, on Sept 23, 2019 in Port au Prince, Haiti.
Around midday, Senate leader Carl Murat Cantave took to Twitter to deny the rumors and set the record straight.
“Contrary to the rumors that a ratification vote is planned for this Sunday, the vote to ratify PM designate @fritzwmichel and his government is planned for this Monday 23 September 2019 at 8:00 am,” Cantave said.
Contrairement aux rumeurs faisant croire que la séance de ratification était prévue pour ce dimanche, la séance de ratification du PM nommé @fritzwmichel et son gouvernement est fixée pour ce lundi 23 septembre 2019 à 8hrs am. 1/2#Haiti
He defended his intentions in a subsequent Tweet saying, “I promise you, whatever happens during the ratification vote, rest assured that I will take charge with courage, savor faire, and know-how to lead a difficult task which you, my fellow senators are depending on me to oversee.”
Je vous promets quelle que soit l’issue de la séance de ratification programmée, je prendrai ma charge avec courage, savoir-faire, savoir-être pour mener à bien la lourde tâche que vous, les sénateurs, m’avez confiée.#Haiti
Haiti has been without a prime minister since March when Prime Minister Jean Henry Ceant was forced to resign after a no-confidence vote.
Prime Minister designate, Fritz William Michel’s nomination was approved by the lower Chamber of Deputies on September 3. But the Senate failed to hold a vote to approve him last week after opposition senators, their supporters and activists vandalized the Senate ahead of the vote, breaking windows, displacing chairs and other furniture, creating a circus atmosphere in the room.
Haiti’s Prime Minister-designate Fritz William Michel, center, talks to his advisor Wilfrid Theodore, right, after his speech in the parliament, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Sept. 3, 2019.
Bribery allegations
Then came a bombshell accusation by opposition Senator Saurel Jacinthe that Senator Cantave came to his home to offer him $100,000 for a yes vote on Michel. He then alleged that the prime minister designate went to several other ruling party senators’ homes to offer them bribes in exchange for their yes votes.
Senator Cantave denied the allegation on Twitter: “For the sake of history and the truth, I never offered money to Senator #Saurel Jacinthe, who is delusional. I am a proud and arrogant man. If the senator has proof [photos or sound], may he show them? The nation can not take this drama.”
Pour l’histoire et la vérité, à aucun moment je n’ai offert de l’argent au Sénateur #Saurel Jacinthe qui est entrain de divaguer. Je suis un homme fier et arrogant.
Si le Sénateur a une preuve (images-sons) qu’il la montre. La nation ne peut plus vivre ces spectacles.#Haiti
Ruling party Senator Dieudonne Luma Etienne also denied the bribery allegation in an interview with VOA Creole. “I am the daughter of farmers. I’ve made many sacrifices. I have never chosen to make money the easy way. I’ve worked hard and struggled to make a name for myself in society. So there’s no way today I’d be willing to tarnish my reputation for something like this,” she said.
But two other senators admitted on local radio that they did accept the bribe.
Against the law
Bribery is illegal in Haiti, a semi-presidential republic. The president is the head of state, while the prime minister is the head of government. Although the president is a publicly elected official, the prime minister is nominated by the president and must be a member of the ruling party of the National Assembly. The prime minister-designate must be approved by both the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate before taking office. The prime minister oversees the Cabinet and assures it performs its duties in accordance with the law. He also, in concert with the president, oversees national defense matters.
Aside from the bribery allegation which roiled the nation, Michel’s nomination has been fraught with problems. Michel has been criticized for selling to the government 20,000 American goats at a cost of $325 a head. Critics say Michel has no experience with livestock and does not own a goat farm. The market price for goats in Haiti is $100. He is also accused of not having been legally discharged of his previous government duties, which, if true would disqualify him from being prime minister.
Opposition vigil
VOA Creole reporter Renan Toussaint interviews Opposition Senators (Left to Right), Antonio Cheramy, Ricard Pierre and Nenel Cassy who are camped out in front of the Senatè, Sept 23, 2019 in Port au Prince, Haiti.
Opposition lawmakers say in light of these problems, Michel should withdraw his nomination. He has refused to do so, and told VOA Creole he is confident his nomination will be approved.
“I am confident and I am ready to work with the Senate to present my platform so they can approve my nomination,” Michel said.
Meanwhile, opposition lawmakers vow to remain vigilant and say they plan on remaining at the parliament until the vote happens.
“We’ve decided to camp out here indefinitely,” opposition Senator Nenel Cassy told VOA Creole. “ We can’t afford not to be here at night and only be present during the day – so day and night – we will be permanently here until the Senate holds the vote.”
