Firefighters have made progress containing wind-driven wildfires in the western U.S. state of California that has claimed one life, destroyed or damaged dozens of structures, and forced the evacuation of tens of thousands of people.
Los Angeles Fire Department Captain Branden Silverman said Saturday morning the blaze in Los Angeles County, named the Saddleridge fire, had been 19-percent contained overnight, thanks to slightly cooler temperatures and lighter winds. The blaze damaged or destroyed at least 31 structures, including homes.
The fire, located in the San Fernando Valley in Northwestern Los Angeles County, was only 13-percent contained on Friday, after burning more than 3,000 hectares, officials said.
Authorities ordered mandatory evacuations Saturday of some 23,000 homes in an area covering about 100,000 residents.
The cause of the Saddleridge fire has not been determined, but investigators said they were following up on a report of flames from a power line when the fire started Thursday night.
To the east of the Saddleridge fire, another blaze swept through a Riverside County mobile home park, destroying dozens of homes. Authorities said that fire, which has burned about 330 hectares, had been 25 percent contained Saturday.
Flames from a backfire, lit by firefighters to stop the Saddleridge Fire from spreading, burn a hillside in Newhall, Calif., Oct. 11, 2019
Red flag warnings remain in effect until 6 p.m. local time Saturday, even though the dry Santa Ana winds from nearby mountains that fueled the fires have died down and were expected to continue to weaken throughout Saturday.
Officials said one man died of a heart attack while speaking with firefighters who were battling the Riverside fire early Friday.
In Northern California, electricity has been restored to 98-percent of the nearly 2 million customers who had their power cut off earlier this week by Pacific Gas & Electric in an effort to prevent wildfires.
California Governor Gavin Newsom declared emergencies Friday for Los Angeles and Riverside counties because of the fires. The governor’s office said it has received a federal grant to help with firefighting costs.
More than 1,000 firefighters from numerous departments were battling the fires from the air and ground.
Human rights organizations say they are preparing for a long-lasting displacement of civilians in northeastern Syria as a result of a military operation by Turkey and its aligned Syrian militants against the U.S.-allied Syrian Democratic Forces.
The new Turkish offensive into Syria on Wednesday started after U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision Sunday to withdraw U.S. troops from the region.
As the Turkish government on Thursday said its military pushed deeper into the region in its operation, humanitarian agency Care International told VOA that approximately 90,000 people have become internally displaced since its beginning on Wednesday.
“Following the launch of a new military operation in the area, civilians in northeast Syria are at high risk,” said Fatima Azzeh, the senior regional communications manager for the Syria crisis at Care International.
“Reports from responders on the ground say civilians are already on the move and some vital services, such as medical facilities and water supplies, have been interrupted,” Azzeh said, adding that thousands more civilians are expected to leave the area in coming days.
Syrian refugees and relatives of nine-month-old baby, Mohammed Omar, killed in a mortar attack a day earlier in Akcakale near northern Syria, leaves after funeral ceremony in Akcakale on October 11, 2019.
The new wave of violence has forced several aid agencies to ask their staffs to evacuate the area with their families.
“This would cause further vulnerability and increased reliance on humanitarian aid, which the international community is not in a position to provide,” she said.
Turkish officials say their military operation, code named Operation Peace Spring, is to pursue a Kurdish armed group known as the Peoples’ Protection Units or the YPG. Turkey considers the YPG a terrorist organization — alleging that the group is linked to Kurdish separatists inside Turkey, known as the PKK.
The United States, however, considers the YPG a key ally, and it became the main local ground force to remove Islamic State (IS) from a wide range of Syrian territory, including the self-proclaimed IS capital, Raqqa.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that in addition to pursuing YPG fighters, his government in northern Syria will take charge of nearly 10,000 IS fighters who are currently held in Kurdish prisons and establish a safe zone to return millions of Syrian refugees from Turkey.
Warning to Europe
Responding to a demand by the European Union to cease the offensive, Erdogan on Thursday threatened to open Turkey’s door to allow the Syrian refugees to flood Europe.
“Hey, European Union, pull yourself together. If you try to label this operation as an occupation, it is very simple: we will open the gates and send 3.6 million refugees your way,” Erdogan said in a speech to ruling party officials in Ankara.
Kurds consider Turkey’s refugee transfer plan an attempt to change the demographic balance of the region by moving large numbers of Sunni Arab Syrians into a traditionally Kurdish heartland.
The conflict in Syria broke out in 2011 following a popular uprising against President Bashar al-Assad’s government. The United Nations estimates nearly half of Syria’s population has been displaced, with an estimated 6.6 million refugees fleeing the country.
An armored vehicle escorts a Turkish military convoy in the border town of Akcakale in Sanliurfa province, Turkey, October 12, 2019. REUTERS/Murad Sezer
Demographic shifts, displacements
The U.N. Commission of Inquiry on Syria, in a statement Thursday, said Turkey’s scale-up of the operation in northeast Syria also could cause mass displacement of vulnerable populations that already have been displaced multiple times by conflict and live in camps. It warned that the campaign could lead to insecurity and chaos, which could create circumstances for the resurgence of IS.
“The last thing Syrians need now is a new wave of violence,” the commission said.
Amnesty International told VOA that roughly 700,000 people within the region have fled war from other Syrian areas and depend on U.N. aid and assistance from other humanitarian organizations for their basic needs. Another million local residents could be gravely affected by the conflict.
“When [Islamic State] took over large swaths of Syria and sent many religious minority communities from other parts of Syria, and in addition to tens of thousands of just regular civilians who were terrified of living under ISIS, they fled into this part of Syria feeling like it was a safe area for them to be in,” said Philippe Nassif, the human rights group’s advocacy director for the Middle East and North Africa.
“So, what’s happening is with the Turkish incursion you’ve got a very large population of internally displaced people and civilians that were already living in this part of Syria, many of them Kurdish, who are now beginning to flee the currently ongoing Turkish intervention,” Nassif told VOA.
Even after Turkey’s operation, Nassif charged that a second phase of humanitarian crisis likely will unfold as the Turkish government tries to implement its so-called safe zone. “You’re going to eventually see this idea of Turkey sending a whole bunch of Syrian refugees from Turkey and resettling them into these newly captured areas.”
“Assuming that happens, they’re going to need humanitarian support and assistance as well. So, you have a second crisis in the future that will result from the current crisis that we’re experiencing right now,” he added.
Arab League foreign ministers condemned Turkey’s military incursion into northern Syria. The League’s secretary general, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, said the group is calling on the U.N. Security Council to take action against Turkey.
At a meeting Saturday in Cairo, Arab League Secretary General Ahmed Aboul Gheit called Turkey’s military action an “invasion” and an “aggression” against an Arab state.
He said the Arab League “condemns the invasion and that the world must not accept it, either, since it contradicts international norms and international law, no matter what pretext the invader uses.”
Iraqi Foreign Minister Mohammed Ali Hakim, who presided over the session, said the Turkish “invasion” would cause a further deterioration of the situation in Syria and a worsening of terrorism both in Syria and neighboring states, like Iraq.
He said Turkey’s action represents a dangerous escalation that will worsen the humanitarian situation and increase the suffering of the Syrian people, in addition to allowing terrorists to regroup and weakening international efforts to fight terrorist groups, especially the Islamic State terror group, which threatens both the region and world.
An explosion is seen over the Syrian town of Ras al-Ain, as seen from the Turkish border town of Ceylanpinar, Sanliurfa province, Turkey, Oct. 12, 2019.
The United Arab Emirate’s minister of state for foreign affairs, Anwar Ghargash, also blasted what he called “Turkey’s blatant aggression” against Syria and urged the international community to condemn it.
Ghargash said the Arab League is meeting at a time when the entire Arab nation is facing unprecedented threats and the region is facing a period of extreme danger, which requires a carefully thought out response, as some regional parties are behaving compulsively without consideration for the unity or sovereignty of a fraternal Arab state.
“Turkey’s naked military aggression on northeast Syria,” he said,”represents a threat to the sovereignty of all Arab states and exploits chaos in the country to flout all international norms and destabilize the region.”
Egyptian state TV didn’t broadcast the statement of Qatar’s foreign minister, but Arab media reported that Qatar refused to endorse the Arab League decision to condemn the Turkish military operation. Qatar and Turkey have kept close ties since Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Bahrain imposed an economic boycott against Doha in June of 2018, for what they say is its support for terrorism.
Egyptian political sociologist Said Sadek told VOA the Arab League should have taken “stronger steps like economic sanctions” to punish Turkey for its aggression. “Turkey is an imperialist regional power with a long history of massacres in the area.”
Dr. Paul Sullivan, a professor at the U.S. National Defense University, agrees with Sadek, saying, “The Turkish invasion has been condemned by most Arab states, [but] that condemnation needs to be followed up by actions to prevent bad things from happening,” such as the “release of ISIS prisoners” and “ethnic cleansing in northern Syria. Operation ‘peace spring’ is not peace,” he says, “and it will not bring springtime to Syria.”
Theodore Karasik, a Washington-based Mideast analyst, insisted that we are “witnessing a shift in the landscape in the Arab world regarding this [Turkish] military action. Arab opinion,” he argues, “is steeped in the ills of the Ottoman Empire and how Erdogan’s actions fit the description.”
The United States has hailed FIFA, soccer’s world governing body, for slapping a five-year ban on a former senior official of the Afghanistan Football Federation (AFF) for failing to act on sexual abuse allegations brought by the country’s female players.
“Survivors of sexual abuse deserve justice & we look to Afghan authorities to ensure accused officials are held accountable,” Alice Wells, acting U.S. assistant secretary for south and central Asia, tweeted Saturday.
We welcome @FIFAcom’s Ethics Committee’s suspension of an official who failed to act on allegations brought by the @AfghanistanWNT. Survivors of sexual abuse deserve justice & we look to Afghan authorities to ensure accused officials are held accountable. AGW
FIFA announced a day earlier its ongoing investigation into complaints, lodged by several female Afghan football players, has found Sayed Aghazada, the former AFF general secretary, guilty of breaching the world body’s code of ethics.
The complainants accused the former AFF president, Keramuudin Karim, of “repeated” sexual abuse between 2013 and 2018 when Aghazada was the general secretary. The players went public with the allegations last year, prompting FIFA to investigate and ban Karim for life in June. It also imposed a $1 million penalty on the former AFF president.
FIFA said Friday that Aghazada was aware of the abuse and had the duty to report and prevent it. Consequently, he has been banned from all football-related activity at both national and international level for five years. A financial penalty of about $10,000 was also imposed on him.
Aghazada was also serving as a member of the FIFA standing committee and as Asian Football Confederation (AFC) executive committee.
Thousands of Chinese basketball fans cheered on the Los Angeles Lakers and Brooklyn Nets at an NBA exhibition game in the city of Shenzhen on Saturday night – but some warned the organization to stay out of politics.
Daryl Morey, general manager of another team, the Houston Rockets, voiced support for pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong in a tweet last week, prompting Chinese sponsors and partners to cut ties with the NBA.
China is estimated to be worth more than $4 billion for the NBA, so the stakes are high.
Outside the arena on Saturday, some protesters waved Chinese flags and others held admonitory red signs. “Morey must apologize to China,” read one. Another said: “Violations of national sovereignty will not be tolerated”.
China has accused the West of stirring up anti-Beijing sentiment in Hong Kong, where large and at times violent anti-government protesters have gained momentum over the past four months.
State media characterized Morey’s tweet – which read “Fight for Freedom. Stand with Hong Kong” – as meddling in China’s affairs. NBA Commissioner Adam Silver defended it on Tuesday, further angering Beijing.
A 20-year-old Chinese university student at Saturday’s game, who would only give his English name, Andy, was unfazed by the controversy and blamed foreign media for stirring things up.
“Sport is a pure thing and I’m not going to stop going because Morey spoke about things he doesn’t understand,” he said.
“If the NBA became harmful to China’s interests, we would reject it. But this wouldn’t be such a big deal if you foreign media would shut up about it.”
The protests in the former British colony began in opposition to a bill allowing extradition to mainland China but have since evolved into broader calls for democracy.
Hong Kong returned to China in 1997 under a “one country, two systems” formula guaranteeing it wide-ranging autonomy.
One man with a sign in Chinese saying “NBA get out of China” had it ripped up by police.
“Take care of your safety and belongings, please don’t display any banners or signs inside,” organizers broadcast as people entered.
As game time approached, Phoebe, a 22-year-old chemistry student in a Lakers jersey, said she would not have come if she didn’t already have a ticket. “The U.S. needs to understand it can’t meddle in other country’s politics. If the NBA does this again I’d rather it would leave the country.”
Jin, a 26-year-old property manager who came across the border from Hong Kong with a friend to attend the game, felt a bit nervous. Asked if he had considered not coming because of the controversy, he paused as police strolled by.
“Well, it’s the Lakers and the Nets, they’ve got strong lineups this year, so…”
A federal judge in New York on Friday temporarily blocked President Donald Trump from implementing a plan to deny green cards to many immigrants who use Medicaid, food stamps and other government benefits.
U.S. District Judge George Daniels’ ruling came just four days before the Trump administration was set to start enforcing new rules that would disqualify immigrants from getting legal U.S. residency if they were likely to become a burden on public welfare programs.
In his ruling, Daniels said Trump was redefining immigration rules that had stood since the late 1800s with a new framework that had “no logic.”
Allowing the policy to go into effect now, he said, would have a significant impact on “law-abiding residents who have come to this country to seek a better life.”
“Overnight, the rule will expose individuals to economic insecurity, health instability, denial of their path to citizenship and potential deportation,” Daniels wrote. “It is a rule that will punish individuals for their receipt of benefits provided by our government, and discourages them from lawfully receiving available assistance intended to aid them in becoming contributing members of society.”
Ruling in California
Almost simultaneously, a federal judge in California also blocked the policy from taking effect, but that order was more geographically limited to states involved in the case: California, Oregon, Maine and Pennsylvania, plus the District of Columbia.
The U.S. Justice Department, which was defending the administration’s policy in court, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the ruling.
The lawsuit in New York is one of several legal challenges nationwide to one of Trump’s most aggressive steps to cut legal immigration. Immigration advocates say the rule changes are discriminatory because they would deny legal residency and visas to immigrants who don’t have money. The Trump administration has said the rules would ensure that immigrants who are granted residency are self-sufficient.
FILE – An Immigration and Customs Enforcement official assists people waiting to enter immigration court in Atlanta, June 12, 2019.
Federal law already requires immigrants seeking to become permanent U.S. residents to prove they will not be a burden on the country — a “public charge,” in legal terms —but the new rules detail a broader range of programs that could disqualify applicants.
The policy is central to Trump’s longtime goal to slash legal immigration and gear it more for people with employment skills instead of toward family members. Those ideas were part of his pitch for an overhaul of immigration laws during his first year in office, but negotiations faltered in Congress.
On average, 544,000 people apply for green cards every year, with about 382,000 falling into categories that would be subject to the new review, according to the government. Guidelines in use since 1999 refer to a “public charge” as someone primarily dependent on cash assistance, income maintenance or government support.
‘More likely than not’
Under the new rules, the Department of Homeland Security has redefined a public charge as someone who is “more likely than not” to receive public benefits for more than 12 months within a 36-month period. If someone uses two benefits, that is counted as two months.
And the definition has been broadened to include Medicaid, housing assistance and food assistance under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.
Factors like immigrants’ age, employment status and English-language ability would also be looked at to determine whether they could become public burdens in the future.
Critics say the rule changes are discriminatory and would have the effect of barring immigrants with lower incomes in favor of those with wealth. The government has said the rule changes would ensure that those gaining legal residency status are self-sufficient.
Rate of using benefits
Immigrants make up a small portion of those getting public benefits, because their legal status often makes them ineligible. An Associated Press analysis of census data shows that non-citizen immigrants with low incomes have a lower rate of using Medicaid, food aid, cash assistance and Supplemental Security Income than their native-born counterparts.
For Medicaid, non-citizen immigrants are only 6.5% of participants, while more than 87% are native-born. For food assistance, immigrants are 8.8% of recipients, with over 85% of participants being native-born.
Earlier this month, Trump issued a presidential proclamation saying immigrants would be barred from entering the country unless they were to be covered by health insurance within 30 days of entering or had enough financial resources to pay for any medical costs. The measure will be effective Nov. 3. The Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, said the measure could prohibit the entry of about 375,000 people a year, mainly family members who account for a majority of people getting green cards from abroad.
Shepard Smith, whose newscast on Fox News Channel seemed increasingly an outlier on a network dominated by supporters of President Trump, abruptly quit after working at Fox since it started in 1996.
Smith said at the end of his daily newscast on Friday that he had asked the network to let him out of his contract and it had agreed.
Even in the current polarized environment, Smith said, “it’s my hope that the facts will win the day, that the facts will always matter and journalism and journalists will thrive.”
Neil Cavuto, who anchors the broadcast following Smith’s, looked shocked after the announcement.
“Whoa,” Cavuto said. “Like you, I’m a little stunned.”
Smith’s departure also comes one day after Attorney General William Barr met privately with media mogul Rupert Murdoch, founder of Fox News. President Trump has been increasingly critical of personalities on Fox News that he views as disloyal.
On his afternoon newscast, Smith had frequently given tough reports debunking statements made by Trump and his supporters — even the Fox News opinion hosts that rule the network’s prime-time lineup.
Two weeks ago, Smith clashed with Tucker Carlson when an analyst on Smith’s program, Andrew Napolitano, said that it was a crime for President Trump to solicit aid for his campaign from a foreign government, in this case the Ukraine. Later that night, Carlson asked his own analyst, Joseph diGenova, to comment and he called Napolitano a fool.
The next day, Smith said that “attacking our colleague who is here to offer legal assessments, on our air, in our work home, is repugnant.”
Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg has lost his title as chairman of the troubled aircraft manufacturer, nearly a year after the first of two crashes of its 737 Max that together killed 346 people.
Boeing announced late Friday that company directors decided to separate the two jobs and elected one of their own, David L. Calhoun, to serve as non-executive chairman.
Earlier on Friday, a panel of international aviation regulators issued a report critical of Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration over how the Max was approved to fly. The group said Boeing failed to adequately inform the FAA about changes to a key flight-control system implicated in the accidents.
Muilenburg said in a statement that he supported splitting the CEO and chairman jobs.
“The board has full confidence in Dennis as CEO and believes this division of labor will enable maximum focus on running the business with the board playing an active oversight role,” Calhoun said in a statement issued by the company.
Board rejects resolution
The board in April opposed a shareholder resolution to split the jobs amid criticism over Boeing’s response to the accidents. The measure was rejected by a 2-to-1 margin.
The Max was Boeing’s best-selling plane until being grounded worldwide in March after the crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia. The company has set aside billions compensate airlines affected by the grounding.
The Justice Department and Congress are investigating the company, which also faces dozens of lawsuits by families of passengers who died in the crashes.
Muilenburg is scheduled to testify Oct. 30 before a House committee looking into the plane’s certification.
Software fixes aren’t complete
Boeing was initially optimistic that the Max could return to flight this spring, but work to fix flight software took longer than expected. In June, FAA test pilots discovered another problem in the plane’s computers, extending the grounding.
Muilenburg said recently that Boeing expected the plane to be back in service by early in the fourth quarter, but the company still hasn’t formally submitted its fixes to regulators. U.S. airlines don’t expect the plane back until at least January, and it could be longer in other countries.
Chicago-based Boeing is one of two companies that dominate the building of large airliners; Europe’s Airbus is the other. Boeing is also a major defense contractor. It has more than 150,000 employees.
VOA Persian’s Ali Javanmardi contributed to this report from Irbil.
Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces say Turkey’s three-day-old offensive in northern Syria aimed at clearing a border zone of Kurdish forces has displaced more than 10,000 people from their homes.
SDF spokesman Mustafa Bali provided the estimate of displaced people in a Friday interview with VOA Persian from his base in the northern Syrian town of Qamishli, adjacent to the Turkish border.
The U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) gave a much higher estimate of 100,000 people having fled their homes by Friday, with most seeking shelter in the northern Syrian towns of Al-Hasakah and Tal Tamer.
Displaced Syrians sit in the back of a pickup truck as Arab and Kurdish civilians flee amid Turkey’s military assault on Kurdish-controlled areas in northeastern Syria, Oct. 11, 2019, in the Syrian border town of Tal Abyad.
“The Turkish offensive is not aimed only at the Kurds,” Bali said. “It is against all Syrian groups in the region, including Christians and Arab Muslims.” He said Turkish bombardments had cut off water supplies in several Syrian towns near the Turkish border. OCHA said a water station in Al-Hasakah servicing about 400,000 people was out of action.
Buffer zone sought
Ankara launched the cross-border operation on Wednesday, saying it wanted to clear a buffer zone in northern Syria of Syrian Kurdish forces, whom it sees as terrorist allies of Kurdish separatists in Turkey.
Turkey reported its first military fatality three days into its incursion into Syria. The defense ministry said three other soldiers were wounded, without giving details. Civilian casualties also were reported in the Turkish-Syrian border region.
NATO urged Turkey, an alliance member, to exercise restraint.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg acknowledged Turkey’s legitimate security concerns about the Syrian Kurdish fighters but warned that the offensive could “jeopardize” progress made against the Islamic State terror group that previously held territory in northern Syria.
Turkey expects NATO support
Stoltenberg spoke at a news conference in Istanbul with Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu. Cavusoglu said Turkey expected solidarity from NATO against the threats it faces.
Explosions were reported in the northern Syrian border towns of Ras al-Ayn and Tal Abyad on Friday as the Turkish military offensive continued.
“I am very concerned by reports of civilian casualties on both sides of the border, and of large numbers of people moving inside Syria in the hope of avoiding the fighting,” said Mark Lowcock, U.N. undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator. He made the comments in a statement published Friday, the second day of a two-day visit to Ankara and the Turkish-Syrian border.
FILE – Mark Lowcock, U.N. undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, is pictured in Berlin, Sept. 3, 2018.
“I reiterate what the secretary-general of the United Nations has said: that we urge all parties to exercise restraint, to act in line with their obligations under the U.N. charter and international humanitarian law, to respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Syria, and in particular to protect civilians and civilian infrastructure,” Lowcock said.
Speaking to VOA Persian, SDF spokesman Bali said people in northern Syria were “frustrated and disappointed” that President Donald Trump withdrew dozens of U.S. troops that had been stationed in northern Syria earlier this week, shortly before Turkey launched the offensive. The troops were part of a U.S. military deployment that has partnered with the SDF in the fight against IS.
“The United States didn’t stop the Turks from doing this offensive,” Bali said.
Trump has said he pulled out the U.S. troops because they had defeated IS and he did not want them to be caught up in an offensive that Ankara long had threatened to carry out against Syrian Kurdish forces. His administration has strongly criticized the Turkish offensive and denied green-lighting it.
The lights were back on Friday for many of the nearly 2 million Northern California residents who lost electricity when the state’s largest utility switched it off this week in an effort to prevent wildfires, as the first death linked to the outages was reported — a man who relied on oxygen.
The threat of widespread outages loomed in Southern California after the winds moved to the Los Angeles area, where a wildfire fueled by strong Santa Ana winds prompted officials to order the evacuation of 100,000 people from their homes in the foothills of the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles County.
In that fire, one man went into cardiac arrest and died at the scene.
Pacific Gas & Electric Co. restored power in Northern California after workers inspected power lines to make sure it was safe to do so. The winds had increased the possibility of transmission lines toppling to the ground and starting wildfires.
The utility said 543,000 Northern California businesses and residences got their power back — but that nearly 195,000 customers were still in the dark. More than half of those who lost power in the San Francisco Bay Area had it again on Friday. The city itself was not subject to the preventive outages. Experts have said there are between two and three people for every electrical customer.
El Dorado County officials on Friday said a man dependent on oxygen died about 12 minutes after PG&E cut off power this week. Marie Aldea of Pollock Pines said her 67-year-old father Robert Mardis Sr. was asleep when the electricity went out around 3:30 a.m. Wednesday and likely couldn’t wake up in time to get his back up machine, which ran on battery.
“We were all asleep, we heard my mom scream. She was crying,” she told KTXL-TV in Sacramento . “My dad went down in her arms, he was going for this oxygen machine.”
Aldea said her father’s health was poor, but she doesn’t understand why the utility turned off the power.
“No winds at all. And because of that, my father is gone,” she said.
PG&E spokesman Jeff Smith said the utility has not been able to confirm the report.
“It’s devastating beyond words,” said Gov. Gavin Newsom. “Losing a family member is horrific and to the extent this was the reason why I hope that is investigated and I hope those responsible are held to account.”
The death was first reported by the Mountain Democrat in Placerville.
Some people in the largely rural Butte, Plumas and Yuba counties and in Northern California’s wine country counties were in their third day without electricity.
Butte County is where a fire started by PG&E equipment last year decimated the town of Paradise and killed 85 people. In Napa and Sonoma counties north of San Francisco, the outages began on the two-year anniversary of deadly wildfires that killed 44 and destroyed thousands of homes.
PG&E said in a statement that employees located 11 spots where parts of its systems were damaged during the strong winds, but Smith said he could not provide damage details. That information will be in a state-mandated report the utility must give regulators within 10 business days after the outage ends.
PG&E faced hostility and second-guessing over the shut-offs, which prompted runs on supplies like coolers and generators and forced institutions to shut down.
Ryan Fisher, a partner in consumer goods and retail practice at global consultancy A.T. Kearney estimated $100 million in $200 million in fresh food was likely lost because of the outages along with $30 million a day in consumer spending.
PG&E cast the blackouts as a matter of public safety to prevent the kind of blazes that have killed scores of people over the past couple of years, destroyed thousands of homes, and ran up tens of billions of dollars in claims that drove the company into bankruptcy.
The utility suggested it was already seeing the wisdom of its decision borne out as gusts topping 77 mph (122 kph) raked some hilltops where wildfire risk was extremely high.
“We have found multiple cases of damage or hazards” caused by heavy winds, including fallen branches into overhead lines, said Sumeet Singh, a vice president for the utility.
Utility CEO Bill Johnson promised if future wind events require similar shut-offs, the utility will “do better” at communicating with customers. It’s unacceptable that its website crashed, maps were inconsistent and call centers were overloaded, Johnson said.
Two rockets struck an Iranian tanker traveling through the Red Sea off the coast of Saudi Arabia on Friday, Iranian officials said, the latest incident in the region amid months of heightened tensions between Tehran and the U.S.
There was no word from Saudi Arabia on the reported attack, and Saudi officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Iranian state television said the explosion damaged two storerooms aboard the unnamed oil tanker and caused an oil leak into the Red Sea near the Saudi port city of Jiddah.
The state-run IRNA news agency, quoting Iran’s National Iranian Tanker Co., identified the stricken vessel as the Sabity. That vessel last turned on its tracking devices in August near the Iranian port city of Bandar Abbas.
US 5th Fleet ‘aware’
Lt. Pete Pagano, a spokesman for the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet overseeing the Mideast, said authorities there were “aware of reports of this incident,” but declined to comment further.
The reported attack comes after the U.S. has alleged that in past months Iran attacked oil tankers near the Strait of Hormuz, at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, something denied by Tehran.
Friday’s incident could push tensions between Iran and the U.S. even higher, more than a year after President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew America from the nuclear deal and imposed sanctions now crushing Iran’s economy.
The mysterious attacks on oil tankers near the Strait of Hormuz, Iran shooting down a U.S. military surveillance drone and other incidents across the wider Middle East followed Trump’s decision.
The latest assault saw Saudi Arabia’s vital oil industry come under a drone-and-cruise-missile attack, halving the kingdom’s output. The U.S. has blamed Iran for the attack, something denied by Tehran. Yemen’s Houthi rebels, whom the kingdom is fighting in a yearslong war, claimed that assault, though analysts say the missiles used in the attack wouldn’t have the range to reach the sites from Yemen.
U.S. President Donald Trump says the U.S. mission of defeating Islamic State in Syria is accomplished and that he plans to keep Turkey in line through economy and not military power. Trump told reporters Thursday that there are no U.S. combat forces in Syria and he does not think Americans would want to send thousands of troops to fight there. Turkey’s assault on Kurdish-held villages in northern Syria has sparked an exodus of civilians from their homes and is threatening to exacerbate a humanitarian crisis in the region. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports.
Antigovernment protests and unrest in Hong Kong continues after nearly four months. Among those affected by the turmoil are about 400,000 foreign domestic workers, mostly women from Indonesia and the Philippines. VOA’s Patsy Widakuswara brings this report from Hong Kong.
Evolutionary biologists know that humans have traces of DNA that go back millions of years, well before humans were human. But thanks to some amazing new high-resolution imagery, scientists can now see how that ancient DNA shows up, then disappears in early human embryos. VOA’s Igor Tsikhanenka reports.
As the effects of climate change continue to ravage the planet, one of the world’s most diverse ecosystems is in trouble. But locals are fighting back, planting trees to cover the scars left by deforestation. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi follows this story to the treetops.
The family of a leading Egyptian pro-democracy activist, who was arrested amid a recent clampdown following anti-government protests, said on Thursday that he was beaten, threatened and stripped to his underwear while in custody.
There was no immediate comment from Egyptian authorities to the allegations.
Alaa Abdel-Fattah rose to prominence with the 2011 uprisings that swept the Middle East and in Egypt toppled longtime President Hosni Mubarak.
He was among more than 2,900 people who activists say were arrested since the small and rare Sept. 20 protests that demanded general-turned-president Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi step down.
A statement from his family said he had told lawyers that since his arrest, he was subjected to several violations including being blindfolded, insulted, slapped, kicked and threatened never to set foot outside one of Cairo’s most notorious prisons, where he is being held.
Mona Seif, Abdel-Fattah’s sister, told The Associated Press that he had filed a legal complaint about all the alleged abuses with the State Security prosecutors during a hearing on Wednesday to renew his pre-trial detention.
However, the family said it fears the retaliation of prison authorities.
“By returning to the same prison with the same people who threatened him, we are worried that he might face more violations and more torture,” said Seif, a staunch human rights advocate.
She said the family would remain together outside prison gates until they are allowed to go in to see him and are “assured that he is fine.”
Abdel-Fattah was released in March, after five years in prison for taking part in a peaceful protest against military trials of civilians. To many, his imprisonment after el-Sissi rose to power — at a time when authorities imposed draconian laws banning public gatherings and unauthorized demonstrations — was another sign of Egypt’s return to autocratic rule.
He was arrested last month from a Cairo police station, where he was required to check in every night under the legal terms of his release.
This time, Abdel-Fattah is facing several charges, including belonging to a terrorist organization and using the social media to spread false news that could threaten national security, said his sister.
Nine Egyptian human rights groups released a statement denouncing the alleged ill-treatment of Abdel-Fattah and calling on the U.N. to examine the situation of human rights in Egypt.
“The continuous attempts to terrorize, crackdown on and punish everyone indiscriminately can only lead to more instability in the country,” read the statement.
Shortly after Abdel-Fattah’s family posted their statement Thursday, the head of the EU parliament’s subcommittee on human rights, Marie Arena, urged Egyptian authorities to release him, as well as his lawyer, who was also arrested along with the activist.
Arena tweeted that she is “dismayed that one of the most prominent Egyptian human rights defenders” is in danger after being “subjected to death threats and torture by state security officers.”
U.S. President Donald Trump says he’s planning to get involved in the case of an American diplomat’s wife who left the U.K. after she was involved in a fatal wrong-way crash.
Trump on Wednesday called what happened “a terrible accident” and said his administration would seek to speak with the driver “and see what we can come up with.”
British police say the 42-year-old woman is a suspect in an Aug. 27 collision between a car and a motorcycle near RAF Croughton, a British military base in England used by the U.S. Air Force. The 19-year-old motorcyclist, Harry Dunn, was killed.
Trump says: “The woman was driving on the wrong side of the road. And that can happen.”
Two-thirds of the votes cast for incumbent Afghan President Ashraf Ghani in last month’s presidential election were cast without proper biometric verification and fraudulent, a leading rival candidate, former warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar said Oct. 7, joining a chorus of candidates making similar accusations.
“This election has no winner in the first round. Both teams [Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah] claiming victory are lying. If only biometric votes are considered valid and the rest discarded, I can say with confidence that Ghani’s team will be in the third position,” he told VOA in an interview in the sprawling Kabul house where he has been living since he moved to the city in 2017 after making a peace deal with the government of his now political rival, Ghani.
He also expressed his willingness to join hands with other candidates alleging fraud, including Ghani’s chief rival, Abdullah. Such a move could give significant momentum to allegations of pre- and post-poll rigging primarily targeting Ghani.
Ghani’s team rejects such allegations and Ghani himself, in his polling day speech, urged the electoral bodies to thoroughly investigate any complaints.
Independent analysts, like those of the Kabul-based Afghanistan Analysts Network, have also questioned at least some of the turnout data presented publicly so far, calling some of the numbers “implausible.”
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar speaks to VOA on the grounds of his home in Kabul, Afghanistan, Oct. 7, 2019.
The province of Nangarhar, “which reported a turnout of 22,813 votes from 309 polling centres on Saturday, a day later, suddenly reported 254,871 votes from 390 polling centres – more than ten times the number reported on E-Day,” an AAN analysis on its website pointed to as one of several examples.
Such observations have increased pressure on Afghanistan’s two electoral bodies, the Independent Election Commission and the Independent Electoral Complaints Commission, which are responsible for handling the vote count and complaints respectively.
The initial results from the September 28 polls are not expected till later this month. Final results are expected next month. The IEC has run into technical and logistical issues in gathering and transferring biometric data to its servers from over 26,000 biometric devices used to record fingerprints and pictures of voters, which may delay the results.
The winning candidate is required to get more than 50% of the votes cast. If no candidate fulfills this criterion, the election goes to a second round in which the two leading candidates compete.
However, Abdullah and Ghani, two of the stronger candidates out of the 18 registered, have already declared victory. Ghani’s running mate, Amrullah Saleh, told VOA Pashto the day after the polls that their ticket had received more than 60% of the vote.
FILE – Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, center, walks toward a ballot box before casting his vote at Amani High School, near the presidential palace in Kabul, Afghanistan, Sept. 28, 2019.
In response, Abdullah said in a press conference the same week that his total votes were “the highest in the election, and the election will not go to a second round.”
Two others, Hekmatyar and former Afghan intelligence head Rahmatullah Nabil, have hinted at a win but have not declared victory outright .
A disagreement between Ghani and Abdullah in the last presidential election, in 2014, led to a crisis so destabilizing that then-U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry had to step in and help negotiate a deal between the two rivals.
International stakeholders in Kabul have been urging all sides to abstain from creating a similar situation. The American and British embassies, as well as the European Union delegation, have been tweeting their support for the electoral bodies and asking all candidates to be patient.
“Calling on everyone to respect the time required for @AfghanistanIEC and @ECCAfghanistan to deliver accurate and transparent election results for brave #Afghan voters,” tweeted the U.S. Embassy in Kabul.
In a similar tweet, the British Embassy asked everyone to give the electoral bodies “time & space to deliver robust & transparent results.”
The IEC and IECC have indicated that they will follow procedures and weed out all unverified votes. That would likely deliver a more transparent and accurate result, but if the vote count, already at a historical low, falls further, it could run into a different set of problems.
“This election had a very low turnout. Any government formed from such a low voter participation will have no legitimacy. It will be a weak government that will not be able to control the situation,” Hekmatyar claimed.
The Afghan Constitution and election law do not require a minimum number of votes to declare the election credible.
