Month: December 2019

A U.N. climate summit ground towards a delayed close on Sunday with a handful of major states resisting pressure to ramp up efforts to combat global warming, prompting sharp criticism from smaller countries and environmental activists.

The Madrid talks were viewed as a test of governments’ collective will to heed the advice of scientists to cut greenhouse gas emissions more rapidly in order to prevent rising global temperatures from hitting irreversible tipping points.

But the conference was expected to endorse only a modest declaration on the “urgent need” to close the gap between existing emissions pledges and the temperature goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement to tackle climate change.

Many developing countries and campaigners had wanted to see much more explicit language spelling out the importance of countries submitting bolder pledges on emissions as the Paris process enters a crucial implementation phase next year.

“These talks reflect how disconnected country leaders are from the urgency of the science and the demands of their citizens in the streets,” said Helen Mountford, Vice President for Climate and Economics, at the World Resources Institute think-tank. “They need to wake up in 2020.”

Brazil, China, Australia, Saudi Arabia and the United States had led resistance to bolder action, delegates said, as the summit — known as COP25 — began wrapping up.

It had been due to finish at the two-week mark on Friday but has run on for two extra days – a long delay even by the standards of often torturous climate summits.

Earlier, talks president Chile triggered outrage after drafting a version of the text that campaigners complained was so weak it betrayed the spirit of the 2015 Paris Agreement.

The process set out in that deal hinges on countries ratcheting up emissions cuts next year.

The final draft did acknowledge the “significant gap” between existing pledges and the temperature goals adopted in 2015.

Nevertheless, it was still seen as a weak response to the sense of urgency felt by communities around the world afflicted by floods, droughts, wildfires and cyclones that scientists say have become more intense as the Earth rapidly warms.

“COP25 demonstrated the collective ambition fatigue of the world’s largest (greenhouse gas) emitters,” said Greenpeace East Asia policy advisor Li Shuo.

The Madrid talks became mired in disputes over the rules that should govern international carbon trading, favored by wealthier countries to reduce the cost of cutting emissions.

Brazil and Australia were among the main holdouts, delegates said, and the summit seemed all but certain to defer big decisions on carbon markets for later.

“As many others have expressed, we are disappointed that we once again failed to find agreement,” Felipe De Leon, a climate official speaking on behalf of Costa Rica. “We engaged actively, we delivered our homework, and yet we did not quite get there.”

Smaller nations had also hoped to win guarantees of financial aid to cope with climate change. The Pacific island of Tuvalu accused the United States, which began withdrawing from the Paris process last month, of blocking progress.

“There are millions of people all around the world who are already suffering from the impacts of climate change,” Ian Fry, Tuvalu’s representative, told delegates. “Denying this fact could be interpreted by some to be a crime against humanity.”

…

Several thousand people shouting words of thanks to the police turned out in Hong Kong on Sunday in an unusual display of support for a force broadly criticized as abusive by the territory’s protest movement.

People made heart signs with their hands at officers, with some calling them heroes for their policing of six months of demonstrations.

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Five Held Over Man’s Death in Hong Kong Protests

The three males and two females aged 15 to 18 were arrested on Friday on suspicion of murder, rioting and wounding and had been detained pending further investigation, police said in a statement

The rally attracted a bigger crowd than a protest against the government a few hundred meters (yards) away. It brought together a few hundred people in a square.

There were also scattered small protests against the government in shopping malls.

Tensions flared in one mall after police arrested about eight protesters. Police used pepper spray when people threw bottles of water at them.

…

A strong earthquake jolted the southern Philippines on Sunday, causing a three-story building to collapse and prompting people to rush out of shopping malls, houses and other buildings in panic, officials said.

The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said the magnitude 6.9 quake struck an area about 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) northwest of Padada town in Davao del Sur province. It had a depth of 30 kilometers (18 miles).

Ricardo Jalad, who heads the Office of Civil Defense, said his office received an initial report that a small three-story building collapsed in Padada as the ground shook and that authorities were checking if people got trapped inside. The building housed a grocery store, Jalad said without elaborating.

Officials in the southern cities of Davao and Cotabato, where the quake was felt strongly, suspended classes for Monday to allow checks on the stability of school buildings. Some cities and town lost their power due to the quake, officials said.

The Davao region has been hit by several earthquakes in recent months, causing deaths and injuries and damaging houses, hotels, malls and hospitals.

The Philippine archipelago lies on the so-called Pacific “Ring of fire,” an arc of faults around the Pacific Ocean where most of the world’s earthquakes occur.

…

Gholam Mahaiuddin sighs softly as he thinks of his 14-year-old son, who was killed in the spring by a bomb dropped last century in the hills of Bamiyan province in central Afghanistan.

“We knew the mountain was dangerous,” said Mahaiuddin, who found his son’s remains after he didn’t come home one day.

“We were aware of mines but we could not find them. They were buried in the soft sand after the rain.”

Forty years after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan – and three decades since the conflict ended – the war’s legacy continues to claim lives across the country.

Mahaiuddin’s son, Moujtaba, was killed along with two friends, aged 12 and 14, on May 17 when they went looking for berries in this idyllic landscape where chocolate-colored mountains are topped with snow.

When none of them had returned the next day, Mahaiuddin and other residents from his tiny village, called Ahangaran, started searching.

“I found my son with just his chest and head left,” Mahaiuddin recalled.

Moujtaba and his friends had been killed by what is known as an AO-2.5 RTM submunition.

The cluster bombs were used extensively by Soviet forces, who dropped them like deadly rain across Afghanistan in the years following their December 1979 invasion.

Mahaiuddin, 44, remembers the war well. He said he used to bring tea to mujahedeen fighters who would hide in the mountains and launch ambushes against Soviet patrols.

More recently, the cluster weapons have been used in Syria, according to a 2016 Human Rights Watch report.

“It is the most dangerous, it is very sensitive to vibrations,” said Bachir Ahmad, who heads a team of deminers from the Danish Demining Group (DDG).

1980s battlefield

The humanitarian organization has been working in several Afghan provinces since 1999 to clear explosives left from a war most of the country’s current, young population never lived through.

The hills of Bamiyan, which is famous as the home of two giant 6th-century Buddha carvings that the Taliban blew up, have been extensively scoured for mines and other explosives.

Near the site of the blast that killed Moujtaba and his friends, DDG workers have painted white pathways showing which areas are clear of danger.

“This is the last battlefield we are cleaning in Bamiyan, it dates back to 1986,” said Habib Noor, the DDG’s head for the province.

Bamiyan, a region dominated by Shiite Hazaras and relatively unaffected by today’s violence ravaging the rest of Afghanistan, will soon be the first of the 34 provinces in Afghanistan where all known contaminated areas have been cleared.

The DDG found 26 explosive devices just in the area around Ahangaran.

“We explored the area with information from the people, finding locals who had fought up there,” Noor said.

Tedious work

At the site near Ahangaran visited by AFP, deminers worked under a bright blue sky, with a doctor and team leader always on hand.

The team of eight, wearing bright blue body armor, picked quietly at the ground, their silence broken only by the sound of crows crying and metal detectors buzzing.

Zarkha, 26, said she had found her first cluster bomb a few days earlier.

“I was very scared,” she said, describing how her team had carefully dug around the sensitive device and then destroyed it in a controlled explosion.

Last year, mines and other “explosive remnants of war” (ERW) killed or wounded 1,391 Afghans, according to government statistics. More than half of the victims were children.

“The explosive is still operable after one hundred years. The metal and plastic will degrade but not the explosives,” said Abdul Hakim Noorzai, DDG’s chief of demining operations based in Kabul.

Ahmad, the demining team leader, said he was angry his country remained devastated by the Soviet war.

“They destroyed our lives. Because of them we have to do demining instead of being a doctor or engineer or teacher,” he said, adding that he had been demining since 2003 and was bored with the tedious work.

While heading down the mountain, the team finds a gang of children playing outside the village’s modest school.

Nahida, 11, smiles shyly under the little white scarf covering her hair.

She remembers Moujtaba well. “He was my cousin. I cried when I learned that he was dead,” she said.

Asked if she knew anything about the war with the Soviets, she replied: “I don’t know where the bombs came from.”

…

A cleft lip or palate is one of the most common birth defects among infants. In developed countries like the U.S., corrective surgeries are often performed during the first couple of years of a child’s life. But in some places like Pakistan there are thousands of children with the birth defect, but not enough doctors who can perform the corrective surgery. Now there is hope thanks to a group of volunteers. VOA’s Asim Ali Rana has more from Gujrat, Pakistan in this report narrated by Bezhan Hamdard

…

The promise of reparations  to atone for historical ties to slavery has opened new territory in a reckoning at U.S. colleges, which until now have responded with monuments, building name changes and public apologies. 

Georgetown University and two theological seminaries have announced funding commitments to benefit descendants of the enslaved people who were sold or toiled to benefit the institutions. 

While no other schools have gone so far, the advantages that institutions received from the slavery economy are receiving new attention as Democratic presidential candidates talk about tax credits and other subsidies that nudge the idea of reparations toward the mainstream. 

The country has been discussing reparations in one way or another since slavery officially ended in 1865. This year marks the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first slave, launching the violence afflicted on black people to prop up the Southern economy.

University of Buffalo senior Jeffrey Clinton said he thinks campuses should acknowledge historical ties to slavery but that the federal government should take the lead on an issue that reaches well beyond higher education. 

“It doesn’t have to be trillions of dollars … but at least address the inequities and attack the racial wealth gap between African Americans and white Americans and really everybody else, because this is an American-made institution. We didn’t immigrate here,” said Clinton, a descendant of slaves who lives in Bay Shore, New York. 

A majority of Georgetown undergraduates voted in April for a nonbinding referendum to pay a $27.20-per-semester “Reconciliation Contribution” toward projects in underprivileged communities that are home to some descendants of 272 slaves who were sold in 1838 to help pay off the school’s debts. 

Georgetown President John DeGioia responded in October with plans instead for a university-led initiative, with the goal of raising about $400,000 from donors, rather than students, to support projects like health clinics and schools in those same communities.

Elsewhere, discussions of reparations have been raised by individual professors, like at the University of Alabama, or by graduate students and community members, like at the University of Chicago. 

At least 56 universities have joined a University of Virginia-led consortium, Universities Studying Slavery, to explore their ties to slavery and share research and strategies. 

In recent years, some schools, like Yale University, have removed the names of slavery supporters from buildings. New monuments have gone up elsewhere, including Brown University’s Slavery Memorial sculpture — a partially buried ball and chain — and the Memorial to Enslaved Laborers under construction at the University of Virginia. 

“It’s a very diffused kind of set of things happening around the nation,” said Guy Emerson Mount, an associate professor of African American history at Auburn University. “It’s really important to pay attention to what each of these are doing” because they could offer learning opportunities and inform national discussions on reparations. 

Virginia Theological Seminary in September announced a $1.7 million endowment fund in recognition of slaves who worked there. It said annual allocations would go toward supporting African American clergy in the Episcopal church and programs that promote justice and inclusion.

The Princeton Theological Seminary in New Jersey followed with a $27.6 million endowment after a historical audit revealed that some founders used slave labor. 

“We did not want to shy away from the uncomfortable part of our history and the difficult conversations that revealing the truth would produce,” seminary President M. Craig Barnes said in October. 

In an October letter to Harvard University’s president, Antigua and Barbuda’s prime minister noted the developments at Georgetown and the seminaries and asked the Ivy League school to consider how it could make amends for the oppression of Antiguan slaves by a plantation owner whose gift endowed a law professorship in 1815. Harvard’s president wrote back that the school is determined to further explore its historical ties to slavery. 

Harvard in 2016 removed a slave owner’s family crest from the law school seal and dedicated a plaque to four slaves who lived and worked on campus.

At the University of Buffalo, some have urged the public school to consider the responsibility it bears having been founded by the 13th U.S. president, Millard Fillmore, who signed the Fugitive Slave Act to help slave owners reclaim runaways. Students have not formally raised the idea of reparations, according to a school spokesman, but they led a discussion on the topic as part of Black Solidarity Week last month. 

William Darity, a Duke University public policy professor and an expert on reparations, said the voices of college students have helped bring attention to reparations in a way that hasn’t been seen since Reconstruction.

But he has warily watched what he sees as a piecemeal approach to an issue he believes merits a congressional response. 

“I don’t want anybody to be under the impression that these constitute comprehensive reparations,” Darity said. 

Supporting a reparations program for all black descendants of American slaves “would be the more courageous act,” he said. 

Few Americans support reparations, according to a recent Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll. It showed that only 29% say the government should pay cash reparations to descendants of enslaved black people. 

University of Buffalo associate professor Keith Griffler, who specializes in African and African American studies, said he sees the cusp of a movement on college campuses. 

“And it’s probably not surprising that some of the wealthier private institutions have been the first to take those kinds of steps, because public universities still have their funding issues. 

“The conversations, just acknowledging these kinds of things,” Griffler said, “I think would go a long way toward making students feel that at least their voices are being heard.” 

…

Leaving the European Union is not the only split British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has to worry about.

Johnson’s commanding election victory this week may let him fulfill his campaign promise to “get Brexit done,” but it could also imperil the future of the United Kingdom of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Scotland and Northern Ireland didn’t vote for Brexit, didn’t embrace this week’s Conservative electoral landslide — and now may be drifting permanently away from London.

In a victory speech Friday, Johnson said the election result proved that leaving the EU is “the irrefutable, irresistible, unarguable decision of the British people.”

Arguably, though, it isn’t. It’s the will of the English, who make up 56 million of the U.K.’s 66 million people. During Britain’s 2016 referendum on EU membership, England and much smaller Wales voted to leave bloc; Scotland and Ireland didn’t. In Thursday’s election, England elected 345 Conservative lawmakers — all but 20 of the 365 House of Commons seats Johnson’s party won across the U.K.

In Scotland, 48 of the 59 seats were won by the Scottish National Party, which opposes Brexit and wants Scotland to become independent of the U.K.

SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon said her party’s “emphatic” victory showed that “the kind of future desired by the majority in Scotland is different to that chosen by the rest of the U.K.”

The SNP has campaigned for decades to make Scotland independent and almost succeeded in 2014, when Scotland held a referendum on seceding from the U.K. The “remain” side won 55% to 45%.

At the time, the referendum was billed as a once-in-a-generation decision. But the SNP argues that Brexit has changed everything because Scotland now faces being dragged out of the EU against its will.

Sturgeon said Friday that Johnson “has no mandate whatsoever to take Scotland out of the EU” and Scotland must be able to decide its future in a new independence referendum.

Johnson insists he will not approve a referendum during the current term of Parliament, which is due to last until 2024. Johnson’s office said the prime minister told the Scottish leader on Friday that “the result of the 2014 referendum was decisive and should be respected.”

The Scotsman newspaper summed up the showdown Saturday with front page face-to-face images of Sturgeon and Johnson: “Two landslides. One collision course.”

“What we’ve got now is pretty close to a perfect storm,” said historian Tom Devine, professor emeritus at the University of Edinburgh. He said the U.K. is facing an “unprecedented constitutional crisis” as Johnson’s refusal to approve a referendum fuels growing momentum for Scottish independence.

Politically and legally, it’s a stalemate. Without the approval of the U.K. government, a referendum would not be legally binding. London could simply ignore the result, as the Spanish government did when Catalonia held an unauthorized independence vote in 2017.

Mark Diffley, an Edinburgh-based political analyst, said Sturgeon “has said that she doesn’t want a Catalonia-style referendum. She wants to do this properly.”

There’s no clear legal route to a second referendum if Johnson refuses, though Sturgeon can apply political and moral pressure. Diffley said the size of the SNP’s win allows Sturgeon to argue that a new referendum is “the will of the people.”

Sturgeon said that next week she will lay out a “detailed democratic case for a transfer of power to enable a referendum to be put beyond legal challenge.”

Devine said the administrations in Edinburgh and London “are in a completely uncompromising condition” and that will only make the crisis worse.

“The longer Johnson refuses to concede a referendum, the greater will the pro-independence momentum in Scotland accelerate,” he said. “By refusing to concede it, Johnson has ironically become a recruiting sergeant for increased militant nationalism.”

Northern Ireland has its own set of political parties and structures largely split along British unionist/Irish nationalist lines. There, too, people feel cast adrift by Brexit, and the political plates are shifting.

For the first time this week, Northern Ireland elected more lawmakers who favor union with Ireland than want to remain part of the U.K.

The island of Ireland, which holds the U.K.’s only land border with the EU, has proved the most difficult issue in Brexit negotiations. Any customs checks or other obstacles along the currently invisible frontier between Northern Ireland and EU member Ireland would undermine both the local economy and Northern Ireland’s peace process.

The divorce deal struck between Johnson and the EU seeks to avoid a hard border by keeping Northern Ireland closely aligned to EU rules, which means new checks on goods moving between Northern Ireland and the rest of the U.K.

“Once you put a border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom, Northern Ireland’s going to be part of a united Ireland for economic purposes,” Jonathan Powell, who helped negotiate Northern Ireland’s 1998 peace accord, told the BBC. “That will increase the tendency toward a united Ireland for political reasons, too.

“I think there is a good chance there will be a united Ireland within 10 years.”

In Scotland, Devine also thinks the days of the Union may be numbered.

“Anything can happen,” he said. “But I think it’s more likely than not that the U.K. will come to an end over the next 20 to 30 years.

…

North Koreans with disabilities may face disproportionate risk due to efforts to curtail the country’s weapons of mass destruction programs. 

Some humanitarian aid groups providing medical, educational and material support to people with physical, sensory and other developmental impairments say United Nations sanctions, as well as the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign imposed on Pyongyang for its nuclear and ballistic missile tests, are limiting their ability to carry-out work in North Korea.  

Amid those restrictions, some non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are abandoning their programs altogether. 

Multiple sources involved in aid work tell VOA that Humanity & Inclusion (HI) is ceasing its North Korea operations. The French/Belgian organization, also known as Handicap International, has been active in the country since 2001 and works in conjunction with the state-run Korean Federation for the Protection of the Disabled, according to the non-profit’s website. 

HI declined to respond to VOA’s request for confirmation. 

North Korea’s opacity and the reluctance of many NGOs to publicly discuss their work there make it difficult for outside observers to obtain a full picture of the situation.  

But, Nazanin Zadeh-Cummings, who lectures in humanitarian studies at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia, says the “detrimental impact of sanctions” is primarily responsible for the departure of international organizations, like HI, from North Korea.

She explains that while humanitarian activity in North Korea is permitted under the sanctions, the lengthy process of applying for exemptions from member states and the UN Sanctions Committee as well as blocks on financial transactions lead to the erosion of partnerships that these organizations have spent years building with Pyongyang.   

“It’s really a tragedy,” Zadeh-Cummings says. “Because of time delays, uncertainty and difficulties in getting sanctions exemptions, those decades of trust and relations are being threatened.”

Among the relief agencies that have pulled-out or suspended work in North Korea are Finland’s Fida International, which closed its food security program earlier this year, and the Britain-based charity Save the Children, which left the country in 2017. Both organizations say the pressure brought on by sanctions forced their decisions.        

Zadeh-Cummings notes the closure of programs that benefit the disabled could be a lost opportunity.  She says that despite North Korea’s reputation as one of the world’s worst human rights abusers, the regime “shows a willingness to engage” with the international community over the creation of such initiatives, which have gone from “non-existent to a space for collaboration” with aid groups in the past several years. 

“The people on the receiving end of this aid are the ones who are losing out,” due to the international sanctions, she adds.

The sanctions further complicate many NGOs’ ability to provide support for North Korea’s disabled due to a “dual use” ban on metallic objects because of concern these could end up in the hands of the country’s military. In turn, this measure could prohibit many medical supplies and adaptive equipment from entering North Korea, unless an import license and waiver are obtained, which some humanitarians say could take many months or years, if not at all. 
 
“I can’t send wheelchairs, crutches or canes because they all have metal in them,” says Sue Kinsler, whose California-based Kinsler Foundation has supported North Korean schools for the blind and has helped disabled athletes compete in recent Paralympics and other sporting events.  

She says her charity, which relies on small donations from churches in South Korea and the U.S., has not been able to raise sufficient funds or collect many donations in recent years.

“They all stopped helping me because of the sanctions,” she  says. “They’re afraid of breaking the rules.” 

Kinsler, who says she used to visit North Korea several times a year, adds that she hasn’t returned since Washington banned U.S. citizens from traveling to the country following the death of tourist Otto Warmbier in 2017. 

Some other American aid workers have obtained permits to enter North Korea to carry-out relief work. 

Dr. Kee Park, director of DPRK Programs at the Korean American Medical Association, says he travels to North Korea twice a year and performs surgeries with local physicians. DPRK stands for Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the North’s official name. 

Park, who lectures at Harvard and co-authored the recent report The Human Costs and Gendered Impact of Sanctions on North Korea, says the difficulty in “navigating the regulatory hurdles” required to obtain permission to transport even the most basic of medical devices to North Korea could mean many patients will become permanently disabled.  

“If they have an injury and cannot obtain surgical care in a timely fashion they might end up with a disability,” he says, adding that sanctions could prevent performance of “simple operations” for disabling conditions such as cleft pallet, clubbed foot and cataracts. 

Park says that despite the lack of new surgical instruments, North Korean doctors are “masters at maximizing the utility of their medical supplies.”

“They reuse as much as possible until things become unusable,” he says. 

“Collateral damage” 

North Korea has given Washington an end of year deadline to drop what Pyongyang calls a “hostile policy” in order to resume stalled denuclearization talks. Some observers say the North wants relief from unilateral U.S. sanctions that have reduced its capacity to earn foreign sources of income – an indication that these measures are having their intended effect. 

Sung-Yoon Lee, a Korea expert at Tufts University, writes in an email to VOA that “targeted financial sanctions are a potent and fine-tuned, non-lethal instrument of coercion.”

Lee notes that while sanctions are not a “perfect instrument”, he argues that humanitarian concern should instead focus on the Kim regime’s “perverse priorities” as the root cause of the North Korean people’s “misery and hunger.” 

“There will invariably be negative trickle down effects on the innocent people and in procedural aspects related to the delivery of aid,” Lee writes.

Andray Abrahamian, a visiting scholar at George Mason University’s Incheon, South Korea campus, agrees that North Korea is “unable or unwilling” to care for many of its citizens, including people with disabilities, and so has largely outsourced this responsibility to international aid groups. 

But Abrahamian, who previously worked for a North Korea-focused NGO, says the livelihood of this already disadvantaged population will continue to decline if recipients of humanitarian support  are seen as “collateral damage.”   

“The further you are away from political power the more vulnerable you are to sanctions-imposed scarcity,” he says.

…

UN investigators accused Chile’s police and army of indiscriminate violence and gross violations, including torture and rape, in crushing recent mass protests over social and economic grievances.

An investigative team from the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights produced a 30-page report expressing alarm at the excessive use of force by security agents.     It said Chile’s violent crackdown on protesters resulted in the reported deaths of dozens of people, a high number of injuries, and the arbitrary detentions of thousands of demonstrators.

Chile’s Office of the Public Prosecutor says it is investigating 26 deaths.   The report holds state agents responsible for many of these deaths, noting that live ammunition was used in some cases.  

The Chilean Ministry of Justice reports that nearly 5,000 people, more than half of whom were police officers, have been injured during the protests.  UN sources say the number of injured is higher than that cited by government officials.  They accuse state agents of unnecessary and disproportionate use of less-lethal weapons, such as anti-riot shotguns, during peaceful demonstrations.

Imma Guerras-Delgado headed the mission to Chile, which took place in the first three weeks of November.  She said the demonstrations that have been occurring since mid-October were triggered by multiple causes, including social and economic inequality.

“The majority of those who have exercised the right to assembly during this period have done so in a peaceful manner,” Guerras-Delgado said. “We have found that the overall management of assemblies by the police was carried out in a fundamentally repressive manner.”  

Guerras-Delgado said the mission is particularly concerned by the use of pellets containing lead.  She said hundreds of people suffered eye injuries, causing blindness in a number of cases, and condemned the brutal suppression of peaceful nationwide protests by the police and army.

“Human rights violations documented by OHCHR [Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights] include the excessive or unnecessary use of force that led to unlawful killings and injuries, arbitrary detentions and torture and ill treatment,” she said.   

Among its recommendations, the report urges Chile to immediately end the indiscriminate use of anti-riot shotguns to control demonstrations.  It also calls on the government to make sure security forces adopt measures to guarantee accountability for human rights violations and to prevent the recurrence of similar events.

…

Cameroon’s Parliament is divided over the so-called special status President Paul Biya ordered for the country’s English-speaking regions as a solution to the crisis that has killed more than 3,000 people.
 
Some lawmakers who convened for the extraordinary session of Parliament on Biya’s instructions suggest that only the creation of federal states, one incorporating the country’s English-speaking regions and the other made up of the French-speaking regions, can stop the crisis. 

Others said the English-speaking regions’ special status already cedes enough power and resources to the crisis-prone areas, where separatists are fighting to create an English-speaking state

Cavaye Yeguie Djibril, speaker of Cameroon’s National Assembly, told the lower house of the Parliament that Biya asked him to convene the extraordinary session  solely to examine the bill and vote it into law because Biya is determined to restore peace in the restive English-speaking regions.  

Lawmaker Njume Peter Ambang from the English-speaking South-West said the section of the bill granting a special status to the English-speaking regions could calm rising tensions for peace to return.

“It is a moment for us to leave a legacy and we should look at this particular document with a lot of seriousness and responsibility,” Ambangsaid.  “We owe Cameroonians a lot. This is the moment that I think we have to make Cameroonians to know that they elected us for their own interest.”

The bill envisages the creation of assemblies of chiefs, regional assemblies and regional councils for the English-speaking North-West and South-West regions with each of the two regions having elected presidents, vice presidents, secretaries, public affairs management controllers and three commissioners responsible for what the bill describes as economic, health, social, educational, sports and cultural development affairs. 

It also would also create the post of a public independent conciliators, responsible for solving disputes over the functioning of regional administrations. The bill also proposes more powers for elected mayors and would give them the authority to recruit hospital staff and teachers. 

But lawmaker Henry Kemende, from the English-speaking North-West region, said the special status for the English-speaking regions will not solve the crisis because most English speakers expect the creation of a federal state recognizing the people’s cultural and linguistic diversity. He said the French-speaking regions should constitute one state while the English speakers form another in a federal republic.

“We thought that will have a bill that will admit the fact that we have failed in a unitary state and that we were going to try something different from the unitary state,” he said.

George Elanga Obam, Cameroon’s minister of decentralization, said by opting for the acceleration of decentralization, Biya is respecting proposals made by people his government consulted.

Obam said after consulting Cameroonians of all walks of life and organizing a national dialogue called by Biya, it was unanimously agreed that effective decentralization is the solution to the crisis in the English-speaking North-West and South-West regions. He said the special status will make the English-speaking regions more involved in making decisions that affect their lives and contributing to their own development.

Separatist leaders invited to the national dialogue this fall refused to take part, calling it a non-event. The talks  recommended that the English-speaking regions be given special status.

Violence erupted in 2017 in Cameroon’s English-speaking regions when teachers and lawyers protested alleged discrimination at the hands of the French-speaking majority.

…

Melania Trump on Friday appeared to condone her husband’s criticism of 16-year-old Greta Thunberg, saying through a spokeswoman that her 13-year-old son, Barron, is in a different category than the teenage climate activist “who travels the globe giving speeches.”

“He is a 13-year-old who wants and deserves privacy,” spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham said in an emailed statement the day after President Donald Trump lashed out at Thunberg  because Time magazine had named her “Person of the Year.”

The first lady’s apparent acceptance of her husband’s actions stood in contrast to the work she’s doing through her “Be Best”  initiative to combat online bullying and teach children to be kind.

The president tweeted Thursday that “Greta must work on her Anger Management problem, then go to a good old fashioned movie with a friend!” He said it was “ridiculous” that Time had chosen her for the honor.

Trump mocked the teenage activist, who has Asperger’s syndrome, a week after the first lady tweeted angrily at Stanford law professor Pamela Karlan for mentioning Barron during her testimony as a Democratic witness at a House Judiciary Committee impeachment hearing.

“A minor child deserves privacy and should be kept out of politics. Pamela Karlan, you should be ashamed of your very angry and obviously biased public pandering, and using a child to do it,” Melania Trump tweeted.

At one point during her testimony, Karlan said that while Trump can “name his son Barron, he can’t make him a baron.” Karlan was trying to make a point that Trump is a president and not a king. At the end of the hearing, Karlan apologized for the comment.

Grisham said the first lady will continue to use “Be Best” to help children.

“It is no secret that the president and first lady often communicate differently — as most married couples do,” Grisham said.

Former first lady Michelle Obama encouraged Thunberg, saying, “don’t let anyone dim your light.”

Michelle Obama wrote on Twitter from Vietnam, where she was traveling this week. “Like the girls I’ve met in Vietnam and all over the world, you have so much to offer us all,” she wrote. “Ignore the doubters and know that millions of people are cheering you on.”

…

Three months after being sworn into office, the civilian-led transitional government in Sudan has been trying to overcome political and economic challenges in the African country after decades under the former regime of Omar al-Bashir, who was toppled in April this year after months of popular protests against his government.   

One major objective for the new government of Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok has been the removal of Sudan from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism.

During his recent visit to Washington, where he met with senior U.S. officials, Hamdok emphasized that removing his country from the list of the states sponsoring terrorism was essential for the success of the new government in carrying out necessary reforms.

“This issue has a lot of bearing on so many processes, not to mention debt and investment but also opening the country at large,” Hamdok said last week during remarks at the Atlantic Council in Washington.

“This is something, unless it is addressed, all these other processes will not take place,” he added, linking the removal of Sudan from the U.S. terrorism list to top priorities his government has taken on for the transitional period.

Sponsoring terrorism

Sudan was added to the U.S.  list of state sponsors of terrorism in 1993 over charges by Washington that Bashir’s Islamist government was supporting terrorism. The country was also targeted by U.S. sanctions over Khartoum’s alleged support for terror groups, including al-Qaida, Hamas and Hezbollah.

“When Bashir took over the country [in 1989], and then the fundamentalists and Islamists gained more and more power, Sudan was harboring some very bad people, including Osama bin Laden,” said former U.S. Ambassador Mary Carlin Yates, co-chair of the Sudan Task Force at the Atlantic Council, who was the U.S. chargé d’affaires to Sudan from 2011 to 2012.

“The more power the Islamists had within the government then, the more of whom we would call the bad actors [and] terrorists came to spend time in Sudan,” she told VOA.

But Sudanese officials maintain that it was the former regime that supported terrorism and that the Sudanese people shouldn’t be published for crimes committed by Bashir’s regime.

Normalized relations

Since the overthrow of Bashir, U.S. officials have expressed support for the new Sudanese government.

Earlier this month, U.S. and Sudan announced the warming of their diplomatic relations through an exchange of ambassadors for the first time in 23 years.

Pleased to announce that the United States and #Sudan have decided to initiate the process to exchange ambassadors for the first time in 23 years. This is a historic step to strengthen our bilateral relationship.

— Secretary Pompeo (@SecPompeo) December 4, 2019

This move, experts say, could be a gesture of goodwill as both sides are trying to open a new page in their relations.

“Having ambassadors in both countries will certainly make efforts to delist Sudan from the terrorism list more effective,” said al-Noor Mohammed, a Sudanese researcher based in Khartoum.

“It gives our government a great deal of legitimacy as it seeks to turn this opening into meaningful outcomes, such as the removal of Sudan from the U.S. [terrorism] list,” he told VOA in a phone interview.

Essential for Sudan’s economy

Experts believe lifting economic sanctions imposed on Sudan and removing the country from the terrorism list will significantly help alleviate economic hardships that Sudan has faced  for many years.

“The new government has inherited a country with an enormous debt of about $60 billion,” said Yousif al-Jalal, a Khartoum-based political analyst.

He told VOA that “removing the country from that list will allow Hamdok’s government to reach out to international monetary lenders to address the debt issue.”

The designation of Sudan as a state sponsor of terrorism bars the country from debt relief and financing from international financial lenders such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

Some groups such as the Sentry, an organization that monitors conflicts in Africa, have called on the U.S. government to accelerate the process of taking Sudan off the terrorism list.

Removing Sudan from the list “will help unlock essential financial support and bolster Sudan’s economic prospects,” the Sentry said in a statement Thursday.

“If it occurs in conjunction with meaningful economic, governance and human rights reforms, the prospects for economic recovery and democratic transformation in the country will grow exponentially,” it added.

U.S. conditions

U.S. officials say that one of the important steps in removing Sudan from the list is reaching a settlement with families of those killed in the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal last week, Sudan’s Hamdok said in addition to settling with the victims’ families, his government was also pursuing a deal with those injured in the 2000 bombing of the guided-missile destroyer USS Cole.

Sudan is accused of providing material support to al-Qaida, which was responsible for all those attacks.

U.S. officials  have also expressed concerns about the presence of some military personnel in the newly established authority in Sudan who had ties with the former regime.

“Sudan needs to give assurances to Washington that these military people won’t have the power to take over the government at some point,” analyst al-Jalal said.

The U.S. also raised questions during Hamdok’s recent visit to Washington about Sudan’s intelligence agency and whether it has fully been transferred to a civilian leadership.

The delisting process

Removing Sudan from the U.S. State Department list requires approval from Congress after a six-month review.

“There is an interagency discussion that happens,” Yates said, adding that the State Department, Defense Department and the intelligence community discuss the outcome and “then they refer the decision to the president.”

She noted that Congress has to be notified after the process is over.

“But after a 45-day period, if the Congress does nothing, then [Sudan would be] delisted,” Yates said.

…

All seven Democratic presidential candidates who qualified for next week’s debate threatened on Friday to skip the event if an labor dispute forces them to cross picket lines on the campus hosting it. 
 
The Democratic National Committee said it was trying to come up with an “acceptable resolution” to the situation so the debate could proceed. 
 
A labor union called UNITE HERE Local 11 said it would picket as Loyola Marymount University hosted Thursday’s sixth Democratic debate of the cycle, and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders responded by tweeting they wouldn’t participate if that meant crossing the lines. Former Vice President Joe Biden, Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar, environmental activist Tom Steyer and businessman Andrew Yang followed suit. 
 
“The DNC should find a solution that lives up to our party’s commitment to fight for working people. I will not cross the union’s picket line even if it means missing the debate,” Warren tweeted. 
 
Sanders tweeted, “I will not be crossing their picket line,” while Biden tweeted: “We’ve got to stand together with @UNITEHERE11 for affordable health care and fair wages. A job is about more than just a paycheck. It’s about dignity.” The other candidates used Twitter to post similar sentiments. 

Picketing began in November
 
UNITE HERE Local 11 says it represents 150 cooks, dishwashers, cashiers and servers working on the Loyola Marymount campus. It says it has been in negotiations with a food service company since March for a collective bargaining agreement without reaching a resolution, and “workers and students began picketing on campus in November to voice their concern for a fair agreement. The company abruptly canceled scheduled contract negotiations last week.” 
 
“We had hoped that workers would have a contract with wages and affordable health insurance before the debate next week. Instead, workers will be picketing when the candidates come to campus,” Susan Minato, co-president of UNITE HERE Local 11, said in the statement. 
 
DNC communications director Xochitl Hinojosa said both the DNC and the university found out about the issue earlier Friday, but expressed support for the union and the candidates’ boycott, stating that DNC Chairman “Tom Perez would absolutely not cross a picket line and would never expect our candidates to either.” 
 
“We are working with all stakeholders to find an acceptable resolution that meets their needs and is consistent with our values and will enable us to proceed as scheduled with next week’s debate,” she said in a statement. 

University encourages resolution
 
Loyola Marymount said that it was not a party to the contract negotiations but that it had contacted the food services company involved, Sodexo, and had encouraged it “to resolve the issues raised by Local 11.” 
 
“Earlier today, LMU asked Sodexo to meet with Local 11 next week to advance negotiations and solutions. LMU is not an agent nor a joint employer of Sodexo, nor of the Sodexo employees assigned to our campus,” the university said in a statement. “LMU is proud to host the DNC presidential debate and is committed to ensuring that the university is a rewarding place to learn, live and work.” 
 
This is the second location site set to host the December debate. In October, the DNC announced it wouldn’t be holding a debate at the University of California-Los Angeles because of “concerns raised by the local organized labor community” and was moving the event to Loyola Marymount. 

…

“Liberal education is more critical than ever if we take into account our nation’s historic mission of educating for democracy,” Lynn Pasquerella, president of the Association of American Colleges and Universities, said.

Those statements come as an increasing number of small, liberal arts colleges in America are closing or being taken over by larger academic institutions… and as the number of international students coming to the U.S. is at an all-time high. (According to a recent report by  Open Doors 2019, recently released by the Institute of International Education (IIE) and the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs). [[ ]]

Pasquerella spoke in detail about this topic, and touched on many other issues in an in-depth interview with VOA earlier this month at the AAC&U offices in Washington.

The following is a transcript of the full interview.

VOA: Thank you for taking the time to sit with me today. First, tell us about your association.

Lynn Pasquerella: The Association of American Colleges and Universities has a mission of advancing the vitality and public standing of liberal education equity and quality as the foundations for excellence in undergraduate education in service to democracy.

VOA: Let’s talk about the status of small liberal arts colleges across the US. Where is it right now and what’s happening with them?

Pasquerella: There’s a prevailing national rhetoric that calls into question the value of higher education in general, and liberal education in particular.

A number of small liberal arts colleges are at risk, in part because of this rhetoric, but also because they have served very distinctive missions. Many small, faith-based institutions in the past, had relied on the clergy, to do administrative work, to teach classes. And as their numbers are dwindling, the colleges are finding that they’re having trouble keeping up with the payroll.

But there are many, many liberal arts institutions that are thriving today, and at AAC&U we believe that that mission is more critical than ever.

VOA: Can you give me some examples of colleges that have either closed or been taken over by larger academic institutions, and examples of colleges that are doing okay.

Pasquerella: In the headlines recently there has been attention paid to places like Mount Ida College, looking at a partnership with the University of Massachusetts being absorbed by that. Marlborough College is looking at a perspective absorption by Emerson, that’s being contested right now.

At Sweetbriar and Hampshire colleges we’re thinking about ways that they could partner with other institutions — the Board of Sweetbriar made a decision to close the college, but the alumni got together and revitalized the college and it is continuing to grow and strengthen.

Hampshire College decided a year and a half ago not to admit a first year class, but they have allowed students who had already been admitted to the college to attend if they chose to and are very active in recruiting a new class, and their numbers continue to grow.

So these are colleges that have been at risk, who have looked at innovative ways to take new directions… there’s a recent book out by Mary Marcy — who is the president of Dominican [University] in California — and her book focuses on the small college imperative and the ways that colleges that are committed to the liberal arts, but are small, can partner with others with business and industry K through 12 to create new pathways for excellence for student success.

And so, colleges like Bates College have new innovative programs that are connecting curriculum to career in ways that will help address some of the concerns of the skeptics around the fact that a liberal education is seen as inconsistent with employability in this world that is STEM-focused.

VOA: What is your assessment of Trinity College,? Like many colleges, it’s had its set of challenges, but seems to be doing well.

Pasquerella: Trinity College is a very prestigious, liberal arts institution in Connecticut — was founded in 1823 with a mission to promote the Liberal Arts and Sciences, and since then has retained a reputation for excellence in the Liberal Arts and Sciences.

But they also have established themselves as an anchor institution, and they demonstrate the ways in which their success is inextricably linked to the success of those in the communities that they seek to serve — and so they do have partnerships with business and industry with K through 12 in the Hartford region. And I think that makes all the difference at a time when we are trying to establish new pipelines for a diverse populations in liberal arts colleges.

VOA: What are some of the reasons colleges are closing, or being taken over by other academic institutions?

Pasquerella: There are a variety of reasons why small liberal arts colleges are closing.

There has been a disinvestment in higher education.

And there’s also been this rhetoric that I mentioned where liberal arts colleges are being called into question.

There has been a shift away from the notion of higher education as a public good, to viewing it as a private commodity. So tuition in exchange for jobs, and as tuition-driven institutions have needed to increase their tuition and fees, there’s been some skepticism about the value added of that type of education.

And so many students are going to community college, to public institutions, as a way of dealing with the cost.

They may transfer into four-year independent … colleges but that’s had some impact.

And the fact that we have so many options. One of the great strengths of American higher education is the diversity of the types of institutions. We know that you can get an education that is a quality education at a two-year Community College, a four year public research-1 institution, a whole range of institutions, and so these options have created some challenges and risks for small liberal arts colleges.

VOA: Some experts say some of these liberal arts colleges have had financial difficulty and therefore closing because funds are being allocated to nonacademic initiatives like sports, sports facilities, things like that. What is your opinion about that?

Pasquerella: These are issues that we need to address; the issues of cost and allocation of scarce resources. When we’re talking about places like Trinity, or other small liberal arts colleges, they are most likely Division-3 schools so they’re not spending enormous amount of money on athletics, they don’t have athletic scholarships, but they recognize the importance of making sure that students have curricular and co-curricular experiences — that they are learning, not only in the classroom, but issues of leadership outside of the classroom as well.

VOA: What are some of the ways these problems can be mitigated?

Pasquerella: Leaders of small liberal arts colleges need to tell their story in a more compelling way, not only to those inside of the academy, but to those outside of the academy as well, who may be skeptical about the value of a liberal education at a time when rapidly changing technology means rapid obsolescence.

And in a world that is globally interdependent, the best preparation that we can offer students is one that teaches them to write, speak and think with precision, coherence and clarity, to anticipate and respond to objections, to engage in moral imagination, imagining what it’s like to be in the shoes of another different from oneself, and to be adaptable and flexible in the face of that rapid change.

That’s exactly what a liberal education does for students. The narrow technical training that has been promoted by many individuals today, places students at risk because once those resources are outsourced or replaced by new technologies, the students lose the capacity to become innovators in their own lives without a liberal arts background.

We don’t think at AAC&U that there is an inconsistency between a liberal education and technical or pre-professional education. We think a liberal education can be applied to students at all types of institutions, and that’s what we are championing at our organization.

VOA: We have a very vibrant body of international students who come to the U.S. to attend all kinds of colleges. Many — especially people coming from Asia and the Middle East — like to attend STEM schools. What do you say about that when it comes to liberal arts colleges?

Pasquerella: Liberal education is a distinctively American tradition, and yet what we’re seeing is that institutions in China, in Korea, in the Middle East, are asking for our help in developing a liberal arts curriculum for their students, because they are concerned about the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and the ways that technology will be brought to bear on the lives and livelihood of people there.

I was just serving on a commission for the National Academy of Arts and Sciences looking at the integration of arts and humanities, with science, technology, engineering, math and medicine, and the conclusion of that report is that this integration is more important than ever, as we help students deal with the unscripted challenges of the future, and prepare for jobs that haven’t yet been invented.

And so there is a recognition worldwide that this education is critical to the success of our students — not only upon graduation, but throughout their lives. At a time when life spans are growing, how do we help people engage in lifelong learning, and to live lives that will enable them to flourish fully as human beings, as individuals and in their communities?

VOA: Let’s talk a little bit about the state of co-education across college campuses. Trinity College is celebrating 50 years of going co-ed. And you were head of a small liberal arts women’s college. So when did co-education really start to pick up steam in this country and what would you say about the impact that has had on higher education?

Pasquerella: Well Mount Holyoke College where I was the president was the first women’s college in the country established in 1837. And there was a need because colleges and universities were not by enlarge open to women. And so it was seen as the equivalent to the Ivy League. And opportunities for women and the seven sister institutions that were formed after 1837, focused on equal opportunity to educational access for women.

In the ‘70s, there was a move toward co-education, in part because there was a recognition that women had the right to go to some of the Ivy League schools where they had been denied access, and some of the so-called ‘Little Ivys.’

At that moment in time, places like Vassar College went coed, and there were a number of other women’s colleges that made a decision to admit men as women were being admitted to places like Dartmouth and a whole range of other institutions that were being challenged legally and ethically to have a more diverse student population.

VOA: What do you think are the benefits and challenges of schools being coed?

Pasquerella: I certainly think there’s value in single sex education. At Mount Holyoke, all of the leadership roles were played by women. And we know in co-educational institutions that women are less likely to play leadership roles, because as some have said — and there was a study at Princeton that showed this — they didn’t think that it was ‘worth the risk.’

And so when we look at the kinds of risks that have been detailed, they’re talking about reputational risks, risks to a sense of wellbeing and purpose that are posed when women take on leadership roles.

And we know that women are judged differently than men in terms of their appearance, the fact that they are judged based on a proven track record, as opposed to potential, whereas men are given leadership positions based on their potential and not necessarily on what they’ve accomplished already.

And so just the different ways in which society judges men and women, has led, I think, to a recommitment to women’s education, recognizing that there are still gender gaps in higher education. 25% of the leaders are women. And that has not changed since 1985.

The numbers have increased slightly to 33%, if we take into account leadership of community colleges, but of course those are the institutions that we devalue in our society.

But if you look at Research-1 institutions, the places that are valued most highly, very few women are leading those institutions, and so we need to look at the barriers to leadership in the academy and how we can address those given that more than 50% of college students are female. What are the persistent barriers, hidden biases that mitigate against women’s leadership in the academy?

VOA: Let’s talk briefly about members of the LGBT community. Where do they fit into all this and how does that factor into the equation?

Pasquerella: It’s a great question. At Mount Holyoke we made a decision under my presidency in 2014 to admit any student who identified as a woman, or who was biologically female at birth.

So this allowed for students — all students — to come to Mount Holyoke except those who identified as male. And for many people, this was a concern, others celebrated it and thought that it was about time that we recognized that the category of woman is not static.

And at times of gender fluidity and a recognition that identity is so grounded in cultural norms, we wanted to be as inclusive as possible while recognizing our commitment to being a women’s college and to serving women.

VOA: Any last comments about the status of liberal arts colleges and the U.S?

Pasquerella: Liberal education is more critical than ever if we take into account our nation’s historic mission of educating for democracy. And at a time when we are existing in what seems to be a post-truth era, when facts are being questioned, when evidence is being challenged, helping students to discern the truth and the power of a liberal education is crucial.

Academic leaders must take up the charge to ensure that all of our citizens have the right to a liberal education.

VOA: Thank you so much for your time.

…

Prosecutors in New York have charged a former Moroccan ambassador to the United Nations and others with visa fraud, accusing them of bringing workers to the United States using fake employment contracts and then exploiting them. 

Abdeslam Jaidi, his ex-wife Maria Luisa Estrella and her brother Ramon Singson brought in more than 10 workers from the Philippines and Morocco since about 2006, according to the indictment filed in federal court in New York. 

The visa applications said the workers would be employed as administrative or technical staff at the consulate or Moroccan U.N. mission, and some included fake employment contracts, it said. 

Instead, the workers were used as personal drivers, domestic helpers and farmhands, the indictment said. 

They were paid low wages — sometimes less than $500 a month — and worked long hours without time off. Some had to hand over their passports, it also said. 

“This case sends a strong message that diplomatic immunity does not equal impunity,” said Martina Vandenberg, head of the Washington-based Human Trafficking Legal Center. “Even high-ranking diplomats can be called to account if there are allegations of visa fraud and exploitation.” 

Other cases

In recent years, other foreign diplomats in the United States have been accused of wrongdoing in connection with the treatment of their employees.  

Earlier this year, the U.S. government suspended new visas for domestic employees of Malawian officials after one of the country’s diplomats failed to pay $1.1 million in damages to a woman she trafficked in the United States. 

Supporters have warned that domestic workers employed by diplomats are vulnerable to abuses and even human trafficking because their visas chain them to specific employers.  

Being tied to a specific employer means they cannot switch to a better job, and if they quit, they typically must leave the country. 

The charges, filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in White Plains, N.Y., were conspiracy to commit offenses and defraud and conspiracy to induce aliens to come to, enter and reside in the country. 

The crimes carry maximum sentences of five and 10 years in prison, respectively. 

Estrella, 60, was arrested in March, while Jaidi, 82, who lives in Rabat, Morocco, and Singson, 55, who lives in Manila, are at large. 
Estrella’s lawyers declined to comment. 

…

China’s Foreign Ministry, when asked about the trade deal with the United States, said it is committed to resolving the issues but the deal must be mutually beneficial.

Spokeswoman Hua Chunying made the comments on Friday at a daily briefing.

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US, China Near Deal That Would Suspend Planned Tariffs

The Trump administration and China are close to finalizing a modest trade agreement that would suspend tariffs set to kick in Sunday, de-escalating their 17-month trade war

The United States and China are coming up against a natural deadline on Dec. 15 when a tariff hike will come into effect.

Washington has set its terms for the first part of the so-called “phased deal”, offering to suspend some tariffs on Chinese goods and cut others in exchange for Beijing buying more American farm goods, U.S. sources have said.

…

Freweini Mebrahtu remembers when she returned to her home village in northern Ethiopia and saw women squatting over holes in the ground. Without any sanitary pads to use during their menstrual period, they were stuck in this undignified position.

“How is that possible? And they were telling me that they don’t even use underwear,” she told VOA. “And that was the turning point for me. I kind of felt the nerves going from head to my toes. And that’s when I said, ‘you know, I’ve gotta do something.’ Why is this thing bothering me over and over again? So that was it.”

The more she examined the problem the bigger it appeared. Two out of every five girls have been forced to miss school during their periods with many eventually dropping out. Grown women were resorting to using old cloth or grass as pads. Women and girls, she found, were being shamed by their community during their menstrual periods.

“We’re talking about gender equality and all that stuff. But when the basic necessity of a young girl is not fulfilled, how is that possible?” she said. “ How is the country going to be developed when 50 percent of your society – women – are compromised this way?”

In 2009, Freweini founded Mariam Seba Products Factory (MSPF) in Ethiopia’s northern city of Mekelle. The factory produces reusable pads that can last up to 18 months and cost 90 percent less than disposable pads. Freweini has teamed up with a charitable organization Dignity Period and together they have distributed more than 150,000 free menstrual hygiene kits produced by the factory.

The work is having an impact. Dignity Period has recorded a 24% increase in attendance by girls in schools where they offer services.

This month Freweini was selected as the CNN Hero of the Year and will receive $100,000 to support her work. She said the award was an affirmation of a decision she made years ago to move, along with her 3-year-old daughter, from the U.S. back to Ethiopia and pursue this cause. Today her daughter is 18 and going off to college.

Congratulations to 2019 CNN Hero of the Year Freweini Mebrahtu

Learn more about her at https://t.co/MkgzSoE3Zf#CNNHeroespic.twitter.com/xTTfdWCnkn

— CNN Heroes (@CNNHeroes) December 9, 2019

“You know, it was a moment of an amazing journey. And people thought that I was crying because of the whole event. But it’s the whole timing issue,” she said. “It must have been God’s willing it to happen, the way it happened.”

But she says her work is not done. She noted that there are 30 million women of reproductive age in Ethiopia and the vast majority do not have access to affordable sanitary pads. Additionally, there is a 15 percent value-added tax on many menstrual hygiene products.

“It’s not just Ethiopia. It’s everywhere, developing countries even in the U.S. there is a tax issue. So, now that CNN has made it an issue for anybody to look at this seriously, we hope that everyone will make a sensible solution and a sensible change in making this a reality for all,” she said.

“Reach out and help your sisters. Wherever you are, together we can make this issue a thing of the past.” #CNNHero Freweini Mebrahtu is stamping out the stigma surrounding menstruation — all while paying women premium wages. https://t.co/Ae0lyQdDY0pic.twitter.com/2G7cyaUYO6

— CNN Heroes (@CNNHeroes) December 9, 2019

…

Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party has won a solid majority of seats in Britain’s Parliament — a decisive outcome to a Brexit-dominated election that should allow Johnson to fulfill his plan to take the U.K. out of the European Union next month.

With just over 600 of the 650 seats declared, the Conservatives reached the 326 mark, guaranteeing their majority.

Johnson said it looked like the Conservatives had “a powerful new mandate to get Brexit done.”

The victory will likely make Johnson the most electorally successful Conservative leader since Margaret Thatcher, another politician who was loved and loathed in almost equal measure. It was a disaster for left-wing Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who faced calls for his resignation even as the results rolled in. The party looked set to gain around 200 seats.

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Britain Brexit Bound as Johnson Set for Big Parliamentary Majority

An exit poll showed Boris Johnson’s Conservatives would win a landslide of 368 seats, more than enough for a very comfortable majority in the 650-seat parliament

Corbyn called the result “very disappointing” for his party and said he would not lead Labour into another election, though he resisted calls to quit immediately,

Results poured in early Friday showing a substantial shift in support to the Conservatives from Labour. In the last election in 2017, the Conservatives won 318 seats and Labour 262.

The result this time looked set to be the biggest Tory majority since Thatcher’s 1980s’ heyday, and Labour’s lowest number of seats since 1935.

The Scottish National Party appeared set to take about 50 of Scotland’s 59 seats — a big increase — with a lackluster dozen or so for the centrist, pro-EU Liberal Democrats. Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson lost her own Scottish seat.

The Conservatives took a swathe of seats in post-industrial northern England towns that were long Labour strongholds. Labour’s vote held up better in London, where the party managed to grab the Putney seat from the Conservatives.

The decisive Conservative showing vindicates Johnson’s decision to press for Thursday’s early election, which was held nearly two years ahead of schedule. He said that if the Conservatives won a majority, he would get Parliament to ratify his Brexit divorce deal and take the U.K. out of the EU by the current Jan. 31 deadline.

Speaking at the election count in his Uxbridge constituency in suburban London, Johnson said the “historic” election “gives us now, in this new government, the chance to respect the democratic will of the British people to change this country for the better and to unleash the potential of the entire people of this country.”

That message appears to have had strong appeal for Brexit-supporting voters, who turned away from Labour in the party’s traditional heartlands and embraced Johnson’s promise that the Conservatives would “get Brexit done.”

“I think Brexit has dominated, it has dominated everything by the looks of it,” said Labour economy spokesman John McDonnell. “We thought other issues could cut through and there would be a wider debate, from this evidence there clearly wasn’t.”

The prospect of Brexit finally happening more than three years after Britons narrowly voted to leave the EU marks a momentous shift for both the U.K. and the bloc. No country has ever left the union, which was created in the decades after World War II to bring unity to a shattered continent.

But a decisive Conservative victory would also provide some relief to the EU, which has grown tired of Britain’s Brexit indecision.

Britain’s departure will start a new phase of negotiations on future relations between Britain and the 27 remaining EU members.

EU Council President Charles Michel promised that EU leaders meeting Friday would send a “strong message” to the next British government and parliament about next steps.

“We are ready to negotiate,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said.

The pound surged when an exit poll forecast the Tory win, jumping over two cents against the dollar, to $1.3445, the highest in more than a year and a half. Many Investors hope a Conservative win would speed up the Brexit process and ease, at least in the short term, some of the uncertainty that has corroded business confidence since the 2016 vote.

Many voters casting ballots on Thursday hoped the election might finally find a way out of the Brexit stalemate in this deeply divided nation. Three and a half years after the U.K. voted by 52%-48% to leave the EU, Britons remain split over whether to leave the 28-nation bloc, and lawmakers have proved incapable of agreeing on departure terms.

On a dank, gray day with outbreaks of blustery rain, voters went to polling stations in schools, community centers, pubs and town halls after a bad-tempered five-week campaign rife with mudslinging and misinformation.

Opinion polls had given the Conservatives a steady lead, but the result was considered hard to predict, because the issue of Brexit cuts across traditional party loyalties.

Johnson campaigned relentlessly on a promise to “Get Brexit done” by getting Parliament to ratify his “oven-ready” divorce deal with the EU and take Britain out of the bloc as scheduled on Jan. 31.

The Conservatives focused much of their energy on trying to win in a “red wall” of working-class towns in central and northern England that have elected Labour lawmakers for decades but also voted strongly in 2016 to leave the EU. That effort got a boost when the Brexit Party led by Nigel Farage decided at the last minute not to contest 317 Conservative-held seats to avoid splitting the pro-Brexit vote.

Labour, which is largely but ambiguously pro-EU, faced competition for anti-Brexit voters from the centrist Liberal Democrats, Scottish and Welsh nationalist parties, and the Greens.

But on the whole Labour tried to focus the campaign away from Brexit and onto its radical domestic agenda, vowing to tax the rich, nationalize industries such as railroads and water companies and give everyone in the country free internet access. It campaigned heavily on the future of the National Health Service, a deeply respected institution that has struggled to meet rising demand after nine years of austerity under Conservative-led governments.

It appears that wasn’t enough to boost Labour’s fortunes. Defeat will likely spell the end for Corbyn, a veteran socialist who moved his party sharply to the left after taking the helm in 2015, but who now looks to have led his left-of-center party to two electoral defeats since 2017. The 70-year-old left-winger was also accused of allowing anti-Semitism to spread within the party.

“It’s Corbyn,” said former Labour Cabinet minister Alan Johnson, when asked about the poor result. “We knew he was incapable of leading, we knew he was worse than useless at all the qualities you need to lead a political party.”

For many voters, the election offered an unpalatable choice. Both Johnson and Corbyn have personal approval ratings in negative territory, and both have been dogged by questions about their character.

Johnson has been confronted with past broken promises, untruths and offensive statements, from calling the children of single mothers “ignorant, aggressive and illegitimate” to comparing Muslim women who wear face-covering veils to “letter boxes.”

Yet, his energy and determination proved persuasive to many voters.

“It’s a big relief, looking at the exit polls as they are now, we’ve finally got that majority a working majority that we have not had for 3 1/2 years,” said Conservative-supporting writer Jack Rydeheard. “We’ve got the opportunity to get Brexit done and get everything else that we promised as well. That’s investment in the NHS, schools, hospitals you name it — it’s finally a chance to break that deadlock in Parliament.”

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