A trip that should have lasted just over a week spirals into a roughly eight-month adventure. Plus, a pioneering teacher memorialized in bronze. And a robot proves its purpose by picking up pebbles. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us The Week in Space.
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Day: September 5, 2024
Despite global efforts to stop the practice of female genital mutilation, the harmful tradition continues to affect the lives and health of millions of women and girls in Somalia. Reporter Najib Ahmed has this story from the capital, Mogadishu, narrated by Anthony LaBruto. (Camera and Produced by: Abdulkadir Zuber)
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LONDON — Disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein won’t face charges of indecent assault in Britain, prosecutors announced on Thursday.
The Crown Prosecution Service, which in 2022 authorized two charges of indecent assault against Weinstein, said it decided to discontinue proceedings because there was “no longer a realistic prospect of conviction.”
“We have explained our decision to all parties,” the CPS said in a statement. ”We would always encourage any potential victims of sexual assault to come forward and report to police, and we will prosecute wherever our legal test is met.”
Weinstein became the most prominent villain of the #MeToo movement in 2017 when women began to go public with accounts of his behavior. After the revelations emerged, British police said they were investigating multiple allegations of sexual assault that reportedly took place between the 1980s and 2015.
In June 2022, the Crown Prosecution Service said it had authorized London’s Metropolitan Police Service to file two charges of indecent assault against Weinstein in relation to an alleged incident that occurred in London in 1996. The victim was in her 50s at the time of the announcement.
Unlike many other countries, Britain does not have a statute of limitations for rape or sexual assault.
Weinstein, who has denied that he raped or sexually assaulted anyone, remains in custody in New York while awaiting retrial in Manhattan, prosecutors said in August.
After the retrial, he is due to start serving a 16-year sentence in California for a separate rape conviction in Los Angeles, authorities said. Weinstein was convicted in Los Angeles in 2022 while already serving a 23-year sentence in New York.
His 2020 conviction in Manhattan was thrown out earlier this year when the state’s top court ruled that the judge in the original trial unfairly allowed testimony against Weinstein based on allegations that weren’t part of the case.
Weinstein, the co-founder of the Miramax entertainment company and The Weinstein Company film studio, was once one of the most powerful people in Hollywood, having produced films such as “Pulp Fiction” and “The Crying Game.”
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Brussels — Elon Musk’s woes are hardly limited to Brazil as he now risks possible EU sanctions in the coming months for allegedly breaking new content rules.
Access to X has been suspended in South America’s largest country since Saturday after a long-running legal battle over disinformation ended with a judge ordering a shutdown.
But Brazil is not alone in its concerns about X.
Politicians worldwide and digital rights groups have repeatedly raised concerns about Musk’s actions since taking over what was then Twitter in late 2022, including sacking many employees tasked with content moderation and maintaining ties with EU regulators.
Musk’s “free speech absolutist” attitude has led to clashes with Brussels.
The European Union could decide within months to take action against X, including possible fines, as part of an ongoing probe into whether the platform is breaching a landmark content moderation law, the Digital Services Act (DSA).
Nothing has yet been decided but any fines could be as high as 6% of X’s annual worldwide turnover unless the company makes changes in line with EU demands.
But if Musk’s reactions are anything to go by, another showdown is on the cards.
When the EU in July accused X of deceptive practices in violation of the DSA, Musk warned: “We look forward to a very public battle in court.”
The temperature was raised even further a month later with another war of words on social media between Musk and the EU’s top tech enforcer, Thierry Breton.
Breton reminded Musk in a letter of his legal duty to stop “harmful content” from spreading on X hours before an interview with U.S. presidential challenger Donald Trump live on the platform.
Musk responded by mocking Breton and sharing a meme that carried an obscene message.
EU ban ‘very unlikely’
Despite the bitter barbs, the European Commission, the EU’s digital watchdog, insists that dialogue with X is ongoing.
“X continues to cooperate with the commission and respond to questions,” the commission’s digital spokesman, Thomas Regnier, told AFP.
Experts also agree that a Brazil-like shutdown in the 27-country EU is unlikely, although it has the legal right.
The DSA would allow the bloc to demand a judge in Ireland, where X has its EU headquarters, order a temporary suspension until the infringements cease.
Breton has repeatedly insisted that “Europe will not hesitate to do what is necessary.”
But since X has around 106 million EU users, significantly higher than the 22 million in Brazil, the belief is that Musk would not want to risk a similar move in Europe.
“Obviously, we can never exclude it, but it is very unlikely,” said Alexandre de Streel of the think tank Centre on Regulation in Europe.
Regardless of what happens next, de Streel said the case would likely end up in the EU courts, calling X “the least cooperative company” with the bloc.
Jan Penfrat of the European Digital Rights advocacy group said a ban was “a very last resort measure” and that X would “probably” not close shop in the EU.
“I would hope that the commission thinks about this very, very hard before going there because this (a ban) would have a tremendously negative effect on the right to freedom of expression and access to information,” Penfrat said.
EU’s X-File
The commission in July accused X of misleading users with its blue checkmarks for certified accounts, insufficient advertising transparency and failing to give researchers access to the platform’s data.
That allegation is part of a wider probe into X, launched in December, and regulators are still probing how it tackles the spread of illegal content and information manipulation.
X now has access to the EU’s file and can defend itself including by replying to the commission’s findings.
The list of governments angry with Musk is growing. He also raised hackles over the summer in the UK during days of rioting sparked by online misinformation that the suspect behind a mass stabbing that killed three girls was a Muslim asylum seeker.
The billionaire, whose personal X account has 196 million followers, engaged in disputes with British politicians after sharing inflammatory posts and claiming a “civil war is inevitable” in the country.
Non-EU member Britain will soon be able to implement a similar law to the DSA with enforcement expected to start next year.
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Kinshasa, Congo — The first delivery of almost 100,000 doses of mpox vaccines will arrive in the Democratic Republic of Congo on Thursday, the African Union’s health watchdog said.
The vast central Africa country of around 100 million people is at the epicenter of the mpox outbreak, with cases and deaths rising.
“We are very pleased with the arrival of this first batch of vaccines in the DRC,” Jean Kaseya, head of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told AFP, adding that more than 99,000 doses were expected.
More than 17,500 cases and 629 deaths have been reported in the country since the start of the year, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
The vaccine doses will be transported onboard an airplane leaving the Danish capital Copenhagen on Wednesday evening and are due to arrive at Kinshasa’s international airport on Thursday at 1100 GMT.
‘Health war’
The Congolese National Institute of Public Health, which is in charge of managing the country’s mpox response, indicated that it was still waiting for details on the origin of the vaccines contained in the first delivery.
“Kinshasa is still waiting for documents from the Africa CDC that will provide information on these doses,” the institute’s director Dieudonne Mwamba Kazadi told AFP.
“We are in a health war against mpox. To face this disease, we need you,” Health Minister Samuel-Roger Kamba said on X on Tuesday.
In Africa, mpox is now present in at least 13 countries, including Burundi, Congo-Brazzaville and the Central African Republic, according to figures from the Africa CDC dated August 27.
On Wednesday, Guinea said it had recorded its first confirmed case of the disease, convening an emergency meeting in response.
A health official speaking on condition of anonymity told AFP that the case was discovered in a sub-prefecture close to the Liberian border.
Outside the continent, the virus has also been detected in Sweden, Pakistan and the Philippines.
The WHO said last week that the first vaccine doses would arrive in the DRC in the following days, with other deliveries to follow.
The WHO said at the end of August that around 230,000 MVA-BN vaccine doses produced by Danish drugmaker Bavarian Nordic were “imminently available to be dispatched to affected regions.”
Other countries have also promised to send vaccine doses to African nations.
Spain has promised 500,000 doses, with France and Germany each pledging 100,000.
The WHO declared an international emergency over mpox on August 14, concerned by the surge in cases of the new Clade 1b strain in the DRC that spread to nearby countries.
Both the Clade 1b and Clade 1a strains are present in the DRC.
The WHO’s Africa bureau said at the end of last month that 10,000 vaccine doses would be delivered to Nigeria — Bavarian Nordic vaccines donated by the United States.
This was the first African country to receive doses outside of clinical trials.
Formerly called monkeypox, the virus was discovered in 1958 in Denmark, in monkeys kept for research.
It was first discovered in humans in 1970 in what is now the DRC.
Mpox is caused by a virus transmitted to humans by infected animals but can also be passed from human to human through close physical contact.
The disease causes fever, muscular aches and large boil-like skin lesions.
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