Greece’s new Cabinet was sworn in Tuesday, two days after conservative party leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis won early elections on pledges to make the country more business-friendly, cut taxes and negotiate an easing of draconian budget conditions agreed as part of the country’s rescue program.
The new Cabinet relies heavily on experienced politicians who have served in previous governments, but also includes non-politician technocrats considered experts in their fields.
FILE – Greece’s newly-elected prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, waves as he walks shortly after his swearing-in ceremony at the Presidential Palace in Athens, July 8, 2019.
Mitsotakis appointed Christos Staikouras to the crucial post of finance minister. Staikouras is an economist and engineer who had served as deputy minister in a previous government.
The new foreign minister is Nikos Dendias, who held previous Cabinet positions in the ministries of development, defense and public order.
A former public order minister under a previous socialist government, Michalis Chrisohoidis, takes the reins of the ministry once again as one of Mitsotakis’ non-parliamentary appointees.
The new appointees headed to their ministries for official handovers after the swearing-in ceremony at the presidential mansion in central Athens.
Mitsotakis had barely announced his Cabinet selection Monday evening when Greece’s creditors bluntly rejected his calls to ease bailout conditions. Finance ministers from the 19 European Union countries that use the euro currency, who met in Brussels, insisted key targets must be adhered to.
“Commitments are commitments, and if we break them, credibility is the first thing to fall apart. That brings about a lack of confidence and investment,” Eurogroup president Mario Centeno said after the meeting.
Greece was dependent for years on successive international bailouts that provided rescue loans from other European Union countries and the International Monetary Fund in return for deep reforms to the country’s economy that included steep tax hikes and major spending cuts.
Unemployment and poverty levels soared in the country. Greece’s third and final international bailout ended last year, but the country’s economy is still under strict supervision by its creditors.
Brazil’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro is among the least popular since the country’s return to democracy three decades ago, but his rating in a poll released on Monday showed his numbers stabilizing.
The Datafolha polling institute found that 33% of respondents said Bolsonaro was doing a “great or good” job. That is technically tied with the 32% in an April Datafolha poll.
Those who think Bolsonaro is doing a “bad or awful” job rose to 33% from 30% in the April poll.
The latest polls show Bolsonaro technically tied with former President Fernando Henrique Cardoso as the leader with the least support at this point in his first term. Thirty-four percent of those asked by Datafolha in June 1995 thought Cardoso was doing “good or great.”
The poll of 2,086 people across Brazil on July 4-5 has a margin of error of 2 percentage points.
Bolsonaro easily won last year’s election over leftist rival Fernando Haddad, who stepped in to take the top place on the Workers Party ticket after a graft conviction prevented imprisoned former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from running. Datafolha polls last year showed Lula far more popular than Bolsonaro – even after he had been imprisoned.
Lula’s conviction has come under scrutiny since the publication of leaked messages last month by news website The Intercept Brasil showed former federal judge and current Justice Minister Sergio Moro stepping over ethical, and possibly legal, lines by coaching the prosecution in Lula’s trial.
Moro, who presided over the case and found Lula guilty, has alternatively argued that the leaked messages show no improper behavior to questioning their authenticity, is facing withering criticism.
On Monday, Moro’s press office said he would take the week of July 15-19 off for “personal” reasons, and later added he was spending time with his family. Moro’s wife and children do not live with him in the capital. July is winter recess for schools in Brazil.
In August the Supreme Court is expected to weigh an appeal from Lula’s legal team, demanding his release from jail.
Lula has been convicted in a second graft trial and faces at least eight more.
Aficionados of Western classical music have carved out a niche for themselves in Iran, where cultural expression remains tightly controlled by strict rules imposed after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
And perhaps surprisingly, musicians in their 20s and 30s perform for overwhelmingly young audiences.
Last week, the Tehran Symphony Orchestra, including female musicians in burgundy headscarves on cello, horn and harp, played works by 19th-century Russian composers for an enraptured crowd in the capital’s main concert venue, Vahdat Hall.
A major draw is Shahrdad Rohani, 65, the orchestra’s charismatic music director. The Iranian-American composer, musician and conductor who has led orchestras in the United States and Europe, said he is proud of his homegrown crop of young musicians.
Iranian American maestro Shahrdad Rohani conducts the Tehran Symphony Orchestra at Unity Hall, in Tehran, Iran, July 3, 2019.
Classical music may not have mass appeal, but Rohani said in a backstage interview that there’s potential for growth, citing a large turnout during a stadium concert last year in Abadan, a provincial city in southwestern Iran.
“Classical music is growing, and as you see, the audience, they are really supporting the arts and classical music,” he told The Associated Press during the intermission of the July 3 sold-out concert.
In four decades of conservative Islamic rule, the space for artistic expression in Iran has expanded or contracted, depending on whether political hard-liners or moderates prevail.
In the first decade after the Islamic Revolution, including the eight-year war with Iraq, pop music disappeared from the public sphere, said Nima Mina of the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London.
The Tehran Symphony Orchestra, founded in 1933, continued its work after 1979, he said. Live performances were initially rare, but have increased in number since the 1990s.
The Tehran Symphony Orchestra performs pieces by 19th-century Russian composers in Unity Hall, in Tehran, Iran, July 3, 2019.
Even during periods of eased controls, red lines are enforced.
This includes a ban on female singers performing for mixed audiences, considered “haram,” or religiously forbidden. In February, female guitarist Negin Parsa sang a solo during a concert by pop singer Hamid Askari. The authorities cut her microphone, and Askari’s permission to perform was briefly suspended.
A music cafe in downtown Tehran complies with the ban on female singers during live shows, but not when playing records. On a recent afternoon, a blues recording featuring a soulful female vocalist played in the background, as customers sipped coffee and smoked cigarettes.
“Authorities rarely challenge the playing of recorded music in the cafe, and mainly argue about the hijab issue,” said waitress Nillofar Dailami, 29, referring to the headscarf all Iranian women are required to wear. Dailami also professed a love for classical music as a result of her study of guitar.
These days, the influence of hard-liners appears on the upswing again as moderates find themselves on the defensive because of the seeming collapse of the 2015 nuclear deal they negotiated with world powers.
The U.S. walked away from the deal a year ago, instead embarking on a “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran, including unprecedented economic sanctions.
The sanctions have hurt ordinary Iranians, sending prices for staples and consumer goods soaring and weakening the local currency, while raising the specter of war with the U.S.
For Tehran music lovers, events like Wednesday’s concert on the main national stage next to the Russian Embassy offers a momentary escape from reality.
Audience members wait for the Tehran Symphony Orchestra during a break at Unity Hall, in Tehran, Iran, July 3, 2019.
“It is little moments that build up your life in the end,” said Shafa Sabeti, a 36-year-old architect whose business has suffered as the result of the economic downturn linked to the U.S. sanctions. “Public spaces have gotten more crowded recently. People are just living the moment — maybe it’s some coping mechanism.”
Yet tensions and fear of escalation are a “major big black cloud hovering over the country,” he said.
Wednesday’s concert featured works by Russian composers Alexander Borodin, Sergey Rachmaninov and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.
The audience was entranced.
There was no fidgeting or coughing. A young couple in the balcony held hands. A woman nearby recorded the concert on her iPhone. Rohani, the conductor, was greeted by loud applause and addressed the crowd several times, including announcing details about an upcoming concert.
“I love the work of Rohani,” said concert-goer Ali Reza, 26, who was introduced to classical music by learning to play the piano. He said most of his friends prefer other styles of music, including rock and pop.
Some said there’s a generational divide, with older people tending to prefer traditional Iranian music.
“There is a lot of interest in Western culture among the young urban middle class population,” said Mina, portraying it as pushback against the lifestyle and artistic expression promoted by the authorities.
He said that since the 1940s, Tehran’s music conservatory has provided a steady supply of musicians, including those who later join the Tehran Symphony Orchestra.
One of the graduates of the conservatory, violinist Ed Nekoo, spent 10 years in the Los Angeles area but returned home to care for his mother.
He said he misses the exchange with peers abroad and complained of the lack of foreign music teachers.
“We have to learn the music by ourselves,” said Nekoo, 44.
Still, he’s optimistic.
“Our audience is so young,” he said. “That’s what I like about classical music.”
Uber is already known for its global ride-hailing service, food delivery arm, and electric bike rentals. Now it has inspired a comedy action movie.
“Stuber,” which begins its international roll-out on Wednesday, revolves around a mild-mannered Uber driver who picks up a Los Angeles detective who turns out to be on the trail of a brutal killer.
Wild ride for driver
Desperate to increase his Uber ratings, driver Stu is drawn into a wild ride involving shootouts, chases, strip clubs and crime bosses.
Director Michael Dowse said Uber Technologies neither sponsored the film and was not involved in any way with making the movie.
“There’s no sponsorship. We never reached out to them for permission or anything like that,” Dowse told Reuters Television.
“We vetted it all legally and stuff and the opinion was that because everyone uses it so much, it’s fair game. As long as you’re not derogatory about it and as long as you use it as it’s used in real life and you’re not making stuff up about how it’s used, you’re free to go. And it’s a better title than ‘Stiffed’,” he said.
Former wrestler plays cop
Former wrestler Dave Bautista plays police officer Vic, who needs a driver to get around Los Angeles after undergoing eye surgery.
Kumail Nanjiani plays Stu, who also works a day job and drives for Uber to supplement his income — hence earning him the nickname Stuber.
First lady Melania Trump is visiting West Virginia to learn how a city at the center of the nation’s opioid epidemic is grappling with the crisis.
Trump on Monday participated in a roundtable discussion on opioids with federal, state and local officials in Huntington, West Virginia. Federal statistics show West Virginia has the highest opioid overdose rate in the U.S.
During the roughly hour-long meeting, Trump heard about how police, schools and health care centers in the area are fighting the opioid scourge. Huntington Mayor Steve Williams said it’s a grim task, and added that his city would still have to deal with the epidemic for at least the next 40 years even if all heroin sales were to abruptly stop.
Religious publishers say President Donald Trump’s most recent proposed tariffs on Chinese imports could result in a Bible shortage.
That’s because millions of Bibles are printed in China each year. Stan Jantz, president and CEO of the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association, says more than half of worldwide Bible production takes place in China.
Critics of a proposed tariff say it would make the Bible more expensive for consumers. It would also hurt the efforts of Christian organizations that give away Bibles as part of their ministry.
The proposed 25% tariff would apply to all books, but critics say it would disproportionately affect Bibles and children’s books. Both tend to have specialized printing requirements that Chinese printers are set up to meet, while many domestic printers are not.
Elizabeth Warren raised $19.1 million in the second quarter, her campaign said Monday, cementing her status in the top tier of Democratic presidential contenders and a leading voice of the party’s liberal base.
The Massachusetts senator’s second-quarter contributions leave her behind only Pete Buttigieg, the South Bend, Ind., mayor who reported nearly $25 million in donations, and former Vice President Joe Biden, who tallied $21.5 million since his candidacy began in late April.
Perhaps most notably, Warren’s donations exceeded those reported by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, her closest rival, who is also vying for liberal voters and is the only other candidate who has joined her in swearing off high-dollar fundraisers.
Warren’s success underscores the threat she poses to both Sanders and California Sen. Kamala Harris, whose $12 million second-quarter fundraising got a major boost in the final days of last month from her performance in the first Democratic debate. While Sanders appeals to progressives seeking an ambitious Democratic agenda, Warren has staked a claim to his base with her now-trademark policy plans. And as Harris seeks a foothold with black voters as the primary’s lone black female candidate, Warren is making headway of her own with black women.
“To sum it up: We raised more money than any other 100% grassroots-funded campaign,” said Roger Lau, Warren’s campaign manager. “That’s big.”
Warren more than tripled the $6 million she raised in the first three months of 2019 , when she silenced some skeptics of her long-term fundraising viability following her decision to rely on grassroots rather than high-dollar donations. The campaign’s $19.1 million came from more than 384,000 contributors giving more than 683,000 donations.
That’s less than the nearly 1 million individual donations Sanders’ campaign reported, but comparable with the 725,000 online donations that President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign reported during the second quarter.
Warren’s extensive organizing apparatus, particularly in early voting primary states, remains both a formidable asset — and a significant cost — as the campaign prepares to report $19.7 million in cash on hand. Her operation currently counts more than 300 paid staff members, 60% of whom are in the four early voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada, according to the campaign.
While a staffing footprint of that size is likely to spark questions about Warren’s high spending rate among some of her presidential rivals, her team has already underlined its confidence that the campaign will have enough resources for the long term.
“Overall, the Warren operation has a six-figure number of people who own a piece of the campaign and an eight-figure amount of money to go execute the plan. So, game on,” Warren adviser Joe Rospars tweeted after her first-quarter fundraising tally emerged.
Warren has an energetic output of policy proposals on everything from education to climate change, a signature of her 2020 efforts that has helped her push past a rocky start in the primary. That fast pace isn’t likely to change as the Democratic campaign nears an expected winnowing from about two dozen candidates.
This week alone, Warren is scheduled to hold a town hall in Milwaukee after joining a half-dozen other Democratic presidential hopefuls at a gathering hosted by the League of United Latin American Citizens. She’ll then head to Philadelphia for Netroots Nation, an annual conference for progressive activists.
“In the weeks and months ahead, we’ll keep growing our movement across the country and Elizabeth will keep rolling out new plans to level the playing field for working people,” Lau wrote in an email to supporters.
Warren was already a guaranteed presence in this fall’s Democratic primary debates, which require at least 130,000 donors as well as minimum polling performance according to rules set by the Democratic National Committee. She’ll likely be joined on that stage in the fall by a rival whose showing she praised after last month’s first debate: former Housing Secretary Julian Castro, who reported on Monday that he had met the higher donor threshold needed to qualify.
The first Democratic presidential debate for the 2020 elections brought a decades-old civil rights issue back into the public spotlight: whether to bus children to racially integrate schools.
One of the most defining moments of the debate came when U.S. Senator Kamala Harris challenged former Vice President Joe Biden’s record for not supporting the type of busing that she experienced as a black schoolgirl in California.
The exchange garnered headlines and brought the topic of busing, which had been a national issue in the 1970s but had largely fallen out of the public conversation, back into the spotlight.
Democratic presidential hopeful US Senator for California Kamala Harris speaks to the press in the Spin Room after the second Democratic primary debate of the 2020 presidential campaign.
What is busing?
Busing was a tool that many U.S. communities used to overcome racial segregation in public schools.
Following the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, legal racial segregation in schools was outlawed across the United States. However, because of demographic trends and housing policies, many U.S. neighborhoods remained segregated, and as a result schools were effectively segregated because students attended schools in neighborhoods where they lived.
In the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s, courts ruled that local jurisdictions were not doing enough to promote desegregation in schools and began mandating busing to address the problem. Federal agencies oversaw and enforced busing efforts, including collecting data about the race of students and withholding money from noncompliant schools.
Who was bused?
Both black students took buses to majority-white schools and white students to majority-black schools in court-ordered busing.
However, Brett Gadsden, the author of a book about desegregation efforts in Delaware, “Between North and South: Delaware, Desegregation, and the Myth of American Sectionalism,” said, “African American students disproportionally shouldered the burden” of efforts to desegregate schools.
Gadsden, an associate professor of history at Northwestern University, said black students were forced to travel longer distances and for many more years than white students.
In this Sept. 26, 1957, file photo, members of the 101st Airborne Division take up positions outside Central High School in Little Rock, Ark., after President Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered them into the city to enforce integration at the school.
Why was it controversial?
Busing proved to be intensely controversial nationwide. Supporters argued busing was necessary to integrate schools and to give black and white students equal access to resources and opportunities.
Critics argued that busing was dangerous and costly, and many parents did not want their children to have to travel great distances to get to school.
While much of the opposition to busing came from whites, the black community was also divided about its merits.
Gadsden said black critics cited the burden their children had to shoulder in terms of distance traveled and time spent on buses. They also complained that historically black schools were closed, and black administrators and teachers lost their jobs as a result of busing policies, while similar demands were not made of white schools, Gadsden said.
In Boston, anti-busing protests turned violent in 1974, with demonstrators throwing bricks and bottles at school buses.
Political analyst Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia said in a Twitter post following the Democratic debate that busing was so unpopular in the 1970s that Democrats running for office often had a choice to “be a profile in courage and lose, or oppose busing in whole or in part & win to fight another day on stronger ground.”
Biden’s stance
During the 1970s when Biden was a freshman U.S. senator representing Delaware, he worked with conservative senators to oppose federally mandated busing.
In a 1975 interview with a Delaware newspaper that was first resurfaced by The Washington Post, Biden said, “I do not buy the concept, popular in the ’60s, which said, ‘We have suppressed the black man for 300 years and the white man is now far ahead in the race for everything our society offers. In order to even the score, we must now give the black man a head start, or even hold the white man back, to even the race.’”
During the Democratic debate, Biden defended his position against mandated busing in the 1970s, arguing that he did not oppose voluntary busing by communities, only federal mandates. “I did not oppose busing in America; what I opposed is busing ordered by the Department of Education,” he said.
Democratic presidential hopeful former US Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. speaks during the second Democratic primary debate of the 2020 presidential campaign.
Harris responded by saying the federal government needed to be able to step in and mandate busing in some areas because “there was a failure of states to integrate public schools in America.”
Schools today
While some communities still champion voluntary busing measures, most busing efforts ended by the turn of the century. Local and national court rulings in the 1990s said many communities had succeeded in improving the integration of their schools and allowed busing programs to end.
The Civil Rights Project at UCLA said in a May report to mark the 65th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, that segregation in schools is again on the rise and has been growing “unchecked” for nearly three decades, “placing the promise of Brown at grave risk.”
The report said white students, on average, attend a school in which 69% of the students are white, Latino students attend schools in which 55% of the students are Latino, and black students attend schools with a combined black and Latino enrollment averaging 67%.
Gadsden agreed there is “a lot of segregation in schools now” but said there is little political will to go back to the era of busing. “Federal courts now are not particularly sympathetic to challenges to school segregation,” he said, also noting there is no great appetite in the U.S. Congress to introduce measures to advance school desegregation.
After the debate, Harris told reporters that “busing is a tool among many that should be considered.” however, when pressed on whether she supported federally mandated busing today, she said she would not unless society became as opposed to integration as it was in the 1970s.
Some critics say Harris’ position on busing today is not that much different from Biden’s.
When people are recovering from an illness or injury, they often don’t think of nutrition, but it may be key to getting their health back.
When Monika McComb returned home from the hospital, she didn’t think about nutrition as being essential for a full recovery.
“I was really, really weak. I could hardly even walk with a cane,” McComb said.
McComb didn’t associate her weakness with malnutrition until she was evaluated; but, researchers from Advocate Health Care and Abbott were conducting a study to evaluate the role nutrition plays in reducing hospital admissions.
Suela Sulo, a researcher from Abbott, says malnutrition is rarely taken into account in dealing with patients who are in recovery.
“Malnutrition is invisible to the eye, and therefore it remains under diagnosed and underrated,” Sulo said.
McComb enrolled in a home health care program and was given a detailed nutrition plan.
Most Americans have access to food, but one in three patients in home health care is malnourished or has some nutritional deficiency that puts his or her health — and recovery — at risk. Katie Riley is the chief nursing officer with Advocate Aurora Health.
“Nutrition is not the primary reason why patients usually come to home health; however, it is important for us to pay attention to the nutrition to promote their strength and get them recovered quicker,” Riley said.
Abbot funded a study in partnership with Advocate Health Care to find a way to reduce hospitalizations, cut medical costs and promote patients’ health.
Suela Sulo said the researchers found that when patients on home health care received education about nutrition along with nutritional drinks, they were nearly 20 percent less likely to be hospitalized or re-hospitalized in the 90 days after an injury or illness.
“Through identifying the patients with malnutrition risk, feeding them with the right nutritional drinks, you are increasing their chances of recovering faster, not going back to the hospital, or not going to the hospital in the first place.”
One of the study’s goals was to create a program that patients could follow on their own, one reason they were educated about nutrition. Gretchen VanDerBosch says anyone can become malnourished and not realize it. She says educating patients about nutrition is so important.
“Because they’re educated, they actually continue their supplements and start it back up, and their outcome is so much improved, they have more strength, they heal quicker, have fewer falls, they have less readmissions,” VanDerBosch said.
The researchers say they hope other health care programs and hospitals can use the study to help other patients as well.
As for Monika McComb, she says she feels stronger and has more energy than she had at the start of the program. She credits support from the home health nurse and the focus on nutrition for her improved health.
A 50-member delegation of Afghan elites is in Qatar for peace talks with Taliban leaders, with the hopes of ending the 18-year-long conflict in Afghanistan.
The two-day summit, facilitated by Germany and Qatar, is an “historic opportunity for all of them to bridge trust deficit, which will help pave the way for direct peace negotiations between Afghan government and the Taliban,” said Asadullah Zaeri, a spokesman of the country’s High Peace Council.
The delegation includes politicians, top members of the council, representatives of women’s groups and senior journalists, he said.
Although both sides have emphasized that members of Afghan government are attending in their personal capacity, not representing Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s government, their presence makes this conference different from the intra-Afghan conference in Moscow in April. At that gathering, the Taliban refused to sit at the table with anyone from the administration of President Ghani – an administration they insist is a “puppet” of the United States.
Ghani termed that conference a failure.
Members of the Taliban political office are seen inside the conference hall at the start of the intra-Afghan dialogue. Sitting far right is Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanekzai, head of the Taliban delegation, in Doha, Qatar, July 7, 2019. (A. Tanzeem/VOA)
However, the United States seems to have succeeded in its efforts to get the Taliban to show flexibility.
“The Intra-Afghan Conference for Peace in #Doha has been a long time coming. It’s great to see senior government, civil society, women, and Taliban representatives at one table together,” tweeted U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
The conference organizers are hoping this first step would pave way for a bigger breakthrough in future.
“A partial success is for people to continue to talk. A great success would be for them to come up with a framework that could lead into direct negotiations, Afghan-Afghan, and hopefully catch up with the speed in which the talks between the Taliban and the United States are progressing,” said Sultan Barakat, the director of the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies at Doha Institute, who has been closely involved in organizing the event.
The Afghan meeting comes as the U.S. special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, who’s already holding talks with the Taliban, is nearing an agreement over a timeframe for the U.S. and NATO troop withdrawal from the country.
Afghan delegates inside the conference hall included Lotfullah Najafizada (2nd-R), the head of Afghan TV channel Tolo News, in Doha, Qatar, July 7, 2019. U.S special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad is seen center rear, with red tie. (A. Tanzeem/VOA)
Both sides claim the talks are progressing well.
“The last 6 days of talks have been the most productive session to date,” tweeted Khalilzad on Saturday. The two sides will resume on the 9th after this intra-Afghan interaction which Khalilzad called “a critical milestone.”
A Taliban spokesman said in a future conference, the insurgent group may be willing to talk to top level Ghani administration officials.
“If someone is coming in his or her personal capacity and expressing his or her views on how to bring about peace in Afghanistan, we have not put any restriction on that,” said Suhail Shaheen when asked whether the Taliban could sit with government ministers or top-level officials.
Afghan High Peace Council member Jamaluddin Badar said government representatives may be in Doha in their personal capacity but they “seemed to be giving the government’s point of view.”
Media representatives were only allowed to briefly take pictures at the start of the intra-Afghan dialogue and was asked to leave before the opening statements, in Doha, Qatar, July 7, 2019. (A. Tanzeem/VOA)
He felt positive about the discussions held till late Sunday afternoon. The Taliban, he said, seemed to be willing to address some critical concerns of most Afghans, such as how to protect the gains made since the ouster of the insurgent group in 2001, particularly in terms of institution building and human rights.
“We might have disagreements with the Taliban on how to interpret those rights, but I don’t think they will be strong enough to lead to fighting,” he said. The Taliban, he added, have even been talking about the need to reduce violence against women.
He was not the only one who expressed optimism about the discussions with the Taliban.
“I think their attitude has changed tremendously. Last night they sat with women and we chatted. They tried to show that they are willing to talk to women,” said Asila Wardak, a women’s rights activist attending the conference.
Members of the Taliban delegation are seen at the Sheraton Doha, before the start of the intra-Afghan dialogue, in Doha, Qatar, July 7, 2019. (A. Tanzeem/VOA)
“We don’t need to eat,” said a young man held in a Libyan detention center five days after the compound was bombed killing more than 50 people and injuring at least 130. “We didn’t touch the food. We need to be out of Libya.”
The hunger strike in the detention center was on its third day Sunday, according to the protester communicating with VOA via phone and social media. He sent pictures of detainees holding signs like “We are in the grave” and “Save us from the next bomb. We are survivors, but still we are targeted.”
News and additional photographs of the protest came from other detainees communicating with hidden mobile phones.
The airstrikes hit the detention center late Tuesday, after international organizations warned both sides of Libya’s ongoing war that civilians were held at that location, which has been targeted before. Amnesty International says there is evidence the detention center is located near weapons’ storage, but Tripoli authorities say there is no legitimate military target in the area.
The morning after airstrikes hit a detention center holding migrants killed more than 50 people and injured at least 130, blood still stains the rubble as officials search for human remains, in Tripoli, Libya, July 3, 2019. (H. Murdock/VOA)
Officials say about 600 people were inside the detention center when the airstrikes hit a nearby garage, and then the center itself. Some survivors reported breaking open the doors of the detention center to escape, others escaped the bombing after guards let them out. Still others reported shots fired in the chaos.
Five days later, migrants were still sleeping outside in the yard on Sunday, according to detainees, with part of the center destroyed and other parts appearing to be about to collapse.
The United Nations announced it would start evacuations over the weekend, but some protesters said moving to another detention center would only prolong the danger.
“If they are taking us to another detention center, we won’t go,” the protester told VOA on the phone. “We want to get out of this country or stay here.”
The migrants say they fled war, violence and abject poverty and risked their lives for the chance at a better life in Europe, before being captured and held in Tripoli. Photographed and transmitted to VOA July 7, 2019, in Tripoli, Libya.
Escalating war
To wind up in a Libyan detention center, migrants travel from across sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and Asia in hopes of crossing the Mediterranean Sea to Europe.
Many people die on the trip to Libya alone and nearly 700 people have drowned in the Mediterranean Sea in 2019 trying to cross to Europe, according to the International Organization for Migration.
Thousands of survivors remain detained in Libya, hoping to try to cross to Europe and unwilling to return to the wars, violence and dire poverty they fled. But as the war for Tripoli intensifies, some say Libya is as dangerous as the countries they fled.
“Sudan, Libya… they are the same,” said one woman outside the detention center only hours after last week’s bombing. She had fled war and genocide in Sudan, only to find herself detained, impoverished and terrified in Libya, she said.
After the detention center was bombed, remaining structures appeared unstable and five days later, migrants were still sleeping outdoors. Pictured and transmitted to VOA July 7, 2019, in Tripoli, Libya.
Libyan forces have been battling for the capital since early April, when Khalifa Haftar, the de-facto leader of eastern Libya declared he would reunite the divided country by force and marched on Tripoli in the west. Forces loyal to the Government of National Accord, which runs western Libya, have been defending the city since. Neither side appears to be backing down.
Nearly 1,000 people have been killed and 5,000 wounded, according to the World Health Organization, and more than 100,000 have fled their homes.
Protesters outside the detention center on Sunday secretly sent out pictures and videos, calling on the international community to rescue them and allow them to apply for asylum in safer countries.
“Doctors Without Borders came with medicine, but we don’t want medicine,” said the protester communicating with VOA via phone and social media. “The UNHCR evacuated some people but we don’t want to evacuate to another detention center.
“We want to go to a safe country, or we will stay here.”
An airstrike hits a Tripoli suburb July 7, 2019, as forces loyal to the Government of National Accord in the west battled forces loyal to Khalifa Haftar, the eastern de-facto leader who has vowed to take the Libyan capital by force. (H. Murdock/VOA)
Two remote California desert communities assessed damage after two major earthquakes hit the area at the end of last week, followed by thousands of smaller aftershocks.
Ridgecrest and neighboring Trona were hit hard by the magnitude 7.1 quake that rocked the Mojave Desert towns Friday. A day earlier, a magnitude 6.4 temblor hit the same patch of the desert.
The area, about 240 kilometers northeast of Los Angeles, is in recovery mode after the quakes crumbled buildings, ignited fires and cut power to thousands of homes and businesses.
The U.S. Geological Survey said Sunday there was just a 1% chance of another magnitude 7 or higher earthquake in the next week, and a rising possibility of no magnitude 6 quakes.
California Governor Gavin Newsom has declared a state of emergency for the area and warned local governments to strengthen alert systems and building codes. “It is a wake-up call for the rest of the state and other parts of the nation,” Newsom told reporters.
The damage wasn’t worse largely because of how remote the area is, but Newsom cautioned after touring Ridgecrest that “it’s deceiving, earthquake damage. You don’t notice it at first.”
The Democratic governor estimated the damage at more than $100 million and said U.S. President Donald Trump called him to offer federal support for rebuilding.
Concerted efforts continue to rebuild the Syrian city of Raqqa, nearly two years after it was recaptured from the Islamic State (IS) terror group. And while these efforts mostly focus on essential services in the city, several activist groups are trying to take on something different by restoring parks, playgrounds and public squares.
U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces liberated Raqqa from IS in October 2017.
During the 3-month-long battle, however, the city’s infrastructure was mostly destroyed, including dozens of public squares and parks that once were used by the terror group for the public execution of dissidents.
Activists who have taken on the mission to reconstruct these facilities say they are particularly focused on projects that could change the face of the city after years of horror under IS rule.
Ahed al-Hendi, head of the Syrian Foundation for Sustainable Development, a local organization that has been involved in several reconstruction projects in Raqqa, says that the idea behind supporting these efforts is to turn the former de facto capital of IS’ self-styled caliphate into a bright and colorful city.
“Under IS rule, only one color was prevalent and allowed and that was black,” he told VOA. “The colors we use now while repairing these parks represent diversity and tolerance.”
A mural said to be representing diversity and tolerance is seen on wall at a park in Raqqa, Syria, June 25, 2019. (Courtesy photo)
Celebrating life after IS
During its reign, IS imposed strict social codes on the local population in Raqqa and elsewhere in Syria and Iraq.
Women in particular were required to wear black dresses covering their entire bodies and faces. Those who disobeyed such rules were given harsh punishments, including imprisonment and flogging.
IS turned also the once bustling al-Naeem Square in downtown Raqqa into a major spot to carry out public executions that terrorized communities who lived under the group’s brutal rule in Syria and Iraq.
“What we are trying to do is to turn all these zones that once symbolized death into places that celebrate life to the fullest,” al-Hendi said.
Aslan Mamo, the lead artist who undertook the revamping of Raqqa parks, says that such projects bring hope and joy for the local population in Raqqa.
Children are seen playing at a newly-restored playground in Raqqa, Syria, June 25, 2019. (Courtesy photo)
“We can’t just rebuild for the sake of rebuilding. We have to put an aesthetic touch on everything we build from now on, because IS destroyed people from inside and tried to kill their taste for beauty,” he said.
He told VOA that they have also done similar works at sport fields, elementary schools and other facilities in the city.
While many displaced people have already returned to their homes in Raqqa after its liberation from IS, experts charge that rebuilding modern facilities would entice more people to consider coming back into the city in the future.
“Restoring public services such as parks and recreational centers is a key factor of stabilizing the city,” said Khaled al-‘Abo, a local civil engineer who has been helping rebuild several parks in Raqqa.
He said in a phone interview with VOA that his team’s objective is to rebuild every park in the city that has been destroyed or used by IS for “evil purposes.”
Workers are seen cutting grass and weeds at a park in Raqqa, Syria, June 13, 2019. (Courtesy photo)
US contribution
According to activists, the initiative has been entirely funded the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), a U.S federal government entity that is responsible for providing assistance to communities in need around the world.
The United States has been a major contributor to the reconstruction of Raqqa and other cities devastated by the war against IS.
In March of this year, the U.S. announced more than $397 million in additional assistance for Syria, including areas recently liberated from IS.
With this amount, the U.S. humanitarian assistance, in response to the Syrian crisis, reached more than $9.5 billion since the beginning of the country’s civil war in 2011.
In Raqqa, residents hope that such initiatives would encourage other international donors to invest more in rebuilding their city.
“With no prospects of self-funding at the moment, only international assistance can help bring back some sense of normalcy to this city,” said Hamoud al-Salih, a 39-year-old resident of Raqqa.
Iraq’s security and paramilitary forces began Sunday a military operation along the border with Syria aimed at clearing the area of Islamic State group militants, the military said in a statement.
Although Iraq declared victory against IS in July 2017, the extremists have turned into an insurgency and have carried out deadly attacks in the country.
The military said the operation that began at sunrise was being carried out by Iraqi troops and members of the Popular Mobilization Forces that largely consist of Iran-backed militias.
It said the operation will last several days and was the first phase of the Will of Victory Operation securing the western province of Anbar and the central and northern regions of Salahuddin and Nineveh.
“We press on the hands of our heroic forces that will achieve victory with the will of its heroes against the gangs of Daesh,” said Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi using an Arabic acronym to refer to IS. “May God protect you and make you victorious.”
IS once held large parts of Syria and Iraq where it declared a caliphate in 2014. The extremists lost in March the last territory they controlled in Syria.
She vowed to stay out of politics and even dropped the French far right’s signature name – Le Pen – from her moniker. But Marion Marechal, a former star lawmaker who’s still only in her 20s, is now tip-toeing back into the political arena, and is already causing trouble.
Widely seen as a potential party leader, the 29-year-old’s discreet meetings in recent days to build bridges with enemy conservatives, crippled by their crushing defeat in European Parliament elections, are further unsettling the mainstream right.
The forays into forbidden territory by the woman once voted the most popular in the far-right National Rally party (formerly the National Front) led by her aunt, Marine Le Pen, have also raised questions about Marechal’s political intentions – and whether a new war within the Le Pen clan is afoot.
Marechal is the darling of her controversial grandfather, Jean-Marie Le Pen, a National Front co-founder expelled by daughter Marine for repeating anti-Semitic remarks that got him convicted. Marechal is more conservative than her aunt. Addressing a major forum for American conservatives last year, she decried the European Union and said France is becoming “the little niece of Islam.”
To Jean-Marie’s disappointment, Marion dropped out of politics two years ago, refusing to seek a new mandate as a National Rally lawmaker to found a private school in Lyon seen as a training ground for far-right leaders.
She denies speculation she is making an end-run around Aunt Marine for a comeback. Nevertheless, the noise created after at least two below-the-radar meetings became known underscores Marechal’s potentially pivotal role in the power politics of the French right.
A dinner in late June between Marechal and more than a dozen officials and lawmakers of The Republicans, or LR, caused a firestorm within the main conservative party. The conservative mainstream has long been extremely wary of liaisons with France’s far right, but the meeting suggested that some conservatives may believe the only way to survive is by joining forces with the likes of Marechal.
Senate leader Gerard Larcher, of the LR, said those who met at a Paris restaurant with Marechal have placed themselves “outside” the party.
“I have always said there was a firewall between us and the National Rally,” party, he said on LCI TV. “Whether you like it or not, this (dinner) was a breach.” Those who attended risk exclusion from the party, Larcher said, making clear that for him they already had “placed themselves outside the values of our political formation.”
Meanwhile, France’s powerful business lobby Medef invited Marechal to speak about the rise of populism at its annual summer gathering – but then canceled the whole panel after the idea left many aghast.
The National Rally came to the forefront of French politics with its win in the European Parliament elections in May. The party bettered President Emmanuel Macron’s centrists and hopes to maintain momentum ahead of municipal elections next year.
In a TV interview in early June, she said she wanted to build a “grand alliance of the right” – though she insisted her intentions were devoid of personal ambition.
She had some stinging words for the National Rally, saying it is “indispensable to political life, but unfortunately it isn’t sufficient.” Defending the nation, and countering Macron’s progressives, needs “other voices from other movements, currents” to create alliances.
Marechal has been regarded as a potential presidential candidate in the 2022 election, or later, raising occasional tensions with her aunt, who was roundly defeated in 2017 by Macron after making it to the runoff. Former White House strategist Steve Bannon praised her as a “rising star” – on a stage he shared with Marine Le Pen at an important National Rally congress.
If Marine Le Pen is wary that her niece is setting the stage for a return to politics, neither she nor her camp is saying so.
Le Pen was politely dismissive of her niece’s initiatives.
“That Marion wants to build bridges with people of the traditional right closer to us than to Emmanuel Macron, so much the better,” she said in an interview with BFMTV this month after her niece’s remarks. As for Marechal’s “regret” about short-comings of the National Rally, Le Pen took a diplomatic dig.
“One should not be pessimistic when one is young,” she said.
African leaders met on Sunday to launch a continental free-trade zone that if successful would unite 1.3 billion people, create a $3.4 trillion economic bloc and usher in a new era of development.
After four years of talks, an agreement to form a 55-nation trade bloc was reached in March, paving the way for Sunday’s African Union summit in Niger where attendees will unveil which
nation will host the trade zone’s headquarters, when trading will start and discuss how exactly it will work.
It is hoped that the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) — the largest since the creation of the World Trade Organization in 1994 — will help unlock Africa’s long-stymied economic potential by boosting intra-regional trade, strengthening supply chains and spreading expertise.
“The eyes of the world are turned to Africa,” Egyptian President and African Union Chairman Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said at the summit’s opening ceremony.
AfCFTA “will reinforce our negotiating position on the international stage. It will represent an important step.”
Africa has much catching up to do: its intra-regional trade accounted for just 17% of exports in 2017 versus 59% in Asia and 69% in Europe, and Africa has missed out on the economic booms
that other trade blocs have experienced in recent decades.
Economists say significant challenges remain, including poor road and rail links, large areas of unrest, excessive border bureaucracy and petty corruption that have held back growth and
integration.
Members have committed to eliminate tariffs on most goods, which will increase trade in the region by 15-25% in the medium term, but this would double if these other issues were dealt with, according to International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates.
The IMF in a May report described a free-trade zone as a potential “economic game changer” of the kind that has boosted growth in Europe and North America, but it added a note of caution.
“Reducing tariffs alone is not sufficient,” it said.
Divergent interests
Africa already has an alphabet soup of competing and overlapping trade zones — ECOWAS in the west, EAC in the east, SADC in the south and COMESA in the east and south.
But only the EAC, driven mainly by Kenya, has made significant progress towards a common market in goods and services. These regional economic communities (REC) will continue to trade among themselves as they do now. The role of AfCFTA is to liberalise trade among those member states that are not currently in the same REC, said Trudi Hartzenberg, director at Tralac, a South Africa-based trade law organization.
The zone’s potential clout received a boost on Tuesday when Nigeria, the largest economy in Africa, agreed to sign the agreement at the summit. Benin has also since agreed to join.
Fifty-four of the continent’s 55 states have signed up, but only 25 have ratified.
One obstacle in negotiations will be the countries’ conflicting motives.
For undiversified but relatively developed economies like Nigeria, which relies heavily on oil exports, the benefits of membership will likely be smaller than others, said John Ashbourne, senior emerging markets economist at Capital Economics.
Nigerian officials have expressed concern that the country could be flooded with low-priced goods, confounding efforts to encourage moribund local manufacturing and expand farming.
In contrast, South Africa’s manufacturers, which are among the most developed in Africa, could quickly expand outside their usual export markets and into West and North Africa, giving them
an advantage over manufacturers from other countries, Ashbourne said.
The presidents of both countries are attending the summit.
The vast difference in countries’ economic heft is another complicating factor in negotiations. Nigeria, Egypt and South Africa account for over 50% of Africa’s cumulative GDP, while its six sovereign island nations represent about 1%. “It will be important to address those disparities to ensure that special and differential treatments for the least developed countries are adopted and successfully implemented,” said Landry Signe, a fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Africa Growth Initiative.
Regulations governing rules of origin, removal of non-tariff barriers and the development of a payments and settlements system are expected to be unveiled at the summit.
Sofia Lysenko’s parents moved to the United States from the Ukraine when she was 3 years old. Today, at 17, some of the biggest American pharmaceutical companies want to team up with this teenage science prodigy because she has created an artificial macromolecule robot that can deliver drugs directly to the brain cells of patients with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Iryna Matviichuk met with Sofia to learn more. Anna Rice narrates her report.
Emergency workers in Ridgecrest, Calif., are assessing the damage after a second major earthquake struck the desert community northeast of Los Angeles on Friday night. No deaths or major injuries have been reported from either the Thursday or Friday quake, but as Mike O’Sullivan reports, Friday’s magnitude-7.1 temblor caused additional damage and left residents shaken.
Hong Kong has long been seen as a good place to do business, thanks to its proximity to China and the one-country, two systems policy that provides a wide degree of economic freedom. But as Beijing expands its control, that reputation is at risk, as VOA’s Bill Gallo reports.
An apparent gas explosion at a shopping plaza in Plantation, Florida, injured several people on Saturday, authorities and local media reported.
Video posted to Twitter showed the force of the blast scattered debris across a parking lot and blew out several windows at a nearby L.A. Fitness gym, sending patrons running for the exits.
The Plantation fire department said on Twitter that there were multiple patients being treated at the scene.
The Sun-Sentinel newspaper reported that witnesses said a vacant restaurant appeared to be the source of the explosion. The city of Plantation is about 6 miles west of Fort Lauderdale.
