Business

Authorities in Afghanistan say the death toll has risen to more than 63 and injured to 183 in the overnight suicide bombing at a packed wedding hall in the capital, Kabul.

The victims were mostly members of the minority Shi’ite Hazara community. 

Afghan Interior Ministry spokesman Nasrat Rahimi confirmed the casualty toll in a statement issued early Sunday, saying women and children were among the victims.

There were no immediate claims of responsibility for the carnage, one of the worst attacks against Afghan civilians in recent years.

The Taliban denied its involvement and condemned the bombing. A spokesman for the insurgent group said “such barbaric deliberate attacks against civilians including women and children are forbidden and unjustifiable.”

Almost all recent bombings in the city, particularly against the Hazara community, have been claimed by Islamic State’s Afghan branch, known as Khorasan Province. 

Rahimi in a statement he issued shortly after the attack said the blast occurred just before midnight on Saturday and police and ambulances quickly reached the site to transport victims to Kabul hospitals.

Civilians continue to bear the brunt of the conflict in Afghanistan, where more than 1,500 were killed or wounded in July alone, according to the United Nations.

The latest Afghan violence comes as peace talks between the United States and the Taliban have come close to reaching an agreement to end the 18-year-old war.  

…

As back to back mass shootings in the U.S. prompt more difficult debates on gun laws, researchers at University of Southern California (USC) are working on a different, perhaps less controversial method of keeping people inside buildings safe and deterring people who want to commit acts of mass violence.  

Design and Behavior

Engineers and computer scientists are exploring building design and technology seeking ways to protect people. Recent innovations offer many possibilities, from placement of exits to the number of hiding spots and even walls that move.  But before designs can be put in place, researchers must first observe the behavior of the building’s occupants.

How do the people inside a building respond when an active shooter is present? Will their behavior change if the building is designed in a different way? Virtual reality (VR) is the first step to answering these questions and helping engineers create a safer building according to USC assistant professor Gale Lucas, who conducts research in the USC Viterbi School of Engineering Computer Science Department and Institute for Creative Technologies.  

“We’re interested in looking at how different building attributes affect responses to incidents of extreme violence, and that’s something that we can’t manipulate easily in the real world, but in virtual reality all of that is possible and it’s possible safe and ethically,” Lucas said. 

Building design features that could make a building safer in mass shooting incidents include the number of exits and hiding places in a building or even whether glass windows are clear or frosted. Many of the features are based on recommendations from government agencies and security experts.

“There are so many recommendations out there and there’s so much money being invested on these recommendations but they’re not well tested in the real world in terms of how they play out,” said Burcin Becerik-Gerber, professor of civil and environmental engineering at USC. She and Lucas co-direct USC’s CENTIENTS, the Center for Intelligent Environments.  

Virtual reality can safely and cheaply simulate real world situations.  Virtual building designs can also easily be changed and adapted for different types of buildings said Becerik-Gerber. 

Later this year, various building designs in a school and an office setting will be tested out in the virtual world with more than 200 real world teachers and office workers on treadmills, using VR so they can run away from the shooter in the virtual world.  

Building features however may not be one size fits all.  For example, frosted glass on doors to a room that may keep people safe in an active shooter situation may not be ideal during a normal school day when people want to be able to look inside a classroom to deter child predators. 

“I think the answer is having more dynamic kinetic elements instead of thinking building elements as static. We’re talking about maybe frosted versus normal glass, but they can have the intelligence when the building senses the threat,” said Becerik-Gerber.

Intelligent Threat-Sensing Building

Instead of an either or, why not have a glass window that can do both said Becerik-Gerber.  Artificial intelligence and sensors in a building can allow it to frost a clear window when it senses a threat.   

“It could be the case where there are sensors when they pick up the noise levels. If there is a shooting, obviously there it will come with some increased noise levels and shouting and other clues. So the building can have for example, dynamic walls that lock up maybe the bad actors in the building,” suggested Becerik-Gerber. 

An intelligent building can also produce digital signage that points occupants to the safest exits, away from the violence.

Researchers said having intelligent buildings can be possible not too far in the future.  The technological elements needed to make a building sense danger and respond to keep its occupants safe are available.  There just has to be the willingness to incorporate the elements and implement them into buildings.  

Through their three-year project on building design and virtual reality, funded by the National Science Foundation, the researchers at USC aim to better understand how different design features influence people’s behavior.  Once they have the data, they can present their findings to security experts and other stakeholders so one day, in the near future, better buildings with intelligence incorporated into the building’s DNA can be created to keep it’s occupants safe from acts of mass violence. 

…

New York City police say they’ve apprehended a man suspected of placing two devices that looked like pressure cookers in a subway station.
 
Chief of Detectives Dermot Shea tweeted Saturday morning that a man seen holding one of the rice cookers in surveillance video was taken into custody.
 
The discovery of the cookers Friday led to an evacuation and roiled the morning commute.
 
Police said cameras near the World Trade Center captured a man with a cart putting cookers in two locations in the subway station.
 
A third cooker of the same type was later discovered 2 miles (3 kilometers) away on a sidewalk.
 
Authorities determined they were not explosives. Pressure cookers can be turned into bombs.
 
Police say they didn’t have details on the man’s apprehension. No charges have been announced.

…

About 4,000 people have held a rally in Moscow to demand fairness in upcoming city council elections, and solo pickets protesting the exclusion of some opposition and independent candidates are taking place at prominent monuments.

The actions Saturday have been much smaller and less heated than recent weekend protests over the issue. Two unauthorized demonstrations were previously harshly broken up by police, with more than 2,000 people detained altogether; a sanctioned demonstration last week attracted as many as 60,000 people, the largest protest in several years.
 
The authorized rally on Saturday was organized by the Communist Party. The solo pickets are following a law that demonstrations by a single person do not require official permission.
 
No detentions have been reported.

…

Saudi state TV says a fire has been controlled at a massive oil and gas field after a drone attack claimed by Yemen’s Houthi rebels.

State TV said the fire struck the Shaybah oil field, which produces some 1 million barrels of crude oil a day.
 

Saudi-led Coalition Moves Against Separatists in Yemen

A fracturing of the alliance could further stall any work toward peace and might deteriorate into a ‘civil war within a civil war’ 

Aramco and Saudi officials did not respond to requests for comment from The Associated Press.
 
The oil field at Shaybah is in the Arabian Peninsula’s Empty Quarter, a sea of sand where temperatures routinely hit 50 degrees Celsius (122 degree Fahrenheit).
 
The site is also just a few kilometers (miles) from the border of the United Arab Emirates and some 1,200 kilometers (750 miles) from rebel-held territory in Yemen, demonstrating the range of the Houthis’ drones.

…

Thirty years ago, the Iron Curtain dividing Europe lifted.  

Next week, German Chancellor Angela Merkel travels to Hungary to commemorate the anniversary of a peace protest on the border with Austria that helped pave the way for the mass flight of East German citizens to the West. The Berlin Wall was torn down three months later, and 1989 went down as an era-changing year that ended the three-decade-long Soviet occupation of the countries of Central Europe.

The commemoration on Aug. 19 will include an ecumenical service in the Lutheran church of Sopron, and is to be held near where 600 East Germans plowed through the border gates to enter the West. Hungarian authorities had announced the border would be opened symbolically later for three hours, but the crowd was too impatient to wait for freedom — and in no mood to receive it as a gift from increasingly superannuated Communist bosses. 

Three years later, political scientist Francis Fukuyama published his triumphalist book The End of History and the Last Man, celebrating the ascendency of Western-style liberal democracy. Humanity, he argued, was reaching “not just … the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.”

But history did not end in 1989. 

Hungary only ‘partly free’

For some, the awkward pairing next week of Germany’s Merkel and Hungary’s authoritarian-inclined prime minister, Viktor Orban, will be symbolic of the return of history, of a new, unfolding east-west cleavage. The pair will be celebrating the rebirth of democracy, but Orban has been accused of backsliding on democracy by systematically dismantling the Western-style institutions his country has struggled to establish since the crumbling of Communism. 

This year, Freedom House, a U.S.-based research group, described Hungary as only “partly free,” the first time it has withheld from a European Union member state the designation “free.” It has accused Orban’s government of having “moved to institute policies that hamper the operations of opposition groups, journalists, universities, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) whose perspectives it finds unfavorable.”

Hungary’s firebrand populist, an anti-Communist liberal-turned-conservative who’s enjoying a burgeoning friendship with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, has remained undeterred in shaping what he likes to call an “illiberal democracy.”His warming relationship with Putin is seen by some as an alliance between two emblematic nationalistic strongmen.

Other populist leaders in the Central European states of Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic have also been accused of seeking to erode democratic checks and balances, of curbing judicial independence, politicizing the civil service and seeking to expand state control over the media and civil society, prompting protests and liberal outrage at their linking of Christianity with patriotism.

Their current populist governments have been the strongest critics of the migrant policies coming out of Brussels, refusing to accept migrants under an EU burden-sharing refugee resettlement plan. They have strained and bellyached at the restrictions and strictures placed on them by EU membership and what they see as an overbearing Brussels.

Growing EU divisions

All four members of the so-called Visegrad group of nations have been labeled in some ways as “flawed” democracies by rights monitors as their governments surf a powerful wave of Central European populism that they hope will reshape the regional bloc by reducing the power of EU institutions and returning it to national governments. The drumbeat of populism has been heard in the neighboring former Communist states in the Balkans and the Baltics.

Their clashes are seen by some liberal critics as tempting geopolitical fate. “It’s hard to deny that divisions between so-called old and new [EU] member states are growing,” according to Jakub Wisniewski, a Polish political analyst and director of the Slovakia-based GlobSec Policy Institute, a research organization. 

He places the political differences now between east and west as having their origins in the past. “Central Europe is still markedly different from the rest of the EU — politically, economically and, most of all, culturally,” he argues.

National electorates in Central Europe are “more conservative, and more preoccupied with health care and local corruption than melting ice-caps or #MeToo. They are also less self-assured, hence their anxieties about Muslim immigration or leftist internationalism,” he adds.

The populists of Central Europe say their critics make the mistake of equating “liberal democracy” only with versions espoused by the political left or center and that there are quite legitimate conservative and nationalist varieties, too. 

Liberal pessimists lament the rise of the nationalist populism, but optimists highlight the rambunctious politics of the region, which, this year, has seen liberal gains in electoral politics. 

In March, an environmental activist, Zuzana Caputova, became the first woman to be elected president of Slovakia. Her election followed massive anti-government street protests last year triggered by the slayings of an investigative reporter and his fiancee that led to the fall of Robert Fico’s conservative coalition government. 

Farther south, April saw nationalists defeated in the presidential election in North Macedonia and pro-European moderates winning elections in Latvia and Lithuania. Street protests have been mounted in the Czech Republic against Andrej Babis, the prime minister, who’s been charged with fraud. They have been the largest seen since 1989.

For all of the rise of nationalist populism, pollsters and analysts say the voters of Central Europe remain firm adherents to the EU.

Populists have to be careful not to push too far on the anti-EU front. Julius Horvath, an economic professor at the Central European University told VOA earlier this year, “Populations would not like a rupture with Europe.”

…

Police in Portland, Oregon, are mobilizing in preparation for Saturday when far-right protesters are expected to come face-to-face with local anti-fascist counter-demonstrators. 

Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler joined leaders of the city’s religious, police and business groups to warn groups “who plan on using Portland on August 17th as a platform to spread your hate.”  Those groups are “not welcome here,” he said. 

He said all of Portland’s nearly 1,000 police officers will be on duty Saturday and will be helped by the Oregon State Police and the FBI. 

Saturday’s rally is organized by a member of the Proud Boys, which has been designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. 

Expected to join them are the American Guard, Three Percenters, Oathkeepers and Daily Stormers.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the American Guard is a “white nationalist group,” Three Percenters and Oathkeepers are “extremist” anti-government militias, and the Daily Stormers are “neo-Nazis.”

Countering the right-wingers is Portland’s Rose City Antifa, an anti-fascist group that has called on its members to take to the streets in an opposing rally. 

Antifa in the United States have grown more visible recently and experts say antifa groups are not centrally organized, and their members may espouse a number of different causes, from politics to race relations to gay rights. But the principle that binds them — along with an unofficial uniform of black clothing and face masks — is the willingness to use violence to fight against white supremacists, which has opened them to criticism from both left and right.

At a June rally in Portland, masked antifa members beat up a conservative blogger named Andy Ngo. Video of the 30-second attack grabbed national attention.

The city’s leadership and residents are on edge ahead of the rallies. Many summer staples like music festivals and recreational events have been canceled. A 5K race has changed its course to avoid possible violence and most businesses in the area plan to close for the day. 

…

Pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong are calling for support from Western nations.  As Mike O’Sullivan reports from Hong Kong, demonstrators took to the streets again on Friday, as several student leaders described what they called anonymous attempts at intimidation.

…

Spaceport America is no longer just a shiny shell of hope that space tourism would one day launch from this remote spot in the New Mexico desert.

The once-empty hangar that anchors the taxpayer-financed launch and landing facility has been transformed into a custom-tailored headquarters where Virgin Galactic will run its commercial flight operations.

The interior spaces unveiled Thursday aim to connect paying customers with every aspect of the operation, providing views of the hangar and the space vehicles as well as the banks of monitors inside mission control.

Two levels within the spaceport include mission control, a preparation area for pilots and a lounge for customers and their friends and families, with each element of the fit and finish paying homage to either the desert landscape that surrounds the futuristic outpost or the promise of traveling to the edge of space.

From hotel rooms to aircraft cabins, the Virgin brand touts its designs for their focus on the customer experience. Spaceport is no different.

 A social hub includes an interactive digital walkway and a coffee bar made of Italian marble. On the upper deck, shades of white and gray speak to Virgin Galactic’s more lofty mission.

Company officials say the space is meant to create “an unparalleled experience” as customers prepare for what Virgin Galactic describes as the journey of a lifetime.

Timeline not set

Just how soon customers will file into Virgin Galactic’s newly outfitted digs for the first commercial flights to space has yet to be determined. A small number of test flights are still needed.

“We were the first company to fly a commercial space ship to space with somebody in the back who was not a pilot — first time that somebody like that has been able to get out of their seats and float around the cabin,” Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides said. “So it’s happening. We have a bit more work to do before we get to commercial service.”

Billionaire Richard Branson, who is behind Virgin Galactic, and former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a Democrat, first pitched the plan for the spaceport nearly 15 years ago.

There were construction delays and cost overruns. Virgin Galactic’s spaceship development took far longer than expected and had a major setback when its first experimental craft broke apart during a 2014 test flight, killing the co-pilot.

Critics suggested the project was a boondoggle, but supporters argued that there were bound to be hard and sometimes costly lessons.

Democratic state Sen. George Munoz has enduring concerns about the business model for commercial, low-orbit travel for passengers.

“You can have all the money in the world and come back and say, ‘Was my 30 seconds of fame worth that risk?'” he said.

Munoz says New Mexico’s anticipated return on investment in terms of jobs and visitors is still overdue, with more than $200 million in public funds spent on Spaceport America in cooperation with Virgin Galactic as the anchor tenant.

New facility

At the facility Thursday, the carrier plane for Virgin’s rocket-powered passenger ship made a few passes and touch-and-goes over a runway.

Behind the spaceport’s signature wall of curved glass, mission control sits on the second floor with an unobstructed view of the runway and beyond.

There’s also space behind two massive sliding doors to accommodate two of Virgin Galactic’s carrier planes and a fleet of six-passenger rocket ships.

Virgin Galactic posted on social media earlier this week that its main operating base was now at the spaceport. And Branson said the wing of Virgin’s next rocket ship has been completed.

Chief Pilot Dave Mackay said the crew in the coming days will fly simulated launch missions to ensure in-flight communications and airspace coordination work as planned. The pilots also will be familiarizing themselves with New Mexico’s airspace and landmarks.

“New Mexico is on track to become one of the very few places on this beautiful planet which regularly launches humans to space,” Mackay said.

Whitesides said that once the test flights are complete, commercial operations can begin. He envisions a fundamental shift in humanity’s relationship with space, noting that fewer than 600 people ever have ventured beyond the Earth’s atmosphere.

“We’re going to be able to send way more than that to space from this facility here,” he said. “In another 15 years, I really hope that we’ve had thousands of people go.”

About 600 people have reserved a seat, according to the company, at a cost of $250,000 a ticket.

That buys them a ride on the winged rocket ship, which is dropped in flight from the carrier airplane. Once free, it fires its rocket motor to hurtle toward the boundary of space before gliding back down.

The latest test flight reached an altitude of 56 miles (90 kilometers) while traveling at three times the speed of sound.

…

TALLAHASSEE, FLORIDA – Florida legislators are moving to officially condemn white nationalism, with Democrats and Republicans alike drafting resolutions against hate-spurred violence, but the unity could be short-lived as elected officials plunge into debates over how the government should intervene to prevent more mass killings and rein in white supremacists. 
 
The condemnations come amid an outcry over a mass shooting in El Paso, Texas, in which authorities believe the gunman posted a racist screed online shortly before the attack.  
  
Following the shooting, Florida Senate President Bill Galvano, a Republican, called the violence a “reminder that we have more work to do,” and he called on a legislative committee to review what can be done to address white nationalism.    

Earlier this week, Sen. Kamala Harris of California, a Democratic presidential hopeful, called for a federal “red flag” law that would allow law enforcement to take away guns from white nationalists, if a judge agrees if a person poses an imminent danger. 
 
While Galvano says he’s open to possibly expanding the Florida’s “red flag” laws, he told the Associated Press on Thursday that the two issues should be addressed separately. 
 
“Do both issues need to be considered and talked about? The answer is yes, but I don’t know if you can just merge them,” Galvano said. 
 
Since Florida’s “red flag” law went into effect in March 2018, there have been 2,434 risk protection orders reported to the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, which prompted the agency to suspend 595 concealed weapons licenses. The protection orders give law enforcement the authority to temporarily confiscate guns. 

Rubio’s call
 
Following the 2018 mass shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio called on Congress to follow his state’s lead in enacting a federal “red flag” law — a call that  he again made following the mass shootings in Texas and Ohio that killed 31 people. 
 
In the wake of those shootings, Florida Republicans have focused their condemnation on hate groups and their attention on keeping guns away from those with mental illness. 
 
A trio of Republican state senators began circulating a resolution on Thursday that rejects white nationalism as “hateful, dangerous and morally corrupt.” 
 
That followed a move earlier in the week by Democrats in the Florida House, who introduced legislation spurning white supremacy as “hateful expressions of intolerance that are contradictory to the values that define the people of Florida and the United States.” 
 
But while both parties were united in their condemnation of race-based hate, it remains to be seen what policy changes will be enacted.  

“We can have lots of discussions about hate as it relates to white supremacy and white nationalism, but it does not get us to the solution of dealing with guns — and that’s the bottom line for any discussion that should be done,” said Sen. Audrey Gibson, the Democratic leader in the Republican-controlled state Senate. 
 
In a letter sent to Galvano on Wednesday, she said it was still too easy to access a gun in Florida. 
 
Gun-control activists are trying to place a measure on the 2020 ballot that would ban assault weapons. 

Common thread
 
“Whether the massacre unfolded in El Paso, Dayton or Las Vegas, Newtown, Parkland or Pulse, the one inescapable common thread that has bound each and every one of these horrific mass shootings is the presence of an assault weapon,” Gibson said. She said the state could do better in controlling access to guns, strengthening background checks for private gun sales and expanding the state’s “red flag” laws to allow relatives, not just law enforcement, to seek a court order when they think a family member might pose a risk. 
 
Galvano said “everything would be on the table” as his chamber begins work on strengthening laws to curb mass violence and to expand the laws enacted in response to the Parkland shootings. But when pressed, Galvano said he would leave it to legislative committees to come up with specific legislation. 
 
“In the best-case scenario, the most effective way to begin to approach the state’s role in these things is to look comprehensively — everything from law enforcement and how we’re doing it, and policy changes in funding, mental health screenings, red flags and gun safety.” 

…

North Korea said Friday it will never sit down with South Korea for talks again, rejecting a vow by the South’s President Moon Jae-in to pursue dialog with Pyongyang made the previous day as he pledged to bring in unification by 2045.

The North has protested joint military drills conducted by South Korea and the United States, which kicked off last week, calling them a “rehearsal for war” and has fired several short-range missiles in recent weeks.

The loss of dialog momentum between the North and South and the stalemate in implementing a historic summit between their two leaders last year is entirely the responsibility of the South, a North Korean spokesman said in a statement.

Blaming US-Korea exercises

The spokesman repeated criticism that the joint U.S.-South Korea drills was sign of Seoul’s hostility against the North.

“As it will be clear, we have nothing more to talk about with South Korean authorities and we have no desire to sit down with them again,” the North’s spokesman for the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Country said.

The committee is tasked with managing the North’s relationship with the South. The rival Koreas remain technically at war under a truce ending the 1950-53 Korean War.

The comments were carried by official KCNA news agency.

Moon and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un have met three times since April last year pledging peace and cooperation but little progress has been made to improve dialog and strengthen exchange and cooperation.

Liberation Day speech

Moon said in a Liberation Day address Thursday marking Korea’s independence from Japan’s 1910-45 colonial rule that it was to the credit of his policy of Korean national peace that dialog with the North was still possible.

“In spite of a series of worrying actions taken by North Korea recently, the momentum for dialog remains unshaken,” Moon said.

The North’s spokesman said it was “delusional” to think that inter-Korean dialog will resume once the military drills with the United States are over.

The spokesman left open the possibility of talks with the United States, speaking of upcoming dialog between the two countries but warned it will have no place for the South.

“South Korea is poking around hoping to reap the benefits of future dialog between the North and the United States, but it will be a good idea to give up such foolishness,” the unnamed spokesman said. 

Trump and Kim have met twice since their first summit in Singapore last year and said their countries will continue talks, but little progress has been made on the North’s stated commitment to denuclearize.

…

Guatemala’s President-elect Alejandro Giammattei says he wants to change an immigration agreement between his country and the United States because Guatemala does not have the resources to care for asylum-seekers from other countries. The deal made in July between the outgoing administration of President Jimmy Morales and U.S. President Donald Trump would require migrants from other countries who cross into Guatemala to apply for asylum from there. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports.
 

…

Immigration raids in the U.S. led to the apprehension of more than 1,500 undocumented immigrants at job sites last year. They are among about 250,000 immigrants deported in 2018 by the Trump administration. On average about 15 employers per year face criminal charges for hiring undocumented workers. As VOA’s Brian Padden reports, advocates and opponents of tighter immigration restrictions argue that raids do little to deter illegal immigration as long as employers are not held accountable. 
 

…

Uganda’s Communication Commission announced, Aug. 8, 2019, that all commercial online publishers must register with the government. The commission says the publishers have to be watched to ensure they are posting appropriate content.  Ugandan social media influencers and news organizations see the requirement as a step toward limiting freedom of speech and the press. Halima Athumani reports from Kampala.

…

A court in Sweden has found American rapper A$AP Rocky guilty of assault but he will not serve any more jail time.

The court on Wednesday gave the rapper a suspended sentence.

A$AP Rocky, whose real name is Rakim Mayers, was arrested with three members of his team after a fight that took place in Stockholm June 30.  
 
Prosecutors alleged that Mayers and two members of his entourage repeatedly punched and kicked the victim during an attack that lasted several minutes. Prosecutors also accuse the rapper of hitting the victim with a glass bottle.

The rapper, who said he was acting in self defense, spent nearly five weeks in detention but was released earlier this month, pending the verdict in his trial.

President Donald Trump attempted to intervene in the case and had urged the release of A$AP Rocky.

 “We do so much for Sweden but it doesn’t seem to work the other way around. Sweden should focus on its real crime problem! #FreeRocky,” Trump said in a series of tweets about the matter.

…

India issued a fresh flood alert Wednesday for parts of the southern state of Kerala, as the nationwide death toll from the annual monsoon deluge rose to at least 244.

Authorities warned Kerala locals of heavy rainfall over the next 24-48 hours in some of the worst affected regions of the state popular with tourists.

Heavy rain in parts of four Indian states — Kerala, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Gujarat – has forced more than 1.2 million people to leave their homes, mostly for government-run relief camps.

Kerala was hit by its worst floods in almost a century last year, when 450 people died, and the state is still recovering from the damage to public infrastructure including highways, railways and roads.

The state’s death toll this monsoon season increased to 95 overnight, with at least 59 people missing, Kerala police told AFP on Wednesday.

At least 58 people have also lost their lives in neighbouring Karnataka state, where authorities have rescued around 677,000 people from flooded regions.

The situation is now improving in Karnataka, however, as waters start to recede, a government official told AFP.

In the western states of Gujarat and Maharashtra the death toll reached 91, with hundreds of thousands rescued from inundated regions.

“Our teams have recovered 49 bodies so far from different regions including Sangli, Kolhapur, Satara and Pune, and most deaths were caused due to drowning and wall collapses,” Deepak Mhaisekar, divisional commissioner of Pune told AFP.

“The situation is under control now,” he added, though the casualty count may increase slightly.

India has deployed the army, navy and air force to work with the local emergency personnel for search, rescue and relief operations.

The monsoon rains are crucial to replenishing water supplies in drought-stricken India, but they kill hundreds of people across the country every year.

…

The U.N. refugee agency warns that time is running out for more than 500 migrants stranded in the Mediterranean Sea as storm clouds gather and their rescue vessels are denied a safe port of entry in Europe.

Italy and Malta continue to refuse docking rights to two rescue vessels. This despite the deteriorating conditions for 356 refugees and migrants rescued August 9 by the Ocean Viking, a vessel run by the charity Doctors Without Borders, and another 151 people who have been on board the Spanish NGO Open Arms for nearly two weeks.

U.N. refugee agency spokesman Charlie Yaxley says the passengers are in urgent need of disembarkation. He tells VOA storms are coming, so time is running out for a solution to be found.

“The rough seas are expected to intensify during the course of today and into tomorrow. Really, this is a question of how much we are willing to turn a blind eye to the suffering of people who have fled war and violence,” he said.

Yaxley says many of the people aboard the rescue vessels come from Somalia, Eritrea, Sudan and other unstable countries. While many others have fled economic hardship rather than conflict, he says they too have suffered appalling abuse–many during their perilous journeys toward Europe and many more in Libya.

He says conditions for refugees and migrants are so abysmal that those rescued at sea should not be returned to Libya, which is not safe.

“People do not choose to risk their lives on these dangerous journeys unless they feel the desperation that their lives are in better hands on the water than on remaining on the land,” he said. “The intensifying fighting, the widespread reports of abuses including arbitrary detention means it cannot be considered to have a safe port. Nobody should be returned there.”

Yaxley says the UNHCR supports a system whereby European nations share the responsibility of hosting the refugees and migrants with the countries that provide a safe haven to those rescued at sea.

However, anti-immigrant governments in Italy and Malta accuse Europe of leaving them to deal with the refugee crisis on their own. To deter rescues at sea, Italy recently passed a law imposing fines of more than one million dollars on boats conducting these missions entering its waters.

…

Updated: Aug. 13, 2019, 3:06 p.m. 

Suzanne Sataline contributed to this report from Hong Kong

Riot police clashed with pro-democracy demonstrators at the Hong Kong’s international airport Tuesday evening, with all departing flights cancelled for a second straight day.

The protestors once again took over the facility’s main terminal, with periodic skirmishes with helmeted police wielding batons.

Scuffles broke out between police and demonstrators as medics took an injured person out of the terminal. A contingent of riot police used pepper spray to disperse protesters as they tried to block an ambulance taking the man away. Police detained at least two people.

Hong Kong’s airport authority said operations had been “seriously disrupted.”

The airport protests over the past two days are part of 10 weeks of demonstrations by Hong Kong residents against their perceived erosion of freedom and lack of autonomy under Chinese control of the territory.

China’s United Nations mission said the protesters had smashed public facilities, paralyzed the airport, blocked public transport and used lethal weapons, “showing a tendency of resorting to terrorism.”

The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet urged Hong Kong authorities to exercise restraint and investigate whether their forces fired tear gas at protesters in ways that are banned under international law.

U.S. President Donald Trump, who last week took a hands-off stance on the protests, told reporters the Hong Kong situation “is a very tough situation, very tough. We’ll see what happens, but I’m sure it will work out….” He expressed the hope that no one would get hurt and “for liberty.”

“I hope it works out for everybody, including China, by the way,” Trump said.

In a later remark on Twitter, Trump said, “Our Intelligence has informed us that the Chinese Government is moving troops to the Border with Hong Kong. Everyone should be calm and safe!” State-run media showed videos of security forces gathering across the border in Mainland China. 

The protests present the biggest challenge to Chinese rule of the semi-autonomous territory since its 1997 handover from Britain. 

The decision by the airport authority to cancel Tuesday’s out-bound flights came just minutes after it suspended all passenger check-in services when protesters blocked passengers from entering their departure gates, and advised the general public not to come to the airport.  

The airport was already struggling to return to normal after reopening a day after hundreds of flights in and out of the airport were cancelled by a similar sit-in demonstration. Some angry travelers anxious to leave Hong Kong got into heated arguments with protesters as Tuesday’s demonstrations escalated, with some managing to push their way through the protest lines.  

The unprecedented shutdown of one of the world’s busiest airports was an extension of the street protests that have gripped the Chinese territory for more than two months. Dozens of protesters were injured Monday after riot police fired tear gas and non-lethal ammunition after the protesters blocked roads and defied police orders to disperse.

The government counted 54 people injured Monday, including two who were hospitalized in serious condition, and 28 who were listed as stable, according to the Hospital Authority.

The protests began as a quest to stop a bill that would have allowed Hong Kong to send criminal suspects elsewhere, including mainland China. Demonstrators are now demanding the the right to directly vote for their next leader in a free and fair election, and an independent inquiry into alleged police brutality.

Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s embattled leader, defended police during a press conference Tuesday, saying they had to make “on-the-spot decisions” under “extremely difficult circumstances.”  Lam said she would address the protesters’ demands “after the violence has been stopped and the chaotic situation that now we are seeing could subside.”

…

Cameroon has threatened all journalists who it says are refusing to be patriotic, after TV reporter Samuel Wazizi was arrested for allegedly supporting separatist fighters in Cameroon’s English-speaking north, west, and southwest regions. The journalists say it is becoming impossible for them to practice their profession, as they face pressure from both separatist fighters and the government.

Paul Atanga Nji, territorial administration minister, says Cameroon’s journalists are becoming highly unpatriotic.

“They have one main objective, just to sabotage government action, to promote secessionist tendencies,” said Nji. “I urge them to be responsible. Those who do not want to respect the laws will be booked as being recalcitrant and will be treated as such.”

Atanga Nji also says most journalists support the opposition and believe that President Paul Biya was not the true winner of the October 2018 presidential election.

Macmillan Ambe, president of the Cameroon Association of English Speaking Journalists, CAMASEJ, says the threat from the government is one of many that journalists have faced since the separatist crisis began in 2016.

He says journalists should be given the freedom they need to do their work.

“When you get the minister of territorial administration giving lessons to journalists on how to report, it just adds to some of the difficulties we are already facing,” said Ambe. “We are subjected to torture, be it physical or psychological. We have also had cases of several journalists who are being called up for questioning, so it becomes very difficult for us to operate.”

Ambe was abducted by separatist fighters in the city of Bamenda last February after he criticized their call for families not to send their children to school.

More recent threats came after Samuel Waziz, an announcer at Chillen Music Television who has hosted shows critical of the government, was arrested by the military. His lawyers said he was accused of hosting separatist fighters in his farm, an allegation he dismissed.

Journalist Promise Akanteh of Royal FM, a radio station in Yaounde who also hosts critical programs, says she has been threatened several times within the past two weeks.

“I have had several phone calls threatening me. Do you know that your daughter still needs you? I said, ‘yes, sir.'” So be careful with what you say on air.  I do not know who was calling,” said Akanteh. “The person threatens me and says be careful with what you say on air. I am telling you this, another person will not be this nice to you.”

The separatists launched their fight in 2017, after English-speakers protested political and economic discrimination in the majority French-speaking country. The government reacted with a crackdown in November 2017 and since then, 2,000 people have been killed, according to the United Nations.

…

Uganda is ramping up efforts to curtail online content deemed immoral or hateful, a move critics say will silence dissent.

Since March 2018, the Uganda Communications Commission,  a state regulator, has required certain online publishers to register and pay a fee of $20 per year.

Now, the government is expanding its enforcement of the regulation, levying the fee on news organizations and social media influencers with large followings, including some journalists, celebrities, musicians and athletes.

The UCC calls these people “data communicators” and will be looking at media sites, including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube to determine which users will be affected.

Catherine Anite, executive director of the Freedom of Expression Media Hub, told VOA’s Nightline Africa  that the registration requirement curbs free speech.

“It’s a very restrictive regulation,” she said. “The freedom of expression is an essential right, and it is the cornerstone of any democratic society, which I believe Uganda is, because we have ascribed to these national, regional and international freedom of expression laws.”

Anite pointed to Article 29 of Uganda’s constitution, which protects freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of belief. She said this should give Ugandans wide latitude to express themselves in any media.

“Uganda is a free society. Uganda is [a] democratic society,” she said. “So, if the constitution gives the right to enjoy freedom of expression, there shouldn’t be the clawback clauses that come in the form of policies and other restrictive laws.”

The expansion of the law comes one week after political activist Stella Nyanzi was sentenced to 18 months in prison for writing a crude poem about Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni’s deceased mother.

The group Unwanted Witness, which monitors digital rights, reported that 33 Ugandans have been interrogated by police or charged with making impermissible online communications between 2016 and 2018, according to Reuters.

Last year, the government introduced a tax on social media usage, charging 200 shillings — about $0.05 cents per user per day, Reuters reported.

UCC head of public relations Ibrahim Bbossa said the regulatory body hopes to make publishers and individuals with large online followings mindful of the need to uphold public morality and peace.

He said registering users is the first step to responding in the event of a problem.

“As UCC, it is upon us to put into implementation these laws so that, just in case of any problems that arise, we are able to come up with resolutions,” Bbossa told Uganda’s Daily Vision  “Online publication can lead to circumstances like inciting the public, misinformation, and at times, theft.”

…