Russian President Vladimir Putin spent his pre-birthday weekend hiking the mountains of southern Siberia with his defense minister.

Putin, who turned 67 on Monday, can be seen walking up steep hills and picking wild mushrooms in photos and video released by the Kremlin.

Putin and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu traversed the vast Taiga forest, at one point stopping to take in the views high on a mountain.

“We are high above the clouds,” the Russian leader exclaimed.

Putin has visited the area in the Tuva region near the Mongolian border several times over the past few years. In 2009, he was photographed riding shirtless on a horse. Two years ago, he and Shoigu fished bare-chested in the pristine lakes.
 

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Hong Kong struggled to recover on Monday, with the metro only partially functioning and infrastructure extensively damaged, after scores of protesters were arrested in violent clashes overnight that drew the first warning from the Chinese military.

Tens of thousands of protesters marched peacefully through the center of the Chinese-ruled city on Sunday, wearing face masks in defiance of colonial-era emergency powers that threaten them with a maximum of one year in prison for hiding their faces.

However, the rallies deteriorated into running clashes as night fell. Police fired tear gas and used baton charges in an attempt to disperse petrol bomb-throwing protesters in several locations across the Asian financial hub.

Scores of protesters were arrested and bussed away under the new emergency laws, which came into effect on Friday night, after some of the most violent clashes in four months of protests virtually shut the city down on Saturday.

The protests have plunged the former British colony into its worst political crisis in decades and pose the biggest popular challenge to Chinese President Xi Jinping since he came to power in 2012.

The Hong Kong government said in a statement early on Monday, a public holiday in the city, “public safety has been jeopardized and the public order of the whole city is being pushed to the verge of a very dangerous situation.”

Further protests are planned in different districts on Monday evening.

Hong Kong’s rail operator, MTR, said on Monday that, due to “serious vandalism”, most of the stations in the network were temporarily closed. That included typically busy stations such as Admiralty and Wan Chai, around the city’s bar district.

MTR’s announcement followed an unprecedented closure on Saturday and minimal operations on Sunday, which largely paralyzed much of the city.

The entire network, which carries around 5 million passengers a day, would shut at 6 p.m. (1000 GMT), more than four hours earlier than normal, to allow for repairs, it said.

Grocery stores that had shut early on Sunday were mostly open by Monday morning. Many businesses and stores have had to close repeatedly during the four months of protests and Hong Kong now faces its first recession in a decade.

Hong Kong’s embattled leader Carrie Lam invoked emergency powers last used more than 50 years ago in the hope of quelling the protests but the move has had the opposite effect, sparking three nights of violence.

China’s Hong Kong military garrison warned protesters on Sunday they could be arrested for targeting its barracks with laser lights.

Chinese military personnel raised a yellow flag with the arrest warning written in large letters, a Reuters witness said, the first direct interaction between the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and protesters.

A few hundred protesters shone laser lights on the barracks walls, the first time they have targeted PLA facilities, and troops in fatigues on the roof shone spotlights at protesters in return. The protesters eventually dispersed.

What started as opposition to a now-withdrawn extradition bill has grown into a pro-democracy movement against what is seen as Beijing’s increasing grip on the city, undermining its “one country, two systems” status promised when Britain handed Hong Kong back to China in 1997.

China dismisses such accusations, saying foreign governments, including Britain and the United States, have fanned anti-China sentiment.

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As Rudy Giuliani was pushing Ukrainian officials last spring to investigate one of Donald Trump’s main political rivals, a group of individuals with ties to the president and his personal lawyer were also active in the former Soviet republic.

Their aims were profit, not politics. This circle of businessmen and Republican donors touted connections to Giuliani and Trump while trying to install new management at the top of Ukraine’s massive state gas company. Their plan was to then steer lucrative contracts to companies controlled by Trump allies, according to two people with knowledge of their plans.

Their plan hit a snag after Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko lost his reelection bid to Volodymyr Zelenskiy, whose conversation with Trump about former Vice President Joe Biden is now at the center of the House impeachment inquiry of Trump.

But the effort to install a friendlier management team at the helm of the gas company, Naftogaz, would soon be taken up with Ukraine’s new president by U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry, whose slate of candidates included a fellow Texan who is one of Perry’s past political donors.

It’s unclear if Perry’s attempts to replace board members at Naftogaz were coordinated with the Giuliani allies pushing for a similar outcome, and no one has alleged that there is criminal activity in any of these efforts. And it’s unclear what role, if any, Giuliani had in helping his clients push to get gas sales agreements with the state-owned company.

But the affair shows how those with ties to Trump and his administration were pursuing business deals in Ukraine that went far beyond advancing the president’s personal political interests. It also raises questions about whether Trump allies were mixing business and politics just as Republicans were calling for a probe of Biden and his son Hunter, who served five years on the board of another Ukrainian energy company, Burisma.

On Friday, according to the news site Axios, Trump told a group of Republican lawmakers that it had been Perry who had prompted the phone call in which Trump asked Zelenskiy for a “favor” regarding Biden. Axios cited a source saying Trump said Perry had asked Trump to make the call to discuss “something about an LNG (liquefied natural gas) plant.”

While it’s unclear whether Trump’s remark Friday referred specifically to the behind-the-scenes maneuvers this spring involving the multibillion-dollar state gas company, The Associated Press has interviewed four people with direct knowledge of the attempts to influence Naftogaz, and their accounts show Perry playing a key role in the effort. Three of the four spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. The fourth is an American businessman with close ties to the Ukrainian energy sector.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Energy Department said Perry, a former Texas governor and Republican presidential candidate, was not advancing anyone’s personal interests. She said his conversations with Ukrainian officials about Naftogaz were part of his efforts to reform the country’s energy sector and create an environment where Western companies can do business.

The Trump and Giuliani allies driving the attempt to change the senior management at Naftogazt, however, appear to have had inside knowledge of the U.S. government’s plans in Ukraine. For example, they told people that Trump would replace the U.S. ambassador there months before she was actually recalled to Washington, according to three of the individuals interviewed by the AP. One of the individuals said he was so concerned by the whole affair that he reported it to a U.S. Embassy official in Ukraine months ago.

The businessmen 

Ukraine, a resource-rich nation that sits on the geographic and symbolic border between Russia and the West, has long been plagued by corruption and government dysfunction, making it a magnet for foreign profiteers.

At the center of the Naftogaz plan, according to three individuals familiar with the details, were three such businessmen: two Soviet-born Florida real estate entrepreneurs, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, and an oil magnate from Boca Raton, Florida, named Harry Sargeant III.

Parnas and Fruman have made hundreds of thousands of dollars in political donations to Republicans, including $325,000 to a Trump-allied political action committee in 2018. This helped the relatively unknown entrepreneurs gain access to top levels of the Republican Party _ including meetings with Trump at the White House and Mar-a-Lago.

The two have also faced lawsuits from disgruntled investors over unpaid debts. During the same period they were pursuing the Naftogaz deal, the two were coordinating with Giuliani to set up meetings with Ukrainian government officials and push for an investigation of the Bidens.

Sargeant, his wife and corporate entities tied to the family have donated at least $1.2 million to Republican campaigns and PACs over the last 20 years, including $100,000 in June to the Trump Victory Fund, according to federal and state campaign finance records. He has also served as finance chair of the Florida state GOP, and gave nearly $14,000 to Giuliani’s failed 2008 presidential campaign.

In early March, Fruman, Parnas and Sargeant were touting a plan to replace Naftogaz CEO Andriy Kobolyev with another senior executive at the company, Andrew Favorov, according to two individuals who spoke to the AP as well as a memorandum about the meeting that was later submitted to the U.S. Embassy in Kiev.

Going back to the Obama administration, the U.S. Energy Department and the State Department have long supported efforts to import American natural gas into Ukraine to reduce the country’s dependence on Russia.

The three approached Favorov with the idea while the Ukrainian executive was attending an energy industry conference in Texas. Parnas and Fruman told him they had flown in from Florida on a private jet to recruit him to be their partner in a new venture to export up to 100 tanker shipments a year of U.S. liquefied gas into Ukraine, where Naftogaz is the largest distributor, according to two people briefed on the details.

Sargeant told Favorov that he regularly meets with Trump at Mar-a-Lago and that the gas-sales plan had the president’s full support, according to the two people who said Favorov recounted the discussion to them.

These conversations were recounted to AP by Dale W. Perry, an American who is a former business partner of Favorov. He told AP in an interview that Favorov described the meeting to him soon after it happened and that Favorov perceived it to be a shakedown. Perry, who is no relation to the energy secretary, is the managing partner of Energy Resources of Ukraine, which currently has business agreements to import natural gas and electricity to Ukraine.

A second person who spoke on condition of anonymity also confirmed to the AP that Favorov had recounted details of the Houston meeting to him.

According to Dale Perry and the other person, Favorov said Parnas told him Trump planned to remove U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch and replace her with someone more open to aiding their business interests.

Dale Perry told the AP he was so concerned about the efforts to change the management at Naftogaz and to get rid of Yovanovitch that he reported what he had heard to Suriya Jayanti, a State Department foreign service officer stationed at the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv who focuses on the energy industry.

He also wrote a detailed memo about Favorov’s account, dated April 12, which was shared with another current State Department official. Perry recently provided a copy of the April memo to AP.

Jayanti declined to provide comment. Favorov also declined to comment.

On March 24, Giuliani and Parnas gathered at the Trump International Hotel in Washington with Healy E. Baumgardner, a former Trump campaign adviser who once served as deputy communications director for Giuliani’s presidential campaign and as a communications official during the George W. Bush administration.

She is now listed as the CEO of 45 Energy Group, a Houston-based energy company whose website describes it as a “government relations, public affairs and business development practice group.”

This was a couple of weeks after the Houston meeting with Favorov, the Naftogaz executive. Giuliani, Parnas and Baumgardner were there to make a business pitch involving gas deals in the former Soviet bloc to a potential investor.

This time, according to Giuliani, the deals that were discussed involved Uzbekistan, not Ukraine.

“I have not pursued a deal in the Ukraine. I don’t know about a deal in the Ukraine. I would not do a deal in the Ukraine now, obviously,” said Giuliani, reached while attending a playoff baseball game between the New York Yankees and Minnesota Twins. “There is absolutely no proof that I did it, because I didn’t do it.”

During this meeting, Parnas again repeated that Yovanovitch, the U.S. ambassador in Kyiv, would soon be replaced, according to a person with direct knowledge of the gathering. She was removed two months later.

Giuliani, who serves as Trump’s personal lawyer and has no official role in government, acknowledged Friday that he was among those pushing the president to replace the ambassador, a career diplomat with a history of fighting corruption.

“The ambassador to Ukraine was replaced,” he said. “I did play a role in that.”

But Giuliani refused to discuss the details of his business dealings, or whether he helped his associates in their push to forge gas sales contracts with the Ukrainian company. He did describe Sergeant as a friend and referred to Parnas and Fruman as his clients in a tweet in May.  

As part of their impeachment inquiry, House Democrats have subpoenaed Giuliani for documents and communications related to dozens of people, including Favorov, Parnas, Fruman and Baumgardner’s 45 Energy Group.

Baumgardner issued a written statement, saying: “While I won’t comment on business discussions, I will say this: this political assault on private business by the Democrats in Congress is complete harassment and an invasion of privacy that should scare the hell out of every American business owner.”

Sargeant did not respond to a voice message left at a number listed for him at an address in Boca Raton.

John Dowd, a former Trump attorney who now represents Parnas and Fruman, said it was actually the Naftogaz executives who approached his clients about making a deal. He says they then met with Rick Perry to get the Energy Department on board.

“The people from the company solicited my clients because Igor is in the gas business, and they asked them, and they flew to Washington and they solicited,” Dowd said. “They sat down and talked about it. And then it was presented to Secretary Perry to see if they could get it together.

“It wasn’t a shakedown; it was an attempt to do legitimate business that didn’t work out.”

The energy secretary

In May, Rick Perry traveled to Kyiv to serve as the senior U.S. government representative at the inauguration of the county’s new president.

In a private meeting with Zelenskiy, Perry pressed the Ukrainian president to fire members of the Naftogaz advisory board. Attendees left the meeting with the impression that Perry wanted to replace the American representative, Amos Hochstein, a former diplomat and energy representative who served in the Obama administration, with someone “reputable in Republican circles,” according to someone who was in the room.

Perry’s push for Ukraine’s state-owned natural gas company Naftogaz to change its supervisory board was first reported by Politico.

A second meeting during the trip, at a Kyiv hotel, included Ukrainian officials and energy sector people. There, Perry made clear that the Trump administration wanted to see the entire Naftogaz supervisory board replaced, according to a person who attended both meetings. Perry again referenced the list of advisers that he had given Zelenskiy, and it was widely interpreted that he wanted Michael Bleyzer, a Ukrainian-American businessman from Texas, to join the newly formed board, the person said. Also on the list was Robert Bensh, another Texan who frequently works in Ukraine, the Energy Department confirmed.

Gordon D. Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, and Kurt D. Volker, then the State Department’s special envoy to Ukraine, were also in the room, according to photographs reviewed by AP. The person, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to fear of retaliation, said he was floored by the American requests because the person had always viewed the U.S. government “as having a higher ethical standard.”

The Naftogaz supervisory board is supposed to be selected by the Ukrainian president’s Cabinet in consultation with international institutions, including the International Monetary Fund, the United States and the European Union. It must be approved by the Ukrainian Cabinet. Ukrainian officials perceived Perry’s push to swap out the board as circumventing that established process, according to the person in the room.

U.S. Energy Department spokeswoman Shaylyn Hynes said Perry had consistently called for the modernization of Ukraine’s business and energy sector in an effort to create an environment that will incentivize Western companies to do business there. She said Perry delivered that same message in the May meeting with Zelenskiy.

“What he did not do is advocate for the business interests of any one individual or company,” Hynes said Saturday. “That is fiction being pushed by those who are disingenuously seeking to advance a nefarious narrative that does not exist.”

Hynes said the Ukrainian government had requested U.S. recommendations to advise the country on energy matters, and Perry provided those recommendations. She confirmed Bleyzer was on the list.  

Bleyzer, whose company is based in Houston, did not respond on Saturday to a voicemail seeking comment. Bensh also did not respond to a phone message.

As a former Texas governor, Perry has always had close ties to the oil and gas industry. He appointed Bleyzer to a two-year term on a state technologies fund board in 2009. The following year, records show Bleyzer donated $20,000 to Perry’s reelection campaign.

Zelenskiy’s office declined to comment on Saturday.

In an interview Friday with the Christian Broadcasting Network, Perry said that “as God as my witness” he never discussed Biden or his son in meetings with Ukrainian or U.S. officials, including Trump or Giuliani.

“This has been a very intense, a very focused push to get Ukraine to clean up the corruption,” Perry said in the interview. “I can’t go in good faith and tell a U.S. company, go and invest here, go and be involved if the corruption is ongoing.”

He did confirm he had had a conversation with Giuliani by phone, but a spokeswoman for the energy secretary declined to say when that call was or whether the two had discussed Naftogaz.

…

A series of memes that have gone viral in Bolivia show President Evo Morales combating raging forest fires with a toy water gun or a flame-thrower, while others superimpose his image on the original cast of the “Ghostbusters” film.

Many young Bolivians have used the memes to poke fun at South America’s longest-serving leftist leader and what they say was his delayed response to thousands of forest fires they blame on his push to develop areas with slash-and-burn agriculture. As the blazes raged, Morales appeared in televised images personally battling flames with a water-filled backpack and nozzle.

Supporters of Bolivia’s first indigenous president say that showed the lengths to which he will go to protect the country’s forests, but many young people don’t buy it. And with young voters making up about a third of Bolivia’s electorate, they could determine the Oct. 20 election in which Morales is seeking a fourth term.

“If the president would have acted before, we wouldn’t be mourning so much loss or the death of so many animals … I’m reconsidering my vote,” said Rolando Condori, 26, a chef at a restaurant in the city of El Alto.

Condori said he has cast ballots for the 59-year-old Morales since he became eligible to vote at age 18. But now he is listening to other candidates to see who can provide jobs and take care of the environment, which have become top issues ahead of the election.

Young Bolivians have been outraged by fires that consumed an estimated 4 million hectares (15,440 square miles) in the past two months, blazes that flew partly under the radar as world attention focused on fires in neighboring Brazil’s Amazon.

Most of the fires in Bolivia have been in dry forests, prairies and farmland in the southeastern Chiquitania region in Santa Cruz province, although some affected the country’s Amazon region.

“Before the fires, Morales had his triumph assured,” said Marcelo Carpio of the network of Leaders for Democracy and Development, a political science school.

Opponents say a decree issued by Morales’ administration in July allowing some controlled burns for agricultural purposes contributed to the environmental disaster. The government denies the forest fires were caused by the decree, saying farmers have cleared land with burns for years and most are still done illegally.

In Morales’ 14 years in office, poverty has dropped in South America’s poorest country and the president still maintains a broad base of support, even among the young.

“To me, (his re-election) would be good for our Bolivia,” said Aldair Hermoso, an 18-year-old who recently quit school to pursue his dream of becoming a professional soccer player. “Evo Morales will be a good president.”

But this support has diminished following corruption scandals, allegations about manipulation of the justice system and his insistence on running for yet another term.

Opinion polls, which say many young voters are undecided, point to a competitive election, and the possibility of a runoff vote. To avoid a runoff and win outright, a candidate must get 50% of the votes plus one or get 40% and finish 10 percentage points ahead of the nearest challenger.

“This is the first election with Mr. Morales participating in which the chance of him losing is real,” said political analyst Franklin Pareja.

Adding to discontent among the young was last year’s decision by Bolivia’s top electoral court to accept Morales’ candidacy for a fourth term despite a constitutional ban and a referendum in which more than 51% of Bolivians rejected his intention to modify the constitution to allow him to run again. Many questioned the independence of the court.

“Morales is no longer fashionable,” said Clara Huanca, a 21-year-old university student.

She said he has failed to provide plans for improving education and that she grew disappointed with Morales when he ignored the constitutional ban on running for more than two consecutive terms.

“I voted for Evo,” Huanca, who is of Aymara origin, said at an internet cafe while she finished a project with some of her classmates. “I was influenced by my parents, but now I’m completely against it and I’m analyzing my vote carefully.”

Many young Bolivians have no recollection of a president other than Morales, and some say they are ready for change despite years of economic and political stability.

But the impact of the youth vote is unpredictable.

While many reject Morales, who started in politics as a coca growers’ union leader, they are equally disenchanted with his top rivals, who include former President Carlos Mesa and lawmaker Oscar Ortiz.

Morales has said he doesn’t believe in social media.

“Social media are like sewers,” he said recently during a public event.

But his campaign has nevertheless created a group of “digital warriors” to reach out to young voters and counterbalance his negative image online.

Young Bolivians make up about 70% percent of the country’s internet users, but candidates have failed to understand their needs, said Tonny Lopez, a local expert in social networks.

And after 14 years in power, there is a lot of material out there to use to poke fun at Morales, Lopez said.

“It’s now in fashion to want to remove Evo (from power), and many don’t know why,” said Edgar Totora, 19. “I think it’s because of what he said himself: `I’ll leave if I lose the referendum,’ and he hasn’t done it. It’s like he’s laughing in our face.”

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A total of 110 million toilets constructed for 600 million people in 60 months.

Citing these figures, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced October 2 that the open defecation in rural India has ended.

However, the results of the world’s biggest toilet-building program rolled out by his government five years ago are more mixed.

While huge progress has been made in providing toilets across hundreds of thousands of villages, experts say open defecation has not been eliminated in a country where venturing into the fields is accepted as normal and where not everyone has access to a toilet yet.

The experience of 37-year-old Komal Godiwal, who migrated from her village in the northern Rajasthan state to work as a housemaid in New Delhi, highlights the gains and shortfalls of Modi’s flagship $20 billion “Clean India” mission.

Two years ago, she rushed to her village when, like millions of poor people, she received a government subsidy of about $200 to build a latrine. Her sister, who lives in the same village but did not receive the subsidy, uses the toilet. Critics charge that the distribution of money to help build toilets has been uneven.

Despite being the proud owner of a toilet, Godiwal herself struggles with issues of sanitation in the urban slum that is home to thousands of poor migrants like her. She and her family share a bathroom with about eight other families. “I have to wake up before 5 am, otherwise they get very dirty and there is a huge line,” she says.

Five years ago India accounted for the most people in the world defecating in the open – 600 million.  They mostly lived in rural areas, where having a household latrine was never a priority because of centuries-old cultural resistance to a toilet under the same roof as the kitchen or the prayer room.

Since then, those numbers have fallen dramatically as India has raced to build millions of toilets using an inexpensive design that involves constructing a twin-pit latrine where waste is piped from one pit to another and decomposes over time.

 Critics, however, charge that overzealous government workers may have inflated numbers since a deadline had been set for declaring India open-defecation free by October 2 — the 150th birthday of Mahatma Gandhi, the leader of India’s independence struggle.

“The entire movement happened in a mission mode. There were targets to achieve,” according to Nazar Khalid, a New Delhi research fellow at the Research Institute for Compassionate Economics, a nonprofit that works on child and sanitation issues in India. He charges that in some places people were coerced to build toilets by local authorities who wanted to demonstrate progress.

A study conducted last year by the group in four of India’s biggest states found that access to household toilets increased from 37% in 2014 to 71% last year. However, roughly one-quarter of people who owned a toilet continued to defecate in the open – they considered it wholesome and healthy and an opportunity to get some fresh air or see their fields.   

The government has dismissed the study, saying that the sample size of 3,235 households was too small in a program that had targeted millions of homes.  

A publicity blitz by the Clean India mission has attempted to shift dogged age-old attitudes and get people to use inside toilets.

Nearly half a million volunteers at the village level took the message to the country’s vast rural areas about how open defecation is the source of diseases such as diarrhea, typhoid and worm infection. Catchy advertisements and even a Bollywood movie featuring a top star picked up the issue to emphasize how toilets at home improve security for women who venture into the fields in the cover of darkness.

Many sanitation experts emphasize that although problems persist, there have been massive gains.

“We have to look at it in the context of the massive scale of India,” according to V.K. Madhavan who heads the India affiliate of WaterAid, a global nonprofit organization working on sanitation issues.

“My sense is that while there are still areas for improvement and gaps, the progress that has been made and what has been achieved will shift the global indicators on sanitation.”

Godiwal, who grew up going into the fields, testifies to changes she has noticed during her visits to her village in the last two years, saying most younger people have stopped open defecation.

Nevertheless, age-old habits have been harder to break among the older people, she says.

“My brother scolds my mother if she goes out in the open, but she gets up early and goes out quietly because she prefers it,” she laughs. Meanwhile, she frets about the state of the toilet she is forced to use in her slum.  

The challenge of reaching the “last mile” also remains – coverage for the poorest and most marginalized, who often tend to be excluded from such programs.

“The point is that in our country so many people are so poor, life is a struggle and sanitation is not a priority,” says Madhavan.

At the same time, he is bullish about the program, saying there will be a point at which “it becomes aspirational for everybody to have a toilet.”

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Thousands of demonstrators gathered in central Kyiv on Sunday to protest broader autonomy for separatist territories, part of a plan to end a war with Russian-backed fighters.

Protesters chanted “No to surrender!”, with some holding placards critical of President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in the crowd, which police said had swelled to around 10,000 people.

The country’s 41-year-old president is gearing up to hold his first summit with Russian strongman Vladimir Putin in an effort to revive a stalled peace process to end the five year separatist conflict in eastern Ukraine.

This week Ukrainian, Russian and separatist negotiators agreed on a roadmap that envisages special status for separatist territories if they conduct free and fair elections under the Ukrainian constitution.

Zelenskiy’s critics fear that Putin will push the comedian-turned-politician to make damaging concessions in order to retain Moscow’s de-facto control of separatist regions in eastern Ukraine.

Protesters in Kyiv’s Independence Square said that agreeing to give broader autonomy to the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic and Lugansk People’s Republic would mean surrendering Ukraine’s interests.

“We are against a betrayal,” protester Sergiy Lezvinsky, 58, told AFP.

“We want to put an end to the occupation, to the decisions that are being fast-tracked.”

The provisional agreement of a roadmap was a key condition set by Moscow for a meeting that will be hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron and also involve German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The plan has been dubbed “the Steinmeier formula”, after the former German foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who proposed it.

But many critics say the proposal favors Russia.

Zelenskiy’s predecessor Petro Poroshenko has called it “Putin’s formula,” claiming it will endorse the Russian annexation of Crimea and Moscow’s de-facto control of eastern Ukraine.

“The Steinmeier formula is a Putin project,” said protester Mykola Chepiga.

He said elections could take place in eastern Ukraine only if Kyiv restores control of the country’s borders in the east.

In an address to the nation earlier this week Zelenskiy said he respected the right of Ukrainians to protest but called on people not to “give in to provocations”.

He pledged not to betray the country’s interests.

The ex-Soviet country of 45 million people has gone through two popular uprisings in two decades and has been mired in a conflict with separatists since 2014.

The conflict — the worst East-West crisis since the end of the Cold War — broke out after Russia annexed Crimea in March, 2014 and has claimed some 13,000 lives.

…

Rights groups and opposition parties in Thailand are warning that a new center authorities plan to open by next month to combat the spread of fake news online may be misused to target and silence government critics.

Thailand emerged from five years of military rule after tainted elections in March that returned the leaders of a 2014 coup to power. The junta sued or arrested hundreds for peacefully protesting its rule and criticizing the military, often online.

Digital Economy and Society Minister Buddhipongse Punnakanta announced the center’s pending arrival in August, adding Thailand to the list of countries in the region fortifying their fronts against online fake news.

The state-run National News Bureau of Thailand later reported that the center would open by November 1 to vet dubious news found online and respond to any falsehoods jeopardizing peace and security with the facts via Facebook, the messaging application Line, and a dedicated website. It said the center would focus on natural disasters, the economy and finance, health products and hazards, and government policy.

However, opposition parties and rights groups say the track record of the junta and the government that has replaced it, led by the pro-military Palang Pracharath party, provide reason to worry.

“There are serious concerns that the proposed fake news center of the government will be yet another tool for censorship, because up until now all of the anti-fake news operation of Thai authorities focus exclusively on comments of critics and dissidents … while taking no action at all against misinformation and hate campaign from sources known to be connected to the military and Palang Pracharath party,” said Sunai Phasuk, senior researcher for Human Rights Watch in Thailand.

Buddhipongse’s staff told VOA that no one was available to comment for this story.

Another common concern among critics is that the center will combine the government’s alleged bias with the power to sue and arrest.

The digital economy minister “has made it clear that the center will work as an interagency coordinating point and [be] authorized to prosecute people with various laws,” Sunai said. “So all this combined together are very draconian censorship tools that [the] Thai government has been using over the past five years under military rule. Now those rules have been consolidated into one center.”

Arthit Suriyawongkul, co-founder of the Thai Netizen Network, which advocates for online freedom, shared his worry.

“I still hope that they would do the right job. We would love to be positive about this, because in the end … we do think that fake news and disinformation in general, actually they do some harm,” he said, referring in particular of the spread of products speciously claimed to have medicinal value.

Arthit said, however, that authorities have too often applied the “fake news” label to what is really just critical opinion.

“We found that the effort, most of the time, is actually targeted [at] those [who are] anti-government or dissidents in general. And sometimes it’s not actually quite clear if [the] information is actually true or false,” he said.

“So I think they just use the term [for] their convenience, as an excuse to clamp down [on] expression.”

Thailand is not alone.

Lasse Schuldt, a lecturer with the law faculty at Thailand’s Thammasat University, said Southeast Asia has become something of a “world’s laboratory” for so-called fake news laws.

While Malaysia and Singapore have attracted the most attention for recent legislation taking the issue head-on, he said other countries in the region have their own laws covering fake news. In Thailand, the Computer Crimes Act specifically criminalizes the publication or sharing of false information online.

When Thailand’s anti-fake news center is finally up and running, Schuldt said it will be in the company of similarly dedicated operations in Vietnam and Indonesia.

The academic said a multilayered combination of developments was driving the trend, from the viral talk of “fake news” during the 2016 U.S. election to countries in Southeast Asia adopting and adapting the language for their own purposes.

“Local realities influence the discourse as well,” he said. “Singapore points in particular to its perceived vulnerability and the prevention of foreign influence. Protracted political division is the background in Thailand. And Vietnam is mostly concerned about the protection of the [Communist] Party and the state.”

The spread of fake news via social media has been blamed for sparking deadly clashes between Buddhists and Muslims in Myanmar and for stoking racial and religious tensions ahead of national elections in Indonesia, the world’s third-largest democracy, earlier this year.

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Pope Francis urged bishops on Sunday to boldly shake up the status quo as they chart ways to better care for the Amazon and its indigenous people amid threats from forest fires, development and what he called ideological “ashes of fear.”
 
Francis opened a three-week meeting on preserving the rainforest and ministering to its native people as he fended off attacks from conservatives who are opposed to his ecological agenda.
 
Francis celebrated an opening Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica on Sunday with global attention newly focused on the forest fires that are devouring the Amazon, which scientists say is a crucial bulwark against global warming.
 
On hand for the service were indigenous people from several tribes, some with their faces painted and wearing feathered headdresses, as well as more than 180 South American cardinals, bishops and priests, who donned green vestments like the pope.
 
They traveled to Rome from the region for three weeks of debate at a special synod, or meeting, that has become one of the most controversial of Francis’ papacy.
 
Among the most contentious proposals on the agenda is whether married elders could be ordained priests to address the chronic priest shortages in the region. Currently indigenous Catholics in remote parts of the Amazon can go months without seeing a priest or having a proper Mass.
 
Another proposal calls for the church to identify new “official ministries” for women, though organizers have made clear that priestly ordination is off the table.
 
 Francis’ conservative critics, including a handful of cardinals, have called the proposals “heretical” and an invitation to a “pagan” religion that idolizes nature rather than God. They have mounted an opposition campaign, issuing petitions and holding conferences to raise their voices.
 
 Yet in his homily, Francis urged the Amazonian bishops to go boldly forward, urging they be “prudent” but not “timid” as they discern new ways to protect the environment and minister to the faithful. He drew a distinction between the “fire” of missionary zeal and fires that aim to carve out the rainforest for agricultural uses.
 
 “The fire set by interests that destroy, like the fire that recently devastated Amazonia, is not the fire of the Gospel,” he said. “The fire of God is warmth that attracts and gathers into unity. It is fed by sharing, not by profits.”
 
 He prayed that God’s “daring prudence” would inspire the bishops to bold action to protect the region.
 
 “If everything continues as it was, if we spend our days content that `this is the way things have always been done,’ then the gift vanishes, smothered by the ashes of fear and concern for defending the status quo,” he said.  
 
 In many ways, Francis opened the synod last year, when he travelled into the Peruvian Amazon and demanded that corporations stop their relentless extraction of timber, gas and gold.  Meeting with native families in steamy Puerto Maldonado, Francis declared that the Amazon and its indigenous peoples are the “heart of the church” and demanded that governments recognize their rights to determine the region’s future.
 
 The seeds of the Amazon synod, however, long predate that visit and even Francis’ landmark 2015 encyclical “Praise Be,” in which he denounced the profit-at-all-cost business interests destroying the rainforest.
 
 The pope, when he was the former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina, drafted the final document of the 2007 meeting of South American bishops in Aparecida, Brazil, which identified the Amazon and its indigenous peoples as threatened by global economic interests and deserving of the church’s utmost attention.
 
 Scientists say the vast rainforest’s lush vegetation absorbs heat-trapping carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The moisture given off by its trees also affects rainfall patterns and climate across South America and beyond.
 
 While the numbers of fires burning in the Amazon declined sharply last month, parts of the rainforest burned at a pace in July and August unseen since 2010. That fueled global worries about climate change, put the Amazon fires on the agenda of the Group of Seven summit hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron and directed environmental outrage at the pro-development stance of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.
 
 Bolsonaro has repeatedly said he wants to promote economic development in the Amazon and regularize small-scale illegal mining. He has also strongly criticized foreign countries for meddling with what he sees is a domestic Brazilian matter.
   

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SEVERNA PARK, MD – Before she could even talk, Ellie Heath used to spend hours drawing. When she grew older, the 15-year-old discovered the joy of sewing.

“It is my biggest hobby. It relaxes me. It started off with earrings and felted mice, and then I eventually got into sewing and jean jackets,” Ellie says.

Her passion for creativity inspired her to become an entrepreneur. “Three Blue Bunnies” is the name of the company she founded to make what she calls “wearable Art.”

“My definition of wearable art is something that makes you feel unique. It’s one of a kind often handmade,” she explains. She sells her products in farmers markets, local church fairs and craft shows.

Design comes to her

All the pieces Ellie creates are made of recycled or donated fabrics.

“There is over 21 billion pounds of textile in the U.S. alone, in landfills and I strive to reduce that number, at least a little,” she says.

She is repurposing jeans jackets by adding her distinctive artistic touch on each of them. The process starts with finding the fabrics matching the jackets.

“Then, I find out the design that works on it through trial and error or maybe just the design comes to me,” she explains. “And then, I cut it out and pin it on the jacket sew it on. And all of my jackets are finished with a costumed label that I make that says my name, and the number of the jacket that I have.”

Ellie credits her mother for encouraging her and her siblings to develop their artistic skills.

“My Mom has always been a huge supporter of the arts,” she recalls. “She’s always given us this place to express our creativity whether in musicals, theaters or on paper and fabrics.”

Ellie’s Mom, Amy Heath, an elementary school art teacher who is now a stay-at-home mother, says creativity feeds kids’ brains.

“I think it’s very important for children to have as many opportunities as possible and be inspired by as many objects and people,” Heath says. “Ellie started making earrings and felting, then exposing herself through church craft fairs, and now she’s a member of the greater Severna Park and Arnold Chamber of Commerce. So she’s getting ideas and experiences through other businesses.”

Learning opportunities

Ellie honed her creative skills in middle school at teacher Cheryl Crow’s Family and Consumer Science class.

“It was back in 2011, 2012, I believe, we introduced new classes called Project Runway,” Crow recalls. “It was about fashion and sewing. Ellie, I guess, would have been 10, 11 (years-old), in 6th grade. I remember she was right in front of me. She’s a dream student. She was always very involved in the class, always working very proficiently, very creative, but also very kind, helpful to the other students.”

In this class, students learn the basic sewing skills.

“I’m very impressed, but glad that I had a hand in teaching Ellie the very basics to help her develop her skills,” Crow says.

Over the last three years, Ellie has created costumes for theatrical productions at Severna Park High school. Last year, Ellie designed several dresses for school musical “Mamma Mia.”

“This year we will have a big project Cinderella,” drama director, Angela Germanos, says. “That will require expensive costuming. A very tricky one is costume changing from ragged Cinderella to rich Cinderella. We hope to do that transformation right on the stage in front of the audience. This will be a big challenge for Ellie.”

But Ellie seems to like challenging projects. Last year she took part in the school’s Prom gowns fundraiser, organized by Key Club.

“We have students modeling prom dresses that are usually donated by a bridal salon,” Key Club co-adviser, Teri Ann Stahl, says. “Every once in a while we get a student who shows exemplary talent and who would like to show off their designs in the show. We were thrilled to have Ellie volunteer to design a dress that could be modeled in the show. Our student model loved it so much that she purchased it and wore it to her senior year prom.”

Live your dreams

Ellie has many dreams. She wants to be an elementary teacher and be able to spread the joy of creativity among children.

She also dreams her business will grow and become an inspiring model for other young people who have a dream to pursue it and make it a reality.

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Hundreds of prisoners, including an opposition party leader, were freed Saturday in Cameroon after Cameroon President Paul Biya ordered a halt to court proceedings against them. 

Supporters sang and shouted at the Yaounde military tribunal as opposition leader Maurice Kamto, who claims he won the October 2018 presidential election, was freed along with other members of his party. Among them was 25-year-old Sabastien Ngomfoue, who was one of hundreds arrested last February in Douala for protesting what they called Kamto’s stolen election victory .

“I was arrested on the 28th of February. I have been in SED gendarme [detention] in Yaounde for seven months,” Ngomfoue said. “This is my first time in court and God almighty, I have been liberated. I plead that they should continue to do more [releases], we [prisoners] face lots of difficulties.”

On Friday night at the national dialogue called for by Biya to address the country’s crisis — especially the separatist war that has killed 2,000 people — the president ordered an end to court proceedings against some members of the Cameroon Renaissance Movement (CRM) of Kamto.

Sosthene Medard Lipot, Kamto’s spokesperson, said they will continue pressing for Kamto to be officially declared the winner and recognized as president.

Lipot said president Biya should have ordered the justice system that he “manipulates” to hasten Kamto’s judgment. He said they wanted to prove in the military tribunal that Kamto’s insurrection charges were based on fabrications by the Biya regime.

Kamto and about 500 CRM members were arrested after taking part in peaceful protests against alleged irregularities in the voting process that Biya easily won to claim a seventh term. Official results said Kamto finished a distant second with 14 percent of the vote.

Amos Oum, a municipal counselor who took part in the national dialogue, said one of the strong recommendations made was that Biya should release all prisoners arrested in connection with the separatist war that has killed more than 2,000 in Cameroon’s English-speaking regions, as well as people arrested for protesting the poll results.

Oum said he is very happy that shortly after the president received the report, he ordered the release of the political prisoners — an indication that Biya also wants to restore peace.

Biya this week also pardoned 333 separatist fighters accused of misdemeanors. But separatist leaders, including Julius Ayuk Tabe, who were sentenced to life in prison by a military tribunal in August, have not been released as requested by some at the national dialogue.

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Thousands marched in Edinburgh Saturday calling for Scottish independence, with a possible British exit from the European Union just weeks away and calls growing for a fresh vote in Scotland on breaking from Britain.

The demonstrators, many carrying Scottish flags, some wearing kilts and a few playing musical instruments – including bagpipes – set off from Holyrood Park in the heart of the Scottish capital.

Among them was lawyer and Scottish Nationalist (SNP) lawmaker Joanna Cherry, who was behind one of the successful legal challenges to Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s decision to suspend parliament.

She was also one of main backers of a law passed last month forcing Johnson to ask the European Union for more time to avoid crashing out of the EU without a deal.

The group organizing Saturday’s march, All Under One Banner, said were hoping to get 100,000 people to attend.

Scotland voted against independence in a 2014 referendum by 55 percent.

But nationalists argue that the 2016 British referendum in favor of Brexit means another independence referendum is necessary — because Scotland voted by 62 percent to stay in the EU.

Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, leader of the SNP, has argued that Brexit will devastate the economy.

Nationalists also argue that some people voted against independence thinking it would guarantee their place inside the EU.

Sturgeon, who wants a second independence referendum in 2021, was unable to attend the march, but tweeted a message of support.

Some independence activists also joined the march, while a few pro-Union protesters carrying Union Jack flags staged a small counter-demonstration.

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The International Organization for Migration has helped 143 Somali refugees, stranded in war-torn Yemen, return home earlier this week.  

The group of Somali refugees, including 56 children, set off by boat from the port of Aden on Monday and arrived at the port of Berbera in Somaliland the following day.

The U.N. migration agency’s spokesman, Joel Millman, said government officials and representatives from humanitarian agencies were on hand to greet them and provide assistance.

“With the conflict having effects on the economic and security situation in Yemen, many migrants and refugees find themselves without the means to provide for themselves and their families.  Stranded, they then turn to humanitarian organizations for return assistance,” Millman said.

The return project is funded by the King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Center and the Kuwaiti government. Since it began last November, Millman said more than 1,500 Somali refugees have been repatriated.

Somalis comprise the bulk of the 250,000 refugees in Yemen.  Many have been there since the 1980s. That’s when civil war broke out in Somalia, leading to the overthrow of President Mohamed Siad Barre.

The safety enjoyed by Somali refugees in Yemen for many years has long since dissipated. Yemen has been embroiled in a civil war for more than four years that turned situation in the country into the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.  The United Nations reports two thirds of the population, or 24 million people, is dependent on international aid for survival.

U.N. refugee spokesman Babar Balloch told VOA conditions in Somalia still are not conducive for returns.  But he adds the UNHCR will assist Somali refugees who voluntarily request help to return home.  

“With the prolonged conflict, the refugees have also been feeling the pressure.  And for those who want to go back home in spite of what is happening inside Somalia, we are able to help them… Once they reach Berbera, we are able to give them some assistance.  In terms of where they want to go and settle down, that is entirely up to the refugees,” he said.

Balloch said the UNHCR and IOM have jointly repatriated nearly 5,000 Somali refugees by boat from Yemen to Somalia since 2017.

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