It’s not for everyone, but if your idea of fun involves taking a plunge in icy water this may be your kind of event. That’s exactly what some people did in Annapolis, Maryland, for a fundraiser for the Special Olympics of Maryland. Participants raised money for the sports organization for people with intellectual disabilities. VOA’s Deborah Block takes us to the polar bear plunge.
From: MeNeedIt
The Israeli military said Friday that it launched “wide-scale” airstrikes on militant targets in the Gaza Strip shortly after Palestinian militants fired three rockets into Israel, two of which were intercepted.
There were no reports of casualties or major damage from the exchange of fire overnight, which came amid heightened tensions after President Donald Trump released his Mideast plan, a U.S. initiative aimed at ending the conflict that heavily favors Israel and was rejected by the Palestinians.
Palestinians have called for large protests after Friday prayers, including at a flashpoint holy site in Jerusalem that is sacred to Muslims and Jews.
Recent relative calm
Gaza has been relatively calm in recent months as Egyptian and U.N. mediators have worked to shore up an informal truce between Israel and Hamas, the Islamic militant group that rules the coastal territory.
Hamas has curbed rocket fire and rolled back weekly protests along the frontier that had often turned violent. In return, Israel has eased the blockade it imposed on Gaza after Hamas seized power from forces loyal to the Palestinian Authority in 2007.
Both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority have rejected the Trump plan, which would allow Israel to annex all of its Jewish settlements, along with the Jordan Valley, in the occupied West Bank. The Palestinians were offered limited self-rule in Gaza, parts of the West Bank and some sparsely populated areas of Israel in return for meeting a long list of conditions.
Hamas has vowed that “all options are open” in responding to the proposal, but is not believed to be seeking war with Israel. Palestinian militants have fought three devastating wars with Israel since the Hamas takeover.
Friday protest
Palestinians have held small, scattered protests in recent days condemning the Trump initiative, and larger demonstrations are expected after Friday prayers, including at the Jerusalem holy site known to Muslims as the Haram al-Sharif, or Noble Sanctuary, and to Jews as the Temple Mount.
It is the third holiest site in Islam after Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia, and is home to the iconic gold Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa mosque. It was also the location of the First and Second Jewish Temples in antiquity. The Western Wall nearby, the only remnant of the Second Temple, is the holiest place where Jews can pray.
The hilltop shrine is managed by an Islamic trust under Jordanian stewardship, and day-to-day affairs are governed by informal understandings with Israel known as the “status quo.” Non-Muslims are allowed to visit during certain hours, but Jews cannot pray there.
In recent years, increasing numbers of religious and ultra-nationalist Jews have visited the site, stoking fears among the Palestinians that Israel intends to one day partition it, as it has done to a similar site in the West Bank town of Hebron that is sacred to both faiths.
The status quo
Israel has repeatedly said it has no intention of changing the status quo and accuses Islamist groups of spreading unfounded rumors to incite violence. The Trump plan, which heavily favors Israel, says the status quo should “continue uninterrupted.”
But the plan also says “people of every faith should be permitted to pray on the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif, in a manner that is fully respectful to their religion, taking into account the times of each religion’s prayers and holidays, as well as other religious factors.”
Palestinians view the sprawling esplanade as the last bit of territory that is fully theirs and the Dome of the Rock as a symbol of their national cause. Muslim worshippers have clashed with police there on numerous occasions in recent years in response to perceived infringements. A provocative visit to the site by Ariel Sharon, a right-wing politician who went on to become prime minister, ignited the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising, in 2000.
The site is part of the Old City in east Jerusalem, which Israel captured, along with the West Bank and Gaza, in the 1967 war. The Palestinians view east Jerusalem as their capital and want all three territories to form their future state.
Trump’s Mideast plan would create a disjointed Palestinian state with a capital on the outskirts of east Jerusalem, beyond the separation barrier built by Israel. The rest of Jerusalem, including the Old City, would remain Israel’s capital.
The plan would allow Israel to annex large parts of the West Bank almost immediately, while Palestinian statehood would be heavily restricted and subject to several preconditions that the Palestinians have always rejected.
From: MeNeedIt
The U.S. senators weighing the removal of President Donald Trump from office completed a final day of questioning Thursday. The Senate impeachment trial now enters an uncertain phase as Republicans appear to have enough votes to block Democrats’ request to hear testimony from key administration officials. As VOA’s congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson reports, the final vote in the impeachment trial could quickly follow.
From: MeNeedIt
Tokyo prosecutors issued an arrest warrant Thursday for Nissan’s former chairman Carlos Ghosn, who skipped bail while awaiting trial in Japan and is now in Lebanon.
Japan has no extradition treaty with Lebanon, so he’s unlikely to be arrested. Lebanon has indicated it will not hand over Ghosn.
Tokyo prosecutors also issued arrest warrants for three Americans they said helped and planned his escape, Michael Taylor, George-Antoine Zayek and Peter Taylor.
Deputy Chief Prosecutor Takahiro Saito declined to say where the three men were thought to be staying. He said Michael Taylor and George Zayek are suspected of helping Ghosn flee by hiding him in cargo at a Japanese airport and getting him into a private jet to leave the country.
Saito would not say if Japan has asked U.S. authorities for help, though he said all options were being explored. Japan and the U.S. have an extradition treaty.
Michael Taylor is a former Green Beret and private security specialist. Peter Taylor appears to be his son. Security footage released earlier showed Zayek and Taylor transiting Istanbul Airport at the same time Ghosn allegedly passed through Turkey on his way to Beirut.
Prosecutors suspect Peter Taylor met several times with Ghosn in Tokyo, starting in July last year, to plot his escape. Saito said Ghosn was given a key to a hotel room in Osaka near the Kansai Airport that Ghosn left from.
Prosecutors say Ghosn broke the law by violating bail conditions that required him to stay in Japan, mostly at his Tokyo home.
“We want to stress that the act of fleeing was clearly wrong,” Saito told reporters. “We need to erase the misunderstanding.”
Separately, Saito said prosecutors on Wednesday forced open a lock to search the Tokyo office of Ghosn’s former defense lawyer Junichiro Hironaka for records of people Ghosn met with while out on bail, and other materials. Prosecutors are asking a judge for help in accessing contents of a computer Ghosn used at Hironaka’s office that the lawyer has refused to hand over, citing attorney-client privilege.
Ghosn has said he is innocent of allegations he under-reported his future income and committed a breach of trust by diverting Nissan money for his personal gain. He says the compensation was never decided on or received, and the Nissan payments were for legitimate business purposes.
Ghosn has lashed out at the Japanese judicial system, saying he fled because he could not expect a fair trial, was subjected to unfair conditions in detention and was barred from meeting his wife under his bail conditions.
He contends others at Nissan Motor Co., which he led for two decades, drove him out to prevent a fuller merger with its French alliance partner Renault.
Ghosn’s dramatic escape, while under the watch of surveillance cameras inside and outside his home is an embarrassment for Japanese authorities.
He is believed to have traveled by train to Osaka and then left via Kansai Airport, reportedly by hiding in a box for audio or musical equipment. Ghosn has not shared specifics of his escape.
The maximum penalty under Japanese law for illegally leaving the country is one year in prison or 300,000 yen ($2,750) in fines, or both. The maximum penalty for hiding a criminal or helping a criminal escape is three years in prison or 300,000 yen ($2,750) in fines.
From: MeNeedIt
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is in London on the cusp of Britain’s departure from the European Union for talks focused on a post-Brexit free trade deal and the U.K.’s decision to allow the Chinese tech company Huawei to play a role in the country’s high-speed wireless network.
As President Donald Trump’s Senate impeachment trial nears a close in Washington, Pompeo was to meet British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Thursday to re-register American concerns about Huawei and the possibility that its entry into the market could affect U.S.-Britain intelligence cooperation. Pompeo and Johnson are also expected to discuss Iran, Trump’s Middle East peace plan, Libya and Venezuela.
U.S. officials said they believed the British decision on Huawei wouldn’t greatly affect negotiations on a trade deal, but could hurt other aspects of the relationship upon which Britain is counting after its divorce from the EU that takes effect on Friday.
“We were urging them to make a decision that was different than the one that they made, and now we’ll have a conversation about how to proceed,” Pompeo told reporters traveling with him on the trip to Europe and Central Asia that will also take him to Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.
“Our view of Huawei has been that putting it in your system creates real risk,” Pompeo said. “This is an extension of the Chinese Communist Party with a legal requirement to hand over information to the Chinese Communist Party.”
“We’ll evaluate what the United Kingdom did,” he said. “It’s a little unclear precisely what they’re going to permit and not permit, so we need to take a little bit of time to evaluate that. But our view is that we should have Western systems with Western rules, and American information only should pass through trusted networks, and we’ll make sure we do that.”
The U.S. has been lobbying European allies to ban Huawei over concerns it could be compelled to help with electronic eavesdropping after Beijing enacted a 2017 national intelligence law. U.S. officials also worry that 5G networks would rely heavily on software, leaving them open to vulnerabilities, and have repeatedly warned they would have to reconsider intelligence sharing with allies that use Huawei. The company has denied the allegations.
On Tuesday, Britain decided to let Huawei have a limited role supplying new high-speed network equipment to wireless carriers, ignoring Washington’s warnings that it would sever intelligence sharing if the company wasn’t banned.
Britain’s decision was the first by a major U.S. ally in Europe, and follows intense lobbying from the Trump administration as the U.S. vies with China for technological dominance.
“There’s big, broad national security issues,” Pompeo said. “Our militaries operate together. There are enormous trade issues. There’s big commercial issues. And there are obviously issues that relate to telecoms and their security.”
Trump has pledged that the U.S. and Britain will negotiate a major free-trade deal as soon as Brexit is complete and officials have already begun discussions on the plan.
Britain will leave the EU on Friday after 47 years of membership, becoming the first country to leave the bloc.
The London stop is the first on a five-nation tour of Europe and Central Asia that Pompeo is making.
The centerpiece of the trip will be a two-day stop in Ukraine that begins later Thursday when Pompeo will become the most senior U.S. official to visit Kyiv and meet with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy since the impeachment process began last year.
Ukraine is at the center of the impeachment charges against Trump who is accused of obstructing Congress and abuse of office for withholding critical military aid to the country in exchange for an investigation into alleged corruption by the son of former Vice President Joe Biden, a political rival. Those allegations got a boost earlier this week when a manuscript of former national security adviser John Bolton’s upcoming book was revealed to echo the claim.
The Senate is expected to vote on hearing impeachment witnesses, including possibly Bolton, on Friday. Bolton maintains that Trump was in fact withholding the aid in exchange for a public pledge of a probe into Biden as witnesses testified before the House impeachment inquiry.
Ukraine has been delicate subject for Pompeo, who over the weekend lashed out at a National Public Radio reporter for asking questions about why he has not publicly defended the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, who was removed from her post early after unsubstantiated allegations were made against her by Trump’s personal attorney Rudolph Giuliani.
Pompeo has twice postponed earlier planned trips to Ukraine, most recently in early January when developments with Iran forced him to cancel. In Kyiv, Pompeo said he plans to discuss the issue of corruption but demurred when asked if he would specifically raise the Bidens or the energy company Burisma for which Hunter Biden worked.
“I don’t want to talk about particular individuals. It’s not worth it,” he said. “It’s a long list in Ukraine of corrupt individuals and a long history there. And President Zelenskiy has told us he’s committed to it. The actions he’s taken so far demonstrate that, and I look forward to having a conversation about that with him as well.”
From: MeNeedIt
The United States on Wednesday issued a fresh round of sanctions related to Russia’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea, targeting eight individuals and one entity, according to a notice on the U.S. Department of Treasury’s website.
Such sanctions block assets under United States control and prohibit U.S. individuals and businesses from conducting any transactions with those targeted.
This is a developing story; we will update with more information as soon as it becomes available
From: MeNeedIt
The White House has informed former national security adviser John Bolton that his book manuscript appeared to contain “significant amounts of classified information” and could not be published in its current form.
The letter from the White House National Security Council to Bolton’s attorney, Charles Cooper, and seen by Reuters, said the manuscript contained some material that was considered “TOP SECRET.”
“Under federal law and the nondisclosure agreements your client signed as a condition for gaining access to classified information, the manuscript may not be published or otherwise disclosed without the deletion of this classified information,” the letter said.
From: MeNeedIt
Russia plans to spend an extra 4.13 trillion rubles ($66.7 billion) by 2024 to meet social development targets set by President Vladimir Putin, but it will not affect macroeconomic stability, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said on Wednesday.
Describing the demographic situation in Russia as “very difficult,” Putin set out plans this month to boost the birth rate, including by offering payments for low-income families with small children and allowances for first-time mothers.
Siluanov said 3.77 trillion rubles of the additional spending by 2024 would come from the federal budget, with the remainder being spent from regional budget funds.
“An unprecedented volume of funds will be allocated to the implementation of the pledge to provide citizens with social support,” Siluanov said. “These decisions will not affect budget and macroeconomic stability.”
Siluanov said his ministry would present budget amendments to the government by Feb. 11 in an attempt to provide funds for people as quickly as possible.
The new spending is on top of 25.7 trillion rubles that Putin ordered in 2018 to be spent on 13 “National Projects” — policy areas encompassing social and infrastructure spending, one of which is demography.
From: MeNeedIt
American officials have recovered the bodies of two U.S. pilots from the site of Monday’s military plane crash in Ghazni province, Afghanistan. It is still unclear why the plane went down in the Taliban-controlled district, but U.S. officials maintain it was not shot down, contrary to Taliban claims. VOA’s Asef Hussaini in Ghazni spoke with the province’s chief of police as well as local officials and filed this report narrated by Bezhan Hamdard.
From: MeNeedIt
South African officials say they’re ready for the possible spread of coronavirus to African shores.
The pneumonia-like virus, which has sickened more than 4,500 people in China since it was identified in the city of Wuhan on Dec. 31, has African governments on alert.
Professor Cheryl Cohen of South Africa’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases says the nation is taking precautions at the continent’s busiest airport, in Johannesburg.
“We have noted the four cases of novel coronavirus that have recently been confirmed in Australia,” she said. “These were anticipated due to the proximity of Australia to Asia. We would like to assure South Africans that South Africa is prepared for any eventuality of an outbreak. We have put in place systems to rapidly identify, detect and respond to any imported cases that may reach our borders.”
Some 21 million travelers came through Johannesburg’s O.R. Tambo International Airport in 2018. It is the only airport in South Africa with direct flights to and from China.
The airport has previously implemented temperature testing and health screening during previous outbreaks of Ebola, Zika and other viruses.
While no cases of the virus have been reported in Africa, China is South Africa’s biggest trading partner, and the Johannesburg Stock Exchange slumped as news of the outbreak spread. That is normal, says economist Lara Hodes of Investec Bank, pointing to one study showing that the 2002 SARS epidemic cost global markets as much as $40 billion.
“So it’s definitely had an effect, a mild effect,” she said. “The JSE has been down. It will generally affect financial markets and, in turn, impact commodity prices and the exchange rate. But it’s very early days and there’s a lot of hype around it because of … SARS a few years ago, they’re worried about the extent it will spread.”
Hodes called the situation a “wait and see,” both in terms of the economy and the virus.
From: MeNeedIt
Next week’s Iowa caucuses are coming to Tbilisi, the capital of the country of Georgia.
For the first time, Iowa’s Democratic Party designated Tbilisi as well as Paris, France and Glasgow, Scotland as international satellite caucus sites, along with 96 new voting locations in the state and across the U.S. where Iowa Democrats can register who they want as their party’s presidential nominee.
Expanding these voting sites will “make these caucuses the most accessible” in the party’s history, said Troy Price, the Iowa Democratic Party Chairman.
The Iowa caucuses, to be held on Feb. 3, will kick off the 2020 U.S. presidential primary season, to be followed within days by the New Hampshire primary. Democratic candidates are competing to become the party’s standard-bearer and face off against the Republican Party’s presumed presidential nominee, President Donald Trump, in November.
Unlike a presidential primary where voters merely cast a ballot for the candidate of their choice, the more time consuming caucus process requires voters to cluster together in support of candidate. Participants may try to persuade wavering voters to join their side — or even attempt to convince voters to switch allegiance.
“What makes a caucus distinctive, of course, is that people are literally voting with their feet,” said Karen Kedrowski, director of The Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Women and Politics at the Iowa State University.
Why Tbilisi?
The Tbilisi site will be hosted by Joshua Kucera, a freelance journalist living in Georgia. Kucera, who is from Des Moines, told the New York Times, “there’s no specific reasons for an Iowan to be here.” So far, he said, only two other Iowa expats have registered for the Tbilisi caucus. As to why Kucera wants to host a caucus, he said “I’m a proud Iowan, nostalgic for Iowa and I like doing Iowan things.”
Kucera told VOA in an email he plans to write about his experiencing hosting the caucus in Tbilisi for another news organization.
The other international sites will be held at a university in Paris and at the home of a graduate student studying in Glasgow.
The 99 Iowa caucuses satellite locations were designated by the Democratic Party following an extensive application process. Organizations and individuals interested in hosting a caucus had to estimate the potential number of Iowa participants in these areas.
Symbolic impact
While the Democratic Party has expanded access, it has limited the potential impact of the satellite caucuses, ruling that no more than 10% of delegates will be selected based on the outcomes from these sites.
But political analysts will be looking to see if the expanded caucus sites significantly increase participation among more diverse populations and what new voter patterns may emerge.
“I’m going to definitely be watching to see if these folks who are participating in the satellite caucuses had a different outcome than those who went to the traditional caucuses,” said Kedrowski, with Iowa State University’s Catt Center for Women and Politics.
The Republican party of Iowa will also be holding caucuses on the same night but will not participate in the expanded satellite locations. President Donald Trump, who is running for second term of office, is overwhelmingly favored over two other register Republican candidates, former U.S. Congressman Joe Walsh and former Massachusetts Governor Bill Weld.
Virtual option
The Iowa Democratic Party considered but ultimately rejected a virtual caucus option, for voters to participate over the phone or on an online platform, due to cybersecurity concerns.
This year’s expanded caucus sites and schedules, the Democratic Party hopes, will facilitate greater participation among busy parents with children, people working night shifts, students away from home and Iowans living abroad.
In the past, the downside of the time-consuming caucus process has been lower voter turnout. In the 2016 Iowa caucuses only 15.7% of the voting population participated. In contrast, over 50% of New Hampshire voters cast ballots in the 2016 primary.
Iowa Democrats also rejected proposals to allow early voting or mailing in ballots that would blur the distinction between caucus and primary.
New Hampshire state law requires that its primary election be the first one held in the nation. By holding caucuses rather than a traditional election, Iowa’s contest technically does not conflict with New Hampshire’s traditional first primary position.
From: MeNeedIt