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Venice’s Hotel Association is urging tourists to visit the lagoon city without fear of high waters. Hoteliers say there have been many cancellations for Christmas and New Year’s, and that bookings have dropped more than 45 percent following the exceptional high tide of November 12. They add that the city is as beautiful as ever and that all museums, shops and restaurants are functioning properly, as is transportation.
The Venice Hotel Association is calling on tourists all over the world to come to see for themselves the beauty of a city that has always lived with high tides, which hoteliers stressed, come and go. They fear that the many cancellations received by hotels following the extraordinary high tide of Nov. 12 has scared tourists away.
FILE – The ‘Acqua Alta,’ a term used to describe Venice’s exceptional tide peaks, is seen outside the city’s Luna Baglioni Hotel during November flooding. (Sabina Castelfranco/VOA)
Venice’s hotel association president, Vittorio Bonacini, said that tide certainly caused many problems in the city, with its hotels alone suffering $33 million in structural damage. He explained that the exceptionally high tide, which peaked at 187 centimeters (74 inches) and caused the worst flooding in the city in 50 years, was brought on by four factors: a rare lunar attraction, sirocco winds, extremely low atmospheric pressure on the high Adriatic Sea and winds blowing from the east at more than 126 kilometers (79 miles) an hour.
Bonacini added that the convergence of those factors was a lethal mix for the configuration of Venice and that the pictures captured at the time reminded everyone of just how fragile the city and its environment are. Bonacini said that what the pictures did not show is that the event lasted a mere one-and-a-half hours and that the tide had begun to recede after 3 hours.
Bonacini said that for centuries Venice has lived and experienced high water or “acqua alta,” regulated by the cycles of the tides which rise and recede every 6 hours.
FILE – Emergency workers are seen wading through high waters during November flooding in Venice. (Sabina Castelfranco/VOA)
Hoteliers say that very quickly after a high tide event, life in the city is back to normal. They say it was obviously harder after the exceptional Nov. 12 event, but all Venetians came together and worked very hard to return the city back to normality in a very short time and, in spite of the damage, everyone resumed their ordinary daily lives.
The tides are not an earthquake, they say, but something that comes and goes, and Venice has always lived with them. As tides come and go, soon the water disappears from the flooded squares and streets, and it’s business as usual at bars, restaurants and shops.
Hoteliers made clear that all activities function properly in the city and that Venice is safe again for everyone, including children and the elderly. They stressed that “acqua alta” is nothing traumatic, but that many hotel guests even consider it a fun experience.
Many hotels hand out high plastic boots to their guests as gifts so that they can avoid getting their feet wet and are not forced to use elevated walkways to enjoy a cup of coffee sitting at a bar in a flooded Saint Mark’s Square.
A mysterious figure who used a rare narwhal tusk to help subdue a knife-wielding extremist on London Bridge last month has been identified as a civil servant in Britain’s Justice Ministry.
Darryn Frost ended his silence Saturday, telling Britain’s Press Association that he and others reacted instinctively when Usman Khan started stabbing people at a prison rehabilitation program at a hall next to the bridge on Nov. 29.
Frost used the rare narwhal tusk to help subdue Khan even though the attacker claimed to be about to detonate a suicide vest, which turned out to be a fake device with no explosives. The intervention of Frost and others help keep the death count to two. He said another man used a chair as a weapon in the desperate struggle.
“When we heard the noise from the floor below, a few of us rushed to the scene,” the 38-year-old said. “I took a narwhal tusk from the wall and used it to defend myself and others from the attacker. Another man was holding the attacker at bay with a wooden chair.”
He said Khan had a large knife in each hand and pointed at his midriff.
“He turned and spoke to me, then indicated he had an explosive device around his waist,” Frost said. “At this point, the man next to me threw his chair at the attacker, who then started running towards him with knives raised above his head.”
The confrontation quickly moved onto London Bridge, where Frost and others – including one man who sprayed Khan with a fire extinguisher – managed to fight the attacker to the ground until police arrived.
The extremist, who had served prison time for earlier terrorism offenses, was shot dead by police moments later after he threatened again to detonate his vest.
Frost said he was withholding many details out of respect for the victims and their families and because of the ongoing investigation. He paid tribute to Saskia Jones and Jack Merritt, the two young people stabbed to death when the attack started.
“In reading about their lives and work I am convinced they represent all that is good in the world, and I will always feel the deep hurt of not being able to save them,” he said.
Frost praised those wounded in the attack and said some had refused treatment until the more severely hurt were cared for.
“That consideration and kindness filled me with hope on that dark day,” he said.
The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is holding talks with General Motors Co. on the automaker’s petition to deploy a limited number of self-driving vehicles on American roads without
steering wheels or other human controls, the head of the agency
said Friday.
Acting NHTSA Administrator James Owens said his agency aims to decide soon on GM’s January 2018 petition as well as on a request by Nuro, a driverless delivery startup backed by Softbank Corp., to deploy a limited number of low-speed, highly automated delivery vehicles without human occupants.
The agency’s review comes at a time of heightened concerns
about the safety of automated piloting systems in vehicles and
aircraft, a potential revolution in ground and air transportation.
“I expect we’re going to be able to move forward with these
petitions soon — as soon as we can,” Owens told Reuters, adding
action “definitely” would come next year.
“This will be a big deal because this will be the first such action that will be taken,” Owens said.
GM, the No. 1 U.S. automaker, confirmed it has been in talks with NHTSA about the petition. Nuro also confirmed it is in talks with NHTSA.
Still work to do
GM Chief Executive Mary Barra and U.S. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao last week met and discussed the petition, officials said, but significant work remains at the technical level.
Owens said NHTSA officials are “crawling through these petitions because we want to make sure” the driverless vehicles are at least as safe as other cars on the roads.
“There’s a lot of back and forth between us and the companies,” Owens said during a Reuters interview that also included Chao and other Transportation Department officials. “We’re sharing with them thoughts and ideas and concerns. They come back to us with additional information.”
Chao said it is important that NHTSA take its time in reviewing the GM petition. Chao suggested that some auto industry officials and analysts were too optimistic about the timing for deployment of fully autonomous vehicles.
“I think the complexity was far greater than what a lot of very optimistic advocates were thinking,” Chao said.
FILE – In this Aug. 16, 2018, photo a self-driving Nuro vehicle parks outside a Fry’s supermarket, which is owned by Kroger, as part of a pilot program for grocery deliveries in Scottsdale, Ariz.
In GM’s petition, NHTSA is for the first time looking at a vehicle in which all driving decisions are made by a computer rather than a human driver. Nuro, which partnered with Kroger Co. last year to deliver groceries, seeks approval not to include a windshield in the vehicle.
The petitions — formal applications for action by the agency — seek exemptions from U.S. vehicle safety rules largely written decades ago that assumed human drivers would be in control of a vehicle. The petitions are for up to 2,500 vehicles per manufacturer.
GM initially said it hoped to win approval to deploy the vehicles by the end of this year. But in July its self-driving unit, Cruise, said it was delaying commercial deployment of cars as more testing of the vehicles was required. A new target date wasn’t specified.
Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo unit this year began offering some rides with no human driver in its limited autonomous ride-hailing service in Arizona, but with steering wheels and employees watching remote feeds of the vehicles’ cameras.
“We’re in communication with them about how they are ensuring the safe operation of the vehicle,” Owens said. “We will continue having a back-and-forth with them.”
Robert Glenn “Junior” Johnson, the moonshine runner turned NASCAR driver described as “The Last American Hero” by author Tom Wolfe in a 1965 article for Esquire, died Friday. He was 88.
NASCAR announced the death of Johnson, the winner of 50 races as a driver and 132 as an owner. He was a member of the inaugural class inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame in 2010.
“From his early days running moonshine through the end of his life, Junior wholly embodied the NASCAR spirit,” NASCAR Chairman Jim France said in a statement. “He was an inaugural NASCAR Hall of Famer, a nod to an extraordinary career as both a driver and team owner. Between his on-track accomplishments and his introduction of (sponsor) Winston to the sport, few have contributed to the success of NASCAR as Junior has.
“The entire NASCAR family is saddened by the loss of a true giant of our sport, and we offer our deepest condolences to Junior’s family and friends during this difficult time.”
From North Wilkesboro, North Carolina, Johnson was named one of NASCAR’s greatest drivers in 1998 after a 14-year career that ended in 1966 and included a win in the 1960 Daytona 500. He honed his driving skills running moonshine through the North Carolina hills, a crime for which he received a federal conviction in 1956 and a full presidential pardon in 1986 from President Ronald Reagan.
His was first immortalized by Wolfe in 1965 and later in a 1973 movie adaptation starring Jeff Bridges.
As a car owner for drivers that included Darrell Waltrip, Cale Yarborough, Bill Elliott and Terry Labonte, Johnson claimed six Cup championships. His last race win as an owner was the 1994 Southern 500 with Elliott.
Waltrip said he grew up only dreaming of one day meeting Johnson, but surpassed that by getting to drive for his hero.
“He became my boss and made me a champion, I loved that man, God Bless Jr and his family. You were the greatest!” Waltrip said on Twitter.
Johnson also is credited with bringing the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company to NASCAR, which then led to Winston sponsoring its premier series from 1971-2003.
“The Last American Hero is gone and so leaves a huge dent in NASCAR racing. Junior Johnson was one of American sports’ great characters and one of the best racer and car owners ever. His mountain man drawl and tricks were legendary,” former race promoter Humpy Wheeler said. “He’ll go down as one of racing’s great ticket sellers.”
Johnson is credited with discovering drafting — using the slipstream of the car in front of you on the track to keep up or slingshot past. Using that maneuver, he won the 1960 Daytona 500, outrunning several cars that were about 10 mph faster.
As a young man, Johnson built a reputation as a moonshiner who could outrun the law on the mountain roads like no one else. He’s credited with inventing the Bootleg Turn, a maneuver that spins the car into a quick 180-degree turn and sends it speeding off in the opposite direction.
Johnson began driving at age 8, long before he had a license.
“I didn’t need one anyway,” he often said with a laugh. “They weren’t going to catch me.”
At 24, Johnson turned that talent to racing and became a superstar in NASCAR in the 1950s and 1960s. He walked away from the sport in 1996 to concentrate on his other businesses, including a line of fried pork skins and country ham.
“I had done just about everything in racing that I wanted to do,” Johnson said in an interview with The Associated Press before driving the pace car for the start of the 2008 Daytona 500, the 50th running of that event. “I do miss being in the garage sometimes, but I just wasn’t excited about going racing anymore.”
Johnson was never caught on the roads during his moonshining days, but he was arrested by federal authorities in 1956 when he was caught working at his father’s still. He was sentenced to 20 months but was released after 11 months in federal prison in Chillicothe, Ohio.
Although a lifelong Democrat, Johnson was pardoned by Reagan. In his later years, Johnson often said that the pardon in December 1986 was “the greatest thing in my life.”
Johnson is survived by wife Lisa, daughter Meredith and son Robert Glenn Johnson III.
“The Last American Hero is gone and so leaves a huge dent in NASCAR racing. Junior Johnson was one of American sports’ great characters and one of the best racer and car owners ever. His mountain man drawl and tricks were legendary,” former race promoter Humpy Wheeler said. “He’ll go down as one of racing’s great ticket sellers.”
Firefighters in the Australian state of New South Wales were bracing for “catastrophic” fire conditions on Saturday as temperatures well above 40C (104F) and strong winds were set to fuel more than 100 fires burning across the state.
Authorities asked people to delay travel, at the start of what is normally a busy Christmas holiday period, warning of the unpredictability of the fires as winds of up to 70 kph (44 mph) were set to fan flames through the middle of the day.
“Catastrophic fire conditions are as bad as it gets,” NSW Rural Fire Services Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons told journalists.
“They are the very worst of conditions. Given we have a landscape with so much active fire burning, you have a recipe for very serious concern and a very dangerous day.”
Flowers and the helmets of volunteer firefighters Andrew O’Dwyer and Geoffrey Keaton, who died when their fire truck was struck by a falling tree as it traveled through a fire, are seen at a memorial n Horsley Park, Australia, Dec. 20, 2019.
Greater Sydney and two surrounding areas were rated as catastrophic for Saturday, and other areas were at extreme or very-high fire danger ratings.
Close to 10,000 emergency personnel would be working across NSW on Saturday, which the NSW Minister for Police and Emergency Services David Elliott said was likely the largest emergency deployment the state had ever seen.
“They’re there, four days before Christmas, to keep families safe,” Elliott told media.
A southerly wind change is expected late on Saturday afternoon. It is forecast to bring winds of up to 90 kph (56 mph), which Fitzsimmons said would initially worsen fire conditions before leading to a dramatic drop in temperatures.
The Gospers Mountain mega fire, which has already burned almost 450,000 hectares (1.1 million acres) to the northwest of Sydney was upgraded to emergency status early on Saturday.
The death of two firefighters on Thursday night when their fire truck was struck by a falling tree as it travelled through the front line of a fire brought the wildfires death toll in New South Wales to eight since the start of October.
Shortly after the two deaths were announced, Prime Minister Scott Morrison issued a statement saying he would return as soon as possible from a family holiday in Hawaii, a trip that had drawn sharp criticism as the wildfires crisis deepened.
Australia has been fighting wildfires across three states for weeks, with blazes destroying more than 700 homes and nearly 3 million acres (1.2 million hectares) of bushland.
Republican Wisconsin lawmakers took steps Friday to spend taxpayer dollars to hire their own attorney and intervene in a federal lawsuit seeking to stop the purge of more than 200,000 voter registrations.
The League of Women Voters of Wisconsin filed the lawsuit this week against the state Elections Commission. It did so after a state judge ruled against the commission and said it must immediately deactivate more than 200,000 voter registrations of people identified as possibly having moved. That decision, in a case brought by a conservative law firm, is being appealed but the ruling has not been put on hold.
The legal battles are being closely watched because the affected voters come from more heavily Democratic parts of the state. Democrats fear forcing them to re-register would create a burden and could negatively affect turnout in the 2020 presidential election. Republicans argue that removing the voters ensures the rolls are not full of people who shouldn’t be voting.
Key state in 2020
President Donald Trump won Wisconsin by fewer than 23,000 votes in 2016. The state is one of a handful of battlegrounds in the upcoming election.
Republican leaders of the state Senate and Assembly on Friday circulated a ballot to approve the hiring of a private attorney to represent them in the federal lawsuit, rather than Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul. Republicans have increasingly turned to hiring their own attorneys, paid for by taxpayers, rather than have Kaul represent them in lawsuits. Republicans don’t trust that Kaul will represent their interests because he is a Democrat.
Kaul’s spokeswoman, Gillian Drummond, did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment on the move.
The League argues in its lawsuit that it would be a violation of constitutional due process rights to deactivate the registrations of the voters without proper notice. The conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty argues in the other case that state law required the Elections Commission to deactivate the voters flagged as potentially having moved who didn’t respond to an October mailing, but it failed to do so.
The Democratic presidential candidates held their liveliest debate yet Thursday in Los Angeles, California. Seven contenders were on the debate stage and clashed over the economy, health care, climate change, campaign finance reform and who best can defeat President Donald Trump next year. VOA National correspondent Jim Malone has more from Washington
The World Health Organization projects that, for the first time, the number of men smoking around the world is dropping, indicating measures to end the global tobacco epidemic are paying off.
WHO officials called it a major shift in the fight against tobacco, which every year kills more than eight million people prematurely.
Data from 143 countries shows that tobacco use among men has stopped growing, following a steady rise in the use of this deadly product during the past two decades.
During this period, WHO reports 60 million of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion smokers have quit the habit. Most of those reductions were driven by women, as male use of tobacco over the same period rose by around 40 million.
“But now we are seeing for the first time a decline in use, with WHO projecting that there will be at least 2 million fewer males using tobacco in 2020 and 5 million less by 2025,” said Ruediger Krech, WHO’s director of health promotion. “Fewer males using tobacco products means fewer people will suffer the avoidable pain and death that they cause.”
Krech says the decline in tobacco use shows tobacco control measures work. He says steps such as taxation, banning advertising and marketing as well as smoking in public places, and plain packaging of tobacco products discourage people from smoking.
The report also found that approximately 43 million children aged 13 to 15 smoke, with boys using tobacco at twice the rate as girls. It said Southeast Asia has the highest rates of tobacco use, while sub-Saharan Africa has the lowest.
WHO said most gains in reducing tobacco use have been in low- and middle-income countries. While the Americas is the world’s best performing region in terms of reduction of tobacco consumption, Europe has the slowest pace of decline.
Russian President Vladimir Putin called the U.S. impeachment process “far-fetched” Thursday, making a seemingly obvious prediction that Donald Trump will be acquitted in the Senate.
Putin said Thursday at his annual news conference in Moscow that the move is a continuation of the Democrats’ fight against Trump.
“The party that lost the (2016) election, the Democratic Party, is trying to achieve results by other means,” Putin said.
He likened Trump’s impeachment to the earlier U.S. probe into collusion with Russia, which Putin downplayed as being groundless.
Putin noted that the impeachment motion “is yet to pass the Senate where the Republicans have a majority.” He added that “they will be unlikely to remove a representative of their own party from office on what seems to me an absolutely far-fetched reason.”
Trump was impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives, becoming only the third American chief executive to be formally charged under the Constitution’s ultimate remedy for high crimes and misdemeanors.
The historic vote split along party lines Wednesday night in the U.S., much the way it has divided the nation, over a charge that the 45th president abused the power of his office by enlisting a foreign government to investigate a political rival ahead of the 2020 election. The House then approved a second charge, that he obstructed Congress in its investigation. The articles of impeachment, the political equivalent of an indictment, now go to the Senate for trial.
Russian President Vladimir Putin gestures during his annual end-of-year news conference in Moscow, Dec. 19, 2019.
German extradition request
Turning to a spat with Germany over the killing of a Georgian citizen in Berlin in August, which German prosecutors alleged had been ordered by Moscow or authorities in the Russian province of Chechnya, Putin described the victim as a “bloodthirsty killer.” He said the man, an ethnic Chechen who was accused of being responsible for the killing of 98 people in just one raid in Russia’s North Caucasus and masterminding bombings on the Moscow subway system.
Russian officials have denied that Moscow had any relation to the killing,
Putin said that Russian law enforcement agencies had spoken to their German counterparts to demand the man’s extradition, but were given the cold shoulder and never sent a formal extradition request. He likened the victim to Islamic State group militants in custody in Turkey, some of whom come from Germany, France and other European nations.
“If those people come your way, will you like it?” Putin said. “Will you let them freely roam the streets like that?”
He argued that law enforcement agencies in Russia and Europe need to cooperate more closely to fend off terror threats.
Wide ranging news conference
Putin spoke on a variety of issues during the marathon news conference that was dominated by local issues, such as Russia’s ailing health care system and federal subsidies for the regions.
He opened it by warning about new challenges posed by global climate change, saying that global warming could threaten Russian Arctic cities and towns built on permafrost.
The Russian leader added that climate changes could trigger fires, devastating floods and other negative consequences.
Putin emphasized that Russia has abided by the Paris agreement intended to slow down global warming. At the same time, he noted that factors behind global climate change have remained unknown and hard to predict.
Putin, who has been in power for two decades, also hailed the economic achievements of his rule. He emphasized that Russia has become the world’s largest grain exporter, surpassing the U.S. and Canada — a dramatic change compared to the Soviet Union that heavily depended on grain imports.
The Russian leader also pointed at industry modernization, saying that three quarters of industrial equipment is no older than 12 years.
He said that the country has built three new airports, 12 new railway stations and the number of major highways has doubled.
The Russian economy had suffered a double blow of a drop in global oil prices and Western sanctions that followed Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Crimea. It has seen a slow recovery since 2017 after a two-year stagnation.
French President Emmanuel Macron, center left, Russian President Vladimir Putin, center right, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, left, attend a working session at the Elysee Palace in Paris, Dec. 9, 2019.
Relations with West
Russia’s ties with the West have remained at post-Cold War lows, but Putin argued that Russia has recovered and become more resilient to shocks from Western penalties and fluctuations in global energy prices.
Putin voiced hope for further moves to settle the conflict in eastern Ukraine following his talks in Paris on Dec. 9 with the leaders of Ukraine, France and Germany.
He said that the 2015 peace agreement signed in Minsk and brokered by France and Germany must be observed, rejecting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s push for revising it.
The fighting in eastern Ukraine that flared up in 2014 after Russia’s annexation of Crimea has killed more than 14,000 and ravaged Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland.
The Minsk deal envisaged that Ukraine can regain control over the border with Russia in the separatist-held regions only after they are granted broad self-rule and hold local elections. The agreement was a diplomatic coup for Russia, ensuring that the rebel regions get a broad authority and resources to survive on their own without cross-border support.
Zelenskiy pushed for tweaking the timeline laid out in the accord so that Ukraine gets control of its border first before local elections are held, but Putin firmly rejected that.
“There is nothing but the Minsk agreement,” Putin said. “If we start revising the Minsk agreement, it will lead to deadlock.”
He said that Russia still hopes to negotiate a new gas deal with Ukraine that will allow his country to maintain transit shipments of gas to Europe via Ukrainian territory. The Russian leader noted that Moscow would be ready to continue pumping gas via Ukraine even though the new prospective Nord Stream 2 pipeline under the Baltic Sea is expected to come online next year.
Lenin
Putin, who once lamented the breakup of the Soviet Union as the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century, had some harsh words to say about Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin.
He lambasted Lenin’s policies on ethnic issues, saying that his idea to grant broad autonomy to ethnic-based Soviet republics, including their right to secede, paved way for the Soviet breakup once the Communist Party’s hold on power started to loosen.
At the same time, Putin rejected the push for taking Lenin’s embalmed body out of the Red Square tomb and burying it, saying that it would offend older people who still see the Soviet founder as a powerful symbol.
He noted that the Soviet demise spawned expectations of a “unipolar world” in which the U.S. dictates terms to others, adding that such “illusions” quickly collapsed. Putin said that China has come to challenge the U.S. as the global economic powerhouse and hailed increasingly close ties between Moscow and Beijing.
Putin, whose current term runs through 2024, remained coy about his political future. He wouldn’t answer if he could potentially extend his rule by shifting into a new governing position to become the head of a Russia-Belarus union.
He left the door open to amending the Russian Constitution, such as changing the powers of the president and the Cabinet, but noted that changes must be made carefully after a broad pubic discussion.
American folk singer and songwriter, Alice Peacock released her latest album, “Minnesota” earlier this year. The album’s title track is a love song to her home state, where her family spends their summers. Much has changed for Peacock since her last solo studio album, 2009’s “Love Remains.” She has had three kids, moved to Cincinnati and … gotten 10 years older.
Three small explosions went off in a southern Rakhine town in Myanmar Thursday just before civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi landed there in a rare visit to the conflict-ridden state, a local official said.
The blasts happened in the normally quiet town of Manaung on an island off Myanmar’s western coast where Suu Kyi was due to open a solar power plant.
“There were three explosions, but no casualties,” Win Myint, spokesperson for Rakhine’s regional government, told AFP.
He said it happened before Suu Kyi arrived, but since they were on the other side of town the event went ahead as planned and she had since left safely on a flight to Yangon.
“This has never happened in Manaung before.”
No group has yet claimed responsibility for planting the small bombs, which detonated at the side of a road, photos from local media showed.
The area has remained largely unscathed by unrest further north, where Myanmar’s military is locked in an increasingly vicious conflict with the Arakan Army (AA).
The rebel group claims to be fighting for more autonomy and rights for the ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and garners sympathy from many local people who have long felt marginalized in the Bamar-majority country.
But tens of thousands have fled their homes over the past year and dozens of civilians have been caught in the crossfire.
There have been allegations of abuse against both sides.
Rights groups say Myanmar’s military has abducted civilians and tortured detainees, but the army points to targeted shootings, roadside bombings and kidnappings by insurgents.
One Indian construction worker died while being held hostage and an MP from Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) has now been held for over six weeks.
A number of hostages seized by the rebels in a raid on a ferry packed with scores of police and soldiers were killed in October, with each side blaming the other.
Rakhine state’s north was also the epicenter of a bloody military crackdown two years ago that forced some 740,000 Rohingya Muslims to flee over the border into Bangladesh.
Thursday’s visit was only the third time Suu Kyi had traveled to Rakhine since the Rohingya crisis erupted in 2017.
Lawyers for Marry Chiwenga, the wife of Zimbabwe’s vice president, Constantino Chiwenga, have asked judges to free her on bail, four days after she was arrested for allegedly attempting to murder her husband.
Attorney Toana Nyamakura filed the bail application on behalf of Marry Chiwenga at the High Court on Wednesday.
While Nyamakura refused to speak to reporters, Kenny Mubaiwa, the father of the former model, maintained his earlier line and only said:
According to state prosecutors, when Vice President Chiwenga was flown to South Africa for medical care in June, Marry Chiwenga forced her husband to stay at a hotel overnight, denying him treatment for about 24 hours. When security agents finally took the vice president to a hospital, his wife allegedly entered his room and removed an IV and a catheter, resulting in profuse bleeding.
Marry Chiwenga was also charged with corruption for allegedly using $1 million in foreign currency – of which there is a shortage in Zimbabwe – to buy houses and luxury vehicles abroad.
Alexander Rusero, a senior journalism lecturer at Harare Polytechnic College, says the attempted murder charge might well be true.
“When you have a whole vice president accusing his wife of murder, I think there is an element of truth to it. No husband in his entire pride would want to bring, or wash dirty linen unless there is something important, and in this case, a life-threatening issue,” he said.
At the same time, Rusero said he thinks the vice president is using his office to get back at his wife, from whom he recently filed for divorce.
“It is an exercise of power, an exercise of office, because the truth is that these are really domestic issues which have nothing to do with the national psyche, which actually have nothing to do with the current efforts that the government might otherwise try to nip the issue of corruption in the bud. They fall away, they are just a matter of flexing muscle by the vice president,” Rusero said.
Mrs. Chiwenga is facing another charge of trying to obtain an official marriage certificate without the vice president’s consent. The Chiwengas have been married for eight years under Zimbabwe’s customary law, a lesser status than the country’s official civil marriage. The state says Marry Chiwenga was attempting to position herself financially and politically in case the vice president died.
State prosecutors are opposed to granting bail, saying Marry Chiwenga has properties outside Zimbabwe and could flee the country to avoid significant jail time.
