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New clashes between government security forces and the Taliban in northern Afghanistan are said to have killed around 20 combatants on both sides.
The predawn fighting in Kunduz province erupted after insurgents assaulted several Afghan police outposts in the volatile Imam Sahib district.
A provincial police spokesman, Inamuddin Rahmani, told VOA the clashes left at least nine police personnel, including a local commander, dead and several others injured. He said 11 assailants were also killed.
For its part the Taliban claimed in a statement that the raid killed 14 among the government forces and overran the security posts. It did not give insurgent casualties.
It was not possible to verify either claim from independent sources in a province that has been the site of intense fighting for years. The Taliban twice captured, though briefly, the provincial capital, also known as Kunduz.
The latest fighting comes as the United States is preparing to relaunch its peace negotiations with the Taliban, possibly next week, nearly three months after President Donald Trump abruptly halted the process.
FILE – U.S. chief negotiator, Zalmay Khalilzad speaks during a news conference at Serena Hotel in Kabul , Afghanistan.
U.S. chief negotiator, Zalmay Khalilzad, is currently visiting the Afghan capital of Kabul, where he is holding meetings with politicians inside and outside of the government before heading to Doha, Qatar, where Taliban negotiators are based.
“In Doha, Ambassador Khalilzad will rejoin talks with the Taliban to discuss steps that could lead to intra-Afghan negotiations and a peaceful settlement of the war, specifically a reduction in violence that leads to a ceasefire,” a State Department announcement said.
The Gulf nation played host to the yearlong U.S.-Taliban dialogue before it was called off by Trump on September 7, when the process had entered a decisive stage, say Taliban officials. Trump had cited intensification in deadly insurgent attacks in Kabul that also killed, among others, an American soldier.
The two foes in the 18-year war, America’s longest, had come close to concluding an agreement that would have set the stage for a phased withdrawal of U.S and NATO forces. In return, the Taliban would have immediately observed a ceasefire in areas of troop withdrawal and given counterterrorism assurances, The insurgent group would have also been required to launch intra-Afghan negotiations to discuss a permanent ceasefire across Afghanistan among other political issues.
Steven Lacchin grew up a fatherless boy, but he knew some very basic facts about the man who was his father.
He knew Lacchin, the name on his Kenyan birth certificate, was his dad’s name. He knew that Mario Lacchin abandoned him and his mother.
When he was older, he learned that his father was an Italian missionary priest – and that in leaving, he had chosen the church over his child.
What he did not know is that less than 10 kilometers (6 miles) away, another man was on a quest to prove that Mario Lacchin was his father, too.
These two men would find each other thanks to an Associated Press story that appeared on the front page of Kenya’s main newspaper. All agreed that they bore a marked resemblance, but they underwent genetic testing to be certain.
Were they indeed half-brothers, sons of the same Father?
The Vatican only publicly admitted this year that it had a problem: Priests were fathering children. And it only acknowledged the problem by revealing that it had crafted internal guidelines to deal with it.
“I don’t know how many children of priests there are in the world, but I know that they are all over the planet,” said Anne-Marie Jarzac, who heads the French group Enfants du Silence (Children of Silence), which recently opened negotiations with French bishops to access church archives so these children of priests can learn their true identities.
Just as clergy sex abuse victims have long suffered the indifference of the Catholic hierarchy, many of these children of priests endure rejection multiple times over: abandoned by their fathers, deprived of their identities and ignored by church superiors when they seek answers or help.
Steven Lacchin’s lineage was no secret. Members of Mario Lacchin’s order were well aware of it and exerted pressure on him to choose the church over his young family, according to his letters.
His mother, Madeleine, kept a decade worth of correspondence with the priest, as well as meticulous records of her efforts to seek child support from the Consolata leadership and regional bishops after Steven was born June 21, 1980. (Steven Lacchin asked that his mother be identified only by her first name.)
The two had met two years earlier in Nanyuki, about 200 kilometers north of Nairobi, where Madeleine was a school teacher at an all-girls school and Lacchin would celebrate Mass. Madeleine would later tell the Consolata regional superior that she first went to Lacchin with “a spiritual problem,” but that they then eased into a “friendly pastor-parishioner” relationship that grew into love.
On July 28, 1979, Mario Lacchin wrote a birthday card to Madeleine in his neat cursive, promising to spend more time with her and her young daughter from a previous relationship, Josephine, despite the risks their union posed.
“I do really love you with all my heart and body,” he wrote. “You are the only one who is giving me, not only physical satisfaction, but a lot more. You are telling me and teaching me how beautiful it is to love and be together no matter the sacrifices we have to make for it.”
Soon after, Madeleine became pregnant. A few months before Steven was born, Lacchin wrote from Rome about meetings he held with the Consolata leadership at the order’s headquarters about his impending fatherhood.
“I had a little trouble in Rome with my superiors,” he wrote Madeleine on March 4, 1980. “It is my impression that nobody is going to help me in the way I would like to go,” he wrote, adding: “How is the baby?”
By the end of 1981, with Steven Lacchin a year old, the priest seemed determined to end his “double life” and devote himself to his family.
“I took a courage to meet with my provincial superior about you, about Steven, about my readiness to leave the priesthood,” he wrote. “I want you, and I will fight until I will be with you, Steven and Josephine forever.”
But in that same letter, Lacchin told Madeleine that his superior wasn’t at all on board with the plan. “He told me that he wants to save my priesthood, but I told him that I will never be able to continue in such a life knowing I had a child belong to me,” he wrote.
Lacchin never left the Consolatas. His letters over the following years speak of his order’s “pressure” to remain a priest, as well as his own feelings of “failure” and his apologies for having promised Madeleine “a future which will never come.”
While the Vatican was loath in those years to let a priest abandon his vocation, the Consolata’s deputy superior, the Rev. James Lengarin, insists that if a priest formally requested to be released from his vows because he had fathered a child, he would have been allowed to go.
By 1985, Madeleine was increasingly unable to care for the children. She was ill, and shunned by her devout Catholic family because of her liaison with Lacchin.
Lacchin, then stationed in Uganda, had left 1.7 million Ugandan shillings for her in the Ugandan diocese of Tororo that year (the equivalent at the time of $2,500), but in the midst of a civil war, Madeleine couldn’t access the money. Due to the upheaval, the money lost nearly all its value.
Two years later, Madeleine wrote to Lacchin’s superiors seeking financial and bureaucratic help as she increasingly feared for Steven’s future. Who would pay for his education? And the child couldn’t get Kenyan citizenship because his father wasn’t Kenyan; Steven Lacchin’s birth certificate and other identity papers all bore Mario Lacchin’s name.
The Consolata’s then-regional superior, the Rev. Mario Barbero, replied that he understood Lacchin had left money for Steven’s care in Uganda.
“With this I think that Mario has given some contribution towards meeting the expenses for Steven’s upbringing, though I know that money is not enough to heal psychological wounds and frustrations you had to go through,” Barbero wrote.
A year later, Madeleine took her case directly to Lacchin.
“Even as I write, I find it difficult to believe that you, Mario, could turn me into the helpless beggar I am,” she wrote on Jan. 5, 1988.
“I accepted your decision regarding me, and yet I cannot accept your hiding behind the priesthood to refuse to help a child you helped bring into the world,” she wrote. “I do not know what you think he will think of you and of your priesthood and other priests when he grows up and learns how you treated him.”
By then, Mario Lacchin had been transferred north and was working at the Consolata mission in Archer’s Post, a onetime trading station in the Northern Rift Valley. There, he met Sabina Losirkale, a young girl in her final year at Gir Gir Primary School who cleaned the Consolata priests’ quarters after classes.
Impregnated at 16, before the age of legal consent in Kenya, she would give birth to a boy, Gerald Erebon, on March 12, 1989. He was pale complexioned, unlike his black mother or siblings or the black man he was told was his father.
When Sabina became pregnant, the Consolatas transferred Lacchin out of Archer’s Post, and he vanished from her life.
Shortly before her death in 2012, family members say, Sabina told them Lacchin was Gerald’s father. The priest has denied it, and refused to take a paternity test. The order acknowledged nothing.
The AP told Gerald Erebon’s story in October. That article led Steven Lacchin to reach out to Erebon on Facebook.
“I saw your story and I feel for you,” he wrote. “I am letting you know, you are not alone.”
Intrigued, but skeptical, Erebon responded. What did the writer want to share?
“He is my dad too,” Lacchin replied.
A few days later, the two met in Nairobi. It turns out they are practically neighbors, living in adjacent neighborhoods along Nairobi’s main Magadi Road. They marveled at how much they looked alike: two bi-racial men born to black African mothers, soft-spoken and pensive, though Erebon towers over Steven.
Awkwardly, they hugged for the first time and looked over the documentation Steven had brought along detailing the years-long relationship between Lacchin and his mother and her efforts to hold him responsible for Steven’s upkeep.
They shared the stories of their lives. Like Erebon, Steven Lacchin was brought up in the church and attended seminary for a time. Steven said he was kicked out once his bishop discovered that his father was a Catholic priest. Eventually he was able to put himself through law school, and now is married with three children.
“I wouldn’t need a DNA to tell these two are brothers,” said Lacchin’s wife, Ruth. “If you look at Mario, you look at Steven, you look at Gerald, it’s one person. It’s one tree. They are brothers!”
Still, they needed to know. The AP arranged for DNA tests.
Two weeks later, the results were in: The findings were “entirely consistent with a direct male-line biological relationship,” the lab said.
In other words, the men are almost certainly half-brothers, said Darren Griffin, a geneticist at the University of Kent who reviewed the lab results for AP.
“The only thing I can say is welcome to the family!” Lacchin told Erebon, shaking his hand.
“This is eternal,” Lacchin said. “We can’t run away from this. We may go our separate ways, but one thing, you know you have a brother out there.”
Erebon said he had thought he was alone, and having “a relative, a family, someone you can call your own, makes it a bit easier for me now.”
Mario Lacchin, who has taken a leave from his parish work in Nairobi to see his Italian relatives, didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Lengarin, the deputy Consolata superior, said he searched the order’s Nairobi archives in 2018 after Erebon came forward and turned up no information about Erebon or Steven Lacchin. But he acknowledged that he only looked into the two years surrounding Erebon’s 1989 birth, and that the order doesn’t keep complete personnel files.
He said AP’s inquiry about Steven Lacchin was the first the order in Rome and Nairobi had heard about a possible second son of Mario Lacchin.
But Steven’s mother was in touch with the Consolata superiors in the 1980s. Steven sent letters to Consolata officials in Nairobi in 2010 and 2014, seeking financial assistance (he wanted to buy land to build a home for his family) along with help sorting out his citizenship status.
Getting no response, starting in 2016 he made the same requests of Mario Lacchin’s bishop, Virgilio Pante, like Mario Lacchin, an Italian member of the Consolata order.
Pante responded with an Oct. 14, 2017, text: “You look for something big. My diocese of Maralal now financially is suffering. True. Can I send you now a Christmas gift 25,000?” (In Kenyan shillings, the equivalent of around $250.)
Steven still wants the church’s help in ironing out his Kenyan and Italian citizenship issues; Erebon wants Mario Lacchin to acknowledge his paternity, so the heritage of his own two children can be recognized and they can obtain Italian citizenship.
“It started very long time ago and our father has to do the right thing, at least once,” Erebon said. “He needs to make it right. And the church should not continue with the cover-up. They should just make this right.”
Kenyan police arrested the Nairobi County governor, known for his chunky gold jewelry and impromptu raps, Friday on corruption charges, a high profile move in the government’s much trumpeted anti-graft push.
Chief public prosecutor Noordin Haji told a news conference that Governor Mike Mbuvi Sonko and his associates were accused of conspiracy to commit corruption, failure to comply with laws related to procurement, unlawful acquisition of public property and laundering the proceeds of crime.
Sonko and his assistants did not respond to calls seeking comment.
Citizens and international investors have long complained of corruption in Kenya, East Africa’s business hub and richest economy.
President Uhuru Kenyatta appointed Haji, a former deputy head of national intelligence, last year after years of taking little action to rein in widespread graft.
FILE- Kenya’s Director of Public Prosecutions Noordin Haji speaks during a Reuters interview at his office in Nairobi, Kenya. July 23, 2019.
On Friday, Haji accused Sonko, who runs the Kenyan capital as Nairobi’s most senior regional politician, of “deploying intimidation tactics and using goons to threaten law enforcement officials” investigating the case.
Police used tear gas to disperse hundreds of Sonko’s supporters when he was called into the anti-corruption office for questioning in November.
Flamboyant Sonko
Sonko, a former senator, was elected in 2017 after years of news splashes featuring his flamboyant lifestyle and flashy fashion, complete with ubiquitous chunky gold jewelry and eye-catching hairstyles.
After Kenyatta and Deputy President William Ruto faced charges of crimes against humanity following the disputed 2007 elections and subsequent violence, Sonko showed up to the proceedings at the Hague-based International Criminal Court with “Uhuruto Not Guilty” dyed into his hair.
He was recently photographed using a gold-plated iPad and matching iPhone and has appeared in rap videos gyrating in public offices wearing gold-colored trainers while insulting political opponents.
Gold-plated taste
He invited a storm of public criticism this month after he shared photos online of his dining room, featuring a gold-plated lion statue, and a gold-tinted dining table and chairs.
He has recruited hundreds of people into his “Sonko Rescue Team” who sweep out streets or appear at fires wearing “Sonko” branded red boiler suits in Nairobi’s poorest neighborhoods.
On Thursday, Sonko received an award sponsored by the Kenya Red Cross and United Nations Volunteers for encouraging volunteering.
Sonko has been photographed handing out cash for things like hospital bills, but Nairobi has seen little improvement in public services under his watch.
Nairobi’s public schools and clinics are crumbling, roads are potholed and hundreds of thousands of people live in slums without access to electricity, sewage or services.
Add facial cuts, bruises and fractures to the risks from cellphones and carelessly using them.
That’s according to a study published Thursday that found a spike in U.S. emergency room treatment for these mostly minor injuries.
The research was led by a facial plastic surgeon whose patients include a woman who broke her nose when she dropped her phone on her face. Dr. Boris Paskhover of Rutgers New Jersey Medical School said his experience treating patients with cellphone injuries prompted him to look into the problem.
Paskhover and others analyzed 20 years of emergency room data and found an increase in cellphone injuries starting after 2006, around the time when the first smartphones were introduced.
Some injuries were caused by phones themselves, including people getting hit by a thrown phone. But Paskhover said many were caused by distracted use including texting while walking, tripping and landing face-down on the sidewalk.
Most patients in the study weren’t hospitalized, but the researchers said the problem should be taken seriously.
The study involved cases in a U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission database that collects emergency room visit information from about 100 hospitals. The researchers tallied 2,500 patients with cellphone-related head and neck injuries from 1998 through 2017.
The study was published in the journal JAMA Otolaryngology.
Nationwide, they estimated there were about 76,000 people injured during that time. Annual cases totaled fewer than 2,000 until 2006, but increased steeply after that. About 40% of those injured were ages 13 to 29, and many were hurt while walking, texting or driving.
Cellphone use also has been linked with repetitive strain injuries in the hands and neck, and injuries to other parts of the body caused by distracted use.
“I love my smartphone,” Paskhover said, but he added that it’s easy to get too absorbed and avoiding injury requires common sense.
“
“People wouldn’t walk around reading a magazine,” he said. “Be careful.”
BOLSOVER, ENGLAND — Dennis Skinner is a no-nonsense, unchanging socialist and the only British MP ever to heckle the Queen’s Speech Ceremony, when Britain’s lawmakers process from the Commons annually to the House of Lords to hear the monarch’s address outlining the government’s legislative program.
Nicknamed the “Beast of Bolsover,” a reference to the Derbyshire constituency he has represented since 1970, the 87-year-old Skinner has traditionally occupied the seat of the front bench below the gangway in the Commons, where invariably wearing a tweed jacket and red tie, he has harangued those he deems “class enemies,” earning himself a dozen cooling off’ suspensions for what was deemed “unparliamentary language.”
The son of a coal miner — his father was sacked after the historic coal strike of 1926 — and a former miner himself, his first brush with the Speaker of the House of Commons was in 1984 when he dubbed the leader of a group of Labour defectors a “pompous sod” and was ordered out of the chamber when he agreed to withdraw only the word “pompous.” In 1992, he incurred another suspension for describing the then Conservative agriculture minister as “a little squirt” and “a slimy wart on Margaret Thatcher’s nose.”
Skinner’s working-class constituents, many of them former coal-miners or the sons and daughters of miners, have been relentlessly behind their pugnacious tribune with the snappy bark, and they have been loyal to the Labour Party. The closure of local collieries by Conservative governments in the 1980s and 1990s only deepened Bolsover’s allegiance to Labour and to their MP, who took a pay cut himself in support of the miners during a ferocious 1984-85 miners’ strike.
But the times are changing and the country’s oldest serving MP may became next week a casualty of electoral war thanks to the scrambling of British politics by Brexit and a makeover of the Labour Party, which has become more focused on metropolitan issues pushed by progressive urban recruits, irritating older and more socially conservative traditional Labour voters.
FILE – Labour party MP Dennis Skinner listens to a speech at a Labour party conference in Liverpool, England, Sept. 25, 2018.
Britain’s ruling Conservatives hope Boris Johnson can pull off what his predecessor at 10 Downing Street, Theresa May, failed to do in a snap election 18 months ago. Their hope is that Johnson will breach the Labour Party’s so-called northern red wall,’ once thought to be impregnable, by persuading anti-European Union northern working-class voters to defect to the class-enemy Conservatives to “deliver Brexit.”
Skinner’s constituency is one brick in that wall and on the streets of Bolsover in the north east of the county of Derbyshire amid rolling hills, the talk is the December 12 general election may mark the end of the long-serving lawmaker’s political career. Locals say while they still admire their local MP, who’s been unable to campaign personally because of recent hip-replacement surgery, Brexit is driving them away from a Labour Party, which wants to hold a second Brexit referendum, if it wins power.
Bolsover voted 70 percent to Leave the EU in the 2016 referendum and because of that high proportion of pro-Brexit voters, the seat is a key target for the Conservatives. On a cold, breezy day when VOA visited the town center, which has the feel of left-behind desperation about it with boarded-up shops, shuttered pubs, neglected terrace houses and shabby cheap takeaways, it wasn’t difficult to find locals planning to switch their votes to either the Conservatives or the newly-minted Brexit Party of Nigel Farage.
One former miner, Dave Michaels, a stocky 65-year-old wearing a flat cap, said, “I’ve been Labour all my life, as was my father, and I don’t like Johnson, don’t trust the man, but I think he’ll get us out of the EU and stop all the dithering.” He voiced annoyance at the influx of eastern European migrants to staff new warehouses and online retail distribution centers. Locals complain migration has altered the social cohesion of this corner of Derbyshire and strained already under-resourced public services.
Others expressed similar sentiments, suggesting that Skinner’s 5,000 majority may well collapse next week, adding to a possible seismic change in British politics that could see Labour and the Liberal Democrats snatch traditional Conservative seats in the pro-EU south of England and the commuter belt around London, but lose heartland seats of their own in the north, midlands and southwest of the country.
Britain’s Labour Party leader and Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s rival in the country’s upcoming election Jeremy Corbyn takes pictures with people outside the University of London, in London, Britain, Dec. 3, 2019.
The Conservatives’ assault on the “red wall” will make or break Johnson’s dream of securing a parliamentary majority and dictate whether Britain leaves the European Union or not.
Daphne, a 52-year-old, who’d just finished shopping in a butcher’s shop, said she’ll be voting for Skinner’s Conservative rival Mark Fletcher. The mother of two grown up daughters, Lewis says she remains grateful to Skinner for all he’s done in the past, but he is “long in the tooth” and it is time for a change. “The Conservatives seem to have a goal,” she says.
The 34-year-old Fletcher, the grandson himself of a miner who was educated at state schools before heading to Cambridge University, says locals “want to get Brexit done and the Labour party has lost its way.” He’s convinced he can win Bolsover and that the Brexit Party won’t deny him victory by splitting the Leave vote. He is buoyed by a seat-by-seat opinion survey last week produced by the YouGov polling agency that predicted he will win the seat on December 12 with 42 percent of the vote, with Labour trailing 38 percent and the Brexit Party picking up 12 percent.
But the remaining days will be crucial before voting — in Bolsover, as well as in 49 other Labour seats in Wales, the midlands and northern England targeted by the Conservatives. At the last general election there were hints the ‘red wall’ isn’t as strong as Labour strategists suppose — two of Bolsover’s neighboring constituencies, North East Derbyshire and Mansfield, defected to the Conservative camp.
The Labour activists are hitting the doorsteps hard in the northern constituencies, though, trawling residual party support. And while the Conservatives are doing well when it comes to the issue of Brexit, they are on the back foot when it comes to public-service issues, and especially in regards to the under-staffed and under-funded National Health Service.
But Brexit isn’t Labour’s only problem in the north in what commentators describe as a “hold-your-nose election.” Johnson and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, seen widely as the most far-left leader the party has ever had, are vying in the unpopularity stakes, and according to opinion polls neither are trusted by voters. Johnson is the most disliked new prime minister in the modern history of opinion polling, while Corbyn is the most disliked leader of the opposition.
General election victory or defeat may come down to who is disliked the most.
Biogen Inc on Thursday presented new data on its experimental Alzheimer’s drug aducanumab that eased concerns raised by some experts but still left many questions unanswered as the company made its case about why it plans to seek U.S. approval after declaring the drug a failure in March.
Experts had been watching closely for any statistical abnormalities or excess safety issues that would affect how the drug is reviewed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), likely in the second half of 2020.
It has been at least 15 years since the FDA has reviewed an application for a new Alzheimer’s treatment, and an agent that can slow progression of the mind-wasting disease is desperately needed.
Alzheimer’s experts on a panel organized by the company, who had seen the data previously, expressed confidence that the complicated study did show that the drug was able to slow progression of the disease.
“All of the data suggests this is a disease modification. That means the impact of the treatment will continue to accrue with time,” said Dr. Paul Aisen, an Alzheimer’s expert from the University of Southern California.
Dr. Ronald Petersen, an Alzheimer’s expert from Mayo Clinic who moderated the panel and has been a paid adviser for Biogen, said while one of the two studies, known as Emerge, was “overwhelmingly positive,” the twin study known as Engage, was not. “Overall, I think it’s more positive than negative,” he said of the results.
Petersen was not too worried about the rates of a brain swelling side effect, known as ARIA-E, which occurred in 33-35 percent of patients in the high-dose groups.
“The side effects are there. They’re not zero. They’re to be expected. But I think they’re manageable.”
Others, however, acknowledged that the affected sample size was small and the trials were cut short early. Only one of the two phase 3 trials showed a statistically significant benefit.
“This reinforces what I thought before. That we need a third study. The data are encouraging, but there are still questions about whether the drug has a clinical effect,” said Dr. Howard Fillit, chief science officer of the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation, who was at the meeting.
Fillit said the company only measured one timepoint – 78 weeks after treatment. “It still remains to be seen if this effect is sustained. It could be an anomaly.”
Dr. Eric Siemers, a former Alzheimer’s researcher for Eli Lilly and a consultant on drugs for neurodegenerative disease who was not involved with the study, said based on his read of the data, the patient responses are not happening by chance.
“The regulators will have a very difficult job. Do you look at the totality of the data, or require more study, which would be years away,” he said.
Stifel analyst Paul Matteis said in a note to clients that he saw aspects that were both “incrementally better and worse than expected,” and puts the probability of the drug winning approval at less than 50%.
Biogen’s shares had been halted prior to the presentation at a Alzheimer’s meeting, reopened lower, and then rose as investors tried to parse the meeting from the complicated study.
Biogen has partnered with Japan’s Eisai Co Ltd to develop aducanumab as well as BAN2401, which works in a similar way.
A Navy sailor shot three civilians, killing two of them, before taking his own life at Pearl Harbor just days before thousands were scheduled to gather at the storied military base to mark the 78th anniversary of the Japanese bombing that launched the U.S. into World War II.
Rear Adm. Robert Chadwick, the commander of Navy Region Hawaii, said the service would evaluate whether security should be upgraded before the annual ceremony. About a dozen survivors of the 1941 bombing were expected to attend, along with dignitaries and service members.
The shooter was identified Thursday as 22-year-old G. Romero, according to a military official who spoke on condition of anonymity to provide details that had not been made public.
Chadwick said he didn’t know the motive behind Wednesday’s shooting at the naval shipyard within the base. The third victim was hospitalized.
It wasn’t known if the sailor and the three male civilians had any type of relationship, or what the motive was for the shooting, Chadwick said.
“We have no indication yet whether they were targeted or if it was a random shooting,” Chadwick said.
The sailor was assigned to the fast attack submarine USS Columbia, which is at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam for maintenance.
He was identified as a 22-year-old enlisted sailor, according to a military official speaking on condition of anonymity to provide details that hadn’t been made public
It wasn’t immediately known what type of weapon was used or how many shots were fired. Chadwick said that was part of the investigation. Personal weapons are not allowed on base.
Names of the victims will not be released until next of kin have been notified.
“Our thoughts are with the families of the victims and everyone involved. I can say that we are mobilizing support services for naval shipyard personnel as well as everyone else who may be affected by this tragic event,” Chadwick said.
The base went into lockdown at about 2:30 p.m. when the first active shooter reports were received. The base reopened a few hours later. Witnesses were still being interviewed hours after the shooting.
The shipyard repairs, maintains and modernizes the ships and submarines of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, which is headquartered at Pearl Harbor. The base is the home port for 10 destroyers and 15 submarines. It also hosts Air Force units.
Hawaii Gov. David Ige said the White House has offered assistance from federal agencies and that the state is also ready to help if needed.
“I join in solidarity with the people of Hawaii as we express our heartbreak over this tragedy and concern for those affected by the shooting,” Ige said in a statement.
Mass shootings and gun violence are rare in Hawaii. In 1999, a Xerox service technician fatally shot seven coworkers. In 2006, a man fatally shot his taxi driver and a couple taking photos of the city lights from a lookout point in the hills above Honolulu.
Hawaii had the lowest gun death rate among the states in 2017, according to the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. The islands have strict firearms laws, including a ban on assault weapons and large capacity ammunition magazines.
The shipyard is across the harbor from the wreckage of USS Arizona, which sank in the Dec. 7, 1941, Japanese attack. It’s also across from the visitors center, which will host Saturday’s ceremony. More than 2,300 Americans were killed in the bombing.
The shipyard has played a key role in naval history, most notably during World War II. Shipyard workers were given just days to repair the USS Yorktown, an aircraft carrier severely damaged during the Battle of the Coral Seat in 1942, because the Navy needed to quickly send the ship to Midway to meet Japanese forces there.
Some 1,400 shipyard workers labored around the clock for almost 72 hours to patch the carrier together. The planes the Yorktown delivered to Midway sank one of the four aircraft carriers Japan sent to the battle and helped destroy two others. The Battle of Midway turned the tide of the war in the United States’ favor.
A documentary on Taylor Swift will kick off the next Sundance Film Festival, where new films including the Will Ferrell-Julia Louis Dreyfus remake of the Swedish film “Force Majeure” and Benh Zeitlin’s long-awaited follow-up to “Beasts of the Southern Wild” are set to premiere.
Programmers for the preeminent showcase for independent cinema, founded by Robert Redford and set annually in the mountains of Park City, Utah, announced the lion’s share of the lineup for its 2020 edition Wednesday. The lineup of 118 feature-length films, culled from a record 15,100 submissions, come from 27 countries, includes 44 first-time filmmakers and is among the most diverse in the festival’s 37-year history. In the four competition categories, 46% of the directors are women, 38% are people of color and 12% are LGBTQ.
Streaming services
The coming Sundance, set for Jan. 23-Feb. 2, follows a 2019 festival that saw deep-pocketed streaming services set off an avalanche of high-priced acquisitions, some of which notably fizzled at the box office. Amazon paid large sums for “Late Night” and “The Report” but neither made much of a dent in theaters; Amazon is now shrinking its exclusive theatrical window for some releases. Warner Bros. paid $15 million for the Bruce Springsteen-infused coming-of-age tale “Blinded by the Light,” but it failed to catch on.
The biggest hit to emerge from last year’s crop was Lulu Wang’s “The Farewell,” which has grossed $17.7 million for A24. It’s been one of the bright spots in a trying marketplace this year for indie film. Still, Sundance, where movies like “Get Out,” “Little Miss Sunshine” and “The Big Sick” first debuted, remains the premier factory for breakout hits. Lately, that’s increasingly meant documentaries, too, including “RBG,” “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” and, from this year’s Sundance, “Apollo 11.”
FILE – Taylor Swift performs at the American Music Awards in Los Angeles, Nov. 24, 2019. A documentary on Swift will kickoff the next Sundance Film Festival.
Taylor Swift documentary
Sure to add extra frenzy this year is Lana Wilson’s “Taylor Swift: Miss Americana,” which the festival describes as “a raw and emotionally revealing look at one of the most iconic artists of our time during a transformational period in her life.”
Netflix has acquired the film and plans to release it in early 2020. It is also set to distribute seven more, including new films from “Mudbound” filmmaker Dee Rees and the fictional debut of “What Happened, Miss Simone” director Liz Garbus, an early sign that Netflix will play a prominent role in this year’s Sundance.
Apple, too, has gotten in on the act, a year after making its first acquisition at Sundance (“Hala”). On Monday, it picked up a high-profile documentary headed to Park City: Amy Ziering and Kirby Dick’s untitled film about a former music executive grappling with the decision to go public with a story of sexual assault by a notable figure in the music industry. Oprah Winfrey is an executive producer.
“This year’s festival is full of films that showcase myriad ways for stories to drive change, across hearts, minds and societies,” Redford, president and founder of the Sundance Institute, said in a statement.
Premieres section
Among the films debuting in Sundance’s Premieres section is Nat Faxon and Jim Rash’s “Downhill,” the English-language remake of Ruben Ostlund’s “Force Majeure,” starring Louis-Dreyfus and Ferrell as a couple whose relationship is altered after they escape an avalanche.
Zeitlin will unveil “Wendy,” a “Peter Pan”-inspired adventure shot in the West Indies. It’s his first movie since his Oscar-nominated debut, “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” a sensation at 2012’s Sundance.
Also on tap for are Rees’ Joan Didion adaptation “The Last Thing He Wanted,” with Anne Hathaway and Ben Affleck; Michael Almereyda’s Nikola Tesla biopic “Tesla,” starring Ethan Hawke as the engineer-inventor; Florian Zeller’s “The Father,” with Anthony Hopkins as an aged man who moves to Paris, co-starring Olivia Colman; and Garbus’ debut “Lost Girls,” a missing-child drama with Amy Ryan and Thomasin McKenzie.
Other notables include Julie Taymor’s nontraditional Gloria Steinem biopic, with Julianne Moore, Alicia Vikander, Bette Midler and Janelle Monae; Justin Simien’s horror satire “Bad Hair”; Dominic Cooke’s Cuban Missile Crisis drama “Ironbark,” with Benedict Cumberbatch; Emerald Fennell’s “Promising Young Woman,” a revenge tale led by Carey Mulligan; Sean Durkin’s ‘80s-set marriage tale “The Nest,” with Jude Law and Carrie Coon; Josephine Decker’s Shirley Jackson biopic “Shirley,” starring Elisabeth Moss as the “The Lottery” author; Viggo Mortensen’s directorial debut “Falling”; and Miranda July’s “Kajillionaire.”
FILE – John Cooper, left, director of the Sundance Film Festival, and Kim Yutani, the festival’s director of programming, take part in the opening day press conference at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, Jan. 24, 2019, in Park City, Utah.
Documentaries
Other documentaries coming to Sundance include Ron Howard’s “Rebuilding Paradise,” about the aftermath of the devastating 2018 California wildfire; “The Fight,” about the ACLU’s legal battles with President Donald Trump; the Deepwater Horizon oil spill expose “The Cost of Silence”; and Kim A. Snyder’s “Us Kids,” about the teenage survivors of Parkland, Florida.
This will be the last Sundance overseen by its longtime director, John Cooper. He is stepping down next year to take on the role of emeritus director.
“The program this year, my last as director, is a celebration: of art and artists, yes, but also of the community that makes the annual pilgrimage to Park City to see the most exciting new work being made today,” said Cooper.
France is preparing for nationwide strikes beginning Thursday that could bring the country to a standstill.
French labor unions have called for walkouts over President Emmanuel Macron’s plans to overhaul the retirement system.
In Paris, the unions plan to march Thursday, prompting police to order all shops, cafes and restaurants along the route to close for the day.
Hotels in Paris reported receiving numerous cancellations, as tourists were rethinking their travel plans. Most of the Paris Metro system will be shut down, as well as all national and international train services.
Most flights will be affected, since air traffic controllers have announced plans to join the protests through Saturday. Teachers unions, postal workers and most civil servants also plan to participate.
Paris police Chief Didier Lallement said 6,000 officers will be on duty amid fears of violence and destruction of property. Protests are banned on the Champs-Elysees around the presidential palace, Parliament and Notre Dame Cathedral.
The protests have the potential to be more destabilizing than other strikes in recent years, including the “yellow vest” demonstrations.
France’s retirement system has long been considered sacrosanct. The last time the government tried to overhaul it was in 1995 when protests brought the country to a three-week halt until then-President Jacques Chirac conceded defeat.
As he stood amid the thick old-growth forests in the coastal range of Oregon, Dave Wiens was nervous. Before he trained to shoot his first barred owl, he had never fired a gun.
He eyed the big female owl, her feathers streaked brown and white, perched on a branch at just the right distance. Then he squeezed the trigger and the owl fell to the forest floor, adding to a running tally of more than 2,400 barred owls killed so far in a controversial experiment by the U.S. government to test whether the northern spotted owl’s rapid decline in the Pacific Northwest can be stopped by killing its aggressive East Coast cousin.
Wiens grew up fascinated by birds, and his graduate research in owl interactions helped lay the groundwork for this tense moment.
“It’s a little distasteful, I think, to go out killing owls to save another owl species,” said Wiens, a biologist who still views each shooting as “gut-wrenching” as the first. “Nonetheless, I also feel like from a conservation standpoint, our back was up against the wall. We knew that barred owls were outcompeting spotted owls and their populations were going haywire.”
In this Oct. 23, 2018 photo, Dave Wiens, a biologist who works for the U.S. Geological Survey, stands in a forest near Corvallis, Ore., as he uses a remote control to trigger a digital bird calling device intended to attract barred owls to be culled.
The federal government has been trying for decades to save the northern spotted owl, a native bird that sparked an intense battle over logging across Washington, Oregon and California decades ago.
After the owl was listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 1990, earning it a cover on Time Magazine, federal officials halted logging on millions of acres of old-growth forests on federal lands to protect the bird’s habitat. But the birds’ population continued to decline.
Meanwhile, researchers, including Wiens, began documenting another threat — larger, more aggressive barred owls competing with spotted owls for food and space and displacing them in some areas.
In this photo taken Oct. 24, 2018, wildlife technician Jordan Hazan records data in a lab in Corvallis, Ore., from a male barred owl he shot earlier in the night.
In almost all ways, the barred owl is the spotted owl’s worst enemy: They reproduce more often, have more babies per year and eat the same prey, like squirrels and wood rats. And they now outnumber spotted owls in many areas of the native bird’s historic range.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s experiment, which began in 2015, has raised thorny questions: To what extent can we reverse declines that have unfolded over decades, often partially due to actions by humans? And as climate change continues to shake up the landscape, how should we intervene?
The experimental killing of barred owls raised such moral dilemmas when it first was proposed in 2012 that the Fish and Wildlife Service took the unusual step of hiring an ethicist to help work through whether it was acceptable and could be done humanely.
The owl experiment is unusual because it involves killing one species of owl to save another owl species. But federal and state officials already have intervened with other species.
— They have broken the necks of thousands of cowbirds to save the warbler, a songbird once on the brink of extinction.
— To preserve salmon runs in the Pacific Northwest and perch and other fish in the Midwest, agencies kill thousands of large seabirds called double-crested cormorants.
— And last year, Congress passed a law making it easier for Oregon, Washington, Idaho and American Indian tribes to kill sea lions that gobble imperiled salmon runs in the Columbia River.
In this photo taken in the early morning hours of Oct. 24, 2018, wildlife technician Jordan Hazan places a male barred owl he shot earlier in the night into a storage freezer in a lab in Corvallis, Ore.
In four small study areas in Washington, Oregon and northern California, Wiens and his trained team have been picking off invasive barred owls with 12-gauge shotguns to see whether the native birds return to their nesting habitat once their competitors are gone. Small efforts to remove barred owls in British Columbia and northern California already showed promising results.
The Fish and Wildlife Service has a permit to kill up to 3,600 owls and, if the $5 million program works, could decide to expand its efforts.
Wiens, who works for the U.S. Geological Survey, now views his gun as “a research tool” in humankind’s attempts to maintain biodiversity and rebalance the forest ecosystem. Because the barred owl has few predators in Northwest forests, he sees his team’s role as apex predator, acting as a cap on a population that doesn’t have one.
“Humans, by stepping in and taking that role in nature, we may be able to achieve more biodiversity in the environment, rather than just having barred owls take over and wipe out all the prey species,” he said.
Marc Bekoff, professor emeritus of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Colorado, Boulder, finds the practice abhorrent and said humans should find another way to help owl.
“There’s no way to couch it as a good thing if you’re killing one species to save another,” Bekoff said.
And Michael Harris, who directs the wildlife law program for Friends of Animals, thinks the government should focus on what humans are doing to the environment and protect habitats rather than scapegoating barred owls.
“We really have to let these things work themselves out,” Harris said. ”It’s going to be very common with climate change. What are we going to do — pick and choose the winners?”
In this photo taken Oct. 24, 2018, wildlife technician Jordan Hazan records data in a lab in Corvallis, Ore., from a male barred owl he shot earlier in the night.
Some see a responsibility to intervene, however, noting that humans are partly to blame for the underlying conditions with activities like logging, which helped lead to the spotted owl’s decline. And others just see a no-win situation.
“A decision not to kill the barred owl is a decision to let the spotted owl go extinct,” said Bob Sallinger, conservation director with the Audubon Society of Portland. “That’s what we have to wrestle with.”
If the experimental removal of barred owls improves the spotted owl populations, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife may consider killing more owls as part of a larger, long-term management strategy. Enough success has been noted that the experiment already has been extended to August 2021.
“I certainly don’t see northern spotted owls going extinct completely,” Wiens said, adding that “extinction in this case will be much longer process and from what we’ve seen from doing these removal experiments, we may be able to slow some of those declines.”
This Associated Press series was produced in partnership with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Heroic efforts to revive ecosystems and save species are being waged worldwide, aimed at reversing some of humankind’s most destructive effects on the planet. “What Can Be Saved?,” a weekly AP series, chronicles the ordinary people and scientists fighting for change against enormous odds — and forging paths that others may follow.
NASA’s sun-skimming spacecraft, the Parker Solar Probe, is surprising scientists with its unprecedented close views of our star.
Scientists released the first results from the mission Wednesday. They observed bursts of energetic particles never seen before on such a small scale as well as switchback-like reversals in the out-flowing solar magnetic field that seem to whip up the solar wind.
NASA’s Nicola Fox compared this unexpected switchback phenomenon to the cracking of a whip.
“They’re striking and it’s hard to not think that they’re somehow important in the whole problem,“ said Stuart Bale of the University of California-Berkeley, who was part of the team.
Dust-free area
Researchers said they also finally have evidence of a dust-free zone encircling the sun. Farther out, there’s so much dust from vaporizing comets and asteroids that one of 80 small viewfinders on one instrument was pierced by a grain earlier this year.
“I can’t say that we don’t worry about the spacecraft. I mean, the spacecraft is going through an environment that we’ve never been before,“ Fox said.
Launched in 2018, Parker has come within 15 million miles (25 million kilometers) of the sun and will get increasingly closer — within 4 million miles (6 million kilometers) — over the next six years. It’s completed three of 24 orbits of the sun, dipping well into the corona, or upper atmosphere. The goal of the mission is to shed light on some of the mysteries surrounding the sun.
Parker will sweep past Venus on December 26 for the second gravity assist of the $1.5 billion mission and make its fourth close solar encounter in January.
The findings in the journal Nature were made during a relatively quiet phase of solar activity.
“We’re just starting to scratch the surface of this fascinating physics,“ said Princeton University’s David McComas, the chief scientist of one of the spacecraft’s instruments.
Active phase ahead
As Parker gets even closer to its target, the sun will go through an active phase “so we can expect even more exciting results soon,” University College London’s Daniel Verscharen wrote in an accompanying editorial. Verscharen was not part of the mission.
Over the summer, Fox shared these early results with solar astrophysicist Eugene Parker, 92, professor emeritus at the University of Chicago, for whom the spacecraft is named. He expressed excitement — “wow“ — and was keen to be involved.
It’s the first NASA spacecraft to be named after a person still alive. Parker attended its launch last year from Cape Canaveral.
A U.K-based correspondent for Dawn, Pakistan’s main English language newspaper, filed a story on the terror attack last Friday in London and her choice of words triggered criticism by several Pakistani government authorities.
The attacker, Usman Khan, 28, a British citizen whose family originates from Pakistan, put on a fake suicide vest on Friday and started attacking people with knives before he was confronted by bystanders and shot dead by police officers near London Bridge. He stabbed five people, two of whom died later of the wounds sustained in the attack.
The reporter’s identification of the attacker as a British citizen of Pakistani origin was deemed as unpatriotic and defamatory because of the usage of the phrase “Pakistani origin” and the linkage to Pakistan.
Chaudhry Fawad Hussain, Pakistan’s Federal Minister for Science & Technology, took to his official Twitter page and criticized Dawn’s writers and editors for the story.
“Dawn walas [people] please have some mercy on this Nation, shocked on your cheap attempt to link a British terrorist to Pakistan, Anwar Al Awlaki and Anjem ch[Chaudhary] both are brit origin nothing to do with Kashmir or Pak, Britain should handle its problem within—irresponsible n cheap attitude,” Hussain wrote in a tweet on Sunday.
Dawn walas please have some mercy on this Nation, shocked on your cheap attempt to link a British terroist to Pakistan, Anwar Al Awlaki and Anjem ch both are brit origin nothing to do with Kashmir or Pak, Britain should handle its problem within—irresponsible n cheap attitude pic.twitter.com/tvldBCNMUd
Hussain’s tweet was retweeted by Shireen Mazari, Pakistan’s Minister for Human Rights and she accused Dawn of pursuing an agenda.
“Dawn has its own agenda – read The News where their UK based reporter has given details of the man’s life incl the fact he was born in UK!,” she said.
Following these tweets, social media in Pakistan has been trending the hashtag #BoycottIndianDawn, accusing the media network of being anti-Pakistan and pro Indian.
Riots in Islamabad
On Monday evening, angry rioters surrounded Dawn’s Islamabad office, and called for staffers to be hanged.
The crowd reportedly shouted, “Long Live Pakistan Army, Death to Dawn” and harassed employees for several hours until police arrived to dispel the crowd.
Tributes placed by the southern end of London Bridge in London, Dec. 2, 2019. London Bridge reopened to cars and pedestrians Monday, three days after a man previously convicted of terrorism offenses stabbed two people to death and injured…
An employee of the newspaper, who spoke to VOA on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said he was physically assaulted.
“They pushed me around and cornered me; they said they wouldn’t let me pass through until I shouted “Long Live Pakistan Army-Death to Dawn,” the employee said.
The newspaper has not issued a statement on the attack against its office. However, they did publish an article, giving the accounts of what transpired over the weekend. The original story that sparked the controversy has not been removed from the newspaper’s website as of Tuesday evening.
Rights Groups Reactions
Several international and local rights groups and organizations advocating for the freedom of press voiced concerns over the incident and urged Pakistani authorities to ensure the safety of Dawn’s reporters in the country.
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) issued a statement Tuesday calling on Pakistan’s Ministry of Human Rights and Information Ministry to address the situation.
“HRCP has received alarming reports that access to @dawn_com’s office in Islamabad is being blocked by protestors shouting pro-army slogans. We are seriously concerned about the security of Dawn’s personnel and urge @mohrpakistan and @MoIB_Official to take immediate action.” HRCP said in a tweet.
Paris-based Reporter Without Borders, a global watchdog monitoring press freedom around the world, also issued a statement Tuesday urging authorities to take immediate measures.
“Reporters Without Borders (RSF) calls on the Pakistani authorities to issue a public and unequivocal condemnation of last night’s siege of the Islamabad headquarters of Pakistan’s oldest English-language daily, Dawn, by an angry crowd of demonstrators calling for it to be banned on completely spurious grounds,” the statement said.
In statement sent to VOA, New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), an international organization defending reporters around the world, expressed concerns and urged Pakistan to investigate reports of death threats against journalists.
“Pakistan authorities must prevent demonstrations against the Dawn newspaper from turning violent, and should investigate death threats made against its staffers,” CPJ said.
Local reaction
Cars and buses are seen stationary on London Bridge in London, Dec. 1, 2019, as police forensic work is completed following Friday’s terror attack. A man wearing a fake suicide vest was subdued by bystanders as he went on a knife rampage…
Some opposition figures also took issue with the threats made against Dawn.
Senator Usman Kakar, a member of Pakistan’s Senate’s Standing Committee on Human Rights and a member of the opposition party Pashtunkhwa Milli Awami (PMAP) party, deemed the incident as a serious threat to press freedom and urged the senate to discuss it.
“This issue needs to be brought up and discussed in the Senate. Media [in Pakistan] is scrutinized and under a lot of pressure…they are afraid of the establishment,” the senator told VOA.
Bilawal Bhutto–Zardari, the leader of Pakistan’s People’s Party, PPP, one of the main opposition parties in the country, criticized the government for tolerating attack against the media.
“Visited the offices of @dawn_com today in Islamabad. Outrageous that a major media house can be attacked by a mob in our capital city right under the government’s nose. Senate Human rights committee has already taken notice of this latest attack on freedom of the press,” Zardari tweeted on Tuesday.
Government involvement
Some journalists in Pakistan allege that the Pakistani government organized the mob in an effort to silence an independent and credible news outlet in the country.
Iqbal Khattak, the head of Freedom Network, a watchdog organization that monitors press freedom in the country, told VOA that the incident seemed pre-planned.
“This incident was really dangerous. Journalists in Pakistan need to ask the government to investigate the matter and ask, ‘who these people were’ and ‘what their issue is’. It seems like the mob was staged,” Khattak said.
The ruling Pakistani Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), has not immediately reacted to the riot incident and threats against Dawn.
VOA’s Aurangzeb Khan contributed to this report from Islamabad. Some of the information used in this report came from Reuters.
