A right-of-center president took office in Uruguay on Sunday, promising to crack down on crime and tighten government finances after a 15-year string of left-leaning governments.

Luis Lacalle Pou, a 46-year-old surfing enthusiast and son of a former president, narrowly won the election in November in his second try for the top office.

Lacalle Pou thanked outgoing President Tabaré Vázquez who gave him the presidential sash.

“The country has built a democracy with this ceremony,” he said, celebrating the seventh presidential change since the restoration of democracy in 1985.

Lacalle Pou inherits a country of nearly 3.4 million people that had grown steadily under the outgoing Broad Front government, but rising crime in recent years dented its popularity and economists have grown concerned about a rising fiscal deficit that reached 4.9% of gross domestic product last year.

In his inaugural address, the new leader promised “to promote what was done well (and) correct what was done badly.”

Lacalle Pou, who has promised to cap government spending, said he wanted reduce the costs of production and services “to recover national competitiveness.”

He said the country faces “an emergency” of insecurity, adding that “the enormous majority of Uruguayans feel unprotected.” He campaigned on calls to bolster the country’s security forces and toughening sentences.

“In the interior of the country we used to sleep with the door open…. Even vehicles were left with doors and windows open and the key in the ignition. But lately the houses are all fenced…. We hope that this government takes some measures and can change that,” said Natalia Cardozo, a 37-year-old teacher who was participating on horseback in the inaugural; day parade.

Lacalle Pou, who spent many years in Uruguay’s congress, grew up in an intensely political family. He father Luis Lacalle Herrera was president from 1990 to 1995 and his mother, Julia Pou, was a senator. His great-grandfather Luis Alberto de Herrera was a major figure in the National Party.

He will have to depend on an ideologically diverse four-party coalition to get his programs through Congress.

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Slovak opposition led by the Ordinary People party (OLANO) won an emphatic victory in the country’s parliamentary election, as voters angry with graft routed the ruling center-left Smer that has dominated the political scene for more than a decade.

Results from 96.16% of voting districts showed Sunday that OLANO, a politically amorphous, pro-European Union and pro-NATO movement focused on fighting corruption, took 24.95% of the vote, far ahead of the ruling Smer with 18.5%.

Support for OLANO surged in recent weeks, from less than 6% late last year, concentrating a protest vote fed by the killing of an investigative journalist and his fiancée two years ago.

Seats won by other liberal and conservative parties gave OLANO a strong position to lead negotiations to form a new center-right government.

‘Let’s Beat the Mafia Together’

OLANO leader Igor Matovic has pledged to clean up politics, an ambition encapsulated in his party’s slogan: “Let’s Beat the Mafia Together.”

“We take the result as a request from people who want us to clean up Slovakia. To make Slovakia a just country, where the law applies to everybody regardless if he is rich or poor,” Matovic said after most of the votes were counted.

Matovic said he would reach out to leaders of three other parties — the liberal Freedom and Solidarity, the conservative For the People of former president Andrej Kiska, and the socially conservative, eurosceptic We Are Family — to form an alliance that would have constitutional majority of more than 90 seats in the 150-seat parliament.

Prime Minister Peter Pellegrini from Smer acknowledged defeat and said the party’s run in the office, for 12 out of the past 14 years, may be over.

“A probable departure of our party into opposition is not such a surprise,” Pellegrini told reporters.

Smer scored its worst result since 2002. Its nationalist and Hungarian minority allies did not win any seats, the first time in decades that Hungarians will not be represented.

Killings spark change

The political shift in the euro zone member state, which has avoided fights with Brussels unlike its central European Visegrad Group neighbors Hungary and Poland, started with the 2018 killing of journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiancée.

An investigation unearthed communications between a businessman now on trial for ordering the hit and politicians and judicial officials. The defendant has denied the charges.

The killings led to the biggest street protests in the post-communist era, forcing Smer leader Robert Fico to resign, though his party held on to power.

Matovic, 46, told Reuters last week he wanted to be a conciliatory voice toward the EU within Visegrad.

A positive signal

The former owner of regional newspapers and a lawmaker since 2010, Matovic calls himself a social conservative and economic liberal but refuses to pin down OLANO on the left-right or liberal-conservative scale.

In the European Parliament, OLANO is aligned with the center-right European People’s Party.

“I would like to send a positive signal,” Matovic said, adding that he did not want European partners to feel Slovakia was a corrupt place “where journalists and their fiancees are murdered just because someone unearthed corruption.”

He said he would strive for better education for the underprivileged Roma minority, and wanted the Roma, Hungarian and Ruthenian minorities to feel equal.

Predictions that the far-right, anti-EU and anti-NATO People’s Party could make strong gains were not borne out and the party won just more than 8%.

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As tensions continue to simmer between Turkey and Russia in the north of Syria, Ankara says another Turkish soldier was killed in the past 24 hours, bringing the total to 34 in the last several days.

Turkey also is claiming to have killed large numbers of Syrian government forces and inflicted heavy material damage in retaliation.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called on Russia to “get out of [Turkey’s way in] Syria” and allow it to “deal with [President Bashar al-] Assad,” in a speech to supporters Saturday. “Turkey,” he said, “has entered Syria at the demand of the Syrian people and not at the demand of Assad.”

Erdogan added that Turkey has retaliated against Syrian forces for killing 34 of its soldiers:

He claims that Turkish troops have killed more than 2,000 Syrian forces, destroyed 300 of their military vehicles and bombed a chemical weapons factory east of Aleppo.  

Syrian state TV denied a chemical weapons factory had been hit, joking that “gases from such an attack would have killed several million people in Aleppo if the story were true.”

Erdogan, who attended a funeral for soldiers killed in Idlib, told mourners that “Turkey has been fighting in Syria, Libya and elsewhere, as it has done in the past, and that there will be more [soldiers killed] in the future.”

Thousands of refugees gathered Saturday along the Turkish border with Greece had to flee tear gas used by Greek forces to stop them from entering Greek soil.  Erdogan said earlier in the day 18,000 refugees had entered Greece and that the number could rise to 25,000 to 30,000.  He said Germany must send money to Turkey to deal with its refugee crisis, in order to stop the flow.

Inside Syria, Russian-backed Syrian government airstrikes continued around Idlib, and Syrian TV asserted it had recaptured the towns of Mansoura, Ziyara, Tel Wasel and Zayzoun Jedida from Turkish-backed rebel forces, killing a number of them and chasing them to Khan Safra in eastern Idlib.

Rami Abdel Rahman of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights claimed that 48 Syrian troops and their allies have been killed in Turkish attacks during the past 24 hours. Arab media reported 8 Hezbollah militiamen were killed in a Turkish drone strike on their headquarters near the town of Saraqeb.

Al-Jazeera TV-Arabic showed rebel forces in control of Saraqeb, as well as a stretch of the strategic M5 highway from Damascus to Aleppo. Damascus had recently celebrated with fanfare the recapture of the last stretch of the highway.

Talks between Turkish and Russian military advisers during the past several days apparently have failed to reach a cease-fire. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told journalists Saturday that President Erdogan will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin on March 5.

Syrian Ambassador to the U.N. Bashar al-Jaafari told the U.N. Security Council Friday that Turkey has “failed to live up to the Sochi or Astana agreements,” in which it was “expected to rein in [rebel] forces.”  Instead, he said, “Turkey has transformed its observer posts in Idlib into war operations rooms to use against Syrian and Russian forces.”

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The leaders of a Sufi Muslim group turned themselves into the custody of the Somali government Saturday after fighting left 22 people dead in central Somalia.

Moallim Mohamud Sheikh, the spiritual leader, and Sheikh Mohamed Shakir, the chief of Ahlu-Sunna Wal-Jamaa (ASWJ), are in the custody of the Somali national army in the town of Dhusamareb after the group’s militias were overpowered in a battle with government forces. Dhusamareb is the administrative capital of Galmudug state.

“Our security forces have ended the standoff and disarmed all ASWJ militias,” Osman Isse Nur, the spokesperson of the newly elected president, told VOA.

Speaking in a video posted online, ASWJ chief Sheikh Shakir said his group ceded power to the Somali national army.

“We agreed to end the fighting for the sake of the civilians. We agreed to hand over ASWJ militias to the commander general who will, in return, take responsibility for the safety of all our members, including the leader,” Shakir said in the video.

At least 22 people were killed in clashes that broke out Thursday night after ASWJ militias fired on a government checkpoint in Dhusamareeb.

The fighting continued Friday morning before spreading to the nearby town of Guricel in the Galgadud region.
 
Reports say normalcy returned to Dhusamareb Saturday as residents, who were forced to flee, came back and reopened their businesses.

Three rival politicians are claiming to be the leader of Galmudug state. Early this month, the parliament of Galmudug elected Ahmed Abdi Kariye as president. He is a former minister backed by the government. ASWJ chief Sheikh Shakir rejected the action, however, and declared himself president, while former president Ahmed Duale refused to cede power.

The Sufi group ASWJ played a pivotal role in the fight against al-Shabab militants, and early this week, a U.S. diplomat said in remarks at the U.N. Security Council briefing that internal rivalries among allies in Somalia could derail the effort to combat al-Qaida-linked insurgents.

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In another one of its many fallouts, the coronavirus is creating new strains for Europe’s 26-nation Schengen zone that allows for the free movement of people among member states. European officials say, for now, there is no reason to close borders, but the spread of the virus seems to bolster nationalist arguments for the zone to be scrapped altogether.  

Like in most places these days, the coronavirus outbreak is topping the French news. Several dozen cases have been reported so far. The government is advising precautionary measures like not shaking hands and forgoing the traditional kiss on both cheeks. The post office has suspended link with China.  

The bigger worry, for now, lies in neighboring Italy. For the moment, the borders between France and Italy remain open. However, a recent decision to allow 3,000 Italian fans to travel to the French city of Lyon for a football match sparked controversy.  

That’s just one example testing Europe’s decades-old Schengen zone. The concept of open internal borders is a cornerstone of European Union goals for closer integration—although Schengen includes several non-EU members, such as Switzerland.  

Europe Races to Ready Hospitals for Coronavirus Break Out

With public health experts warning a tipping point for coronavirus is getting closer, European authorities are racing to ready their health systems to cope with a flood of sick and highly contagious patients

As yet, the EU has not called for closing Schengen borders. However, its top official for communicable diseases, Andrea Ammon, said Europe must prepare for more serious outbreaks, like Italy’s.  

“Our assessment is that we will likely see similar situations in other countries in Europe, and that the picture may, in the coming weeks, vary from country to country,” Ammon said.

Experts say closing borders won’t prevent the virus from crossing them but that hasn’t stopped nationalist parties from pushing this move. Here’s

Among them is Marine Le Pen, head of France’s main opposition National Rally party. But speaking on French radio this week, she wrongly claimed the EU has not said a word about the coronavirus outbreak. She said the bloc has only condemned those who want more border control — proving an open-border ideology that is almost a religion.  

Nationalist politicians in Austria, Italy and Switzerland have made similar remarks. They have long lobbied for closed borders to stop migration. The coronavirus has reinforced these arguments.  

At the same time, Schengen has also been weakened by member states. A few years ago some, such as Hungary, closed their borders to counter the migration crisis. France closed its borders after the 2015 terrorist attacks on its soil.

While the Schengen system allows for temporary closures, experts say in practice some countries are turning “temporary” into a more permanent state of affairs.

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The United States said Friday that Washington was postponing a special summit with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) as countries around the globe continued to fight the spread of coronavirus disease (COVID-19). 

“As the international community works together to defeat the novel coronavirus, the United States, in consultation with ASEAN partners, has made the difficult decision to postpone the ASEAN leaders meeting previously scheduled for mid-March,” a senior administration official said. 

The U.S. and 10 nations from the Southeast Asian bloc have been eyeing a special summit to boost ties at a time when analysts say China continues to expand its influence in Southeast Asia while driving a wedge between Washington and some of its traditional allies in the region.

“The United States values our relationships with the nations of this critical region and looks forward to future meetings,” the official said. 

The summit was scheduled for March 14 in Las Vegas. Bilateral meetings between U.S. President Donald Trump and ASEAN leaders were also being planned. 

VOA’s Patsy Widakuswara contributed to this report from the White House. 

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North Korean leader Kim Jong Un oversaw military drills on Friday, state media KCNA said on Saturday, a rare public outing amid efforts to prevent an outbreak of the coronavirus in the isolated country.

North Korea has not confirmed any cases of the virus, but state media said a month-long quarantine period had been imposed for people showing symptoms and “high-intensity” measures were taken including reinforcing checks in border regions and at airports and sea ports.

On Feb. 16, Kim made his first public appearance in 22 days to visit a mausoleum marking the anniversary of the birth of his father and late leader Kim Jong Il.

The military drill was to “judge the mobility and the fire power strike ability” on the frontline and eastern units and ended to a “great satisfaction” of Kim, KCNA said.

“Soldiers, who have firmly armed themselves with a-match-for-a-hundred idea of the Party and trained under the simulated conditions of actual battles, reduced a target islet to a sea of flames,” KCNA said.

In a separate dispatch, KCNA said Kim has also convened a meeting of the ruling Workers’ Party’s powerful politburo where a stricter enforcement of “top-class anti-epidemic steps” was discussed to prevent the spread of the virus.

“In case the infectious disease spreading beyond control finds its way into our country, it will entail serious consequences,” Kim was quoted as telling the meeting. “No special cases must be allowed within the state anti-epidemic system.”

He instructed the officials to “seal off all the channels and space through which the infectious disease may find its way, and strengthen check-up, test and quarantine,” KCNA added.

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Roughly 20 million people in Pakistan’s most populous city, Karachi, face water shortages regularly. That is a key issue addressed by a Houston team at the Future City National Finals in Washington. Students on the team attend the Al-Hadi School of Accelerative Learning in the Houston area and most have relatives from Karachi. For VOA, Sahar Majid has more on their winning future city model. Kathleen Struck narrates.

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U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo defended the Trump administration’s strategy in Iran in a tense Capitol Hill hearing Friday. The panel marked the first time Pompeo has answered questions from lawmakers in an open setting since the death of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani in early January. VOA’s Congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson has more on Congressional Democrats’ concerns about transparency in US foreign policy.

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The United States Navy says that a Chinese Navy destroyer targeted a U.S. patrol aircraft with a laser last week while it was flying over the Philippine Sea, about 600 kilometers west of Guam.

The U.S. Pacific Fleet said in a statement that a Chinese ship trained the laser on the American P-8A Poseidon aircraft in an “unsafe” and “unprofessional manner,” while the P-8 was operation “in international airspace in accordance with international rules and regulations.”

The U.S. Navy said the Chinese action was in violation of the Code for Unplanned Encounters at Sea (CUES), a multilateral agreement reached in 2014, and also inconsistent with a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the U.S. and China defense departments on safety of air and maritime encounters, the statement said.

The laser was captured by a sensor onboard the P-8A and was not visible to the naked eye.

“Weapons-grade lasers could potentially cause serious harm to aircrew and mariners, as well as ship and aircraft systems,” the Navy said.

The P-8A Poseidon is deployed to Kadena Air Force Base in Okinawa, Japan and conducts routine operations, maritime patrol, and reconnaissance in the U.S. 7th Fleet area of operations.

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The World Bank on Thursday said it is normalizing relations with the Federal Government of Somalia after 30 years.

The bank noted the Somali government’s “strong record of fiscal, political, social and economic reforms in recent years” in making the move.

“Normalizing relations means that the country is now in good standing with the World Bank,” World Bank Country Manager Hugh Riddell told VOA Somali. “It means that going forward Somalia will be able to access grants, grants financing for poverty reduction.”

He said the new grants will help Somalia invest in basic needs of the Somali people.

After 30 years, the @WorldBank Group & Somalia took an important step today toward reestablishing financial relations + increasing WBG support for the Somali people.

I thank @SomaliPM & @DrBeileh for their good work + important reforms.

Read more here: https://t.co/Jn0q8IFX86pic.twitter.com/4ZHvYmPwVt

— David Malpass (@DavidMalpassWBG) February 27, 2020

News of the World Bank’s move came just a day after the International Monetary Fund announced it had secured “sufficient financing pledges” to provide comprehensive debt relief to Somalia. More than 100 IMF member countries have pledged to provide US$334 million in financing, IMF said.

.@KGeorgieva: More than 100 countries—including low-income countries—have agreed to contribute the money IMF needs to provide debt relief to #Somalia. https://t.co/nSSsj8UJwFpic.twitter.com/NPIOptt2s2

— IMF (@IMFNews) February 26, 2020

The African Development Bank and African Development Fund approved a framework for $122.55 million to clear Somalia’s arrears on the same day as the IMF announcement.

Somalia owes more than $5 billion to external creditors and hopes to achieve debt relief under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative.

Riddell said the nod from the World Bank does not mean that Somalia will borrow more money. This was in response to concern from Somali observers that the improvement in financial standing by the Somali government could translate into borrowing and taking on more debt.

“This does not mean that Somalia will have access to lending, there will be no loans from the World Bank; the financing that will come will be purely grants,” Riddell said.

“Somalis need not worry that this will lead to borrowing by the Somali government, and the World Bank money will be purely 100 percent grants,” he added.

Riddell says the bank has been working closely with the Somali Ministry of Finance and the central bank since 2012. He praised the reforms made.

“Some of the basic reforms that have taken place over the past seven years have been increasing revenue generation, not only Mogadishu port, Mogadishu airport but also increasingly the private sector,” he said. “That means that the government is able to generate its revenues from businesses, and those businesses are happy to pay increasing amounts of tax to the government because of the transparency that is now in the budget system and the oversight of the expenditures that is now carried out by the Ministry of Finance.”

He also said that Somalia’s Auditor General has been carrying out annual audits of the budget and is reporting to the parliament. He said laws have been passed that enabled the central bank of Somalia to carry out supervisory functions in the financial sector of remittances, as well supervise the new Somali banks that have been formed.

The Somali prime minister has welcomed the move by the World Bank and the African Development Bank, and described it as a “landmark milestone.”

Prime Minister Hassan Ali Khaire tweeted: “#WB & #AfDB announce to reengage #Somalia, clear arrears & ultimately relieve the country of the debt burden under the HIPC Initiative, paving the way 4 tremendous foreign direct investment! Our commitment to reform begins to pay dividends. Deeply indebted!”

Landmark milestone as #WB & #AfDB announce to reengage #Somalia, clear arrears & ultimately relieve the country of the debt burden under the HIPC Initiative, paving the way 4 tremendous foreign direct investment! Our commitment to reform begins to pay dividends. Deeply indebted!

— SomaliPM (@SomaliPM) February 27, 2020

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U.S .lawmakers are working to quickly pass a bipartisan deal providing billions of dollars in emergency funding to address the worldwide spread of coronavirus. Congressional Democrats have criticized the Trump administration for a poorly coordinated response, calling the $2.5 billion White House proposal insufficient. But as VOA’s congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson reports, health officials assured lawmakers U.S. efforts are working.

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