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Myanmar’s government has rejected the International Criminal Court’s decision to allow prosecutors to open an investigation into crimes committed against the country’s Rohingya Muslim minority.
Government spokesman Zaw Htay said at a Friday night press conference that Myanmar stood by its position that the Netherlands-based court has no jurisdiction over its actions.
He cited a Myanmar Foreign Ministry statement from April 2018 that because Myanmar was not a party to the agreement establishing the court, it did not need to abide by the court’s rulings.
The court’s position is that because Myanmar’s alleged atrocities sent more than 700,000 Rohingya fleeing to Bangladesh for safety, it does have jurisdiction because Bangladesh is a party to the court and the case may involve forced jurisdiction.
A federal jury found Friday that an anti-abortion activist had illegally recorded workers secretly at Planned Parenthood clinics and was liable for violating federal and state laws. The jury ordered him and others to pay nearly $1 million in damages.
After a six-week civil trial, the San Francisco jury found David Daleiden had trespassed on private property and had committed other crimes in recording the 2015 videos. He and the Center for Medical Progress contended that Planned Parenthood illegally sells fetal tissue, which the group says it does not do.
Daleiden and a co-defendant, Sandra Merritt, are set to go on trial starting Dec. 6 on 14 counts each of invasion of privacy. They have pleaded not guilty and argue they are undercover journalists shielded from prosecution.
Planned Parenthood sued the activists as part of what the group called “a multiyear illegal effort to manufacture a malicious campaign.”
“The jury recognized today that those behind the campaign broke the law in order to advance their goals of banning safe, legal abortion in this country, and to prevent Planned Parenthood from serving the patients who depend on us,” the organization’s acting president and CEO, Alexis McGill Johnson, said in a statement.
‘Biased judge’
Daleiden said the jury had reached the verdict after a “biased judge with close Planned Parenthood ties spent six weeks trying to influence the jury with pre-determined rulings and suppressed the video evidence.”
The judge barred the release of some of the videos.
Daleiden and Merritt sneaked into numerous Planned Parenthood meetings and other abortion rights gatherings and shot undercover videos of their attempts to buy fetal material. They published the videos in 2015.
Planned Parenthood says it doesn’t sell fetal material for profit and charged only modest expenses to cover costs of donating it for medical research. The organization stopped seeking reimbursement for its shipping costs, and it never faced charges.
Planned Parenthood said punitive and compensatory damages from Friday’s ruling totaled $2.3 million.
U.S. regulators on Friday approved a new medicine that can prevent some extremely painful sickle cell disease flare-ups.
The Food and Drug Administration approved Novartis AG’s Adakveo for patients 16 and older. The monthly infusion, which halves occurrences of sickle cell pain episodes, will carry a list price of roughly $85,000 to $113,000 per year, depending on dosing. Insured patients generally will pay less.
Sickle cell disease is one of the most common inherited blood disorders, affecting about 100,000 Americans, most of them black, and about 300 million people worldwide.
Its hallmark is periodic episodes in which red blood cells stick together, blocking blood from reaching organs and small blood vessels. That causes intense pain and cumulative organ damage that shortens the lives of people with the disease.
“The duration and severity of these pain crises worsens with aging. Often patients die during one of these crises,” said Dr. Biree Andemariam, chief medical officer of the Sickle Cell Disease Association of America.
Andemariam, a former Novartis adviser, said the drug appears to work better the longer patients receive it.
The Swiss drugmaker is continuing patient testing to determine whether Adakveo, also known as crizanlizumab, lengthens patients’ lives, said Ameet Mallik, the company’s head of oncology and blood disorder research.
He said severe pain episodes send U.S. patients to emergency departments about 200,000 times per year. About 85% are hospitalized for days to a week, running up big bills.
The debilitating condition also causes anemia, delayed growth, vision damage and painful swelling in hands and feet, making it hard for some people to maintain jobs or attend school.
Current treatments include a 21-year-old cancer drug called hydroxyurea and Endari, approved in 2017.
In patient studies, Endari reduced frequency of pain episodes about 25% and hydroxyurea reduced them by half. Hydroxyurea can have serious side effects and requires weekly blood tests.
Both drugs have complicated dosing and don’t work — or stop working — in some patients.
In a one-year study of 198 patients, those getting the higher of two Adakveo doses averaged 1.6 pain episodes over that year and 36% had none. A comparison group on placebo averaged three pain episodes that year and 17 percent had none. Adakveo’s side effects included influenza and high fever.
Danielle Jamison, of Islandton, South Carolina, has suffered with sickle cell pain episodes since shortly after birth. The 35-year-old previously had a half-dozen pain crises requiring hospital trips each year. Those lessened by about half when she began taking hydroxyurea nine years ago.
She hasn’t been in the hospital since she started taking crizanlizumab two years ago as part of a patient study. She still has mild daily pain, but she said she can now take care of her home and drive her 9-year-old daughter to activities.
“It’s made a huge difference in how much I’m able to do,” Jamison said.
All three drugs work through different mechanisms, so doctors may switch patients to Adakveo or to add it to their current treatment, said Andemariam, head of University of Connecticut’s sickle cell treatment and research program.
Meanwhile, numerous drugs to treat sickle cell disease and gene therapies to possibly cure it are being tested.
Student protesters are barricading themselves in at universities across Hong Kong, stockpiling makeshift weapons and turning campuses into what look like war zones. It marks a dangerous new phase in Hong Kong’s five-month-old anti-government protests. VOA’s Bill Gallo went behind the scenes at one campus where students said they were preparing for the worst.
A San Francisco Bay Area real estate heiress who was under house arrest on $35 million bail for more than two years plans to reconnect with her children and visit family in China after a jury acquitted her of killing the father of her kids, her attorney said Friday.
After deliberating for 12 days, jurors found Tiffany Li not guilty on charges of murder and conspiring with her boyfriend to kill 27-year-old Keith Green in 2016 over a custody dispute.
The case drew global attention when Li’s family, who made a fortune in real estate construction in China, posted one of the highest bail amounts on record in the United States.
Li wept Friday as the verdicts were read and rushed out of the building afterward. Jurors were still deliberating on murder and conspiracy charges against Li’s co-defendant and boyfriend, Kaveh Bayat.
Attorney Geoffrey Carr said Li plans to travel to see family in China and strengthen her relationship with her children. She plans on bettering herself as a person, he said.
“Any time any defendant is found not guilty in a serious crime, they’re (given) a gift by somebody — I don’t believe in God, but somebody — and they should pay attention,” Carr said.
He bristled at a question that Li’s immense wealth allowed her to build a strong defense team that secured the not-guilty verdict. Carr said the team of three lawyers and four investigators would have worked just as diligently had they been appointed by a judge to a poor defendant.
San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe said jurors gave “their heart and soul” to the decision.
“Obviously disappointed, obviously we don’t agree,” he said. “But as we always say, this is how the jury system works, and we respect the jury for what it does.”
Prosecutors said Li lured Green, her former boyfriend, to her mansion in Hillsborough, south of San Francisco, to discuss custody of their children. They say Bayat shot Green in the mouth and the two hired a friend to dispose of the body.
Prosecutors presented evidence that Green’s blood was found in Li’s Mercedes and gunshot residue was discovered in her garage.
Li’s attorneys argued that Green was killed in a botched kidnapping plot and that she had nothing to do with his death. She had settled the custody issues with her former boyfriend, they said.
Green’s body was found along a dirt road north of San Francisco nearly two weeks after he was last seen meeting with Li about their children. The pair met around 2009.
The prosecution faced a setback earlier this month when its chief witness, Olivier Adella, was arrested on charges of contacting an ex-girlfriend and witness for the defense. Adella was expected to testify that Li and Bayat asked him to dispose of Green’s body, but prosecutors did not call him as a witness.
The founder of a Malawian maternity clinic for poor women says it has set a record – delivering more than 8,800 babies with not a single death of mother or child. For her efforts improving access to safe childbirth, Charity Salima has become known as “Malawi’s Florence Nightingale,” the English founder of modern nursing. Lameck Masina reports from Lilongwe.
The Hong Kong government condemned Friday an attack by a “violent mob” on the city’s justice secretary in London, the first direct altercation between demonstrators and a government minister during months of often violent protests.
Secretary for Justice Teresa Cheng, who was in London to promote Hong Kong as a dispute resolution and deal-making hub, was targeted by a group of protesters who shouted “murderer” and “shameful.”
A statement by the Hong Kong government said Cheng suffered “serious bodily harm” but gave no details. Video footage of the incident showed Cheng falling to the ground.
Hong Kong Justice Secretary Teresa Cheng walks as protesters surround her in London, Nov. 14, 2019, in this still image from video obtained via social media.
Hong Kong’s leader Carrie Lam said in a statement she strongly condemned what she described as an attack on Cheng.
The Hong Kong government said in a separate statement: “The secretary denounces all forms of violence and radicalism depriving others’ legitimate rights in the pretext of pursuing their political ideals, which would never be in the interest of Hong Kong and any civilized society.”
Street cleaned dies, city paralyzed
The incident came amid escalating violence in Chinese-ruled Hong Kong, where a student protester died earlier this month after falling from a parking garage during demonstrations.
A 70-year-old street cleaner, who videos on social media showed had been hit in the head by a brick thrown by “masked rioters,” died Thursday, authorities said.
The Food and Environmental Hygiene Department expressed profound sadness Friday at the death of its cleaning worker and said it was providing assistance to his family.
Anti-government protesters paralyzed parts of Hong Kong for a fifth day Friday, forcing schools to close and blocking some highways as students built barricades in university campuses and authorities struggled to tame the violence.
Protesters used barriers and other debris to block the Cross-Harbour Tunnel that links Hong Kong island to Kowloon district, leading to severe traffic congestion. The government once again urged employers to adopt flexible working arrangements amid the chaos.
Demonstrators raise their hands as they attend a protest at the Central District in Hong Kong, Nov. 15, 2019.
Protesters call for elections
Thousands of students remain hunkered down at several universities, surrounded by piles of food, bricks, petrol bombs, catapults and other homemade weapons.
Police said the prestigious Chinese University had “become a manufacturing base for petrol bombs” and the students’ actions were “another step closer to terrorism.”
Those protesters demanded that the government commit to holding local elections Nov. 24. The protesters and warned of unspecified consequences if the government didn’t meet their demand within 24 hours.
The district council elections are seen as a barometer of public sentiment in the semi-autonomous Chinese territory. Pro-democracy activists say the government may use the escalating violence as a reason to cancel the elections.
Around 4,000 people, between the ages of 12 and 83, have been arrested since the unrest escalated in June.
Protesters with bows practice running away from riot police, on the roof of a bus shelter near the Cross Harbour Tunnel, which was blocked after demonstrators occupied the nearby Hong Kong Polytechnic University, in Hong Kong, Nov. 15, 2019.
No end in sight to violence
The demonstrations have paralyzed parts of the city and battered the retail and tourism sectors, with widespread disruptions across the financial center and no end in sight to the violence and vandalism.
The protests escalated in June over a now-scrapped extradition bill that would have allowed people to be sent to mainland China for trial. They have since evolved into calls for greater democracy, among other demands.
Cheng, the embattled Lam’s chief legal adviser, played a key role in pushing forward the proposed extradition bill that ignited the protests.
The months-long protests have plunged the former British colony into its biggest political crisis in decades and pose the gravest popular challenge to Chinese President Xi Jinping since he came to power in 2012. Xi, speaking in Brazil on Thursday, said stopping violence was the most urgent task for Hong Kong.
The territory is also expected to confirm Friday it has fallen into recession for the first time in a decade amid concerns the economy could be in even worse shape than feared as the anti-government protests take a heavy toll.
Alibaba Group Chairman Daniel Zhang, however, said Hong Kong’s future is “bright” as the e-commerce giant kicked off a retail campaign for its secondary listing in the city.
Many in Hong Kong are angry at what they see as China stifling freedoms guaranteed under the “one country, two systems” formula put in place when Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule in 1997.
China denies interfering in Hong Kong and has blamed Western countries, including Britain and the United States, for stirring up trouble.
Roughly one in 10 migrants pushed back to Mexico to await U.S. court hearings under a Trump administration program have been caught crossing the border again, a top border official said Thursday.
Acting U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Mark Morgan said during a White House briefing that migrants returned to Mexico under a program known as the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) have a 9% recidivism rate. Many of those migrants intend to seek asylum in the United States.
“Unfortunately, some of the individuals in the MPP program are actually going outside the shelter environment,” Morgan said. “They’re re-engaging with the cartels because they’re tired of waiting. And that’s when we’re hearing that some of that further abuse and exploitation is happening.”
Nearly 59,000 migrants have been returned to Mexico under the program, according to a CBP spokesman.
Migrants, most of them asylum-seekers sent back to Mexico from the U.S. under the “Remain in Mexico” program, officially named Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), occupy a makeshift encampment in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico, Oct. 28, 2019.
Program to deter Central Americans
The administration of President Donald Trump launched the MPP program in January as part of a strategy to deter mostly Central American families from trekking to the U.S. border to seek asylum. Trump officials have argued the bulk of such claims for protection lack merit and that migrants are motivated by economic concerns.
Immigration advocates say asylum seekers sent to wait in Mexican border towns, for the weeks or months it takes for their cases to wind through backlogged immigration courts, face dangerous and possibly deadly conditions.
Migrants who claim fear of returning to Mexico can ask to stay in the United States for the duration of their court case.
But just 1% of cases have been transferred out of the program, according to a Reuters analysis of federal immigration court data as of early October.
Report criticizes program
A report released by the office of U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley on Thursday criticized the MPP program and the Trump administration’s handling of a migrant surge earlier this year.
The report, citing interviews with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services employees, said political supervisors at the agency intervened to override asylum officer decisions to remove migrants from the MPP program.
An agency spokeswoman called the allegation “completely false” and said political appointees do not conduct reviews of such decisions.
Border Patrol arrested 35,444 people in October, the fifth consecutive monthly decline this year, according to a CBP official. The administration has said the MPP program and other measures have helped lead to a decline in border arrests.”
The popular musician-turned-parliamentarian was attending a rally for Kassiano Wadri, a politician from Uganda’s Arua region, in the north of the country.
There, Wine says, government forces ambushed, arrested and tortured him.
“The marks on my back, ankles, elbows, legs and head are still visible. I continued to groan in pain and the last I heard was someone hit me at the back of the head with an object — I think a gun butt or something,” Wine wrote. “That was the last time I knew what was going on.”
FILE – Uganda’s prominent opposition politician Robert Kyagulanyi known as Bobi Wine, center, walks ahead of appearing at the general court martial in Gulu, northern Uganda, Aug. 23, 2018.
Wine, a vocal critic of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, is certain security forces knew where he’d be and meticulously planned their attack.
Reporting by The Wall Street Journal this summer confirms his claims and shows that Ugandan intelligence officials, with the help of employees of Chinese tech giant Huawei, hacked into Wine’s WhatsApp and Skype accounts to monitor the dissident and his supporters.
In an interview Wednesday, Wine told VOA he’s now adopted a sophisticated routine to throw government spies off his trail using burner phones and old-fashioned code words.
“What I’ve been doing to protect myself and the people that I communicate with is, one, to use coded language when I’m talking on the phone that is known,” he told VOA.
“I’ve been forced to devise means of changing telephone numbers and telephone headsets constantly to keep them on the wrong track,” Wine added. “And sometimes, when I have to move to a place and I don’t want to be followed by the regime, I’m forced to leave my phone behind or put my phone in a car that is going in a different region of the country while I’m going into another one. That alone is how I’m trying to maneuver to go around it.”
FILE – Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei speaks during a roundtable at the telecom giant’s headquarters in Shenzhen, China, June 17, 2019. Huawei’s founder says revenues will be $30 billion less than forecast over the next two years.
Denials
Huawei, who helped build a large portion of Africa’s cellular backbone, has also been implicated in allegations of spying on African diplomacy on behalf of the Chinese government.
But Ren Zhengfei, the founder of Huawei, firmly denies spying claims and says his company refuses to give up confidential information of clients and “would definitely say ‘no’ to such a request,” in a rare press conference at the company’s headquarters in January.
In a recent interview with VOA, Zambian President Edgar Lungu also addressed the question of spying on dissidents and opposition parties in the country.
“There was this story that Huawei, the Chinese company, that I am spying on opposition party leaders, their phones and so on,” he said, describing what he thinks is a spread of misinformation.
He further explained that these claims are detrimental to the country’s image and foreign policy.
“I think that we need to do more … so that the truth is given to the people, so that we are not demonized over fake news stories,” he said.
‘They were tracking me’
Wine, who was born Robert Kyagulanyi, says his first-hand experiences reveal the scope and sophistication of government-backed spying.
“Among the things I got to learn was that they were listening to my calls and having a copy of all that was WhatsApp chats and many other things, following my location every time,” he said. “I even learned that day when I was arrested and brutalized in Arua, it was because of that technology that they got that they could listen to my phones, and they were tracking me. And they know that they follow me on my phone and they know where I am and listening to my calls.”
The government’s paranoia won’t stop, Wine suggested, as long as they perceive him as a threat.
And he has no plans to back down.
Wadri, the candidate Wine campaigned for in 2018, won his seat in parliament.
Now Wine is gearing up for a new kind of campaigning, after announcing this summer his intention to run for president in Uganda’s 2021 polls.
The parents of an American journalist who has been missing in Syria for the past seven years told VOA in an interview that they are convinced he is still alive and that the U.S. government should do what it can to reveal his whereabouts and ensure his safe return home.
The 38-year-old journalist, Austin Tice, went to Syria in May 2012 to cover the war as it was entering its second year. He was arrested three months later in August at a checkpoint in Darayya suburb, south of the capital Damascus, and has been missing since.
“In the event that Austin sees this interview, [we want him to know] that his mother and father love him very much and his siblings can’t wait to see him again,” Tice’s father, Marc Tice, told VOA. “We know he is strong and we know he will hang in there, and we can’t wait to hold him in our arms.”
Marc Tice said he and his wife, Debra Tice, believe their son is apprehended in Syria, most likely in areas currently under the Syrian government control. The couple have been trying relentlessly for years to secure the release of their son, albeit with no success.
“It doesn’t really matter who is holding him, the thing that really matters is who has the authority to secure his safe relief,” said his mother, Debra. “We know he is still alive; he is somewhere in Syria, most likely in Damascus or its whereabouts. He is staying alive because he wants to walk free.”
The parents have visited Lebanon several times hoping to get into Syria to appeal directly to the Syrian government. They were never granted a visa to enter the war-torn country.
FILE – Marc and Debra Tice, the parents of Austin Tice, who has been missing in Syria since August 2012, hold photos of him during a new conference, at the Press Club, in Beirut, Lebanon, July 20, 2017.
A Marine
Tice is a veteran Marine officer who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. A graduate of the Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, he worked as a freelance journalist, reporting for several outlets such as The Washington Post, CBS and the French news agency.
His reporting on Syria focused on the escalating conflict and its consequences on vulnerable people, particularly children.
In a photo he posted on Flickr, June 19, 2012, he wrote, “I have more pictures of beautiful Syrian kids than I could ever possibly use. It breaks my heart to see what is happening to them. No kid should even have to know that things like this happen in the world, much less be forced to live and sometimes die this way.”
He was detained less than two months later, on Aug. 14, 2012.
Nearly five weeks after his disappearance, a video surfaced on social media showing Tice blindfolded and in distress among a group of men leading him away in what observers believe to be a staged video, according to the Tice family. Concurrently, multiple pro-Syrian regime news outlets also reported him being “still alive” and accused him of being a spy for Israel.
The U.S. State Department has said it also believes Tice is still alive and it is actively working to bring him back. The FBI has allocated a $1 million reward for any information leading to his return.
His parents, however, say they believe more should be done to press the Syrian government for more information. The couple on Tice’s 38th birthday, Aug. 11, launched the “Ask About Austin” campaign to garner more popular support.
Organizations such as the National Press Club and Reporters Without Borders have also joined their efforts.
Congressional outreach
Last September, the National Press Club led teams of volunteers in a congressional outreach effort to inform congressional teams of Tice’s case. It lobbied U.S. lawmakers to sign a bipartisan letter to President Donald Trump urging “continued efforts to free Austin and return him to his family.”
The letter was sent to Trump after receiving 52 signatures from the Senate and 121 from the House of Representatives.
“We strongly urge you that you continue to use the full weight of your national security team — including dispatching the Special Envoy for Hostage Affairs — to secure his release. Seven years is simply too long for Austin to be separated from his loved ones,” read the letter led by Representative Eliot Engel, the chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.
The campaign came after the release two foreigners recently from their detention in Syria, American Sam Goodwin and Canadian Kristian Lee Baxter. Both were released through Lebanon’s mediation.
Unbearable environment
Dozens of Syrian and foreign journalists who went to Syria to document the war have been killed or injured over the years.
According to the World Press Freedom Index, Syria continues to be an “unbearable environment” for journalists, where the risk of arrest, abduction or death makes journalism “extremely dangerous” in the country.
The Syrian Center for Journalistic Freedoms said in its September report that since the Syrian uprising started in 2011, about 1,251 violations were committed against journalists. It claimed that half of these violations were committed by the Syrian government, while the Islamic State group seconded the regime in targeting journalists.
Singer-songwriter Jesse Colin Young made history with the “Youngbloods” on their classic ‘60s peace anthem “Get Together.” Earlier this year, Jesse released his 19th solo album “Dreamers” and this is his first album of new material since 2006’s “Celtic Mambo.”
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services naturalized 833,000 people – an 11-year high in new oaths of citizenship – in fiscal year 2019, which ended September 30. This fiscal year, USCIS administered the Oath of Allegiance to 60 of America’s newest citizens, from 51 different countries, during a special naturalizing ceremony Tuesday at Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian.
Holding American flags in their left hands, the group raised their right hands, and placed them over their hearts, and took the Oath of Allegiance to the United States of America.
“It means a lot, joining one of the world’s greatest country of all times and able to serve this country,” said Sandra Amoah, a new U.S. citizen originally from Ghana.
For these 60 people from 51 different countries, young and old, this was the final step to become a naturalized citizen of the United States of America. But it also marked a new beginning in their lives.
“It’s going to open more doors for me for a young guy growing up, it’s a great opportunity right here,” Ghana native Yaw Opoku Amoah told VOA.
“I found it very emotional and I feel that it is a privilege that not very many people can obtain,” Virginia Growich, a new U.S. citizen who was born in England said.
Naturalizations Hit 11-Year High as Election Year Approaches video player.
Becoming a U.S. citizen bestows many privileges, including being able to bring family members to the U.S., as well as being eligible for federal jobs and to run for public office. But in this crowd, many were excited to able to vote in upcoming presidential elections.
“I got my citizenship, and the most exciting part … next year it’s going to be vote and I will vote, yes,” said Sumreen Amer, a new citizen originally from Pakistan.
“I am very interested in being able to vote,” Growich agreed.
While the Trump administration has proposed major cuts to legal and family immigration, and capped the number of refugees to the U.S. in 2020 at 18,000, USCIS, the government agency that oversees lawful immigration to the United States, naturalized 833,000 people in fiscal year 2019, an 11-year high in new oaths of citizenship.
Sarah Taylor, acting director of the Washington District, says one reason for the increase in naturalizations might be the upcoming election.
“So we did have a big uptick always before a presidential election. It stayed high in the last couple of years and we anticipated it will remain high,” Taylor said.
Coming from such countries as Afghanistan and Yemen, these new citizens are hopeful for a bright future for themselves and their families, as they said: naturalization will open new doors for them in this land of opportunities.
