Senegal is failing to prevent the abuse of thousands of students at the West African country’s Quranic schools, says Human Rights Watch, despite government promises to stop the exploitation.  The rights group analyzed the Senegalese government’s efforts to address abuses over the last two years and found them to be insufficient and ineffective.   

Modou – not his real name – was just six years old when he says the abuse started.  

After his parents died, the now 12-year-old boy says his uncle sent him to study and live at a Quranic school, where teachers forced him and other students to beg in the streets.

If they didn’t return with adequate money and food, they were restrained for months at a time, he says.

Pointing to the scars on his legs, Modou says if he misbehaved or didn’t recite the Koran properly, the teachers beat him and locked him in chains.  

He says when he was beaten, he’d think of his mother and how, if she were still here, this would have never happened.  But eventually, says Modou, he accepted it and told himself it would pass.

Modou is one of 100,000 Quranic students, known as talibés, who are being exploited and abused in Senegal, says Human Rights Watch in a report released Monday.

And the government, according to the rights group, is doing little to stop it.

The report titled “Senegal: Failure to End Abuses in Quranic Schools,” says students at some schools who refuse to beg are subject to harsh, physical punishments and often suffer from malnutrition and untreated illness.  

Human Rights Watch found that some children have even died from neglect.

The number of teachers arrested for abuse has increased in recent years, but according to Human Rights Watch’s Lauren Seibert, charges are often dropped due to the social influence of Koranic teachers.

“There were a dozen or so cases like this in the past couple years where you can clearly see that the final charge and or the corresponding sentence were reduced,” Seibert said.

Quranic schools are unregulated in Senegal so anyone looking to make money can open a religious school and profit from exploiting their students, says Human Rights Watch.  

Modou was able to escape and find help at Empire des Enfants, a shelter in Dakar that cares for talibé runaways. 

Program coordinator Alassane Diagne says the children often arrive filthy, tired and sick.

He asks why does this problem persist?  It’s because there are people who profit from this disorder, says Diagne.  They don’t need authorization to open their Quranic school, he says, no one is going to verify their credentials, and the government lacks the will to fix it. If you ask, they’ll say it’s because they don’t have the resources, says Diagne, adding that he disagrees. They know where to find the means to fund the things that serve their interests, he says, so, it’s a matter of will.

But not all Quranic school students are mistreated.

Quranic teacher Mouhamed Niass says his nearly 200 students are well cared for at his school in a Dakar suburb and that it is up to the state to stop abuse. The state should also provide funding to religious schools, says Niass, so children aren’t forced to beg.

He says the children need mats, they need mattresses, they need shelter.  They need to be supported like the children at the public schools.  It’s unfortunate that the state doesn’t do it. It causes problems.  The schools need support in order to support the children, because they’re the children of Senegal.

Thierno Diop, an inspector with Senegal’s ministry of education, says the ministry doesn’t inspect religious schools, known as daaras, because it’s not authorized to do so.  

He says this problem goes above the education inspectors.  The inspections are meant to investigate the regulated schools, says Diop, but the daaras, which are constantly moving from one location to the next, can’t be controlled.  It’s because of the bad will of the state that the talibé are still in the streets, he says.  If the state wanted to stop it, adds Diop, they could do it.

A few towns in Senegal have seen some success, says Human Rights Watch’s Seibert, with mayors not only enforcing bans on begging but also shutting down religious schools that were deemed unsafe.  

But enforcement at the local level is rare, she says.

A 2013 bill would have created a regulatory system for Quranic schools by establishing so-called “modern daaras” that teach secular subjects in addition to religious ones.  

But the bill has yet to be passed into law.

And until the national government steps up, the majority of talibés, including Modou, will have to rely on a few, private shelters to protect them from those willing to do them harm.

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Russian President Vladimir Putin on December 16 signed amendments to the Administrative Violations Code that allow hefty fines for violating the controversial law on “foreign agents,” which critics say is used to muzzle dissent and discourage the free exchange of ideas and a free press.

According to the changes, individuals who violate the law more than twice in a 12-month period will have to pay a fine of up to 10,000 rubles ($159) for the first violation, and up to 100,000 rubles ($1,590) or 15 days in jail for repeat violations.

Organizations will be obliged to pay a penalty of up to 1 million rubles ($15,900) for the first violation, and up to 5 million rubles ($79,500) for subsequent violations of the law.

The amendments were approved by lawmakers earlier this month.

Two weeks earlier, Putin signed into law a bill that gives authorities the power to label reporters who work for organizations officially listed as foreign agents as foreign agents themselves.

The tag will be applied to individuals who collaborate with foreign media outlets and receive financial or other material support from them.

Russia passed the original foreign agent law — which requires all NGOs receiving foreign funding to register — in 2012 following a major wave of anti-government protests. Putin blamed Western influence and money for those protests.

Critics of the law say it stigmatizes organizations with the designation and would do the same to journalists if they are labeled as foreign agents.

RFE/RL President Jamie Fly said on December 4 that the law ratchets up pressure on hundreds of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) correspondents in Russia who provide one of the few remaining alternatives to Kremlin-controlled news.

Last month, Russia’s Justice Ministry listed RFE/RL’s Sever.Realii website as a “foreign agent,” saying the decision was based on conclusions made by the parliamentary committee on an investigation into meddling in the country’s internal affairs.

In December 2017, the Justice Ministry listed Current Time TV, several RFE/RL services and projects, such as its Russian Service, Tatar-Bashkir Service, Sibir.Realii, Idel.Realii, Factograph, Kavkaz Realii, and Krym.Realii, as well as the Voice of America, as “foreign mass media performing the functions of a foreign agent.”

Russian officials have said the law is a “symmetrical response” after Russia’s state-funded channel RT — which U.S. authorities accuse of spreading propaganda — was required to register its U.S. operating unit under the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).

U.S. officials have said the action is not symmetrical, arguing that the U.S. and Russian laws differ and that Russia uses its “foreign agent” legislation to silence dissent and discourage the free exchange of ideas.

Human Rights Watch, a U.S.-based rights group, in 2017 called the law “devastating” for local NGOs, saying more than a dozen had been forced to close their doors.

With reporting by TASS and Meduza.

…

Sharing the cockpit of a helicopter on sizzling tarmac, French and British air force chiefs vowed to pursue the joint fight against jihadists in the heart of the Sahel even as the shadow of Brexit looms over their countries.

“We’ve got a long, fabulous history of working alongside each other, and I don’t expect anything to change anytime soon,” Royal Air Force (RAF) Chief of Air Staff Mike Wigston told AFP on a visit to the city of Gao with French counterpart Philippe Lavigne.

“If anything, we are going to work stronger together,” he said.

Backed by 100 British personnel, France has a 4,500-strong Sahel force supporting national armies struggling with a seven-year-old jihadist revolt.

Thousands of civilians have been killed, and hundreds of thousands have fled their homes.

The two generals this weekend visited Mali, Niger and Chad, which with Burkina Faso and Mauritania form the so-called G5 Sahel, an anti-terror force.

Wigston said Mali and its neighbors were “the front line of instability.”

The priority of the Sahel deployment “is to stamp out the violent extremism which is making people’s lives a misery,” he said.

“But there is a wider security issue here which affects Europe and the potential for this instability and the conflict in this region to spill into Europe… so we are also here to protect Europe.”

What next?

Britain is set to leave the European Union by January 31 following a general election that gave the pro-Brexit Conservative party a large majority.

France sent troops into Mali in 2013 to help drive back Islamist insurgents who had seized the north of the country.

But attacks have continued since then, and the conflict has since spread to the country’s center as well as to neighboring Burkina Faso and Niger.

France’s Operation Barkhane remains in place to train and support poorly equipped local forces, but at a hefty cost that France’s EU allies have only partially eased.

Britain and France signed a defense cooperation pact in London in 2010 — and both sides have repeatedly said it will not be affected by Brexit.

Since July 2018, London has contributed three heavy-lift Chinook helicopters to France’s Sahel fight. They have clocked up some 1,600 hours of flying time to date, transporting about 11,000 personnel and 800 tonnes of freight.

The twin-rotor helicopters can haul nearly four tonnes of supplies and more than 30 troops at a time — a vital contribution in a region where road access to frontline troops is long and dangerous, with a high risk of mines and militia attacks.

The helicopter support “allows us to devote ourselves to air combat missions while our British comrades provide logistics, refuelling and troop transport,” said Loic, who heads France’s Barkhane air combat group in Mali.

In line with French military security protocol, the colonel can be identified only by his first name.

Without the British help, he said, “we would be forced to assign other helicopters or resort to slower, riskier, road convoys.”

‘With or without Brexit’

Fighters on the ground say the Chinooks have been invaluable.

They were deployed to help out last month when two French army helicopters crashed in Mali, killing all 13 on board and bringing to 41 the number of French troops killed in the Sahel region since 2013.

“For us, it would be a real plus if this [Chinook] capacity remained beyond the summer of 2020,” the current deadline for the British deployment, Colonel Loic said.

For his part, Wigston said: “I absolutely understand how vital this asset is to Barkhane, I will transmit (the message) to the political authorities in London.”

Aside from Barkhane, London has announced the deployment of 250 troops to the Sahel for three years from 2020 as part of the United Nations’ MINUSMA peacekeeping force in Mali.

Lavigne insisted that broader military cooperation would continue “with or without Brexit”.

“Our air forces are quite similar, they have the same operating capacities and expertise, and tomorrow we will continue to work together to bring security,” he said.

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U.S. President Donald Trump, facing impeachment this week, sparred Monday with House Democrats who accused him of “multiple federal crimes” in the abuse of the presidency.

“The Impeachment Hoax is the greatest con job in the history of American politics!” Trump contended on Twitter. “The Fake News Media, and their partner, the Democrat Party, are working overtime to make life for the United Republican Party, and all it stands for, as difficult as possible!”

READ THE TRANSCRIPTS! The Impeachment Hoax is the greatest con job in the history of American politics! The Fake News Media, and their partner, the Democrat Party, are working overtime to make life for the United Republican Party, and all it stands for, as difficult as possible!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 16, 2019

With the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives likely to impeach him Wednesday, Trump retweeted comments from Republican supporters ridiculing the allegations against him. Trump, the 45th U.S. president, would be the third American leader to be impeached in the 243-year history of the country, although his conviction by the Republican-majority Senate at a trial next month and removal from office remains highly unlikely. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told Fox News last week there was “zero chance” the president  would be removed from office.

Trump’s  Twitter broadsides came as the House Judiciary Committee early Monday released a 658-page report detailing the allegations against him in two articles of impeachment. One accuses the president of abuse of power by soliciting Ukraine to investigate one of his chief 2020 Democratic challengers, former Vice President Joe Biden. The other charges him with obstruction of Congress by refusing to turn over thousands of documents to impeachment investigators and blocking key aides from testifying.

“Although President Trump’s actions need not rise to the level of a criminal violation to justify impeachment, his conduct here was criminal,” the panel’s Democrats contended. They described Trump’s behavior as “both constitutional and criminal in character,” including bribery and wire fraud. They argued that the president “betrayed the people of this nation” and should be removed from office.

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“He has abused his power in soliciting and pressuring a vulnerable foreign nation to corrupt the next United States presidential election by sabotaging a political opponent and endorsing a debunked conspiracy theory promoted by our adversary, Russia,” the report said. “President Trump has done all this for his own personal gain, rather than for any legitimate reason, and has compromised our national security and democratic system in the process. After he was caught, President Trump defiantly insisted his conduct was ‘perfect.'”

The report contended that Trump covered up his “own repeated misconduct” and sought to “nullify a vital constitutional safeguard vested solely in the House of Representatives.” 

“If President Trump is left unchecked, we will send an alarming message to future presidents,” the report stated. “In word and deed, President Trump has sought to write the Impeachment Clause out of the Constitution.”

Trump’s White House spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham attacked the Democrats’ arguments against Trump, saying, “Thankfully the people of this country continue to see the partisan sham that this is.”

The war of words between the White House and House Democrats came as the lead Senate Democrat, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, wrote to McConnell that Democrats want to hear testimony from four key Trump administration officials at Trump’s trial who did not testify in the House inquiry controlled by Democrats.

Schumer said on  Sunday the Senate should subpoena acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, top Mulvaney aide Robert Blair, as well as former National Security Adviser John Bolton and budget official Michael Duffey.

Schumer Proposes Senate Subpoena 4 White House Officials for Impeachment Trial

The House is expected to impeach Trump this week, with a Senate trial to follow in January

McConnell, however, has said he will coordinate Trump’s defense with the president’s lawyers and the parameters of a Senate trial have yet to be decided.

McConnell has raised the prospect of a short trial with no witnesses called, ending with a Senate vote on Trump’s fate after House impeachment managers present their case against Trump and the president’s lawyers lay out his defense.  

Trump has said he is agreeable to a short trial with no witnesses, but at other times has said he wants to hear testimony from the unnamed government whistleblower who first raised concerns about his late July request to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate Biden and from his son, Hunter Biden, about his work for a Ukrainian natural gas company. The whistleblower is reported to be a former White House aide who now works at the Central Intelligence Agency. 

A McConnell spokesman said the Republican leader would be meeting with Schumer to work out how to conduct Trump’s impeachment trial.

Schumer also proposed in the letter the amount of time House members and White House lawyers would have for opening arguments, how much time senators would have to question them, and the amount of time allotted for witness testimony, closing arguments and deliberations before the 100-member Senate delivers its verdict.

“We believe this proposal…will allow for a trial in which all of the facts can be considered fully and fairly, and in which final votes can be taken within a reasonable period of time, without any unnecessary delay,” Schumer wrote.

Trump spokeswoman Grisham called it “laughable” that Schumer, often a Trump antagonist, is calling for a fair trial.

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The full House of Representatives is expected to vote this week on two articles of impeachment approved by the House Judiciary Committee. It is likely that Donald Trump will become the third president in U.S. history to be impeached, with a Senate trial expected next year. Democrats have accused him of abusing the power of the presidency by soliciting Ukraine to investigate one of his chief 2020 Democratic challengers and of blocking Congress to investigate. Trump and his supporters insist he did nothing wrong. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi has more.

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Leaders of the G5 Sahel nations held summit talks in Niamey Sunday, after the death last week of 71 Niger soldiers in a jihadist attack, calling for closer cooperation and international support in the battle against the Islamist threat.

Burkina Faso President Roch Marc Christian Kabore, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the regional G5 group, called for a minute’s silence for the victims of Tuesday’s attack at a military camp in Inates, near the Mali border.

“These endless attacks carried out by terrorist groups in our region remind us not only of the gravity of the situation, but also the urgency for us to work more closely together,” said Kabore.

“The terrorist threat against the Sahel countries is getting worse,” said Niger’s President Mahamadou Issoufou, the host of the summit.

The attacks were aimed not just at military targets but increasingly “civilian populations, notably traditional local leaders”.

Earlier four of the five Sahel leaders paid homage at the graves of 71 Niger military personnel killed. Kabore and Issoufou attended along with Mali’s Ibrahim Boubakar Keita, Chad’s Idriss Deby Itno for the short ceremony at an air base in Niamey.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the assault, in which hundreds of jihadists attacked a camp near the border with Mali with shells and mortars.

The attack in Inates in the western Tillaberi region was the deadliest on Niger’s military since Islamist militant violence began to spill over from neighboring Mali in 2015, and dealt a blow to efforts to roll back jihadism in the Sahel.

At Sunday’s ceremony, a large panel painted in the red, white and green of the Niger flag bore the inscription; “rest in peace, worthy and valiant sons of the nation. The Fatherland will be eternally grateful”.

The G5 leaders announced on Saturday they would hold the extraordinary summit in Niger to show solidarity and to “consult” after the large-scale attack. The meeting had originally been due to take place in the Burkinabe capital Ouagadougou.

Niger has been observing three days of national mourning from Friday to Sunday.

Militant violence has spread across the vast Sahel region, especially in Burkina Faso and Niger, having started when armed Islamists revolted in northern Mali in 2012.

In the last four months, the insurgency has claimed the lives of more than 230 soldiers in Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso. Last month, 13 French troops were killed in a helicopter collision while hunting jihadists in northern Mali.

Thousands of civilians have also died and more than a million have been forced to flee their homes since the jihadist revolt began.

Analysts note an escalation in the jihadists’ operational tactics, which seem to have become bolder and more complex in recent months.

From hit-and-run raids by a small group of Kalashnikov-armed guerrillas, the jihadists are now carrying out operations that involve hundreds of fighters, armed with mortars and using vehicles for suicide attacks.

Ranged against them are the impoverished armies of Chad, Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania and Niger, plus a 4,500-man French force in the Sahel and the 13,000-man UN force in Mali, MINUSMA.

Tuesday’s attack prompted French President Emmanuel Macron to postpone a meeting scheduled for next week in the southwestern French town of Pau, where he and five presidents from the Sahel were due to discuss security in the region.

The talks will now take place early next year.

The Sahel region of Africa lies to the south of the Sahara Desert and stretches across the breadth of the African continent.

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Human remains discovered last month at a farm outside the city of Guadalajara have been confirmed as belonging to at least 50 people, authorities in Mexico’s west-central state of Jalisco reported.

Jalisco state prosecutors said recovery work at the farm in Tlajomulco de Zuniga, which began Nov. 22 after the initial discovery, concluded Friday as experts determined there was no more evidence to be gathered from the scene.

The office said in a Saturday statement that there was a “preliminary” indication that the remains corresponded to 50 individuals.

Prosecutors said they had identified 13 people so far — 12 male and one female, all of whom were previously listed as missing.

The state forensic sciences institute will seek to determine the sex of the rest and cause of death.

The investigation continues, with the goal of identifying more victims as well as “those responsible for this crime which gravely harms society,” the statement said.

The state is home to Jalisco New Generation, one of Mexico’s bloodiest and most ruthless drug cartels.

In July, Jalisco prosecutors announced 21 bodies had been found in excavations in the yard of a house near Guadalajara. In May, authorities discovered the remains of at least 34 people at two separate properties in the state.

Such clandestine burial sites are frequently used by criminals to dispose of bodies.

At least 40,000 people have disappeared since Mexico’s drug war began in 2006.

…

Libya’s U.N.-supported government is held hostage by “armed and terrorist militias” in the capital, Tripoli, Egypt’s leader said Sunday.

President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi said in televised comments that the Government of National Accord “is not able to have a free and real will because they have been taken hostage by armed and terrorist militias there.”

The GNA is backed by Egypt’s regional rivals Turkey and Qatar and Egypt’s relations with the two countries have been strained since 2013. That’s when Sissi, as defense minister, led the military overthrow of elected but divisive Islamist President Muhammad Morsi amid mass protests against his brief rule. Morsi was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Tripoli-based government is supported by a Libyan affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood group, which Cairo designated as a terrorist organization in 2013. Turkey and Qatar are also staunch backers of the Brotherhood.

Sissi said the Libyan conflict has posed a threat to Egypt’s national security because militants and weapons spill over the border into Egypt. He said it had been a priority for Egypt to directly interfere in Libya “but did not take this step to maintain the relationship and brotherhood with the Libyan people.”

There was no immediate comment from the Tripoli authorities.

Last week, the Egyptian president said a comprehensive political solution for the Libyan conflict would be achieved in the coming months that would put an end to a “terrorist hotbed that pushes militants and weapons to (Libya’s) neighboring countries including Egypt.”

Fighting Stalls After ‘Final Assault’ on Tripoli Fails to End War

Libyan strongman Khalifa Haftar has announced plans to overrun the western capital several times, but a stalemate continues in the suburbs

Libya descended into chaos after the 2011 civil war that ousted and killed long-time dictator Moammar Gadhafi. The turmoil that followed Gadhafi’s death enabled the rise of Islamic militants. The country was divided into two parts, a weak U.N.-supported administration in Tripoli and a rival government in the east aligned with the self-styled Libyan National Army, led by Gen. Khalifa Haftar.

Haftar, who has modeled himself after Sissi, has for months been fighting an array of militias allied with the Tripoli authorities to wrest control of the capital. He is backed by the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, as well as France and Russia, while the Tripoli-based government receives aid from Turkey, Qatar and Italy.

On Saturday, Egypt’s parliament Speaker Ali Abdel-Al said Egypt recognizes the Libyan legislature as “the sole legitimate body representing the Libyan people,” according to the MENA news agency. He said the Egyptian parliament backs Haftar’s forces in their “fighting against terrorism.”

Libya’s parliament is affiliated with the government based in the country’s east and has opposed the U.N.-supported government in Tripoli.

Abdel-Al did not say whether the government of Sissi decided to rescind its recognition of the Tripoli-based government. Multiple calls to the country’s presidency and Foreign Ministry went unanswered.

The Libyan commander Thursday declared a “final” and decisive battle for Tripoli, unleashing heavy clashes on the southern reaches of the city in the past two days against the Tripoli-based militias.

Sissi’s comments came amid heightened tensions with Turkey after a controversial maritime border agreement it signed last month with Libya’s U.N.-based government.

Greece, Egypt and Cyprus, which lie between the two geographically, have denounced the deal as being contrary to international law, and Greece expelled the Libyan ambassador last week over the issue.

…

Juni Martoyo says she has no interest in sending her third child to study in the United States, although her two other children are at universities in Virginia and New Hampshire.

One of her main concerns is security, as mass shootings in public places, including schools or universities, have become more frequent.

“Secondly, English language is not interesting anymore,” Martoyo from Blitar, East Java, said in a phone interview with VOA. “However, safety is the main reason. Mandarin language is now more attractive.”

Like many parents in Indonesia, Martoyo said she is looking for universities for her child in countries other than the United States.

Security and safety reasons contribute to the overall declining number of foreign students in the United States. Other reasons include the bureaucracy in obtaining permits, a decrease in scholarships because of budget cuts, and inconveniences caused by trade war and immigration limitations.

According to the Open Doors report released Nov. 18 by the Institute of International Education (IIE) and the U.S. State Department, the numbers of new student enrollments from South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Mexico, Nepal, Iran, England and Turkey showed decreases from 0.3% to 16.5%.

The number of Indonesian students enrolling in colleges or universities in the United States decreased by 3.4%, the IIE reported.

Where are those students headed?

Anondho Wijanarko, secretary of Directorate General Resources and Higher Education with the Indonesian Ministry of Education and Culture, told VOA that the Overseas Postgraduate Scholarship (BPPLN) awarded by the Indonesian government to its students is more likely to be distributed at colleges and universities in Europe. It is easier to get an acceptance letter to those universities, which gets the visa process started, than U.S. schools.

However, Wijanarko did not have an exact number comparing Indonesian college students studying in Europe with students studying in other countries.

Offsetting the declining number of some international students at American universities were increases to U.S. schools in the number of students from Taiwan, China (up 1.7%), India (up 2.9%) and Brazil (up 9.8%), the IIE report showed. Students from China (369,548) and India (202,014) to the U.S. comprise more than half of the more than 1 million international students in the United States.

However, the overall growth in the number of international students in American universities during the 2018-2019 year is only 0.05%, which is the lowest growth in 10 years.

…

Iran’s telecommunications minister announced on Sunday that the country has defused a second cyberattack in less than a week, this time “aimed at spying on government intelligence.”

Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi said in a short Twitter post that the alleged attack was “identified and defused by a cybersecurity shield,” and that the ”spying servers were identified and the hackers were also tracked.” He did not elaborate.

Last Wednesday, Jahromi told the official IRNA news agency that a “massive” and “governmental” cyberattack also targeted Iran’s electronic infrastructure. He provided no specifics on the purported attack except to say it was also defused and that a report would be released.

On Tuesday, the minister dismissed reports of hacking operations targeting Iranian banks, including local media reports that accounts of millions of customers of Iranian banks were hacked.

This is not the first time Iran says it has defused a cyberattack, though it has disconnected much of its infrastructure from the internet after the Stuxnet computer virus, widely believed to be a joint U.S.-Israeli creation, disrupted thousands of Iranian centrifuges in the country’s nuclear sites in the late 2000s.

In June, Washington officials said that U.S. military cyber forces launched a strike against Iranian military computer systems as President Donald Trump backed away from plans for a more conventional military strike in response to Iran’s downing of a U.S. surveillance drone in the strategic Persian Gulf.

Tensions have escalated between the U.S. and Iran ever since President Donald Trump withdrew America last year from the 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran and began a policy of “maximum pressure.” Iran has since been hit by multiple rounds of sanctions.

…

Southeast Asian environmental activists  – including young counterparts to teenage activist and Time magazine person of the year Greta Thunberg – are concerned they are not getting the attention that the climate emergency deserves, complaining that the region’s authorities are leaving this month’s climate negotiations in Madrid, also known as COP25, without committing to new climate action plans for 2020, as other nations have done.

The negotiations are meant to find a way to carry out the plans, agreed to in Paris in 2015, to cut global greenhouse gas emissions. However they have broken down as negotiators cannot agree on how much rich nations should spend to support poor nations to enact the plans. Many Southeast Asian governments want such supporting funds but their constituents also say the governments need to promise more dramatic emissions decreases.

Disagreement Drags UN Climate Talks Into Second Extra Day

Among main issues still being discussed are rules for international carbon markets and a system for channeling money to help poor countries cope with economic impact of climate change

“The situation is critical: our youth are mobilizing and striking because they know that there are only 10 years left for governments to act for them to have a decent future,” Sarah Elago, a member of the Philippine House of Representatives, said. “Why is it that children are doing more than the governing adults?”  

Like the Philippines, almost every nation in Southeast Asia has islands or long coastlines, making them particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Consequently, the region’s activists are particularly concerned that their governments did not offer forceful action plans at COP25, formally known as the United Nations Climate Change Conference, which was supposed to conclude on December 13 but continues as of press time.

Activists have exerted pressure on regional governments to offer a climate action plan but those governments say they are doing their best, as developing countries that did not create the problem.

Some say there is little point in offering action when there is none from the United States, the biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions until being recently overtaken by China. Developing nations around the Asia Pacific and elsewhere are paying the price because of polluting industrialized nations, according to Basav Sen, climate policy director at the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies.

“Our country, as a matter of policy, prioritizes enriching its oil and gas industry over preserving the ecosystems upon which billions of people rely for their food, water and homes,” he wrote in an op-ed for the newspaper USA Today.

He recommended “responsible world governments could publicly shame the U.S. government for its climate policies.”
Southeast Asia must do more, however, Abel Da Silva, a member East Timor’s National Parliament, said.

“We cannot stay on the sidelines of this catastrophe,” said Da Silva. “Southeast Asia is contributing to climate change through its reliance on coal, its deforestation and haze crisis, and its lack of ambition in its climate action plans.”

The region has to “reverse this shameful historical trend and right our past wrongs on the climate,” he said.

Nations generally submit action plans on how they will decrease greenhouse gas emissions at the annual U.N. climate conference. Although nations do other things to deal with climate change, such as constructing walls against rising water levels, emissions are the main issue.

Laos, which is trying to develop hydropower dams as a main industry, is the only Southeast Asian nation to set a goal of zero net carbon emissions by 2050 – it is also the only nation in the region that is landlocked. 
 

…

A bus carrying Hindu pilgrims drove off a highway and crashed in Nepal on Sunday, killing 14 people and injuring 18, police said.

The pilgrims were returning home after visiting the famed Hindu Kalinchowk Bhagwati temple when the bus veered off the highway about 80 kilometers (50 miles) east of the capital, Kathmandu, police official Prajwal Maharjan said.

Rescuers were able to pull out the injured passengers and take them to nearby hospitals for treatment.

Maharjan said police were investigating the cause of the crash but the roads were slippery because of winter rain. The visibility was also poor due to morning fog..

There was also a possibility of mechanical failure and it appeared the bus was not from the area and the driver might not be familiar with the road conditions.

Bus accidents in Nepal, which is mostly covered by mountains, are generally blamed on poorly maintained vehicles and roads.

…