Author: CensorBiz

Prominent Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong was arrested Thursday for taking part in a protest at the height of the city’s pro-democracy unrest last year, but he vowed to continue resisting China’s crackdown on dissent.
 
The arrest of the territory’s most high-profile dissident is the latest in a string of arrests of government critics and comes after China imposed a sweeping new national security law on Hong Kong in late June.
 
Wong was arrested for “unlawful assembly” over a 2019 demonstration against a government ban on face masks that was imposed before the coronavirus pandemic, his lawyer said.
 
The 23-year-old , who now faces three separate cases, said after being bailed that he was also held for violating the “draconian” anti-mask law, which has since been ruled unconstitutional.
 
Wong’s lawyer told AFP he was re-arrested when he reported to a police station concerning another case currently being tried.
 
“Wong is accused of participating in an unlawful assembly on October 5 last year, when hundreds marched to oppose an anti-mask ban the government rolled out,” lawyer Jonathan Man said.
 
A police spokesman confirmed a 23-year-old was arrested for “knowingly participating in unauthorised assembly” while violating the mask ban.
 
Wong told reporters after he was bailed: “No matter what happens, I will continue to resist and hope to let the world to know that how Hong Kongers choose not to surrender.”
 
At the time of the October 5 march, Hong Kong had already been battered by four months of increasingly violent pro-democracy protests.
 
The city had ground to a halt following a night of chaos in which hardcore protesters trashed dozens of subway stations, vandalised shops with mainland China ties, built fires and blocked roads.  
 
Hundreds of protesters, almost all masked, staged the unsanctioned demonstration through the popular shopping district of Causeway Bay, a day after the city’s leader Carrie Lam outlawed face coverings by invoking colonial-era emergency powers not used for half a century.
 
Under Hong Kong’s current anti-virus measures, face masks are now mandatory in all public places.
  Jailed twice
 
China’s security law, which was imposed in late June, was designed to stamp out the demonstrations and targets acts deemed to be secession, subversion, terrorism and foreign collusion.  
 
Beijing has described it as a “sword” hanging over the heads of its opponents as it pushes to return stability. Critics say it has blanketed the city in fear, and UN rights experts warned its broad wording posed a serious risk to Hong Kong’s freedoms.
 
Wong – who spent most of his teenage years leading protests and has twice been jailed – recently told AFP he constantly wonders how long it will be before the police’s new national security unit comes for him.
 
The security law has already swept up two of his closest comrades.
 
Fellow former student leader Nathan Law has fled to Britain and is now wanted for national security crimes, according to Chinese state media.  
 
Agnes Chow — who has led protests alongside Wong since they were just 15 — is one of 22 people arrested under the new law so far. She has been released on bail.
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North Korea shot, killed, and immediately cremated a South Korean civilian official who went missing earlier this week near the two countries’ disputed western sea border, according to South Korea’s military.  Seoul’s National Defense Ministry said Thursday the man was questioned in North Korean waters, before being shot to death, doused with oil, and then set on fire by troops wearing gas masks, apparently all on orders from a superior. South Korean officials did not reveal how they knew those details, citing only “diverse intelligence.”     “Our military strongly condemns this brutal act and strongly urges the North to explain this and punish those responsible,” Lt. Gen. Ahn Young-ho of the South Korean military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff told a press briefing. “We also warn North Korea that all responsibility for this incident lies with it.”  North Korea’s military has not responded to Seoul’s request for more information, according to South Korean defense officials. Pyongyang has not publicly commented on the incident.  The unidentified 47-year-old official, who worked for the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries, disappeared Monday while on duty aboard a patrol boat off the South Korean border island of Yeonpyeong. He was reported missing about 10 kilometers south of the Northern Limit Line, the de facto inter-Korean sea border.   The circumstances of the man’s disappearance are not clear. South Korean military officials believe he may have been trying to flee to North Korea. The report did not say why the man would have defected to the North.  Past incidents  Earlier this week, South Korean police said they arrested a defector who was trying to return to North Korea via a military training site in the border town of Cheorwon.     In July, a 24-year-old man who had fled North Korea successfully swam back into the country, after being accused of rape in South Korea. That incident prompted the North to lock down a border area, ostensibly because of coronavirus concerns.    Earlier this month, the top U.S. commander in South Korea, General Robert Abrams, said North Korea had issued “shoot-to-kill” orders to prevent the coronavirus from entering the country from China.FILE – Visitors wearing masks to avoid the spread of COVID-19 fill out a form which is mandatory to get into a hospital in Seoul, South Korea, Aug. 26, 2020.The coronavirus-related security zones were first reported by the Daily NK, a Seoul-based news website with sources in North Korea. The outlet said the new rules stipulated that anyone “breaking rules or disrupting public order near the border will be shot without warning.” The rules apply to all areas of the country, it said. Raises tensions    The shooting incident is awkwardly timed for South Korean President Moon Jae-in, who this week used a video speech at the United Nations General Assembly to call for an end-of-war declaration between North and South Korea.   The left-leaning Moon, who desperately wants to improve ties with Pyongyang before he leaves office in 2022, has been trying to convince the North to return to the dialogue and cooperation that marked the beginning of his five-year term.  North Korea earlier this year cut communications channels with the South and blew up the two countries’ de facto embassy after complaining about South Korean activists who launched balloons filled with anti-Pyongyang propaganda across the border.   The two countries have been in a technical state of war, since their 1950s conflict ended in a truce and not a peace treaty.  Though tensions sporadically break out, deaths – especially involving civilians – are rare. The last time a South Korean civilian was shot dead in North Korea was in 2008, when a North Korean soldier killed a South Korean tourist who had wandered into a restricted area at a mountain resort.   
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Authorities in Nigeria say a gas tanker truck exploded Wednesday, killing at least 28 people, including school children and university students in the central state of Kogi. Initial reports indicate the driver lost control of the truck carrying fuel when the brakes failed, causing the truck to overturn and explode, setting fire to multiple vehicles on the Lokoja-Zariagi highway. President Muhammadu Buhari suggested in a statement that police and transport agencies need to be more serious in enforcing safety standards, saying, “Nigeria is not having a shortage of laws and regulations, but the problem is a lack of zeal to enforce those laws and regulations for the sake of public safety.” Buhari did not speak directly to concerns that road accidents are common in Nigeria  because roads are not well maintained.  The Daily Post said 25 people died in another crash on the same of Lokoja-Zariagi highway last year. 
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President Donald Trump met with nine Republican state attorneys general on Wednesday to discuss the fate of a legal immunity for internet companies after the Justice Department unveiled a legislative proposal aimed at reforming the same law. Trump met with attorneys general from Arizona, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and West Virginia. Also Wednesday, the Justice Department, which is probing Google for potential breaches of antitrust law, held a call with state attorneys general’s offices to preview a complaint to be filed against the search and advertising giant, perhaps as soon as next week, according to two sources familiar with the matter.   It is normal for the department to seek support from state attorneys general when it files big lawsuits. Critics have accused Google, owned by Alphabet Inc., of breaking antitrust law by abusing its dominance of online advertising and its Android smartphone operating system as well as favoring its own businesses in search.   The White House said the legal immunity discussion involved how the attorneys general can utilize existing legal recourses at the state level—in an effort to weaken the law known as Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects internet companies from liability over content posted by users. After the meeting, Trump told reporters he expects to come to a conclusion on the issue of technology platforms within a short period. It was not immediately clear what conclusion he was referring to.   He said his administration is watching the performance of tech platforms in the run-up to the Nov. 3 presidential election. “In recent years, a small group of powerful technology platforms have tightened their grip over commerce and communications in America,” Trump said. “Every year countless Americans are banned, blacklisted and silenced through arbitrary or malicious enforcement of ever-shifting rules,” he added.   Trump, who himself frequently posts on Twitter, said Twitter routinely restricts expressions of conservative views.   Earlier on Wednesday, the Justice Department unveiled a legislative proposal to reform Section 230. It followed through on Trump’s bid earlier this year to crack down on tech giants after Twitter Inc. placed warning labels on some of Trump’s tweets, saying they have included potentially misleading information about mail-in voting. The Justice Department’s proposal would need congressional approval and is not likely to see action until next year at the earliest. Unless the Republicans win control of the House of Representatives and maintain control of the Senate in the November elections, any bill would need Democratic support.   The Justice Department proposal primarily states that when internet companies “willfully distribute illegal material or moderate content in bad faith, Section 230 should not shield them from the consequences of their actions.” It proposes a series of reforms to ensure internet companies are transparent about their decisions when removing content and when they should be held responsible for speech they modify. It also revises existing definitions of Section 230 with more concrete language that offers more guidance to users and courts.   It also incentivizes online platforms to address illicit content and pushes for more clarity on federal civil enforcement actions.    The Internet Association, which represents major internet companies including Facebook Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and Google, said the Justice Department’s proposal would severely limit people’s ability to express themselves and have a safe experience online. The group’s deputy general counsel, Elizabeth Banker, said moderation efforts that remove misinformation, platform manipulation and cyberbullying would all result in lawsuits under the proposal. 
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Fake news about the coronavirus can do real harm. Polygraph.info is spotlighting fact-checks from other reliable sources here​.Daily Debunk”Biden distorts Trump’s words on virus ‘hoax’,” Associated Press, September 17. Social Media DisinfoScreenshot Circulating on social media: Claim that U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidance is trying to keep mothers away from their newborn children.Verdict: Missing ContextRead the full story at: Reuters
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It will take some countries years to return to economic growth following the coronavirus crisis, which is lasting longer than expected, the No. 2 official at the International Monetary Fund said on Wednesday.
 
The Fund has provided some $90 billion in emergency financing to almost 80 countries, including 20 in Latin America.
 
It is continuing to work with member countries on how to contain the pandemic and mitigate its economic impact, First Deputy Managing Director Geoffrey Okamoto told an online event hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
 
“We’re trying to preserve our financial firepower,” Okamoto said. “We’re talking about a … return to growth that’s going to take a few years, and many countries along the way that are probably going to need assistance.”
 
Latin American and Caribbean economies are among the hardest hit in the world by the pandemic, reporting around 8.4 million coronavirus cases, and more than 314,000 deaths.
 
Okamoto told the event that Fund officials were in talks with the Group of 20 major economies about extending a temporary halt in official bilateral debt service payments by low-income countries under the Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI), and how to kickstart private sector participation.
 
The G20 initiative approved in April currently expires at the end of the year, but experts and government officials in many countries have backed extending it into 2021, with a decision expected in coming weeks and months.
 
The issue of debt sustainability was “top of mind” for Fund officials, Okamoto said, noting that a lot of countries in Latin America had been in debt distress before the coronavirus crisis, which exacerbated those pressures.
 
The DSSI is giving the IMF more time to assess the full debt picture for these countries, he said. “It’s lasting longer than we anticipated, and so that is going to change a bit the dynamics of what we think is sustainable in the long run.”
 
He said the Fund was continuing to ask rich countries to bankroll two specific Fund programs that lend to poor countries.
 
The United States, the largest shareholder in the IMF, has signaled it hopes to contribute, but no funds have been provided for those programs thus far.
 
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A New York judge on Wednesday ordered President Donald Trump’s son Eric to make himself available by Oct. 7 to be interviewed under oath for a state probe into financing for properties owned by his family’s company.
 
Justice Arthur Engoron of the Manhattan Supreme Court said Eric Trump, an executive vice president at the Trump Organization, offered no grounds for delaying his deposition by the office of New York Attorney General Letitia James until after the Nov. 3 presidential election.
 
At a hearing, the judge rejected as unpersuasive an argument that Trump, as a “vital and integral part” of his father’s re-election bid, was too busy to be interviewed, and said he was not “bound by the timelines of the national election.”
 
Lawyers for Eric Trump did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
 
James has been conducting a civil probe into “potential fraud or illegality” concerning whether Donald Trump and the Trump Organization overstated the value of assets to obtain loans and tax benefits.
 
Her probe began after Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, told Congress the president had inflated some asset values to save money on loans and insurance, and deflated other asset values to reduce real estate taxes.
 
James originally subpoenaed Eric Trump’s testimony on May 26. A scheduled July 22 deposition was canceled as Trump changed his legal team, and his new lawyers sought a further delay until Nov. 19 or later.
 
Matthew Colangelo, a lawyer for James, said the threat of “personal inconvenience” to Eric Trump did not justify that long a wait.
 
“Mr. Trump shouldn’t be able to profit from his own dilatory conduct,” Colangelo said.
James’ probe has focused on four properties: the Seven Springs Estate in Westchester County, New York; 40 Wall Street in Manhattan; the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago, and the Trump National Golf Club in Los Angeles.
 
There has been no determination any laws have been broken.
 
The investigation is separate from a criminal probe by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, who is seeking eight years of Donald Trump’s tax returns through a separate subpoena.
 
Vance has said in court filings he might have grounds to investigate Donald Trump and the Trump Organization for tax fraud, and that his probe related to reports of possible insurance and bank fraud by the company and its officers.
 
A federal appeals court is scheduled to hear Trump’s appeal on Friday of an order letting Vance obtain his tax returns.
 
Trump is a Republican, while James and Vance are Democrats.
 
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Conservatives and liberals alike have much at stake with U.S. President Donald Trump’s choice of a replacement for the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died last week after 27 years on the bench.  Trump has promised to nominate a conservative, female jurist on Saturday to succeed Ginsburg, the most liberal member of the high court. Whoever Trump taps will cement a new 6-3 conservative majority and play a pivotal role in deciding issues of great consequence to millions of Americans. Among them: the fate of the Obama-era Affordable Care Act that provides health insurance to millions of people, immigration, abortion rights, and economic and social protections for the LGBTQ community.  In recent years, the Supreme Court has blocked attempts to gut Obamacare and roll back abortion rights while expanding the rights of LGBTQ people.   But those outcomes hailed by liberal forces were achieved by narrow margins. With the almost certain installation of a sixth conservative on the nine-member bench, the balance of power will greatly shift to conservative forces.  These issues will likely dominate the looming Senate confirmation hearings. But the potential nominee – whether federal Judge Amy Coney Barrett of the Chicago-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, Judge Barbara Lagoa of the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Judge Allison Jones Rushing of the U. S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in Richmond, Virginia, or some other candidate — will likely decline disclosing her views about them.  “If she is asked about Obamacare and Roe and all these things, she’s just going to say, ‘I can’t discuss cases that might come before me,’ ” said Saikrishna Prakash, a University of Virginia law professor who knows Barrett professionally.    Here is a look at three of the issues that could dominate deliberation over the choice of the next Supreme Court justice: Obamacare  Ten years after its passage, Americans remain divided over the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare, with just over 50% supporting it in polls. While the program narrowly enacted by Congress in March 2010 allows 20 million uninsured Americans to purchase subsidized health insurance, conservatives have long objected to mandatory provisions and say the system is not financially sustainable.  Since its inception and rocky start, Obamacare has weathered repeated legal challenges, including two that made it all the way to the Supreme Court. On November 10, one week after the 2020 presidential election, the high court is scheduled to hear oral arguments in the third significant challenge – this one brought by 20 states led by Texas.  The states contend that after Congress in 2017 eliminated tax penalties for individuals lacking insurance, the individual mandate to buy insurance was rendered unconstitutional, and they want the court to scrap the entire law.    During the past two cases to reach the Supreme Court, Ginsburg and the court’s three other liberal justices joined conservative Chief Justice Roberts to preserve the law.    “But this time will be different,” Russ Feingold, a former Democratic senator from Wisconsin and now president of the left-leaning American Constitution Society, said in a statement. “This time Justice Ginsburg will not be on the bench.”    But it’s far from certain that a new conservative justice will vote to abolish Obamacare altogether even if she finds the individual mandate unconstitutional.  Roberts and two fellow conservatives on the high court subscribe to a doctrine that says even if one part of a law is flawed, the rest should be preserved to the extent possible. Moreover, the Trump administration and Republican congressional leaders have yet to agree on a replacement health care system.  Abortion rights  Few issues are more divisive than abortion rights. Advocates see it as a reproductive right; religious conservatives say abortion is tantamount to murder.  Ever since the high court legalized abortion in 1973 in a landmark ruling known as Roe v. Wade, conservatives have sought to chip away or overturn it.  But the Supreme Court has over the years upheld the precedent, with retired Justice Anthony Kennedy, a Republican appointee, casting the swing vote. This year, Roberts, himself an abortion opponent, joined the liberal wing to strike down a new Louisiana law that would have severely restricted access to abortions, citing precedent in an earlier case.  Now with the prospect of a sixth conservative on the court and more than a dozen abortion cases working their way through the courts, conservative anti-abortion activists see the opportunity for sweeping victories. Trump has already added two conservatives to the high court – Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh – almost certain to side with anti-abortion forces.   “This third justice will give us the ability to overturn Roe with a 6-3 majority,” Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life, said in a video released after Ginsburg’s death.  LGBTQ Rights    In recent years, with the U.S. Congress deadlocked and unable to act, the Supreme Court has issued a string of landmark decisions expanding LGBTQ rights. The culmination came when the high court legalized gay marriage in 2015.    At the same time, however, the court has increasingly favored religious groups in disputes pitting religious liberty against LGBTQ rights. In 2018, the justices ruled in favor of a Colorado baker who refused to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple on religious grounds. Another test will come in November when the court takes up a case involving a Catholic charity that does not allow same-sex couples to work as foster parents. Since Justice Anthony Kennedy, the LGBTQ community’s biggest champion on the court, stepped down two years ago, many lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer rights activists have feared another conservative appointment could endanger their freedoms and rights.    “There is an enormous amount at stake for the LGBTQ community in this fight,” Lamda Legal, a national legal rights organization, said in a statement highlighting the anti-civil rights records of the three leading candidates to succeed Ginsburg.  But Prakash of the University of Virginia, noted that it was Gorsuch, Trump’s first high court appointee, who wrote a landmark 6-3 ruling this year expanding workplace anti- discrimination protections to LGBTQ workers in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia. “Even if she (Barrett) disagreed with Bostock, it doesn’t matter,” Prakash said, referring to the case about LGBTQ workplace discrimination.   
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Kremlin critic Aleksei Navalny has been discharged from the Berlin hospital where he was being treated for what Germany has said is a case of poisoning with a nerve agent from the Soviet-era Novichok group.The 44-year-old posted on social media a picture of himself sitting on a park bench in the German capital after being released, adding that while he still doesn’t have full use of his left hand, he has started learning how to regain his balance by standing on one leg.Navalny fell violently ill aboard a Moscow-bound flight on August 20 originating in the Siberian city of Tomsk, where he was carrying out his latest investigation into state corruption. Days later, he was airlifted to Berlin for treatment.“The first time they put me in front of a mirror after 24 days in intensive care (of which 16 were in a coma), a character from the movie ‘The Lord of the Rings’ looked back at me and I can tell you, it was not an elf at all,” Navalny said in the post.“I was terribly upset: I thought that I would never be discharged. But the doctors continued to do their miracle,” he added.Navalny said he will continue to do physiotherapy, while doctors from the Charite hospital in Berlin said in a statement on September 23 that based on his “progress and current condition,” physicians believe that a “complete recovery is possible.””However, it remains too early to gauge the potential long-term effects of his severe poisoning,” the statement cautioned.German authorities have said tests in Germany, France, and Sweden have determined Navalny was poisoned with a chemical agent from the Novichok group.French President Emmanuel Macron on September 22 demanded a “swift and flawless” explanation from Moscow for the poisoning during his speech to the 75th-annual United Nations General Assembly.Several other countries in the West have also demanded an explanation from Russia, but Moscow has declined to open an investigation so far, saying it has yet to see evidence of a crime.The Kremlin, which also has denied any involvement in the attack, said on September 23 that the anti-corruption crusader “is free” to return to Russia whenever he pleases.Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also addressed a recent article in the French newspaper Le Monde, saying the report that President Vladimir Putin told his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, in a recent conversation that perhaps Navalny had poisoned himself had many inaccuracies.He did, however, confirm that the Navalny case was discussed between the two leaders.Navalny was medically airlifted to Germany at the request of his wife following a medical tussle with Russian doctors who said he was too sick to travel.He emerged earlier this month from a medically induced coma as his condition slowly improved.German doctors say the military-grade nerve agent Novichok was found both inside his body and on his skin.Navalny said in a post on his website on September 21 that the 30-day deadline for Russian police to conduct their “pre-investigative check” into what he called his attempted murder by poisoning has expired. He demanded that the Russian side return articles of clothing taken when he was hospitalized there.Experts say the clothes he had on could help any investigation into the poisoning.Russian officials have questioned German officials’ findings and their statements since Navalny arrived there for treatment.Russian police must either launch an investigation or close a case within 30 days of a pre-investigative check.However, police in Omsk have said they are continuing their investigation.Navalny’s team has said a water bottle removed from his hotel room in the city of Tomsk after he fell ill had been taken to Germany and found to contain traces of the nerve agent.Peskov has said suggestions that Navalny ingested the nerve agent via a water bottle in Siberia are “absurd.”In a statement issued via his Instagram account on September 19, Navalny called his road to recovery “a clear path now, albeit long.”Navalny was attacked with a green dye by unknown assailants in Russia in 2017, leaving him with permanent damage to his vision.Two years later, he suddenly fell ill while in Russian detention with what Russian doctors said was a severe allergic reaction but which he and his team insisted was an intentional poisoning. That case still has not been solved. 
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Colleagues, friends and admirers will begin paying their final respects Wednesday to the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.   Ginsburg’s casket will be brought to the Supreme Court building Wednesday morning for a private ceremony in the Great Hall, attended by her family and her fellow justices.  The casket will then be moved to the building’s front steps and lie in repose for public viewing until Thursday, resting on the same wooden platform built for the casket of President Abraham Lincoln after his assassination in 1865.   A further tribute will occur Friday when Ginsburg will be taken across the street to the U.S. Capitol, where she will lie in state in the building’s Statuary Hall, making her the first woman to receive such an honor.  The public will be able to view the casket after a formal ceremony for invited guests. Civil rights icon Rosa Parks lay in honor in the Capitol’s historic Rotunda after her death in 2005, a designation due to the fact that she was not a government official.   A statement by the U.S. Supreme Court says Ginsburg will be buried next week in a private ceremony at Arlington National Ceremony, the final resting place of such figures as President John F. Kennedy, his brothers Robert and Edward, both prominent U.S. senators, and heavyweight boxing champ Joe Louis.   Ginsburg died last Friday at the age of 87 of metastatic pancreatic cancer, ending a 27-year tenure on the nation’s highest court.  Her status as leader of the court’s liberal minority, along with her work seeking legal equality for women and girls in all spheres of American life before becoming a jurist, made her a cultural icon, earning her the nickname “The Notorious R.B.G.” Her death has sparked a political battle over her replacement, with President Donald Trump and Senate Republicans vowing to name and confirm a new justice before the November 3 presidential election, which would give the court a solid 6-3 conservative majority.  President Trump announced Tuesday that he will name his nominee for the lifetime appointment on Saturday. 
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China aims to push back against the United States by reopening talks with 10 Southeast Asian nations on a code of conduct that would help prevent mishaps in a crowded, disputed Asian sea, political scholars say. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi urged in August that the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations bloc resume talks with his country toward a South China Sea code of conduct, state-controlled news media in China said. Wang told a symposium in Beijing this month that negotiators should try to finish the code “at a faster pace,” China Central Television reported online. The minister’s calls followed charges from U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo in July that Chinese claims in the sea are illegal and that Washington would help other countries that come under pressure from Beijing. China calls about 90% of the sea its own. FILE – Chinese vessels are pictured in disputed South China Sea, April 21, 2017.Beijing vies with sovereignty in tracts of the 3.5 million-square-kilometer sea with bloc members Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam and the Philippines.  Ignoring code of conduct talks – popular in Southeast Asia and pending since the negotiating parties reached a related framework deal in 2002 – would put China on the bloc’s bad side and endear it to the United States, scholars believe. Talks broke down in 2019. “The reason that I think the Chinese first agreed to the code of conduct was to block out the Americans, that the Chinese could say ‘we already established a track toward addressing the issues in the South China Sea, so the South China Sea is peaceful, and it is stable, so to the Americans, do not meddle,’” said Yun Sun, East Asia Program senior associate at the Stimson Center think tank in Washington. Backed by the world’s third strongest armed forces, China has upset Southeast Asian countries over the past decade by landfilling some of the sea’s tiny islets, sometimes for military use. Claimants prize the waterway for fisheries and undersea energy reserves. The U.S. government has no claim in the sea but bristles when its rival superpower China exerts too much control over it. Chinese officials worry about what the United States will do next, analysts believe. The two powers are already locked in trade, technology and consular disputes. “I think China now really wants to finalize the code of conduct because the South China Sea right now could reach a boiling point any time now,” said Aaron Rabena, research fellow at the Asia-Pacific Pathways to Progress Foundation in Metro Manila. “It’s really a major flashpoint between China and the United States, and China doesn’t want more tensions with the U.S.”  Southeast Asian countries are receptive now to both Beijing and Washington. But the Philippines, after a boat standoff with China in 2012, won world court arbitration against China in 2016 and Vietnam has considered filing its own case.Vietnam Weighs World Court Arbitration Against China if Maritime Diplomacy Fails Southeast Asian country would ask an international tribunal to rule on sovereignty disputes in resource-rich sea between them Countries that feel “hopeless” will “develop alternative channels to achieve what they want,” Sun said. China and the bloc better known as ASEAN agreed in 2017 to restart the talks and later set a completion goal of 2021. A code would be designed to prevent accidents that capsize fishing boats, a common occurrence, as well as deadly skirmishes such as the Sino-Vietnamese clashes of 1974 and 1988. Negotiations have stalled over the years largely because of code content that would touch on sovereignty disputes. For example, it’s unclear whether wording would cover mishaps near Chinese-controlled islets, make certain clauses legally binding and set up an enforcement body. Taiwan, a sixth claimant to the sea, is excluded from the code talks but still uses the waterway. ASEAN and China remain stuck on “details” in the code, said Huang Kwei-bo, vice dean of the international affairs college at National Chengchi University in Taipei. But China figures that just the act of negotiating will keep Washington at bay, he said. “You could say it’s just an empty diplomatic move, but I think according to foreign relations that to negotiate is always better than not negotiating,” Huang said. 
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As local authorities in northeastern Syria announce the discovery of new mass graves belonging to the victims of Islamic State in Raqqa, families whose loved ones disappeared during the group’s control over the region hope they might finally get some answers.  The First Responders, a rescue and recovery team in northeastern Syria, earlier this month announced finding a mass grave in the western outskirt of Raqqa’s Farusiya, raising the number of discovered sites to five this year. Raqqa SyriaFollowing the announcement and the recovery of 16 bodies from the grave, the families of the victims are calling on authorities to prioritize a speedy identification process of the remains.   “The coalition and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) must support The First Responders team with technical support so they would be able to verify the identities of the bodies found in mass graves and under the rubble of buildings that were destroyed during the battle to defeat IS in the city of Raqqa,” said Ensaf Nasser who has been looking for her husband since IS kidnapped him in 2014.  Nasser’s husband, Foad Ahmed el-Mohamed, was a local journalist taking pictures of wounded civilians at Aisha Hospital in Deir el-Zour city when IS militants broke in and took him away. She has since relentlessly perused threads leading to the whereabouts of her husband, without much luck.Foad Ahmed el-Mohamed, was a local journalist in Deir el-Zour. Here holding a twin born in the hospital he used to work at in 2014. (Photo courtesy Ensaf Nasser)Nasser told VOA she has learned that the extremist group accused her husband of infidelity because he advocated for a secular and democratic state instead of a caliphate. He was also accused of breaking their strict Sunni codes by marrying Nasser, who was a follower of Syria’s Druze sect, and naming his son after the Argentinian Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara.  “I have knocked at every door and followed every lead through official channels or personal connections, but I still have no evidence of what happened to him,” Nasser said. While still hoping to find him alive, she added that if he is found dead, she can at least find closure and honor his memory.  Islamic State kidnapped thousands of civilians, mainly activists, to hush any opposing voice as it prepared to impose its control in 2013, Human Rights Watch said in a report earlier this year. The watchdog said that many victims have vanished during IS expansion in 2014.   The Syrian Network for Human Rights has registered 8,648 cases of kidnapped people, including 319 children and 225 women. Local authorities suspect that many of the missing have likely been killed by IS and buried in graves across the mostly desert terrain of eastern Syria.   Raqqa Civil Council said it has found 28 mass graves since defeating IS’s physical caliphate in 2019. The sites allegedly contain about 6,300 bodies and belong mostly to people executed by IS. A member of The First Responders team in Raqqa seals a bag containing a body recovered from a mass graves. The exhuming operation use primitive means, as the team lacks technology to analyze the remains. (Photo: Osama al-Khalaf)Location and recoveryThe First Responders told VOA they have found some of the graves after receiving information from local residents about human remains. The team will begin exhuming the remains following an investigation and verification process.The First Responders was established in September 2018 by Raqqa Civil Council to exhume the mass graves and as an emergency response team. In 2020 alone, the team found five mass graves and exhumed about 300 bodies.   “Once a body is found, the team will record the basic information on the date and location of the recovery, sex, apparent cause of death and any personal belongings. The recovered human body will be assigned an ID number and preserved in another location,” said Osama al-Khalaf, a spokesperson for Raqqa Civil Council.  Al-Khalaf said that if a body is identified, it will be handed over to its family for a proper burial. For those not identified, local authorities have dedicated two graveyards outside Raqqa, he added.    “The work to exhume and identify the human remains is done by primitive tools like shovels, and they lack equipment to analyze the bodies’ DNA,” he said.  Local authorities say they need international support and technical assistance to properly identify victims and preserve the bodies as evidence of IS crimes. Families’ pleasActivists supporting relatives of the victims say the families are growing weary over officials’ reluctance to share with them any information on the fate of the discovered graves. They say families deserve to know if IS prisoners have been interrogated about the fate of the disappeared, especially as some of the detained foreign jihadists are repatriated to their countries while others flee northeast Syria.  Laila Kiki, executive director of the Syria Campaign and an advocate of the families, told VOA that local authorities are yet to establish a formal system to communicate with the victims’ families. She said the authorities needed to make information-sharing a priority.  “One of the main demands of our campaign is to create a mechanism of communication between the families and the authorities on the ground. Currently, there is no two-way communication between the families and local authorities in northeastern Syria,” said Kiki, adding that the international community also needed to step in to help in the process.    “It is important for the families to get the answers they need. And it is important for the international community and the U.S.-led coalition to take the demands of the families seriously and to interrogate IS fighters. IS has impacted every Syrian family, and we need answers from those involved,” she said.
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Increased security measures are not stopping cyber operatives from looking for ways to break into critical U.S. voting systems, according to officials charged with safeguarding the nation’s Nov. 3 presidential election. But exactly who is behind the ongoing efforts remains unclear. “Election systems, like IT systems generally, are being scanned, are being targeted, are being researched for vulnerabilities,” Matt Masterson, the Department of Homeland Security’s senior election security adviser, said Tuesday during a virtual event on election security hosted by Auburn University’s McCrary Institute. “What keeps me up at night is, is there something we’re not seeing? Is there something we’re not tracking?” he said.  FILE – Senior Cybersecurity Adviser at the Department of Homeland Security Matthew Masterson testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Oct. 22, 2019.U.S. officials have been preparing for new attacks on voting systems since 2016, when Russian-linked actors targeted all 50 states, managing to access voter registration databases in a handful of them. As part of that effort, officials have been working to install cyber intrusion detection sensors across the country, now allowing all states and more than 2,500 local jurisdictions to get real-time threat information. So far, the effort seems to be paying off.   “We haven’t seen cyberattacks to date this year on voter registration databases or on any systems involved in primary voting,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said last week at a virtual conference hosted by the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. “To our knowledge, no foreign government has attempted to tamper with U.S. vote counts.” Indirect threatsBut Masterson warned U.S. adversaries may still be looking for a way into critical systems to meddle with the upcoming presidential election. “While we have no evidence of direct targeting of election infrastructure by nation states, we know and continue to see reports of scanning,” he said. There are also concerns that cyber actors looking to interfere with Election Day voting will launch an indirect attack, perhaps using ransomware to take down systems that could create difficulties, even though they are not directly involved in the election process. “We see cascading impacts where internet is lost, connectivity to websites is lost,” Masterson said.  State and local officials are also being targeted, with cyber actors using spear-phishing and social engineering as ways to get passwords or other information that could give them access to critical systems. Disinformation campaigns Even so, some state election officials say thanks to the ongoing efforts of federal and state authorities, they are much better prepared than they were in 2016. “There is no doubt that we are in a tremendously better situation now, today, than we were during those elections,” said David Stafford, supervisor of elections for Escambia County, Florida. “We know who to call if something happens.” “Unfortunately, the threat has grown along with us,” he added. Some state officials remain uneasy about the possibility that where efforts to hack the U.S. election may fail, ongoing disinformation campaigns could succeed. “I do worry about in those last couple of days and on Election Day,” said Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar, who like Masterson and Stafford, spoke at the Auburn University event. “I keep telling people don’t click retweet,” she said. “It’s so easy to perpetuate. And of course, that’s what our foreign adversaries, that’s what our domestic adversaries, that’s what they want us to do to undermine confidence in the election.” 
 
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A spokesman for European Council President Charles Michel says a summit of European Union leaders scheduled for Thursday and Friday has been postponed, after Michel was forced to go into COVID-19 quarantine following contact with an infected security guard.  EU council spokesman Barend Leyts tweeted that Michel learned on Tuesday that a security officer, with whom he was in close contact early last week, tested positive for COVID-19. The @eucopresident has decided to postpone the special European Council meeting that was planned for 24 and 25 September to 1 and 2 October #EUCO— Barend Leyts (@BarendLeyts) September 22, 2020Leyts said the EU council president is tested regularly, and as recently as Monday tested negative for COVID-19. But Michel plans to follow Belgium’s COVID-19 regulations and is going into isolation. The EU is headquartered in Brussels. The summit, now scheduled for Oct. 1-2, will focus on a variety of issues ranging from Brexit negotiations, to climate change, to the tensions between Greece and Turkey over energy rights on the eastern Mediterranean island nation of Cyprus. Final approval for sanctions against Belarus regarding the crackdown following the country’s contested election last month is also set to be a focus. Michel, a former Belgian prime minister, spent much of the past week in shuttle diplomacy over the Turkey issue, including trips to Cyprus, the Greek island of Lesbos and Athens. 
 
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The woman accused of sending a ricin-laced letter to U.S. President Donald Trump will appear in court Tuesday, according to law enforcement officials. Pascale Ferrier, 53, of Quebec was arrested by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials Sunday at the Peace Bridge, which connects Buffalo, a city in New York state, with Fort Erie in Ontario, Canada, according to U.S. court documents. The letter addressed to Trump was intercepted at a facility that processes mail addressed to the president. It tested positive for ricin, the AP reported. FILE – Pascale Ferrier appears in a jail booking photograph taken after her arrest by the Mission Police Department in Mission, Texas, March 13, 2019.Ferrier is also suspected of sending ricin-filled letters to police in Texas, according to a spokesman for the Royal Canadian Mount Police. “We believe a total of six letters were sent: one to the White House and five to Texas,” Cpl. Charles Poirier, of the RCMP’s Quebec division, told CBC News. This was not her first brush with authorities, according to an AP report. In March 2019, she was arrested in Mission, Texas, for having a fake driver’s license and possessing an unlicensed gun, according to the CBC.  The charges were dismissed, but she did spend 20 days in jail, which is when authorities discovered she had overstayed her visa, the CBC reported. She was then deported back to Canada. Ricin, a poison found naturally in castor beans, is deadly, with as little as 500 micrograms being lethal. There is no antidote. Ferrier was expected to make her first court appearance Tuesday afternoon in Buffalo. 
 
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Saudi Arabia, the most powerful Arab nation and home to Islam’s holiest sites, has made its official position on the region’s longest-running conflict clear: Full ties between the kingdom and Israel can only happen when peace is reached with the Palestinians.
Yet state-backed Saudi media and clerics are signaling change is already underway with Israel — something that can only happen under the directives of the country’s powerful heir, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
The divergent messages on the possibility of Saudi ties with Israel reflect what analysts and insiders say is a schism between how the 35-year-old prince and his 84-year-old father, King Salman, view national interests.  
“It’s no secret there’s a generational conflict,” said New York-based Rabbi Marc Schneier, who serves as an advisor to Bahrain’s king and has held talks in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries to promote stronger ties with Jews and Israel.  
Gulf capitals have been increasingly looking to Israel as an ally to defend against common rival Iran amid quiet concerns about the direction of U.S. foreign policy and the uncertainty around the upcoming presidential election. But it’s not only countering Iran that’s brought Israel and Arab states closer in recent years.  
The rabbi said the former Saudi ambassador to the U.S., Prince Khalid bin Salman, told him that the top priority of his brother, the crown prince, is reforming the Saudi economy.
“He said these exact words: ‘We will not be able to succeed without Israel.’ So for the Saudis, it’s not a question of ‘if,’ it’s a question of ‘when.’ And there’s no doubt that they will establish relations with Israel,” Schneier said.
Prominent Saudi royal, Prince Turki al-Faisal, insists “any talk of a rift between the king and the crown prince is mere speculation.”
“We’ve seen none of that,” said the prince, who served for years as head of intelligence and briefly as ambassador to the U.S.  
Analysts and observers say Saudi Arabia is unlikely to formalize ties with Israel as long as King Salman wields power. While the king has handed off day-to-day control of Saudi affairs to his son, he has stepped in on occasion to intervene and even push back with statements in support of the Palestinians.  
In a phone call with President Donald Trump on Sept. 6, King Salman repeated his commitment to the Arab Peace Initiative, according to the state-run Saudi Press Agency. The initiative offers Israel normal ties with Arab states in return for Palestinian statehood on territory Israel captured in 1967 — a deal that starkly contradicts the Trump administration’s Middle East peace plan.
Still, the crown prince has bucked tradition with an unprecedented assertiveness. Prince Mohammed is also eager to reset ties with the U.S. in the aftermath of the killing of Saudi critic Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.
When the White House announced last month the United Arab Emirates and Israel agreed to establish full diplomatic ties — a move matched by Bahrain  weeks later — Saudi Arabia refrained from criticizing the deal or hosting summits condemning the decision, despite Palestinian requests to do so.
The Palestinians have slammed the agreements as a “betrayal of Jerusalem, Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Palestinian cause,” but government-controlled Saudi media hailed them as historic and good for regional peace.
The kingdom also approved the use of Saudi airspace for Israeli flights to the UAE, a decision announced the day after Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, met with Prince Mohammed in Riyadh. Kushner has been pushing Arab states to normalize ties with Israel.
Prince Mohammed was quoted in The Atlantic  during his most recent visit to the U.S. in April 2018 saying Israel is a big economy and “there are a lot of interests we share with Israel.” He said Palestinians and Israelis have the right to their own land, before adding there has to be a peace agreement to assure stability and to have normal relations.
His comments were interpreted as support for the eventual establishment of full ties between the kingdom and Israel, which would annihilate what’s left of the Arab consensus that recognition of Israel can only come after the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Most telling, however, was the Sept. 11 announcement that the tiny-island nation of Bahrain was establishing ties with Israel. Analysts say the move could not have happened without Saudi approval.
It strongly suggested Saudi Arabia is open to the idea of formal ties with Israel, said Hussein Ibish, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington.
“It tells me they are willing to look at this themselves in the future, possibly,” he said. “There is a sense that this might be a very good move for Saudi Arabia, but they don’t want it to be an expression of Saudi weakness. They want to make sure it’s an expression of or a contributor to Saudi strength.”
Prince Turki says Arab states should demand a high price for normalizing ties with Israel. He said Israel remains “the stumbling block in all of these efforts.”
“My view is that if you take a sounding now of Saudi positions on Palestine … you see more than 90% of the population as supporting the official position of Saudi Arabia that there must be a Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital,” Prince Turki told The Associated Press.
Raghida Dergham, a longtime Arab columnist and co-chair with Prince Turki of the Beirut Institute Summit in Abu Dhabi, said younger generations in the Middle East want normality rather than a confiscation of ambitions and dreams.  
“They want solutions not a perpetuation of rejection,” said Dergham, whose Beirut Institute e-policy circles have tackled questions about the future of the region and its youth.  
When the UAE-Israel deal was announced in August, the top trending hashtag on Twitter in Saudi Arabia was against normalization with Israel. Still, public criticism in Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain has largely been muted, in part because these governments suppress free speech.
“It is very hard to get accurate data, even when polling people,” said Yasmine Farouk, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.  
Farouk said public opinion on Israel in Saudi Arabia is diverse and complex, with opinions varying among different age groups and among liberals and conservatives. She said there is an effort to prepare the Saudi public for change and to shape public debate around Israel.  
As Saudi Arabia prepares to mark its 90th National Day on Wednesday, clerics across the country were directed to deliver sermons about the importance of obeying the ruler to preserve unity and peace.  
Earlier this month, the imam of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Sheikh Abdul Rahman al-Sudais, delivered another state-backed sermon on the importance of dialogue in international relations and kindness to non-Muslims, specifically mentioning Jews.  
He concluded by saying the Palestinian cause must not be forgotten, but his words caused a stir on social media, with many seeing the remarks as further evidence of the groundwork being laid for Saudi-Israeli ties.
The English-language Saudi daily, Arab News, which has been featuring op-eds by rabbis, changed its social media banner on Twitter this past Friday to say “Shana Tova,” the Jewish New Year greeting. 
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Storm surge and rainfall combined Tuesday to bring more flooding along the Texas coast after Tropical Storm Beta made landfall, threatening areas that have already seen their share of damaging weather during a busy hurricane season.
The storm made landfall late Monday just north of Port O’Connor, Texas. Early Tuesday, Beta was 35 miles (56 kilometers) north northwest of the city with maximum winds of 40 mph (64 kph), the U.S. National Hurricane Center said. The storm was moving toward the northwest near 3 mph (4 kilometers) and is expected to stall inland over Texas.
“We currently have both storm surge and rainfall going on right now,” said National Weather Service meteorologist Amaryllis Cotto in Galveston, Texas.
Cotto said 6-12 inches (15-30 centimeters) of rain has fallen in the area, with isolated amounts of up to 18 inches (45 centimeters). Dangerous flash flooding is expected through Wednesday, Cotto said.
Beta was the ninth named storm that made landfall in the continental U.S. this year. That tied a record set in 1916, according to Colorado State University hurricane researcher Phil Klotzbach. It also was the first time a Greek letter named storm made landfall in the continental U.S.
Forecasters ran out of traditional storm names on Friday, forcing the use of the Greek alphabet for only the second time since the 1950s.
Beta will move inland over southeastern Texas through Wednesday and then over Louisiana and Mississippi on Wednesday night through Friday, and the biggest unknown from Beta was how much rainfall it could produce. Beta was expected to weaken into a depression, but flash flooding was possible in Arkansas and Mississippi as the system moves farther inland.
Earlier predictions of up to 20 inches (51 centimeters) in some areas were downgraded Monday to up to 15 inches (38 centimeters).
Forecasters and officials reassured residents Beta was not expected to be another Hurricane Harvey or Tropical Storm Imelda. Harvey in 2017 dumped more than 50 inches (127 centimeters) of rain on Houston, causing $125 billion in damage in Texas. Imelda, which hit Southeast Texas last year, was one of the wettest cyclones on record.
Storm surge up to 4 feet (1.2 meters) was forecast from Port Aransas to Sabine Pass in Texas. In Galveston, an island city southeast of Houston, there was already some street flooding Monday from rising tides and part of a popular fishing pier collapsed due to strong waves.
Farther south on the Texas coast, Maria Serrano Culpepper along with her two daughters and dogs left their home in Magnolia Beach near Matagorda Bay on Sunday night.  
Culpepper said she didn’t want to be trapped in her home, three blocks from the beach, with wind, rain and possibly no electricity. She and her family evacuated to a friend’s home in nearby Victoria.  
Culpepper said her home should be fine as it’s on stilts 13 feet (4 meters) off the ground and was built to withstand strong storms.
“I’m feeling OK now. I had two nights without sleeping because I was worried about (Beta) being a Category 1 hurricane. I calmed down when the storm lost power,” said Culpepper, who works as an engineer at a nearby chemical plant.  
On Monday, Gov. Greg Abbott issued a disaster declaration for 29 Texas counties ahead of Beta’s arrival.  
Beta is forecast to dump heavy rain on the southwestern corner of Louisiana three weeks after the same area got pounded by Hurricane Laura. The rainfall and storm surge prompted Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards to declare a state of emergency.
In Lake Charles, Mayor Nic Hunter worried about Beta’s rainfall could set back efforts in his Louisiana community to recover after Laura, which damaged about 95% of the city’s 30,000 structures. Hunter said the worry of another storm was “an emotional and mental toll for a lot of our citizens.”
Parts of the Alabama coast and Florida Panhandle were still reeling from Hurricane Sally, which roared ashore Wednesday, causing at least two deaths. Two Boston-based disaster modeling firms figured Sally caused about $2 billion in privately insured losses from wind and storm surge. Karen Clark & Company estimated losses at $2 billion, while AIR Worldwide said they were between $1 and $3 billion. The estimates don’t include uninsured losses, the National Flood Insurance Program claims or damage to offshore property, like oil rigs.
Hurricane Teddy was about 295 miles (475 kilometers) northeast of Bermuda Monday night as it heads toward Nova Scotia. It had maximum sustained winds of 100 mph (160 kph) while moving north at 25 mph (40 kph) and away from the wealthy British territory, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami. It was expected to weaken and become a strong post-tropical cyclone before reaching Nova Scotia on Wednesday.  
The government closed all air and sea ports, schools and government offices for the second time in a week. Hurricane Paulette made landfall in Bermuda on Sept. 14, knocking down trees and leaving thousands without power.
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