Author: CensorBiz

There will be more than 7,000 candidates contesting Iran’s parliamentary elections — less than half of those who applied to stand in the nationwide vote Friday.The candidates are mostly conservatives and hard-liners who exhibit absolute loyalty to the country’s supreme leader, but there will be a smattering of lesser-known reformists and moderates who support engagement with the West.The Guardians Council, which vets all candidates, has provoked controversy by disqualifying about 9,000 of the 16,000 people who registered to run, including 90 current lawmakers, according to the Interior Ministry.The mass disqualifications, targeting reformist and moderate candidates, is the most since the 1979 Islamic Revolution that ushered in a theocratic system.Many people frustrated by the poor economic situation in the country and the lack of choice in the elections have said they will boycott the elections in a show of displeasure toward the government.Below are some of the most prominent figures running, the ones who are not, and the ones who were disqualified.RunningA man holds a poster of Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf one of parliamentary candidate in Tehran, Iran, Feb. 18, 2020.Mohammad Baqer QalibafThe conservative former mayor of Tehran unsuccessfully ran for the presidency three times. If he wins, the former police chief and air force commander within the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) is seen as a prime candidate to become the next parliament speaker. As mayor, he was accused of incompetence and corruption.Mostafa MirsalimMirsalim, a conservative, is a former culture minister whose 1994-97 tenure was marked with increased restrictions and censorship. He has criticized President Hassan Rohani’s outreach to the West as ineffectual, saying the result has been new restrictions on Iran and continued sanctions against the country. The French-educated Mirsalim has taught mechanical engineering at Tehran’s Amir Kabir University.Masud PezeshkianHe is among the few reformist lawmakers permitted to run for reelection. Pezeshkian, a former health minister, is a reformist lawmaker from the mainly ethnic Azeri-populated city of Tabriz. The deputy parliament speaker, he is expected to battle with Qalibaf for the leadership of the legislature.Not contestingIranian parliament speaker Ali Larijani attends a news conference at the Iranian embassy in Beirut’s southern suburbs, as a picture of late Iran’s Quds Force top commander Qassem Soleimani is seen in the background, Feb. 17, 2020.Ali LarijaniIran’s powerful parliamentary speaker, Ali Larijani, decided not to contest the elections. The conservative Larijani has been speaker since 2008. Larijani’s brothers also hold key posts in the country. Ayatollah Sadeq Amoli Larijani is the head of the country’s judiciary and Mohammad Javad Larijani heads the judiciary’s Human Rights Council. There has been speculation that Larijani intends to run for president in 2021.Mohammad Reza ArefAref served as vice president under reformist President Mohammad Khatami. In the 2013 presidential election he withdrew from the race to increase President Hassan Rouhani’s chances of winning. In the 2016 parliamentary elections, Aref won his seat in Tehran. He has headed the reformist faction in parliament.Saeed JaliliJalili was Iran’s former top nuclear negotiator under President Mahmud Ahmadinejad. An ultra-hard-liner, he is said to be loyal to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei and his public remarks closely echo the country’s top leader. In the 2013 presidential election he was known as the establishment’s candidate of choice.Barred from runningFILE – Ali Motahari, who has been barred as a candidate in the parliamentary elections, attended a campaign gathering of candidates mainly close to the reformist camp, in Tehran, Feb. 23, 2016.Ali MotahariMotahari, a moderate, is one of the very few insiders in the Islamic republic who openly criticizes the system. Representing Tehran, he has criticized the house arrest of opposition figures Mir Hossein Musavi; Musavi’s wife, Zahra Rahnavard; and reformist cleric Mehdi Karrubi. Motahari has also suggested he could run for president in 2021.Mahmud SadeghiSadeghi was an obscure legal expert until his election to parliament in 2016 as one of moderates allied with Rouhani. An outspoken lawmaker, Sadeghi has been an irritant to the conservative establishment ever since. He has aired defiant criticism of state repression and censorship.Shahindokht MolaverdiMolaverdi, a special assistant to Rouhani on citizen’s rights, previously served as vice president on women’s affairs. She has expressed commitment to gender equality and angered hard-liners for her efforts to promote women’s rights.
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Las Vegas’ popular strip, home to hotels and casinos, is crowded with tourists and crowd-pleasing sites. VOA’s Carolyn Presutti, in Nevada to cover the state’s caucuses Saturday, shares some of the views.
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It’s already being called a humanitarian catastrophe, and analysts say the fighting in Idlib, Syria, is moving closer to more heavily populated areas. While international aid organizations call for an immediate cease-fire, VOA’s Heather Murdock reports from Manbij that local aid groups say an end to fighting will not even begin to quell this disaster.
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Former national security adviser John Bolton on Wednesday denounced the House’s impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump as “grossly partisan” and said his testimony would not have changed Trump’s acquittal in the Senate, as he continued to stay quiet on the details of a yet-to-be-released book.In his second public discussion this week, Bolton was on stage at Vanderbilt University with former national security adviser under President Barack Obama, Susan Rice, who questioned Bolton’s refusal to discuss more details while his book undergoes screening for possible classified national security details by the Trump administration. Bolton was likewise quiet on specifics from the book during a Monday speaking engagement at Duke University.Book due next monthBolton plans to publish the book next month detailing his time in the White House, including criticism of Trump actions such as his decision to withhold military assistance while seeking a political favor from Ukraine. He said he believes the book doesn’t contain classified information.Bolton contended that the House “committed impeachment malpractice,” drawing some grumbling from the audience, saying “the process drove Republicans who might have voted for impeachment away because it was so partisan.” He also said he didn’t expect the Senate to vote against having him testify.”People can argue about what I should have said and what I should have done,” Bolton said. “I would bet you a dollar right here and now, my testimony would have made no difference to the ultimate outcome.”In leaked passages from the book’s manuscript, Bolton says Trump told him he was conditioning the release of military aid to Ukraine on whether its government would help investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son.Rice said she also underwent a White House pre-clearance process for her own book. She said nothing caused her “to refuse to share information with Congress or the public that I thought was of national import.””I can’t imagine withholding my testimony, with or without a subpoena,” Rice said. “I also can’t imagine, frankly, in the absence of being able to provide that information directly to Congress, not having exercised my First Amendment right to speak publicly at a time when my testimony or my experience would be relevant.””Spill his guts”For anyone saying he should just “spill his guts” on what he knows, Bolton cited the “implied threat of criminal prosecution” if what he shares is determined to be classified information. Asked if he would have testified under a House subpoena, Bolton again cited the review process.”I’m not here to speculate on that with the pre-publication review process under way,” Bolton said, drawing some laughs from the audience. “Laugh all you want. This is the judgment of my counsel, somebody I worked with 35 years ago, 30 years ago at the Department of Justice.”House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff have put off — but not ruled out — a subpoena for Bolton, who refused to participate in the House impeachment inquiry but later said he would testify in the Senate trial.
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Former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg was a major target of his Democratic rivals in his first debate Wednesday in Las Vegas, Nevada. Bloomberg has already had a major impact on the race by spending hundreds of millions of dollars on TV ads and has shot into second place in some national public opinion polls behind Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. Bloomberg now finds himself in a crowd of moderates all trying to be the main alternative to Sanders, a self-described Democratic Socialist who has strong support from the progressive wing of the party. VOA National Correspondent Jim Malone has more from Washington.
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A former Russian police officer told a court his superior ordered him to plant drugs on investigative journalist Ivan Golunov, whose arrest last summer sparked outrage.Denis Konovalov, who was fired in connection with his arrest on fabricating drug charges against Golunov, admitted he framed the journalist but said he did so at the behest of Igor Lyakhovets, who is also on trial.Aleksei Kovrizhkin, Lyazovets’ lawyer, said his client is innocent and that prosecutors are pressuring Konovalov.“Judging by his look, he is very despondent. I don’t know what path they found to him, but he is broken,” Kovrizhkin told Open Media.Lyazovets claims he was on vacation when Golunov was arrested, but said his subordinates consulted with him by phone about the case.FILE – Russian investigative journalist Ivan Golunov greets colleagues and supporters as he leaves an Investigative Committee building in Moscow, Russia, June 11, 2019.Golunov was arrested on June 6 in Moscow on charges of attempting to sell a large amount of illegal drugs just as he was preparing to publish an investigation about corruption in the nation’s funeral industry.The fabricated arrest quickly unraveled after police posted photos of drug paraphernalia supposedly from inside Golunov’s home.Journalists and friends who had been to Golunov’s residence quickly recognized the photos were fake and began staging pickets.Golunov was released from house arrest on June 11 after the country’s interior minister announced that criminal charges against him would be dropped, and a day before his supporters had planned a protest. 
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Did an artificial-intelligence system beat human doctors in warning the world of a severe coronavirus outbreak in China?In a narrow sense, yes. But what the humans lacked in sheer speed, they more than made up in finesse.Early warnings of disease outbreaks can help people and governments save lives. In the final days of 2019, an AI system in Boston sent out the first global alert about a new viral outbreak in China. But it took human intelligence to recognize the significance of the outbreak and then awaken response from the public health community.What’s more, the mere mortals produced a similar alert only a half-hour behind the AI systems.For now, AI-powered disease-alert systems can still resemble car alarms — easily triggered and sometimes ignored. A network of medical experts and sleuths must still do the hard work of sifting through rumors to piece together the fuller picture. It’s difficult to say what future AI systems, powered by ever larger datasets on outbreaks, may be able to accomplish.The first public alert outside China about the novel coronavirus came on Dec. 30 from the automated HealthMap system at Boston Children’s Hospital. At 11:12 p.m. local time, HealthMap sent an alert about unidentified pneumonia cases in the Chinese city of Wuhan. The system, which scans online news and social media reports, ranked the alert’s seriousness as only 3 out of 5. It took days for HealthMap researchers to recognize its importance.Four hours before the HealthMap notice, New York epidemiologist Marjorie Pollack had already started working on her own public alert, spurred by a growing sense of dread after reading a personal email she received that evening.“This is being passed around the internet here,” wrote her contact, who linked to a post on the Chinese social media forum Pincong. The post discussed a Wuhan health agency notice and read in part: “Unexplained pneumonia???”Pollack, deputy editor of the volunteer-led Program for Monitoring Emerging Diseases, known as ProMed, quickly mobilized a team to look into it. ProMed’s more detailed report went out about 30 minutes after the terse HealthMap alert.Early warning systems that scan social media, online news articles and government reports for signs of infectious disease outbreaks help inform global agencies such as the World Health Organization — giving international experts a head start when local bureaucratic hurdles and language barriers might otherwise get in the way.Some systems, including ProMed, rely on human expertise. Others are partly or completely automated.And rather than competing with one another, they are often complementary — HealthMap is intertwined with ProMed and helps run its online infrastructure.“These tools can help hold feet to the fire for government agencies,” said John Brownstein, who runs the HealthMap system as chief innovation officer at Boston Children’s Hospital. “It forces people to be more open.”The last 48 hours of 2019 were a critical time for understanding the new virus and its significance. Earlier on Dec. 30, Wuhan Central Hospital doctor Li Wenliang warned his former classmates about the virus in a social media group — a move that led local authorities to summon him for questioning several hours later.Li, who died Feb. 7 after contracting the virus, told The New York Times that it would have been better if officials had disclosed information about the epidemic earlier. “There should be more openness and transparency,” he said.ProMed reports are often incorporated into other outbreak warning systems. including those run by the World Health Organization, the Canadian government and the Toronto startup BlueDot. WHO also pools data from HealthMap and other sources.Computer systems that scan online reports for information about disease outbreaks rely on natural language processing, the same branch of artificial intelligence that helps answer questions posed to a search engine or digital voice assistant.But the algorithms can only be as effective as the data they are scouring, said Nita Madhav, CEO of San Francisco-based disease monitoring firm Metabiota, which first notified its clients about the outbreak in early January.Madhav said that inconsistency in how different agencies report medical data can stymie algorithms. The text-scanning programs extract keywords from online text, but may fumble when organizations variously report new virus cases, cumulative virus cases, or new cases in a given time interval. The potential for confusion means there’s almost always still a person involved in reviewing the data.“There’s still a bit of human in the loop,” Madhav said.Andrew Beam, a Harvard University epidemiologist, said that scanning online reports for key words can help reveal trends, but the accuracy depends on the quality of the data. He also notes that these techniques aren’t so novel.“There is an art to intelligently scraping web sites,” Beam said. “But it’s also Google’s core technology since the 1990s.”Google itself started its own Flu Trends service to detect outbreaks in 2008 by looking for patterns in search queries about flu symptoms. Experts criticized it for overestimating flu prevalence. Google shut down the website in 2015 and handed its technology to nonprofit organizations such as HealthMap to use Google data to build their own models.Google is now working with Brownstein’s team on a similar web-based approach for tracking the geographical spread of tick-borne Lyme disease.Scientists are also using big data to model possible routes of early disease transmission.In early January, Isaac Bogoch, an infectious disease physician and researcher at Toronto General Hospital, analyzed commercial flight data with BlueDot founder Kamran Khan to see which cities outside mainland China were most connected to Wuhan.Wuhan stopped outbound commercial air travel in late January — but not before an estimated 5 million people had fled the city, as the Wuhan mayor later told reporters.“We showed that the highest volume of flights from Wuhan were to Thailand, Japan, and Hong Kong,” Bogoch said. “Lo and behold, a few days later we started to see cases pop up in these places.”In 2016, the researchers used a similar approach to predict the spread of the Zika virus from Brazil to southern Florida.Now that many governments have launched aggressive measures to curb disease transmission, it’s harder to build algorithms to predict what’s next, Bogoch said.Artificial intelligence systems depend on vast amounts of prior data to train computers how to interpret new facts. But there are no close parallels to the way China is enforcing quarantine zones that impact hundreds of millions of people. 
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DESSOURCES, HAITI – Farmhand Celavi Belor has lost so much weight over the past year his clothes hang limply off his angular frame.“Sometimes I go two or three days without eating,” the 41-year-old said as he looked up from hoeing a rocky field in the mountains of northwestern Haiti.Farmhand Celavi Belor, 41, a father of five children, pauses from work in Jean-Rabel, Haiti, Jan. 31, 2020.The only food Belor, his wife and five children had to eat the day before was cornmeal, and now the only food left in their mud shack is a shriveled green chili and some stale beans.“My biggest worry is one day I just won’t be able to get up anymore,” he said, his eyes sunken and unfocused.While Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas, has long had one of the world’s highest levels of food insecurity, drought has ravaged harvests for the last few years, worsening food shortages and raising prices.The northwest, one of the Caribbean nation’s most remote and impoverished regions, has suffered the most.A collapse in the gourde currency has put imported food, which supplies more than half the country’s needs, out of reach for many Haitians like Belor, who earns just $0.40 a day when he can find the work.Compounding that, anti-government protests sparked by anger over alleged corruption shuttered businesses and public institutions for three months last fall and disrupted the transportation of goods, including food aid.By further stoking inflation and squeezing incomes, the peyi lock, as the standstill was known in Creole, has tipped Haiti into a new hunger crisis.Third of Haitians need foodOne in three Haitians, about 3.7 million people, needs urgent food assistance, up from 2.6 million people at the end of 2018, the United Nations said in December. Haiti now ranks 111 out of 117 countries on the Global Hunger Index, in the company mostly of the poorest sub-Saharan African countries.If immediate action is not taken, by next month 1.2 million people will only be able to eat one meal every other day in the Caribbean nation, the United Nations has warned.Frena Remorin, 30, (seated) cooks bananas in the improvised kitchen in the yard of her house in Jean-Rabel, Haiti, Jan. 31, 2020.“No one has eaten yet today but if I feed my kids too early in the day they are hungry by night and cannot sleep,” said Frena Remorin, 30, who lives down the road from Belor in the district of Dessources.Sitting on a stool peeling manioc and bananas to boil over a charcoal fire, Remorin is struggling to find work washing clothes because few people have the money to spend.“I don’t have enough money now for two meals a day,” she said.Political instabilityDonors who had hoped Haiti could rebuild as a successful nation after the country’s devastating 2010 quake have been frustrated by the political instability and bad governance hampering development efforts.With no authorized government or budget, Haiti now is not allowed to access certain funds from international organizations earmarked for it, further hindering its ability to respond to the food crisis. Foreign aid to Haiti’s public coffers, which leapt after 2010, halved last year.FILE – Haiti’s President Jovenel Moise speaks with Reuters, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Nov. 15, 2019.President Jovenel Moise is struggling to negotiate a power-sharing agreement to break the political gridlock. In the meantime, local authorities make do.“This is the first time we’ve had it this bad,” said Dessources district leader Jean Jacques Lebeau, 60, who receives $45 per month from the central government to help around 12,000 households.Self-sufficientIt wasn’t always like this. Haiti was largely food self-sufficient until the 1980s, when at the encouragement of the United States the country started loosening restrictions on crop imports and lowered tariffs, then imported surplus U.S. crops, a decision that put Haitian farmers out of business and contributed to investment tailing off.Add to this the effects of climate change: Haiti regularly tops the ranks of most vulnerable nations. This is because it is part of an island in the Caribbean, where hurricanes are getting stronger, but also because it has little infrastructure or resilience.The real impact of the crisis will show in six months or so as malnutrition sets in, experts like Cédric Piriou, Haiti Country Director of Action Against Hunger, say.Infant mortality already appears to be rising.“If we had four children suffering malnutrition die before, now these last few months it has been six to eight,” said Margareth Narcisse, 57, a doctor on the medical board of St Damien Pediatric’s Hospital in Port-au-Prince, the capital city.The impoverished slums of the capital are, together with the Northwest, the areas worst affected by hunger.Dorvil Chiloveson, 3, swollen with edema, is watched over by his mother Linda Julien, 20, in the malnutrition ward at St. Damien Pediatric Hospital in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Jan. 29, 2020.In the malnutrition ward, 3-year-old Dorvil Chiloveson lies on his side in a cot. He is suffering from severe protein malnutrition, known as kwashiorkor: his tiny body is swollen with edema, with patches of skin discolored and showing raw flesh.“We couldn’t go sell our harvest during peyi lock so we lost it,” said his grandmother Marise Rose Dor, 41, who lives on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince.After they ate their crop, all they could afford was rice with bananas from the garden. Instead of buying drinking water, they used a local spring they know is likely to be contaminated because of the absence of a sewage system in Haiti.Many families told Reuters they could no longer afford tablets to clean the water or charcoal to boil it.Helicopter aidThe U.N. World Food Program (WFP), which alongside other international organizations assists Haiti’s most needy, has scaled up operations in response to the crisis, distributing more food, and cash. Given the resurgence of gang violence plaguing the roads, it has also arranged for a helicopter to transport staff, other humanitarian workers and light cargo.The WFP estimated in November it needed $72 million to fund this emergency assistance to 700,000 Haitians for eight months.On Wednesday it said it had raised only $19 million so far.“Why should we bail the authorities out if they helped create this crisis?” one Haiti-based European diplomat asked, adding that politicians were not being held accountable. “How do we change that so that they don’t hurt people when they are going hungry?” Humanitarian workers — and Haitians — beg the world not to turn a blind eye to the immediate suffering.In Dessources, Belor, who cannot afford schooling in a country where about 80% of education is private, says his children are pale and listless.In the past, at least they could rely on the mango and breadfruit trees if they could not afford to buy food. But thanks to the drought, these trees are no longer producing.Belor no longer even worships at his Baptist church because he cannot afford the clothes he feels he needs to attend.“I live without hope,” he said.
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South Korea confirmed its first death from the new coronavirus, local media reported Thursday, as the number of infections in the country tripled within two days.The Korea Center for Disease Control and Prevention said in a statement the exact cause of death is being investigated. The report came as the country grapples with the outbreak and its economic impact.South Korea reported 53 new coronavirus infections Thursday, bringing the total number of cases in the country to 104.South Korean authorities have warned the outbreak is entering a “new phase” and is now spreading locally, even among people who have no links to China, where the virus originated.The virus, which causes a pneumonialike illness recently named COVID-19, has killed more than 2,100 people and infected more than 75,000 worldwide. Almost all the infections have been in China.People suspected of being infected with the new coronavirus wait to receive tests at a medical center in Daegu, South Korea, Feb. 20, 2020. The mayor of Daegu urged its 2.5 million people Thursday to refrain from going outside as cases spike.Spreading locallyAlmost all of the latest South Korean coronavirus infections were in Daegu, the country’s fourth-largest city.Many were linked to a religious group called the Shincheonji Church of Jesus the Temple of the Tabernacle of the Testimony, which was founded in 1984 by Lee Man-hee, who is revered by his followers as a messiah.Daegu’s mayor has cautioned residents to stay inside their homes to prevent a further outbreak.There are fears that the new coronavirus “has spread deep within Korea undetected,” said an editorial in the Chosun Ilbo, a major South Korean newspaper.“Existing measures to deal with the outbreak are not working,” it continued.  A woman wearing a mask to prevent contracting the coronavirus rides on a subway in Seoul, South Korea, Feb. 20, 2020.Economic damageThe outbreak could have a major impact on South Korea’s economy, which was already experiencing lagging growth. Citing the virus scare, Moody’s Investor Service Monday cut its forecast for South Korea’s economic growth in 2020 to 1.9% from 2.1%.Moody’s also said China is now expected to experience 5.2% growth in 2020, down from an earlier estimate of 5.8%.Economic turmoil in China is acutely felt in South Korea, because Beijing is Seoul’s top trading partner. Some South Korean automakers, including Hyundai and Kia, temporarily halted or reduced production because of a shortage of parts from China, where many factories have closed.South Korean President Moon Jae-in said Tuesday that the situation is “more serious than we thought,” adding that “emergency steps” are needed to contain the economic fallout.US military on alertThe U.S. military, which has more than 28,000 troops in South Korea, has implemented precautionary measures to prevent the spread of the virus.The latest outbreak in Daegu, about a three-hour drive south of Seoul, is especially worrying as the United States has thousands of troops in the area.All nonessential travel to and from Daegu has been banned, and travel outside U.S. bases has been minimized, according to General Robert Abrams, the commander of U.S. Forces Korea.The U.S. military has also implemented a “mandatory self-quarantine” for any service members who visited the Daegu religious group, where many of the latest infections were reported.
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All eyes were on Michael Bloomberg Wednesday night, as six Democratic Party hopefuls took the debate stage in Las Vegas.  Mike O’Sullivan reports the billionaire newcomer to the presidential race quickly became a target, as did frontrunner Bernie Sanders.
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China announced Thursday that it would cut interest rates in a bid to boost the economy, as it battles the economic fallout of the new coronavirus outbreak.The reduction in the loan prime rate (LPR), one of the preferential rates commercial banks impose on their best customers and which serves as a reference for other lending rates, is the latest measure to help companies struggling through the epidemic.The one-year LPR was lowered to 4.05 percent from 4.15 percent, the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) said in a statement.The five-year LPR, on which many lenders base their mortgage rates, was also lowered to 4.75 percent from 4.8 percent.The LPR, released on the 20th day of every month, is based on rates of the central bank’s open market operations, especially medium-term lending facility rates.Coronavirus effectThe rate reduction comes as Beijing battles to control a virus epidemic that has infected more than 74,500 people in the country.The outbreak is threatening to put a dent in the global economy, with China paralyzed by vast quarantine measures and major firms such as iPhone maker Apple and mining giant BHP warning it could damage bottom lines.The central bank said earlier this month it would offer a 300 billion yuan ($43 billion) boost to help businesses involved in fighting the epidemic.More stimulus expectedJulian Evans-Pritchard of Capital Economics said the rate cut would “help companies weather the damage from the coronavirus at the margins.”But he said the ability of firms to postpone loan repayments and access loans on preferential terms would be more important in the short term.“We expect the People’s Bank to continue loosening monetary conditions in the coming weeks, especially given signs that the coronavirus disruptions have started to weigh on employment,” he said.“But rate cuts alone will provide limited relief to the millions of small private firms that are suffering the most from the epidemic and are poorly served by the formal banking (sector).”
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FBI Director Christopher Wray recently called violent extremism motivated by race or ethnicity as a “top-level priority … on the same footing as ISIS.”  And these extremist groups are using Islamic State tactics to recruit new members, often young, impressionable, alienated teenagers, according to a former member of a hate group. Mil Arcega reports.
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Roger Stone, a friend and confidant of President Donald Trump, is set to appear before a federal judge Thursday to be sentenced for lying to Congress, witness tampering and obstruction of justice stemming from the 2016 Russian election meddling probe. Prosecutors had recommended seven to nine years in prison. But Attorney General William Barr and other top Justice Department officials overruled their own prosecutors and recommended a lighter prison sentence. Three of the prosecutors withdrew from the case in protest and a fourth quit the Justice Department outright. But it is up to U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson to decide how long Stone will be locked up. Berman has refused to delay Stone’s sentencing but has said she could put off an order for Stone to begin his sentence while Stone’s lawyers pursue a request for a new trial.FILE – Donald Trump walks to the federal courthouse in Newark, N.J., with Roger Stone, who was then director of Trump’s presidential exploratory committee, Oct. 25, 1999, for the swearing-in of Trump’s sister as a federal judge.Complaint about juror That request came after Trump tweeted his belief last week that the foreperson on the Stone jury was “unambiguously” biased — an opinion he retweeted Tuesday after a commentator on Fox News also said Stone deserved a new trial. “Madam foreperson, your (sic) a lawyer, you have a duty, an affirmative obligation to reveal to us when we selected you the existence of these tweets in which you were so harshly negative about the president and the people who support him,” Trump said in his own tweet. “Pretty obvious he should get a new trial. I think almost any judge in the country would order a new trial. I’m not so sure about Judge Jackson, though,” he added. Trump’s public comments about the Stone case and his open criticism of a federal judge are at the center of allegations of political influence into what has historically been an independent Justice Department. Barr and the department recommended a lighter sentence after Trump complained in a tweet that a sentence in the range of seven to nine years would be “horrible” and “unfair.” Judges ‘concerned’A national association of federal judges was to hold an emergency meeting Wednesday, but it was canceled and there was no information available on rescheduling. U.S. District Judge Cynthia Rufe, president of the Federal Judges Association, said the judges were “concerned about the attacks on individual judges.”  Rufe declined to give more details but said the jurists “could not wait” until their spring meeting to discuss the matter. She said the Federal Judges Association had no interest in getting involved in the Stone case but did support Jackson. “We are supportive of any federal judge who does what is required,” she said. Former President Barack Obama appointed Jackson, and Trump has been notoriously critical of nearly every major decision and policy his predecessor made. Trump also complained last week about Jackson’s decision to place former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort in solitary confinement. FILE – Attorney General William Barr speaks at the National Sheriffs’ Association Winter Legislative and Technology Conference in Washington, Feb. 10, 2020.Trump congratulated Barr last week for “taking charge” of the Stone case. Both denied that Trump asked him to intervene. Barr is scheduled to appear before the House Judiciary Committee next month. Calls for Barr to resignMore than 2,000 former Justice Department officials have called on Barr to resign, saying his handling of the Stone case “openly and repeatedly flouted” the independence of the judicial branch. Barr told ABC News last week that Trump’s tweets made it “impossible” for him to do his job, saying he would not be “bullied or influenced by anybody, whether it’s Congress, a newspaper editorial board or the president.” Trump acknowledged that he had made Barr’s job “harder” but called him a man of “great integrity” who was up against people who “don’t want to see good things happen.” Mary Motta and Masood Farivar contributed to this report.
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A man in Florida is suing one of Latin America’s largest airlines, saying his 6-year-old son was sexually assaulted by an airline employee while traveling as an unaccompanied minor from Brazil to the U.S.The father filed the negligence lawsuit Monday against LATAM Airlines in federal court in Orlando, Florida.In a statement, a spokesman for LATAM said the company hadn’t received a summons related to the lawsuit. “However, it takes any allegation of this nature seriously and will fully cooperate with any resulting investigation,” the statement said.  In 2018, the boy’s mother put him on a LATAM flight from Belo Horizonte to Sao Paulo with the expectation that her son would then transfer to a Florida-bound flight, according to the lawsuit.The boy had his Brazilian and U.S. passports, as well as airline documents, in a plastic folder around his neck. At some point, a flight attendant removed the folder and placed the documents in the boy’s backpack. The boy was handed off to another LATAM employee when he landed in Sao Paulo, but the flight attendant neglected to tell the employee where the travel documents were, the lawsuit said.Because they couldn’t find the documents, Brazilian Federal Police refused to let the boy on the connecting flight. By the time the airline employee found the documents in the backpack, the Florida-bound flight had taken off, according to the lawsuit.The airline decided to put the boy up at a nearby hotel where four airline employees took turns supervising him over 15 hours. One of the employees — a man — sexually assaulted the boy, the lawsuit said.The lawsuit said the airline failed to train its employees, minimize risks and supervise its employees.”LATAM, and the airline industry generally, had actual knowledge of the risk to unaccompanied minor children during lengthy layovers, and that unaccompanied minors who are negligently cared for could result in assaults of children,” the lawsuit said.The Associated Press typically does not name people who say they have been sexually assaulted.A spokeswoman for the father’s attorney on Wednesday would not comment when asked whether law enforcement was notified.
 
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The Cabinet of South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir has endorsed his decision to return the country to a system of 10 states, with the addition of three administrative areas, ahead of Saturday’s deadline to form a transitional unity government.   Kiir bowed to pressure from opposition parties last weekend and scrapped a 32-state system he established unilaterally during South Sudan’s civil war. Kiir and opposition leader Riek Machar are now under international pressure to create a unity government by Saturday, after missing two previous deadlines.Government spokesperson Michael Makuei said that after Wednesday’s meeting, the Council of Ministers directed Justice Minister Paulino Wanawilla to revise language in the August 2018 peace deal to incorporate the 10-state proposal into the transitional constitution.“After being discussed, it was passed by the Cabinet and [they] directed the minister of justice to prepare it and tabled before the Cabinet, probably this afternoon, so that it is adopted by the Cabinet because there is no room for further extension,” Makuei told VOA’s South Sudan in Focus program.Makuei said President Kiir will likely sign the amended language into law on Friday.Manawa Peter Gatkuoth, deputy spokesman of the main opposition party SPLM-IO, said the party is not opposed to forming the unity government by the Feb. 22 deadline, but wants to see all provisions of the peace deal, including security arrangements, implemented before then.FILE – Workers are seen at an oil well at the Toma South oil field to Heglig, in Ruweng State, South Sudan, Aug. 25, 2018.“At least 90 percent of the outstanding issues, we handled them like the position of 10 states, which has been taken by the president. We welcomed it, and also we put our observation especially about Ruweng. This issue should be on the table,” Gatkuoth told South Sudan in Focus.Ruweng is one of three administrative areas proposed by President Kiir. It is also located in the oil-rich northern part of the country, which opposition and government forces fought to control during the country’s five-and-a-half year civil war.Makuei said everything should move forward quickly, noting most security mechanisms are in place.“There are VIP protection units, they are ready in Gorom and can be graduated even tomorrow or next [the day after] tomorrow and they will be deployed. They will be here in Juba to protect the VIPs. Secondly, the unified forces that are there, some of them are trained,” Makuei told reporters in Juba Wednesday.Makuei said establishment of the government will not be “held hostage for some provision of the agreement” which has yet to be completed. 
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A federal judge in Texas has dismissed Chinese tech giant Huawei’s lawsuit challenging a U.S. law that bars the government and its contractors from using Huawei equipment because of security concerns.The lawsuit, filed last March, sought to declare the law unconstitutional. Huawei argued the law singled out the company for punishment, denied it due process and amounted to a “death penalty.”But a court ruled Tuesday that the ban isn’t punitive and that the federal government has the right to take its business elsewhere.Huawei, China’s first global tech brand, is at the center of U.S.-Chinese tensions over technology competition and digital spying. The company has spent years trying to put to rest accusations that it facilitates Chinese spying and that it is controlled by the ruling Communist Party.The lawsuit was filed in Plano, Texas, the headquarters of Huawei’s U.S. operations. It was dismissed before going to trial. Experts had described Huawei’s challenge as a long shot, but said the company didn’t have many other options to challenge the law.Huawei said it was disappointed and will consider further legal options.The Trump administration has been aggressively lobbying Western allies to avoid Huawei’s equipment for next-generation, 5G cellular networks. Administration officials say Huawei can give the Chinese government backdoor access to data, allegations that the company rejects.U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has also spoken out against Huawei, including during a talk with reporters in Brussels on Monday, turning U.S. opposition to Huawei into a bipartisan effort.
 
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International Criminal Court judges on Wednesday rejected an appeal by an alleged Islamic extremist from Mali who argued that the charges against him were not serious enough to merit standing trial at the global court.
The decision clears the way for the trial of Al Hassan Ag Abdoul Aziz Ag Mohamed Ag Mahmoud to start later this year for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Timbuktu, including torture, rape and persecution.
Prosecutors allege Al Hassan was responsible for the torture and mistreatment of the people in the ancient Sahara Desert city from April 2012 until January 2013 while it was occupied and ruled by Islamic extremists.
Al Hassan allegedly was a key member of Ansar Dine, an Islamic extremist group with links to al-Qaida that held power in northern Mali at the time. Prosecutors say Ansar Dine imposed a brutal regime on Timbuktu residents including public floggings, amputations and forced marriages.
At a hearing last year, the court’s Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda told judges Al Hassan was the de facto chief of the Islamic police and “played an essential and undeniable role in the system of persecution established by the armed groups throughout the period of occupation of Timbuktu.”
His trial is scheduled to start July 14.
Set up in 2002, the ICC is a court of last resort established to prosecute grave crimes when local authorities cannot or will not take legal action.  
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