Author: CensorBiz

The family of a 12-year-old girl who was raped and murdered has welcomed the execution of two men convicted for the crime in Somalia’s northeastern Puntland region.The two men, Abdifatah Abdirahman Warsame, 24, and Abdishakur Mohamed Dige, 46, were executed Tuesday by firing squad in the town of Bosaso.  The execution of a third man, Abdisalam Abdirahman Warsame, 32, who is the brother of Abdifatah, was delayed for ten days.The father of Aisha Ilyas Aden said he was relieved the culprits have paid the price.“I’m feeling good,” says Ilyas Aden.Aden said the punishment will deter rape against Somali women.“There will be a strong lesson from this case,” he said. “Somali girls will be safer.”The girl was abducted near her home, gang raped and then brutally killed in the town of Galkayo in February 2019.The rape and murder of Aden sparked widespread public outcry and calls for justice. The hashtag #JusticeforAisha trended, while many chose to use her photo as their social media profiles.Authorities in Puntland arrested ten men in connection with the case.  Their trial became the first televised rape trial in Somalia and the first in which DNA was used to obtain a conviction.  Authorities said samples taken linked the three men to the murder and rape. The other seven were acquitted.What happened?Aden went missing on February 24, 2019 between 7 and 8 a.m., when her mother sent her to a market to do some shopping. She was kidnapped and ended up in the house of a neighbor. The neighbor, Abdishakur Mohamed Dige, lived in that house with his mother.The two other defendants were neighbors.One of the men executed Tuesday, Abdifatah Abdirahman Warsame, confessed to participating in the rape but denied involvement of her killing.He told the court that on the day of the kidnapping, Dige who took him inside his house and showed him Aisha, tied up in a room. He said he was convinced by Dige to participate in the rape.Warsame said that when he left the house, Aisha was still alive.  He said Dige later told him he had to kill the girl in order to avoid being identified.Early the next morning, Aden’s body was found near Dige’s home. The prosecution showed photos of the victim’s body badly tortured, bruised and mutilated.In May last year, the court convicted the three men for the crime, and sentenced them to death. In August last year, a higher court upheld the death sentence. The Puntland region’s leader Said Abdullahi Deni then signed off the execution.Warsame testified that his brother, Abdisalam, was not involved in the rape and killing of Aden. He identified another man he says participated in the gang rape.Aisha’s father who witnessed the execution of the men said he personally checked their pulse to make sure they were dead. He said the two men asked for his forgiveness before their execution.Human rights groups said the killing of Aisha was a “serious and horrific crime” but says Puntland needed to “credibly investigate and prosecute the crime” in honor of Aisha.“We called for justice at the time, but also raised concerns about provisions in Puntland’s sexual offenses act which include the death penalty,” Laetitia Bader, a senior researcher for Human Rights Watch. She said the death penalty is worrying in a context in which abuses of due process are frequent.“Even in the most established judicial systems, due process abuses occur, particularly in high-profile and contentious cases like this one,” she said. “So Puntland should be seeking to end its use of the death penalty, even if that is an unpopular move, not the contrary.”
…

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders won the New Hampshire Democratic primary Tuesday, as the race to be the party’s candidate to take on President Donald Trump in November starts to come into focus after months of battling among a wide group of challengers.Sanders captured 26% of the vote, edging out former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg who finished with 24%.Sanders called his performance a “great victory” before a cheering crowd in Manchester, and predicted Democrats would eventually come together in a vital effort to unseat Trump.”Let me say tonight this victory here is the beginning of the end of Donald Trump,” he said.  “No matter who wins [the nomination] – and we hope it is us – we are going to unite together and defeat the most dangerous president in the history of the country.”Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar turned in a surprising third-place performance with 20% of the vote, bouncing back from a poor showing in last week’s Iowa caucus.  A University of New Hampshire poll on Monday had her with just 7% support, though only half of respondents said they had made up their mind at that point.Klobuchar celebrated with her supporters Tuesday night, saying her campaign has “beaten the odds every step of the way.”Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., speaks during a campaign event at Exeter Town Hall, Monday, Feb. 10, 2020, in Exeter, N.H.”I can not wait to win the nomination. I can not wait to build a movement, and win with a movement of fired up Democrats, independents and moderate Republicans that see this election as we do,” she said.Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren placed fourth with 9% of the vote, followed by former Vice President Joe Biden at 8%.”Bernie Sanders winning a neighboring state, continuing to be really strong and having die hard, strong support, I think he’s a real victor,” Gibbs Knotts, a political science professor at the College of Charleston, told VOA.  “I think obviously with both Buttigieg and Klobuchar doing better than expectations, all three of those come out of New Hampshire with a lot of momentum.”The win for Sanders, following a strong performance in Iowa, could solidify him as the front-runner in the race, but he has two popular centrists close behind.  Many political analysts question whether a self-avowed democratic socialist like Sanders could unseat Trump, who has repeatedly lashed out at Sanders’ socialist policies, which include a Medicare-for-All universal health care program.Sanders and Buttigieg entered New Hampshire tied as the front-runners in the wake of last week’s muddled Iowa caucuses, in which Buttigieg narrowly won the most delegates while Sanders narrowly won the popular vote.Candidates will next focus on the western state of Nevada where they will hold a debate next week ahead of the February 22 caucuses there, and then on South Carolina and its February 29 primary.Biden, who finished a poor fourth in Iowa after being touted as the front-runner long before he declared his candidacy, left New Hampshire for South Carolina before the election results were in.Knotts said the South Carolina vote “cannot get here soon enough for Biden.””There’s some good news for Biden. Every poll he has been up in South Carolina,” Knotts told VOA. “He’s going to very friendly territory, he’s got the most endorsements, he’s got really strong support from the black community in South Carolina — that’s going to be over 60% of primary voters, likely. It’s such a contrast to these states that are much less diverse like Iowa and New Hampshire.”Biden expressed a sense of forward-looking confidence as he addressed his supporters at a rally Tuesday in Columbia, South Carolina, telling them, “We’re just getting started.””Tonight though, we just heard from the first two of 50 states, two of them,” he said. “Not all the nation. Not half the nation. Not a quarter of the nation, not 10 percent — two. Now where I come from, that’s the opening bell, not the closing bell. And the fight to end Donald Trump’s presidency is just beginning.”Warren also remained upbeat Tuesday despite another disappointing finish to start the nomination process.”This fight we’re in — the fight to save our democracy — is an uphill battle,” she said. “But our campaign is built for the long haul.”And highlighting an issue that many Democrats have said is among their biggest priorities when choosing a candidate, Warren said, “Our campaign is best positioned to beat Donald Trump in November, because we can unite our party.”The New Hampshire primary was much more competitive for the Democrats than in 2016 when Sanders won 60% of the vote.  But that race was essentially between him and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, while this time the field remains crowded.Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders speaks to the media at a polling station at the McDonough School on Election Day in the New Hampshire presidential primary election in Manchester, New Hampshire, U.S., February 11, 2020.It is getting a bit thinner after entrepreneur Andrew Yang, who was at the bottom of the pack Tuesday with 3%, announced he would be dropping out.  Colorado Senator Michael Bennet also ended his bid for the presidency Tuesday.More could leave after Super Tuesday on March 3 when 14 states vote.Knotts said Democrats may take a lesson from the Republican race in 2016, when a number of candidates opposed Trump, but in doing so split the vote among themselves and allowed Trump to claim the Republican nomination.”If there is an anti-Sanders vote, right now it’s Buttigieg and Klobuchar, at least in New Hampshire, getting a bulk of that,” he said.  “But if they continue to split it up with Warren and Biden, then Sanders is able to win between 20 and 30 percent in all these states, but in a five- or six-person race that can be enough to march toward the nomination.  I feel like Super Tuesday, given that it’s just three days after South Carolina, I think that’s going to be a day when it might turn down to a two- or three-person race.”A potential wild card in the Democratic race is former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.  He was not on the ballot in New Hampshire, preferring instead to concentrate his campaign on other states in the coming month where he is using his vast wealth to fund a huge media effort.  Bloomberg has become a recent target of Trump’s criticism — a sign that he is starting to draw attention in the crowded field.
…

In a decision officials say excludes children under 10 years of age, the Indonesian government announced Tuesday it was unwilling to bring home dozens of its citizens detained abroad on the suspicion of membership in the Islamic State (IS) terror group.The ruling brings uncertainty to the fate of some 689 Indonesian men, women and children stranded in countries like Syria, Turkey and Afghanistan after leaving their homeland to join Islamic State. Officials say they have not discussed if the decision will affect the detainees’ citizenship status.Mahfud MD, Indonesia’s coordinating minister for political, legal and security affairs, said the decision not to repatriate the former IS members was made during a meeting with President Joko Widodo, also known as Jokowi.  FILE – Indonesian Chief Security Minister Mohammad Mahfud MD gestures as he talks during an interview at his office in Jakarta, Indonesia, Dec. 26, 2019.At a press conference after the meeting with Jokowi, Mahfud said his government was concerned that the IS suspected members, if returned, will try to spread their radical ideology.“From the meeting, we decided that the government and the state must provide the feeling of security from terrorist threats and new terrorist viruses to the 267 million Indonesians,” he said. “With the repatriation of these FTF (foreign terrorist fighters), it will become a new virus that will bring uneasiness to the 267 million Indonesians.”Mahfud said he was uncertain how many minors were among the 689 Indonesians with IS ties.The CIA has provided information helping Jakarta officials identify 228 of the Indonesian citizens, with the rest to be investigated. For any minor identified to be younger than 10, the government will consider their return on a “case-by-case” basis.Beka Ulung Hapsara, a commissioner of the Indonesian National Commission on Human Rights, told VOA that the Indonesian government needed to consider international human rights laws in dealing with the former IS fighters and their families, particularly the children, who will be considered under the U.N.’s Convention on the Rights of the Child.“Indonesia is a member of the U.N. Human Rights Council. It is fitting for Indonesia to encourage U.N. Human Rights standards in treating ex-ISIS Indonesians,” said Beka, using another acronym for Islamic State.RadicalizationIndonesia has witnessed a rise in radicalization over the years, along with the occasional terrorist attacks. When Islamic State proclaimed a caliphate in large areas of Iraq and Syria in 2014, dozens of Indonesian nationals traveled to the Middle East to join the IS caliphate.  According to Indonesia’s counterterrorism agency, some 1,321 Indonesians have attempted to join IS since its creation. An investigation in 2017 by the nonprofit Soufan Center found that an estimated 600 Indonesians went to Syria to join IS. Among them were 387 men, 113 women and 100 children. Many were ultimately killed or were later arrested, as IS lost territory through its final defeat in Syria’s Baghouz town in March 2019.IS foreign fightersThe U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, who are holding thousands of IS foreign fighters and their families, including those from Indonesia, say the detainees have become a major burden on its  limited resources. SDF has continuously asked that the detainees be repatriated in their respective countries.Indonesian policymakers and experts have been split over repatriation. Some have invoked the government’s duty to its citizens, while others argue the ex-IS members could become a potential future threat.FILE – Men wait to be screened by U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) fighters after being evacuated out of the last territory held by Islamic State militants, near Baghuz, eastern Syria, Feb. 22, 2019.Vice presidential spokesman Masduki Baidlowi, one of the officials in favor of returning the suspected citizens, said Indonesia was obliged to provide maximum protection to the detainees based on the country’s Citizenship Act.  Hikmahanto Juwana, an expert on international law at the University of Indonesia in Depol, charged that the suspected IS members were no longer entitled for citizenship protection because they “voluntarily” revoked their Indonesian citizenship.“If they are no longer Indonesian citizens, on what grounds should the government consider giving maximum protection as mentioned by Masduki Baidlowi?” he asked.Stanislaus Riyanta, an expert on Indonesian intelligence and national security, told VOA that to many, it was unclear if the suspected foreign fighters could be reformed, given “the strong evidence on radical ideology in their heads.”He said the Indonesians in Syria over the years have witnessed various forms of violence and brainwashing, which puts under scrutiny any government effort to deradicalize them.“If they are repatriated, this will create new problems to the government. Changing view and ideology is unlike treating a sick person (by) giving them medicine. We never know what’s in a person’s head,” he said.  
 VOA’s Ghita Intan, Eva Mazrieva, and Virginia Gunawan contributed to this story.
…

Military activity and the humanitarian crisis both intensified Tuesday in the city of Idlib as Turkey and its allies clashed with Syrian forces, whose northward drive has rendered over a half-million Syrian civilians homeless since December.Syrian government warplanes struck Idlib’s center Tuesday morning just hours after Turkish forces downed one of Syria’s Russian-made utility helicopters.”I could not reach the helicopter crash location because the whole area is being bombed,” said Abd Albaset, a 32-year-old refugee from Ma’arat al-Nu’ man, who now works as a freelance war photographer in the embattled Syrian province. “The attacks on Idlib itself make it clear that nowhere in this area is safe.”Firefighters spray a truck after a government airstrike in the city of Idlib, Syria, Feb. 11, 2020.The opposition Syrian channel Orient TV claimed airstrikes killed 12 civilians and injured another 33 in the attack on downtown Idlib.”Our teams documented the killing of 208 people in January, including 60 children and 28 women,” said Sayeed Mousa Zaidan, spokesman for the area’s civilian defense force commonly known as the “White Helmets.””In February, we retrieved the bodies of 127 people, 12 of them were today, after regime airstrikes on Idlib city. Northwestern Syria is witnessing the largest military campaign to date by [the Syrian] regime, Russian and Iranian forces,” Zaidan said.Turkey is increasingly intent on blunting the offensive, which it claims is a complete violation of the 2018 de-escalation agreement it brokered with Moscow purporting to provide “safe zones” for Syria’s civilians.On Monday, the Turkish Defense Ministry said that its forces, together with the allied opposition Syrian National Army, hit 115 Syrian government targets “neutralizing more than 100 of their personnel.””The recent deployment of Turkish military has significantly increased in the last two weeks both in terms of equipment and ground troops,” said Ammar Kahf, executive director of the Omran Center for Strategic Studies, a Syrian affairs research organization in Istanbul.A man wails after a government airstrike in the city of Idlib, Syria, Feb. 11, 2020.Kahf estimates that Ankara has committed over 5,000 ground troops along with heavy artillery and long-range missiles in the area, and that is not including the increase in weaponry for its allied Syrian National Army.”This is the biggest build-up of force by Turkey so far, but it still seems within the defensive mode in terms of preventing the further advance of the regime into Idlib,” Kahf said. “They are trying to keep this zone out of [Syrian President Bashar al-] Assad’s hands until after the implementation of a political process for Syria.”But as the fighting escalates, social services in the area are grinding to a halt, despite renewed cross-border aid shipments.”We count up the assault on civilian infrastructure, and it’s unprecedented,” said Isam Khatib, director of Kesh Malek, a local mutual aid organization. “In the past month alone, 11 medical facilities, 28 schools, seven refugee camps and nine groceries were bombed or shelled in northwest Syria. The regime also targeted five civil defense White Helmet centers, four bakeries, 19 mosques, three water stations, and two power plants.””As a result, our group made the tough decision to cease its education and anti-extremism programs after our staff fled for safety,” Khatib said.The U.N. is warning that its means to cope are running thin.”Since the beginning of December, some 689,000 women, children, and men have been displaced from their homes in northwest Syria. That’s more than 100,000 people in just over a week,” said David Swanson, U.N. regional spokesperson in the Turkish border town of Gaziantep.”This latest displacement compounds an already dire humanitarian situation in Idlib. Over 400,000 people were made homeless between the end of April and the end of August, many of them multiple times,” Swanson added.Civilians flee from Idlib to find safety inside Syria near the border with Turkey, Feb. 11, 2020.The U.N. has released a new Humanitarian Readiness and Response Plan for northwest Syria, calling for an additional $336 million for the next six months to deal with the new wave of refugees.”We need to provide more tents, plastic sheeting, stoves, warm clothes and fuel,” Swanson said.Nighttime temperatures in Idlib are dipping below freezing, and the U.N. said the pressing need is for shelter to protect against the harsh winter conditions.”A baby died today from the cold in my camp,” said Faisal Alhamoud, another refugee from Ma’arat al-Nu’ man, a town 40 kilometers south of Idlib that fell to government forces last month.Alhamoud said about 35 refugees, including 15 children, have been killed by shelling at the makeshift camp, just 17 kilometers from the Turkish border.”Many children are vulnerable to death as a result of the weather and the bombing, unless we provide them with help,” said Alhamoud, 35, a child welfare worker and father of six. “God will ask us about them on Judgment Day.”
…

At least 15 people drowned Tuesday after an overcrowded boat carrying Rohingya Muslim refugees capsized and sank off the coast of Bangladesh .Commander Sohel Rana of the coast guard station on St. Martin’s Island, Bangladesh, said the wooden boat was setting sail for Malaysia when it hit a coral reef in shallow water. It was packed with refugees from camps around Cox’s Bazar.Fishermen alerted the coast guard, which found the vessel sinking with survivors swimming and crying for help. Navy divers joined the coast guard for the rescue operation. By nightfall, rescuers had saved 73 people and recovered 15 bodies. Among the dead were women and children.Coast guard spokesman Hamidul Islam said the chance of finding survivors is slim, but ” But added, “we are continuing the search and rescue operations.”Rohingya refugees wait after their boat capsized, in Teknaf, near Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, Feb. 11, 2020.Jamila Bibi from the Kutupalong Refugee Camp is one of the survivors. She said her husband was in Malaysia. “I was going to him. But I cannot go to my destination now,” she said.A Rohingya teenager who declined to reveal his name said, “I can’t eat properly at camp. Can’t move freely. I thought, ‘If I go to Malaysia, maybe I can live a better life.’ So I wanted to go to Malaysia by boat.”‘Wakeup call’More than 730,000 Rohingya left Myanmar after a military-led campaign against them in 2017. They were forced to live in crowded, dirty camps across the border in Bangladesh. But several attempts to repatriate Rohingya Muslims back to Buddhist-majority Myanmar have been met with resistance.The United Nations refugee agency UNHCR says Malaysia had nearly 100,000 Rohingya refugees by the end of 2019, the second largest number after Bangladesh.Many of the refugees in Cox’s Bazar have since tried to make the hazardous sea journey to Malaysia. Last November, Bangladesh’s coast guard rescued 122 Rohingya refugees when a vessel they had boarded to Malaysia started sinking because of a mechanical problem.Following news reports of the drownings, Save the Children said in a statement, “The Rohingya refugee crisis has claimed yet more innocent victims today.” The humanitarian organization called the drownings “a wakeup call” and urged Myanmar to “ensure the Rohingya community can return to their homes in a safe and dignified manner.”
 
…

After nearly a week of roaming China’s epidemic-struck city, filming the dead and the sickened in overwhelmed hospitals, the strain of being hounded by both the new virus and the country’s dissent-quelling police started to tell.Chen Qiushi looked haggard and disheveled in his online posts, an almost unrecognizable shadow of the energetic young man who had rolled into Wuhan on a self-assigned mission to tell its inhabitants’ stories, just as authorities locked the city down almost three weeks ago.Until he disappeared last week, the 34-year-old lawyer-turned-video blogger was one of the most visible pioneers in a small but dogged movement that is defying the ruling Communist Party’s tightly policed monopoly on information.Armed with smart phones and social media accounts, these citizen-journalists are telling their stories and those of others from Wuhan and other locked-down virus zones in Hubei province. The scale of this non-sanctioned storytelling is unprecedented in any previous major outbreak or disaster in China. It presents a challenge to the Communist Party, which wants to control the narrative of China, as it always has since taking power in 1949.”It’s very different from anything we have witnessed,” said Maria Repnikova, a communications professor at Georgia State University who researches Chinese media.Never have so many Chinese, including victims and health care workers, used their phones to televise their experiences of a disaster, she said. That’s partly because the more than 50 million people locked down in cities under quarantine are “really anxious and bored and their lives have pretty much stopped.”Official state media extol the Communist Party’s massive efforts to build new hospitals in a flash, send in thousands of medical workers and ramp up production of face masks without detailing the underlying conditions that are driving these efforts.Chen did just that in more than 100 posts from Wuhan over two weeks. He showed the sick crammed into hospital corridors and the struggles of residents to get treatment.”Why am I here? I have stated that it’s my duty to be a citizen-journalist,” he said, filming himself with a selfie stick outside a train station. “What sort of a journalist are you if you don’t dare rush to the front line in a disaster?”A video posted Jan. 25 showed what Chen said was a body left under a blanket outside an emergency ward. Inside another hospital, he filmed a dead man propped up on a wheelchair, head hanging down and face deathly pale.Medical workers in protective suits attend to coronavirus patients inside an isolated ward at a hospital in Wuhan, Hubei province, China Feb. 6, 2020.”What’s wrong with him?” he asked a woman holding the man up with an arm across the chest.”He has already passed,” she said.Chen’s posts and vlogs, or video blogs, garnered millions of views — and police attention.In an anguished video post near the end of his first week in Wuhan, he said police had called him, wanting to know where he was, and questioned his parents.”I am scared,” he said. “I have the virus in front of me, and on my back, I have the legal and administrative power of China.”His voice trembling with emotion and tears welling in his eyes, he vowed to continue “as long as I am alive in this city.””Even death doesn’t scare me!” he said. “So you think I’m scared of the Communist Party?”Last week, Chen’s posts dried up. His mother broke the silence with a video post in the small hours of Friday. She said Chen was unreachable and appealed for help in finding him.Later that evening, his friend and well-known mixed martial artist Xu Xiaodong said in a live broadcast on YouTube that Chen had been forcibly quarantined for 14 days, considered the maximum incubation period for the virus. He said Chen had been healthy and showed no signs of infection.On Sunday, Xu tweeted that despite pleading with authorities for a call with Chen, he and others haven’t been able to get in touch.Police also came knocking last week for Fang Bin, who has been posting videos from Wuhan hospitals, including footage of body bags piled in a minibus, waiting to be carted to a crematorium.Fang, a seller of traditional Chinese clothing, filmed a testy exchange through the metal grill of his door with a group of four or five officers. The footage posted on YouTube offered a glimpse into how the security apparatus is working overtime to keep a lid on public anger about the spread of the virus.”Why are there so many of you?” Fang asked. “If I open the door, you’ll take me away!”Chen re-posted that video on his Twitter feed—one of his last tweets before his disappearance.The death of a Wuhan doctor last week focused attention on earlier attempts to suppress speech, and its consequences. Police had accused Dr. Li Wenliang of spreading rumors after he raised alarm in December about the outbreak. He succumbed to the virus, bringing an outpouring of grief, along with anger at authorities for how he had been treated.A makeshift memorial for Li Wenliang, a doctor who issued an early warning about the coronavirus outbreak before it was officially recognized, is seen after Li died of the virus, at Central Hospital of Wuhan in Hubei province, China Feb. 7, 2020.Wuhan police referred a request for comment to Hubei provincial authorities. Repeated calls to the Hubei foreign affairs office rang unanswered, playing instead a pre-recorded message: “Don’t believe rumors, don’t spread rumors.”For Gao Fei, a migrant worker detained after criticizing Chinese President Xi Jinping over the virus outbreak, the doctor’s death and Chen’s disappearance are “a wake-up call for the Chinese people.””The number one reason our government couldn’t control this is because they always conceal the truth and block information from citizens,” he said from his hometown in Hubei.Gao, a welder who had rushed home from southern China right before the lockdown, went to hospitals and drugstores and shared what he saw online. After tweeting that Xi’s measures were against humanity, he was detained with drug users and a “rumormonger” who pointed out overcrowded hospitals.He admires Chen’s bravery and push for social progress. “He’s the spine, the backbone of China,” Gao said.Since graduating from law school in 2007, Chen has worked as a waiter, hotel cleaner, voice actor, police reporter, and eventually, a TV host, launching a budding media career. He passed the bar in 2014 and began practicing in Beijing.In 2018, Chen started a video blog on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, and quickly amassed over a million fans for his legal commentary.He ran into trouble last year after posting videos of pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. Traveling to the semi-autonomous Chinese city, he attended both a patriotic pro-Beijing rally and a protest march, showing both sides to give his mainland audience a balanced perspective. In response, authorities shut down his Chinese social media accounts and called him back to the mainland.From Wuhan, Chen has broadcast on YouTube and Twitter, which are blocked in China. Only people who use a virtual private network, or VPN, can see the videos. His YouTube page sports the motto: “Don’t sing the praises of the wealthy and powerful, speak only for the common people.”Some of his posts were tinged with dark humor. Chen posed in a plastic bottle with its bottom cut off over his head, looking like a spaceman. He showed two men, one wearing a sanitary towel, the other incontinence pants, in lieu of sold-out face masks.Others posts shouted defiance.”Letting people speak cannot cause deaths,” he tweeted on Jan. 28. “Not letting people speak can cause many deaths.” 
…

Indonesia’s government on Tuesday banned citizens who joined the Islamic State group in Syria from returning home because of fears they could pose a threat to national security.A furious debate has raged in the world’s most populous Muslim nation in recent weeks over how to handle hundreds of suspected militants and their families seeking to return from combat zones in Iraq and Syria, as well as those in detention, after IS lost large swathes of territory and the United States announced the withdrawal of its forces.The country has been torn between protecting citizens’ rights, especially those of women and children, and national security.”The government has no plans to repatriate terrorists,” the coordinating minister for Political, Legal and Security Affairs, Mohammad Mahfud MD, said after a Cabinet meeting to discuss the return of hundreds of Indonesians held by authorities in Syria.”The state should provide security for 267 million Indonesians from new terrorist viruses,” he said.He said the government will collect more data on the identities of people who joined radical groups in the Middle East. Citing U.S. Central Intelligence Agency records, he said some 689 Indonesian citizens are currently in Syria, of whom only 228 had been identified.The government is considering the possibility of allowing children return home, especially orphans.Indonesian veterans of fighting in Afghanistan spearheaded attacks in the 2000s against local and Western targets, including nightclub bombings on the resort island of Bali that killed 202 people, mostly foreign tourists.A sustained crackdown by Indonesian authorities since 2002 has reduced the threat of large-scale attacks against Western or civilian targets. But IS attacks abroad have inspired Indonesian militants to continue to plan and carry out attacks, mostly against police targets across the country, officials say.”Anybody coming back from Syria is going to have immediate credibility and legitimacy in the jihadi movement,” said Sidney Jones, the director of the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict. “There might be people coming back who can take any of these amorphous, feckless groups of extremists and drill them into shape.” 
…

The Libyan coast guard apprehended 81 migrants off the coast of Libya and returned them to the capital of the war-ravaged country, the U.N. migration agency said Tuesday.
The International Organization for Migration said that the coast guard plucked the migrants, among them 18 women and four children, from the Mediterranean late Monday. Back in Tripoli, the agency offered the migrants emergency medical assistance. It was not clear where the migrants were from.
The U.N. refugee agency reported last week that the total number of migrants intercepted by the Libyan coast guard in the past month rose 121% from the same period last year.
Libya, which sits on Africa’s Mediterranean coast, has become a major conduit for migrants seeking refuge in Europe from war and poverty in Africa and the Middle East. The European Union, looking to keep the migration crisis off its shores, trains and funds Libya’s coast guard to catch the jam-packed boats and return them to the country, where migrants often land in detention centers run by the interior ministry of Libya’s U.N.-backed government.
The facilities, rife with abuses, face criticism from human rights groups over their dangerous conditions, especially as fighting between eastern-based forces and the Tripoli government creeps close to the centers.
Late Monday, 15 migrants were released from Abu Salim detention center in Tripoli following “indiscriminate shelling” in the vicinity, the IOM said.
Hundreds of migrants had moved into Abu Salim after fleeing another detention center, housed within a large military complex, which came under attack last July. That airstrike killed at least 50 people and injured over a hundred others, ranking among the deadliest assaults on civilians in the war and turning a spotlight on the many perils migrants face in facilities near the front lines.
In its statement Tuesday, the IOM reiterated that coordinates of detention centers filled with civilians are known to the warring sides.  
…

As the death toll from the coronavirus continues to mount in China and elsewhere, thousands of African students in China count the hours hoping that their governments will evacuate them.Solomon Yohannes of Ethiopia, a third-year engineering student at Wuchang Technology University in the Wuhan region of China, the epicenter of the outbreak, sat in a room in a nearly deserted campus. He said virtually all of Wuchang’s 15,000 students have left, but about 200 foreigners, mostly Africans, remain. “We are counting on the next two to three days for some solution,” he told VOA’s Afaan Oromo service. Until then he and others will remain secluded. “If you leave, you have to wear all the protective gear,” he said.Another student at Wuchang called on the Ethiopian government to take action. “We want the government to take us out of the country as every other government is doing,” the student told VOA’s Amharic service. “America, India, took their whole citizens out of the country. We also want to tell the government to at least take us out of the city where the crisis is right now.”There are an estimated 61,000 African students studying in China and they now face food shortages, isolation and uncertainty. Last week a 21-year-old student from Cameroon studying in the city of Jingzhou tested positive, becoming the first reported African student to contract the virus.Hermes Koundou, a third-year engineering student from the Central African Republic studying at Nankin University, about 530 kilometers east of Wuhan, said students there are cautious.“We buy food online, you see, and we cook inside our rooms because it is not easy to get to the common kitchen over there, as many people are there cooking,” he told VOA’s French to Africa service. “And you never know, you could be in contact there, with a student already infected with the coronavirus. So, we stay in our rooms.”Antony Waigwa of Kenya, a Ph.D. student of the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences in Wuhan, said he and fellow students have been offered masks and given free wi-fi and access to an emergency hotline. While they wait for information, they are keeping the thermostat high in the belief that it may decrease the ability of the disease to be transmitted. A doctor (L) talks with a patient during his rounds at the ward of a quarantine zone in Wuhan, the epicenter of the new coronavirus outbreak, in China’s central Hubei province, Feb. 3, 2020.“The situation is tense. We’re just afraid of contracting the disease,” Waigwa told VOA’s Swahili service. “You cannot say that you are fully safe because you can get it. The disease is transmitted via air. It’s an airborne disease as much as it is contagious. But it is manageable by keeping ourselves safe by not getting out of the school compound.”Ethiopian Ambassador to China Teshome Toga Chanaka said the embassy is closely monitoring the situation and added there are approximately 100 Ethiopian students in Wuhan city and about 300 in Hubei province. He said they are in contact with student associations but said neither the government of China nor the World Health Organization is advising evacuation right now. “This is a very serious matter. We are very much concerned, of course, about the situation. But we also have confidence in the prevention and control measures the government of China is taking,” he told VOA’s Amharic service.He added that evacuation is a complicated process requiring clearance from various Chinese ministries and agencies and then preparation in Ethiopia to receive the students. He said many African embassies are in touch with one another and ready to act, if needed. “We are not alone in this, literally all African countries have students in Wuhan city. So, I don’t think Ethiopia is alone in this,” he said. “We are also making consultation among the Beijing belt of African embassies so that, when the push comes to shove, certainly we will be taking action.”This story originated in the Africa division with reporting contributions from Horn of Africa Amharic service’s Eden Geremew and Afaan Oromo service’s Sora Halake, Swahili service’s Patrick Nnduwimana and Idd Ligongo, and French to Africa service’s Timothée Donangmaye.
…

Voters in the northeastern U.S. state of New Hampshire are casting ballots Tuesday in the Democratic primary as candidates look to build early momentum in the race to oppose President Donald Trump in the November national election.Just after midnight, voters in Dixville Notch made the first selections in the state, with former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg getting two votes in the Democratic primary, followed by one vote each for Sen. Bernie Sanders and former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg.In a curious twist, Bloomberg, who in his political career has been a Democrat, Republican and independent, also got a write-in vote as a Republican.  Thus far, the billionaire has focused his campaigning on states later in the voting calendar and with a huge emphasis on television advertising.Polls in most areas open later in the morning, and results are likely Tuesday evening.The contest in New Hampshire has taken on added consequence in the aftermath of a split vote in last week’s Iowa caucuses that were remembered mostly for the agonizingly slow release of the final outcome that was linked to a wrongly coded app used in collecting vote totals from throughout the farm state.In the end, Buttigieg edged Sanders, a self-declared democratic socialist, in Iowa.Pre-election polls showed Sanders ahead of Buttigieg in New Hampshire. Three other contenders are also hoping for a good showing in Tuesday’s vote: former Vice President Joe Biden and Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, all of whom trailed the leaders in Iowa.Small, mostly white New Hampshire is hardly reflective of the racial and ethnic diversity of the United States as a whole, but its importance every four years at the start of the presidential election campaign is recognized by both Democrats and Republicans.  The New Hampshire winner could gain an edge in the next two Democratic contests, in Nevada and South Carolina, which are scheduled for the last two Saturdays in February, ahead of 14 states voting on March 3.Meanwhile, Trump staged a Monday night rally for his supporters in the snow-covered state where he criticized the Democratic field.”They’re all fighting each other.  They’re all going after each other,” Trump said.  “They don’t know what they’re doing.”U.S. Democrats say their chief aim in the long slog of state contests to pick a nominee to oppose Trump is to find the most likely choice who can defeat him. All of the Democratic challengers defeat Trump in hypothetical national matchups, but the margins have edged closer in recent surveys, with Trump taking credit for a strong U.S. economy and winning acquittal last week in the Senate on impeachment charges brought against him by Democrats in the House of Representatives.All the Democrats are claiming they are best equipped to take on Trump.”Let me start by asking you to form in your mind an image that I always ask voters to picture, because I picture it every day,” Buttigieg told his supporters at a Monday rally.  “And it’s the image of what it’s going to be like the first time that the sun comes up over the mountains and lakes of New Hampshire and Donald Trump is no longer the president of the United States.”Democratic presidential candidate former South Bend, Ind. Mayor Pete Buttigieg speaks at a campaign event, Monday, Feb. 10, 2020, in Exeter, N.H.Sanders made his pitch at an early Monday rally, saying, “We are the strongest campaign to defeat Trump because of the nature of our campaign,” funded from a large network of small-dollar donors, which he contended was a sharp contrast with his rivals who have accepted contributions from wealthy donors.”Unlike some of my opponents, I don’t have contributions from the CEOs of the pharmaceutical industry or Wall Street tycoons,” Sanders said in a clear attack on Buttigieg, who has accepted such donations and says he needs them to build a national political operation.Warren retooled her campaign message after a third-place finish in Iowa and urged her supporters to not “look backwards.””Our democracy hangs in the balance.  So it comes to you, New Hampshire, to decide,” she said.  “When there’s this much fear, when there’s this much on the line, do we crouch down?  Do we cower?  Do we back up?  Or do we fight back?  Me — I’m fighting back.”At a speech Monday night, Biden, making his third run for the Democratic presidential nomination, argued that Trump inherited a robust economy from former President Barack Obama, when Biden was his vice president.”Trump’s going to tell us over and over again the economy is on the ballot this year,” Biden will say. “It sure is. And I’m going to make sure he understands it’s on the ballot because working class and middle class people are getting clobbered.  But something else is on the ballot.  Character is on the ballot.  The character of this country is on the ballot.”Klobuchar, who finished fifth in Iowa and won praise for her performance at a Friday night candidates debate, said she is seeing a “surge of support” in New Hampshire. Two polls had her moving ahead of Biden and Warren into third behind Sanders and Buttigieg.”A lot of people did not think that I was going to make it through the summer or make it to that debate stage, but I more than made it to the debate stage.  And since that debate, our campaign has been surging,” she said Monday.In Iowa, state Democratic officials said Buttigieg took 14 of the 41 delegates up for grabs to the party’s July national nominating convention in Milwaukee, followed by Sanders with 12, Warren with eight, Biden six and Klobuchar one.
…

Journalists in disputed territorially Kashmir urged the Indian government on Monday to allow them to report freely and expressed concern about alleged police harassment since the region’s semi-autonomy was rescinded in August amid an unprecedented lockdown.The Kashmir Press Club, an elected body of journalists in the region, said security agencies were using physical attacks, threats and summons to intimidate journalists. The group said the government should “ensure freedom of speech and expression as guaranteed in the constitution instead of muzzling the press.”On Saturday, police summoned two journalists for questioning in Srinagar for reporting about a strike call issued by the pro-independence Jammu-Kashmir Liberation Front. The Kashmir Press Club denounced the police action.”The harassment and questioning of journalists in Kashmir on flimsy grounds” by the police is “a damning verdict on the appalling condition in which media is operating,” the group said in a statement.It also criticized restrictions on the internet and surveillance by police, calling them “tools designed and aimed to ensure only the government-promoted version is heard.”India’s decision to strip the region of its special status in August brought journalism to a near halt in Kashmir. A communications shutdown affected media operations, and most newspapers published in Srinagar, the region’s main city, have been unable to issue online editions.Foreign journalists have been denied permission to visit the Himalayan region.India is ranked 140th out of 180 countries in the World Press Freedom Index published by Reporters Without Borders, a global media watchdog.The conflict over Kashmir began in the late 1940s, when India and Pakistan won independence from the British Empire and began fighting over their rival claims to the region.Since 1989, a full-blown armed rebellion has raged in the Indian-controlled portion seeking a united Kashmir — either under Pakistani rule or independent of both countries. India accuses Pakistan of training and arming the rebels, a charge Islamabad denies.About 70,000 people have been killed in the uprising and an Indian military crackdown.
…

A storm battered Europe with hurricane-force winds and heavy rains, killing at least seven people and causing severe travel disruptions as it moved eastward across the continent Monday and bore down on Germany.After striking Britain and Ireland on Sunday, the storm moved on, leaving a trail of damage including power cuts for tens of thousands of homes across Europe.A woman and her 15-year-old daughter died in Poland after the storm ripped off the roof of a ski rental equipment building in the mountain resort of Bukowina Tatrzanska and sent it hurtling onto people standing near a ski lift, police said. Three people also were injured in the incident.In Sweden, one man drowned after the boat he and another person were sailing in on the southern lake of Fegen capsized. The victim was washed ashore and later died. The other person is still missing, according to the Aftonbladet daily.Two men, one in the north of Slovenia and another in southern England, also died after their cars were hit by falling trees. And in Germany, a driver died after crashing his truck into a trailer parked by workers clearing storm debris off a highway in the southern state of Hesse.The jib of a crane is seen after it fell onto the roof of Frankfurt Cathedral during a storm, in Frankfurt, Germany, Feb. 10, 2020.Police in the Czech Republic said the storm likely was to blame for a car accident that killed the man driving and injured a woman passenger. Investigators think a tree fell on the car, which skidded off the road and and overturned.The number of Czech households without electricity reached 290,000, according to power company CEZ.Britain, which bore the brunt of the storm on Sunday, was assessing the damage and working to get power restored to 20,000 homes. However, for parts of northern England and Scotland, the respite is set to be brief, with forecasts of blizzards and snow.Many parts of the country were mopping up after a month and a half’s rain fell in just 24 hours in some places and rivers burst their banks. Though 360 flood warnings have been removed as the storm moves on, around 75 remain in place across the country.The River Irwell burst its banks in northwest England, prompting authorities to evacuate residents. And in the Scottish town of Hawick, which borders England, a guest house and bistro collapsed into the raging River Teviot. No one was injured.In another dramatic scene, a driver managed to escape unhurt in the early hours of Monday when a car fell nose-first into a sinkhole in a residential street in the town of Brentwood, east of London. Six properties had to be evacuated due to the unstable ground that is said to have been linked to a partially collapsed sewer. The emergency services made the scene safe just before daybreak.The British government said it was offering financial compensation through its emergency Bellwin scheme. Under the scheme, local authorities dealing with the storm can apply to have certain costs reimbursed.Transport authorities were also working hard to clear up the mess. Network Rail, which runs the country’s rail infrastructure, said thousands of engineers had “battled horrendous conditions” after the storm blew trees, sheds, roofs and even trampolines onto the tracks.Ferries were operating across the English Channel after being closed down on Sunday, though P&O Ferries said in a tweet that further disruptions were possible.Airlines operating to and from U.K. airports were still being affected by the storm, with more than 100 flights canceled.”We’re getting in touch with those affected, and have brought in extra customer teams to help them with a range of options including a full refund or an alternative flight between now and Thursday,” British Airways said in a statement.The storm had largely passed through France by midday, though meteorologists warned that the Mediterranean island of Corsica could later see winds as high as 200 kph (124 mph). Up to 130,000 homes stretching from Brittany, in western France, through Normandy and the northern regions were without power Monday morning.In Germany, utility companies were also scrambling to restore power to some 50,000 homes in northern Bavaria, where a top wind of over 160 kph (100 mph) was recorded. The storm resulted in a record amount of electricity being fed into the German grid from wind turbines, equivalent to almost 44 nuclear power plants.Train travel across Europe’s biggest economy was also severely disrupted, leaving many commuters unable to get to work. Deutsche Bahn said Monday it was slowly resuming long-distance rail services in the north of the country but warned travelers to expect further disruptions. Airlines canceled hundreds of flights from German airports.The storm, which was dubbed Sabine in Germany, also led to school closures in several cities and regions, including North Rhine-Westphalia state, where several people were injured by falling branches and toppling trees. Parts of a construction crane fell onto the roof of Frankfurt Cathedral overnight.Even though there were no reported fatalities in Belgium, the storm had an emotional impact in the central town of Zottegem, where a scenic 150-year-old poplar tree was snapped at its roots, before falling and being pulverized on a country road.The tree had been granted protected status by the Flemish regional government and locals now plan to have a special remembrance service on Friday.”The tree meant so much to everyone,” Stefan Fostier, the driving force behind the initiative, told The Associated Press. “It will be a moment to honor the tree.”
…

The U.N. Sanctions Committee said it is ready to grant exemptions that would allow aid to North Korea to help the country battle the fast-spreading coronavirus.”The Committee stands ready to consider as expeditiously as possible any requests for exemptions related to the prevention and/or treatment of the coronavirus, should the need arise,” a spokesperson for the U.N. 1718 Sanctions Committee on North Korea said in an email statement sent to VOA’s Korean Service.Sanctions that the U.N. Security Council has placed on North Korea since 2006 to curb its nuclear weapons program currently restrict goods from flowing freely in and out of country, but the U.N. has been granting exemptions as needed for humanitarian organizations to provide aid to the country since then.Phil Robertson, deputy director of the Asia Division for Human Rights Watch, said aid organizations cannot operate in North Korea to help it contain and treat the deadly virus “without the permission of the government.”North Korea has not asked for help from any outside organization as it stepped up its efforts to contain the virus from entering the country.FILE – A State Commission of Quality Management staff member carries a disinfectant spray can as checks are done to inspect and quarantine goods being delivered via the borders at the Pyongyang Airport in Pyongyang, North Korea, Feb. 1, 2020.There are no official reports of confirmed coronavirus cases in North Korea.  But the Choi, now a professor at Korea University’s Public Policy Research Institute in Seoul, thinks there could be an outbreak in North Korea because “it is impossible to have closed off all roads connecting to China.”North Korea shares a border with China. North Korea’s official newspaper Rodong Sinmun reported Monday that medical workers in Sinuiju are “performing their responsibility in hygienic information service and quarantine work to curb the infectious disease.”The paper also reported that the Sariwon Hygienic and Anti-Epidemic Station “produces disinfectant by itself and supplies it to factories, enterprises and neighborhood units in a responsible manner so as to prevent the novel coronavirus infection.” Sariwon is a city south of Pyongyang.  During the SARS epidemic in 2002 and 2003, North Korea allowed international relief into the country to help fight the fatal virus.On Saturday, it appears North Korea canceled a scheduled large-scale parade to celebrate the 72nd anniversary of the Korean People’s Army.The country’s state Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on Sunday only mentioned that soldiers laid a bouquet of flowers before the statutes of former leaders of North Korea, Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, the grandfather and father of current leader Kim Jong Il, in Mansu Hill, to commemorate the anniversary. Usually, North Korea commemorates its founding anniversary with big parades showcasing its military prowess.In 2018, the country displayed its military weapons, as thousands of people gathered in Pyongyang to celebrate the 70th anniversary. In 2019, North Korea did not hold a military parade due to denuclearization talks with the U.S. — talks that remain largely stalled since the abrupt end of the working-level talks held in Stockholm in October.Also amid growing concern about the virus, Kim has not been seen publicly for over two weeks. He was last seen in public attending the Lunar New Year’s performance on Jan. 25. Christy Lee contributed to this story, which originated on VOA’s Korean Service.
 
…

U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration is proposing a 21% cut in aid the United States provides to foreign countries, with a budget request of $44.1 billion for such programs, compared with $55.7 billion enacted in fiscal 2020.Lawmakers and others predict Trump’s plan to cut one-fifth of foreign aid from the current level will not survive scrutiny on Capitol Hill, especially in an election year.”…the White House should save some trees rather than sending us a budget that’s headed straight here,” tweeted House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel, attaching a photo of a blue plastic “House of Representatives” trash receptacle.Response to the Office of Management and Budget Acting Director Russ Vought pauses as he speaks during a television interview at the White House, Feb.10, 2020, in Washington.The House, controlled by the opposition Democrats, last year also rejected Trump’s proposal to slash foreign aid.”It is likely that Congress will restore much, if not all, of the cut and, of course, the amounts in question are infinitesimal relative to the government’s annual deficit and overall debt situation,” Giselle Donnelly, said resident fellow in defense and national security at the American Enterprise Institute. “But the cuts are also of secondary importance compared to the way in which this administration has decimated the Foreign Service, and, as we have seen with the firing and denigration of NSC and ambassadorial officials, deprecated the ‘quiet professionals’ who serve on the front lines of U.S. foreign policy. One cannot put a price tag on the loss of talent and the lowering of morale.”  Retired U.S. Navy Admiral Mike Mullen, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 2007 to 2011, in a letter to Congress, is warning of the danger of such cuts.”The more we cut the international affairs budget, the higher the risk for longer and deadlier military operations,” wrote Mullen.FILE – A man walks past boxes of USAID humanitarian aid at a warehouse at the Tienditas International Bridge on the outskirts of Cucuta, Colombia, Feb. 21, 2019, on the border with Venezuela.The assessment is shared by Center for American Progress Senior Fellow Brian Katulis, who notes that the United States has traditionally used foreign aid to help stabilize other countries, thus Trump should not “unilaterally disarm” by decreasing this tool.”If we are not doing that, other places are going to see more violence, poor governance, and the sorts of problems that he [President Trump] tries to address by building a wall on the southern border-migrants and refugees – these are the sorts of things addressed by foreign aid,” said Katulis, who worked at the National Security Council, State Department and Defense Department during the Clinton administration.Combined with increased military spending, “the proposed foreign aid spending cuts underline the president’s commitment to emphasize force over diplomacy and working with others in global affairs,” said a former U.S. ambassador to NATO, Ivo Daalder.”As in previous years, a bipartisan majority in Congress is sure to reject these cuts to help ensure the United States continues to engage the world with all of the tools needed for success,” said Daalder, president of the Chicago Council on Foreign Affairs.FILE – Ukrainian servicemen are seen after a welcoming ceremony for a plane from the United States with aid, including ten Humvee vehicles, at Borispil airport near Kyiv, March 25, 2015.“It’s become an annual event. The president’s budget proposes massive cuts in humanitarian aid and international relief to the most vulnerable around the world, and the bipartisan majorities in the Congress reject these proposals and the flight from U.S. leadership that they represent,” said Refugees International President Eric Schwartz. “The irony is that President Trump, Secretary Pompeo, and others in the Trump administration continually boast about the generosity of the United States. It’s high time that their actions match their words.”The White House, while cutting other types of foreign aid, proposes a big boost in funding for the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, a new and independent agency that provides funds for private development projects.Aid to Ukraine would remain at the same level.Trump last week was acquitted by the U.S. Senate of impeachment charges that he withheld aid to Kyiv to pressure the Ukrainian government to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, now a Democratic Party presidential candidate. 
…

With months left before U.S. elections, President Donald Trump unveiled a Office of Management and Budget Acting Director Russell Vought speaks during a television interview at the White House, Feb.10, 2020 in Washington.Cutting critical lifelines Russell Vought, Trump’s acting budget director, said Monday the proposal will include over $740 billion for defense spending, including a 20% increase for nuclear modernization.And the massive $1.5 trillion in tax cuts, mostly benefitting the wealthiest, will be extended beyond 2025.Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi lambasted the proposal.”The budget is a statement of values and once again the president is showing just how little he values the good health, financial security and wellbeing of hardworking American families,” she said in a statement.”Year after year, President Trump’s budgets have sought to inflict devastating cuts to critical lifelines that millions of Americans rely on.”But Vought defended the plan and called on Democrats to approve the required spending cuts.”This is a budget reflection built upon the pro growth economic policies of this president, which have unleashed one of the most powerful economies in American history,” he told reporters as he presented the spending and revenue plan.But he said it is necessary to restrain non-defense spending and “time to rethink” aid, which is why Trump calls for a 21% reduction for foreign aid.He also defended the 3.0% growth targets saying in an interview with CNBC that the estimates are “entirely possible to be able to hit in the next 10 years.”Trump’s plan calls for $2 billion in homeland security spending for the U.S.-Mexico border wall, boosts spending for NASA by 12% while slashing the Environmental Protection Agency by more than 26%.Budget expert MacGuineas said the proposal includes some important policy reforms to put deficits on a downward path.”But when you peel away the rosy growth assumptions, the assumed reversal of spending increases the President has already signed into law, and the exaggerated and unspecified savings, we are still left with a mountain of debt.”
 
…

A strong winter storm that battered Britain with hurricane-force winds and heavy rains moved eastward Monday, causing severe travel disruption and an array of flood warnings as rivers burst their banks or were on the verge of doing so.There were reports of deaths directly linked to the storm with one driver in south-western Czech Republic killed after his car was hit by a falling tree.  A man also died early on Monday in the north of Slovenia when a tree fell on his car. And in  Sweden, one man drowned late Sunday after the boat he and another person were sailing in on the southern lake of Fegen capsized. The victim was washed ashore and later died. The other person is still missing, according to the Aftonbladet daily.Waves crash over Newhaven Lighthouse on the south coast of England, United Kingdom, as Storm Ciara swept over the country.Britain bore the brunt of storm on Sunday and more than 20,000 homes spent the night without power. Parts of the country were bracing for blizzards and snow on Monday.
“While Storm Ciara is clearing away, that doesn’t mean we’re entering a quieter period of weather,” said Alex Burkill, a meteorologist at the Met Office. “It’s going to stay very unsettled.”
In the wake of the storm, many parts of the country were mopping up after a month and a half’s rainfall fell in just 24 hours in some places and rivers burst their banks. Around 180 flood warnings remained in place across the country. The River Irwell burst its banks in northwest England and residents were evacuated.
In the Scottish town of Hawick, which borders England, a guest house and bistro collapsed into the River Teviot on Sunday. No one was injured.
Britain’s transport networks were severely disrupted with flights, ferries and trains all seeing cancellations and delays. Drivers faced treacherous conditions with floodwater, fallen trees and other debris closing roads. Commuters were being urged to check their routes before traveling.
British Airways said in a statement that there will be a “minor knock-on effect” to Monday’s schedule.
“We’re getting in touch with those affected, and have brought in extra customer teams to help them with a range of options including a full refund or an alternative flight between now and Thursday,” the airline said. “Any customer flying short-haul to or from Heathrow or Gatwick, can also choose to make changes to their travel plans if they would prefer to fly another time.”
On Sunday, the storm hit the Isle of Wight off the southern coast of Britain with gusts of 97 mph (156 kph). Propelled by its fierce winds, a British Airways plane was thought to have made the fastest New York-to-London flight by a conventional airliner, arriving 102 minutes early.
In Germany, utility companies were also scrambling to restore power to some 50,000 homes in northern Bavaria early Monday. Train travel across Europe’s biggest economy was also severely disrupted, leaving many commuters unable to get to work. Deutsche Bahn said Monday it was slowly resuming long-distance rail services in the north of the country but warned travelers to expect further disruptions. Airlines canceled hundreds of flights from German airports.
The storm, which was dubbed Sabine in Germany, also led  to school closures in several cities and regions, including Germany’s North Rhine-Westphalia state, where several people were injured by falling branches and toppling trees.
Meteorologists expect gusts up to 140 kilometers per hour (87 mph) in mountainous areas of southern Germany later Monday.
About 96,000 households were also without electricity across the Czech Republic and at least seven flights from Prague’s international airport were cancelled, including the flights to Zurich, Munich, Frankfurt, Duesseldorf, London and Amsterdam.
An Airbus A320 operated by Qatar Airways was diverted from Prague to Vienna after the pilots were not able to land early Monday. Dozens of train routes were blocked due to trees on the tracks, while other trains are delayed.  
 
…

The black comedy “Parasite” is a tale of two South Korean families – the wealthy Parks and the poor Kims – mirroring the deepening inequality in Asia’s fourth-largest economy.The film made history as the first non-English language movie to win the Oscar for best picture on Sunday, prompting South Korean social media to erupt in celebration.The film’s message resonated with many South Koreans who identify themselves as “dirt spoons,” those born to low-income families who have all but given up on owning a decent house or climbing the social ladder, as opposed to “gold spoons,” who are from better-off families.While inequality in South Korea is not necessarily worse than many other countries, the concept has exploded onto the political scene in recent years amid runaway home prices and a stagnating economy, undermining support for President Moon Jae-in.Moon, in his congratulatory message, said “Parasite” had “moved the hearts of people around the world with a most uniquely Korean story.”But the film’s message is a sharp critique of South Korea’s modern society, and director Bong Joon-ho turned to many familiar scenes around Seoul to highlight the divide between the city’s haves and have-nots.Across South Korea the divide is visible as some of the old neighborhoods of crumbling brick slums contrast with the gleaming high-life of Seoul’s more swanky spots.The film uses many of those visual cues to illustrate the competition going on in society, and the sometimes “parasitic” relationships between the rich and poor.”The uncomfortable exchanges in the movie sparked mixed feelings by hitting a sore spot in society and pitting the rich against the poor,” said Kim Chang-hwan, a 35-year-old Seoul resident.Fake Diploma South Korea’s economic inequality is higher than many members of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), on par with Britain and Latvia, and has worsened in recent years.Still, its Gini coefficient, a commonly used measure of how evenly income is distributed across the population, is better than places such as the United States, according to the OECD.But after years of economic growth that powered the country’s recovery from the 1950-53 Korean War, South Korean’s economic future is more uncertain, causing growing concerns for many.A 2019 survey by the government affiliated Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs found more than 85% of South Korean respondents felt there were “very big” income gaps in society and people needed to be from a wealthy family in order to be successful.Young people have become especially pessimistic amid a highly competitive education system and job market.That has sent support for Moon plummeting to as low as 45% in early February, as his younger supporters express dissatisfaction with their economic prospects. While Moon is constitutionally barred from running again, a key parliamentary election is due to be held in April, posing a test for his ruling party.In “Parasite,” one character fakes a diploma for her brother to get a job as a tutor for a rich family.The scene reminded some South Koreans of an ongoing scandal that led to the resignation of Justice Minister Cho Kuk.Cho resigned in December and is being prosecuted for falsifying documents regarding family investments and efforts to gain university admissions for his children. He has denied wrongdoing.”Parasite’s win is a really great thing, but it was bitter to see the father impressed with his children’s forgery skills and their plans to get the jobs,” one Twitter user wrote, referring to one of the main characters.The scandal struck a chord in South Korea where young people, who compete furiously through school and university, are increasingly finding themselves scrambling for a dwindling number of positions in a slack job market, in a system they see as plagued by systemic unfairness and biased in favor of the elite.The issue was a particular disappointment to the young people who supported Moon and his party when he became president on a platform of cleaning out corruption in the government and business.
…