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Lee Kun-hee, the ailing Samsung Electronics chairman who transformed the small television maker into a global giant of consumer electronics, has died. He was 78.A Samsung statement said Lee died Sunday with his family members, including his son and de facto company chief Lee Jae-yong, by his side.Lee Kun-hee had been hospitalized since May 2014 after suffering a heart attack, and the younger Lee has run Samsung, the biggest company in South Korea.“All of us at Samsung will cherish his memory and are grateful for the journey we shared with him,” the Samsung statement said. “Our deepest sympathies are with his family, relatives and those nearest. His legacy will be everlasting.”Lee Kun-hee inherited control from his father and during his nearly 30 years of leadership, Samsung Electronics Co. became a global brand and the world’s largest maker of smartphones, televisions and memory chips. Samsung sells Galaxy phones while also making the screens and microchips that power its rivals, Apple’s iPhones and Google Android phones.Samsung helped make the nation’s economy, Asia’s fourth largest. Its businesses encompass shipbuilding, life insurance, construction, hotels, amusement park operation and more. Samsung Electronics alone accounts for 20% of the market capital on South Korea’s main stock market.Lee leaves behind immense wealth, with Forbes estimating his fortune at $16 billion as of January 2017.His death comes during a complex time for Samsung.A stern, terse leaderWhen he was hospitalized, Samsung’s once-lucrative mobile business faced threats from upstart makers in China and other emerging markets. Pressure was high to innovate its traditionally strong hardware business, to reform a stifling hierarchical culture and to improve its corporate governance and transparency.Samsung was ensnared in the 2016-17 corruption scandal that led to then-President Park Geun-hye’s impeachment and imprisonment. Its executives, including the younger Lee, were investigated by prosecutors who believed Samsung executives bribed Park to secure the government’s backing for a smooth leadership transition from father to son.In a previous scandal, Lee Kun-hee was convicted in 2008 for illegal share dealings, tax evasion and bribery designed to pass his wealth and corporate control to his three children.The late Lee was a stern, terse leader who focused on big-picture strategies, leaving details and daily management to executives.His near-absolute authority allowed the company to make bold decisions in the fast-changing technology industry, such as shelling out billions to build new production lines for memory chips and display panels even as the 2008 global financial crisis unfolded.Those risky moves fueled Samsung’s rise.Lee was born Jan. 9, 1942, in the southeastern city of Daegu during Japan’s colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula. His father Lee Byung-chull had founded an export business there in 1938 and following the 1950-53 Korean War, he rebuilt the company into an electronics and home appliance manufacturer and the country’s first major trading company.Lee Byung-chull was often called one of the fathers of modern industrial South Korea. Lee Kun-hee was the third son and his inheritance of his father’s businesses bucked the tradition of family wealth going to the eldest. One of Lee Kun-hee’s brothers sued for a bigger part of Samsung but lost the case.When Lee Kun-hee inherited control from his father in 1987, Samsung was relying on Japanese technology to produce TVs and was making its first steps into exporting microwaves and refrigerators.The company was expanding its semiconductor factories after entering the business in 1974 by acquiring a near-bankrupt firm.‘Let’s change everything’A decisive moment came in 1993. Lee Kun-hee made sweeping changes to Samsung after a two-month trip abroad convinced him the company needed to improve the quality of its products.In a speech to Samsung executives, he famously urged, “Let’s change everything except our wives and children.”Not all his moves succeeded.A notable failure was the group’s expansion into the auto industry in the 1990s, in part driven by Lee Kun-hee’s passion for luxury cars. Samsung later sold near-bankrupt Samsung Motor to Renault. The company also was frequently criticized for disrespecting labor rights. Cancer cases among workers at its semiconductor factories were ignored for years.In 2020, Lee Jae-yong declared heredity transfers at Samsung would end, promising the management rights he inherited wouldn’t pass to his children. He also said Samsung would stop suppressing employee attempts to organize unions, although labor activists questioned his sincerity.South Koreans are both proud of Samsung’s global success and concerned the company and Lee family are above the law and influence over almost every corner of society.Critics particularly note how Lee Kun-hee’s only son gained immense wealth through unlisted shares of Samsung firms that later went public.In 2007, a former company lawyer accused Samsung of wrongdoing in a book that became a best seller in South Korea. Lee Kun-hee was subsequently indicted on tax evasion and other charges.Lee resigned as chairman of Samsung Electronics and was convicted and sentenced to a suspended three-year prison term. He received a presidential pardon in 2009 and returned to Samsung’s management in 2010.
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Confirmed coronavirus infections continued to soar Saturday in many parts of the U.S. and Europe. In some cases, so did anger over the restrictions governments put in place to try to stem the tide.Oklahoma, Illinois, New Mexico and Michigan were among states announcing new record highs in daily confirmed cases Saturday, a day after a nationwide daily record of more than 83,000 reported infections, according to Johns Hopkins University.Dr. Joneigh Khaldun, Michigan’s chief medical executive, said it’s “now more important than ever that people take this seriously.” The 3,338 new COVID-19 cases in her state topped the old record by more than 1,300.German authorities reported a record one-day total of new coronavirus cases this weekend while leaders in Spain and Italy debated how to control the resurgent virus amid public pushback to curfews despite a global death toll topping 1.1 million.In Italy, officials huddled with regional authorities on Saturday to determine what new restrictions could be imposed as confirmed cases surpassed half a million.Premier Giuseppe Conte has said he doesn’t want to put Italy under severe lockdown again, as he did at the pandemic’s start. In past days, several governors ordered overnight curfews in their regions to stop people from congregating at night outside bars and other venues.One such curfew fueled anger in Naples, triggering a violent clash by protesters with police. Italian media said protesters hurled rocks, pieces of broken ceramic tiles and smoke bombs at police while they battled back with tear gas. Elsewhere in Europe, police in Warsaw, Poland, used tear gas and pepper spray to disperse protesters angry over new virus restrictions, and anti-lockdown demonstrators gathered in London’s Trafalgar Square.Interior Minister Luciana Lamorgese on Saturday branded the Naples protests “unacceptable” and said prosecutors were investigating.According to Health Ministry figures, Italy’s one-day new caseload of confirmed infections crept closer to 20,000 on Saturday, a slightly bigger daily increase than Friday. The nation’s confirmed death toll, second-highest in Europe after Britain’s, rose to 37,210 after 151 more deaths.Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez plans to meet with his Cabinet on Sunday morning in Madrid to prepare a new state of emergency, a strategy used twice since the start of the pandemic.The first in March ordered strict home confinement across the nation, closed stores, and recruited private industry for the national public health fight. The second went into effect two weeks ago, focused on transit limits in the Madrid area.In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel urged citizens again to reduce their number of social contacts as the nation recorded a new daily high for infections.The 14,714 cases reported on Saturday includes cases from both Friday and Thursday because of a three-hour data outage at the country’s disease control agency Thursday. Forty-nine more people died, bringing the overall death toll past 10,000.The chancellor said in her weekly podcast “if we all obey (to social distancing) we will all together survive this enormous challenge posed by the virus.”Other European countries have tightened restrictions hoping to cope with their own rising case counts.Slovenia closed down hotels, shopping malls and other nonessential shops as authorities reported a record high of both new daily infections and deaths in the small country of 2 million people. Greece unveiled a mask requirement and a mandatory nightly curfew for Athens and other areas deemed high risk.In South America, Colombia became the eighth country to reach 1 million confirmed coronavirus cases on Saturday, according to the Colombian Ministry of Health. Two of the others are also in Latin America: Argentina, which hit that mark on Monday, and Brazil, which has more than 5 million confirmed cases.In the U.S., the virus has claimed about 240,000 lives, according to the COVID-19 Dashboard published by Johns Hopkins. The total U.S. caseload reported Friday was 83,757, topping the 77,362 cases reported on July 16.Many rural communities are bearing the brunt. In Columbia, Tennessee, Maury Regional Medical Center said Friday it was suspending elective surgical procedures that require an overnight stay for two weeks, beginning on Monday. The Daily Herald reported that it was treating 50 COVID-19 inpatients, 20 of whom were in the medical center’s 26-bed intensive care unit.Martin Chaney, Maury Regional’s chief medical officer, said small home gatherings have become the emerging threat through which the disease is being spread in the six-county region the medical center covers.”In our homes, we all let our guard down,” Chaney said. “You think it is safe to not socially distance, and you take your masks off. That is spreading the disease very rapidly.”
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Jerry Jeff Walker, a Texas country singer and songwriter who wrote the pop song “Mr. Bojangles,” has died at age 78.Walker died Friday of cancer, family spokesman John T. Davis told The Associated Press.”He had battled throat cancer for many years, and some other health issues,” Davis said Saturday.Walker emerged from New York’s Greenwich Village folk scene in the 1960s, and he was a founding member of the band Circus Maximus. He moved to Texas in the 1970s and in 1972 scored a hit with his version of the Guy Clark song “L.A. Freeway.”Walker and the Lost Gonzo Band in 1973 recorded an album live in Texas called “Viva Terlingua” that became a classic of the country-rock scene. Walker had since released more than 30 albums.In 1986, he formed independent music label Tried & True Music and released albums under it.Walker was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2017, undergoing chemotherapy and radiation, he told the Austin American Statesman in 2018.”I guess I took my singing for granted, and now I don’t,” he told the newspaper.In 2017, it was announced that Walker had donated more than 100 boxes of his music archives to The Wittliff Collections at Texas State University, including tapes, photographs, handwritten lyrics and artifacts.Walker’s survivors include his wife, Susan; son, Django; and daughter, Jessie Jane. 
 
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There were tense scenes in the streets of Santiago Friday, October 23, as protesters faced off with police just days before a referendum to decide on a new constitution for Chile. Riot police used tear gas and a water cannon to control the crowd out on the street.  These protests began a little over a year ago to call for reforms to the pension, healthcare and education systems. A new constitution was a central demand that emerged from the protests with Chileans expected to turn out in the millions Sunday, October 25, to cast their vote in the referendum. (Reuters)  
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The wife of a jailed Iranian dissident has criticized Iran’s government for refusing to grant her husband a single day of sick leave in his 14 months of detention despite his multiple ailments and risk of coronavirus exposure in prison.In an interview with VOA Persian from her home in Mashhad this week, Sedigheh Maliki-Fard said her husband, Hashem Khastar, 67, a teachers’ rights advocate, has been “exhausted” by health problems and poor living conditions at the city’s Vakilabad prison, where he has been jailed since February.Intelligence agents arrested Khastar in August 2019 after he joined 13 other activists in signing an open letter calling for the resignation of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Khastar was detained by the intelligence ministry in Mashhad and denied bail prior to his February transfer to Vakilabad.Iranian prosecutors charged Khastar with membership in an anti-government group, spreading anti-government propaganda and running a Telegram social media channel with the intention of disrupting national security. An appellate court sentenced him to 16 years in prison on March 29.Coronavirus concernMaliki-Fard said her husband and his fellow inmates at Vakilabad have been held in a small room with no exposure to natural light. She also expressed concern about the spread of the coronavirus at the prison and the lack of disinfectants to keep inmates safe.VOA could not independently verify her account of conditions at the prison because it is barred from reporting inside Iran.International rights activists also have expressed concerns about prisoners of conscience contracting the virus in what they describe as Iran’s unsanitary and overcrowded jails. They have called for their release.Iran granted temporary releases or furloughs to tens of thousands of prisoners in March to try to curb prison outbreaks of the virus. But it excluded prisoners sentenced to more than five-year terms for peaceful activities designated by authorities as national security offenses.Dissident’s Wife Denounces Iran for Not Freeing Sick HusbandHashem Khastar is serving a 16-year sentence Maliki-Fard also said Khastar has recently been suffering from high blood pressure in addition to a gastrointestinal illness that she described to VOA in May.In that prior interview, she said she had written repeatedly to Mashhad’s Revolutionary Court and had even met with its deputy prosecutor to request sick leave for Khastar, but said they rejected her appeals, citing her husband’s prison term as being greater than five years.There has been no comment from Iranian officials about Khastar’s case in state media in recent months.Previous arrestsPrior to his August 2019 arrest, Khastar had been arrested four other times for his labor rights and pro-democracy activism between 2004 and 2018, according to the Iran Prison Atlas of U.S. advocacy group United for Iran.This article originated in VOA’s Persian Service. Click here for the original Persian version of the story. 
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Authorities in Afghanistan say a suicide bomb explosion outside an education facility in Kabul has killed at least 13 people and injured 30 others.
 
Interior Ministry spokesman Tariq Arian said a man with explosives strapped to his body tried to storm the packed facility late Saturday but was intercepted by security guards and instead set off his explosives outside.
There were no immediate claims of responsibility for the attack.
 
The Taliban insurgent group denied its involvement, prompting suspicions that militants linked to the Islamic State terror group could be behind the bombing.
 
The local IS branch, known as Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP), has routinely carried out bombings of Shi’ite gatherings and worship places in Kabul and elsewhere in Afghanistan.  
 
Saturday’s attack came after a roadside bomb hit a minivan in the central-eastern Afghan province of Ghazni earlier in the day. The ensuing blast killed at least nine passengers and injured several others. Women were among the victims, a provincial government spokesman told VOA.  
 
The uptick in Afghan violence comes as a month-long peace dialogue between the Kabul government and representatives of the Taliban in Qatar faces a stalemate over procedural matters.  
 
The U.S.-brokered peace talks, which started on September 12, had raised hopes of a reduction in violence in Afghanistan. But hostilities have since intensified, inflicting dozens of casualties daily on combatants on the Afghan warring sides and civilians.  
 
The Afghan Air Force earlier in the week carried out an anti-Taliban airstrike in northeastern Takhar province that struck a mosque school. The strike killed at least 12 children and injured 18 others. 
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Uganda has reduced the cost of a COVID-19 test from $65 to $50, a move welcomed by truck drivers in the East African region. Business had been brought to a standstill at the border between Kenya and Uganda, with trucks backed up over 60 kilometers due to the high cost of COVID-19 testing.
   
In August, Uganda instituted a cost-recovery fee of $65 for COVID-19 testing for some categories of individuals and organizations.
 
The move caused an uproar, especially among truck drivers transporting goods within the East African region, since Uganda is a major transit route for countries such as Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania, South Sudan and Kenya.
 
In a statement issued Saturday, Uganda’s Health Ministry explained the fee cut, saying that the cost of transporting laboratory testing kits and other supplies from the manufacturer to Uganda has been reduced with resumption of international flights.
 
Dr. Diana Atwine, the permanent secretary of the Ministry of Health, explained to VOA how the cost for tests came down.
    
“The basis for the cost was actually the cost incurred while procuring and transportation and all those logistical costs, and therefore it was very expensive. But now, the airport opened. But also remember that at the beginning, few companies that were manufacturing. But over time, we have seen more companies come on board, therefore the tests are easily available and therefore the cost even has come down,” Atwine said.
 
Last week, the East African Business Council called for an end to mandatory testing of truck drivers within the East African region. In a statement, the council argued that this would ease congestion, which is stifling cross-border trade and reducing trade volumes, just when the region is struggling to recover from the pandemic.
 
Ayebare Kenneth, the chairman of the Cargo Consolidators Association, told VOA that the cost cut is a welcome move, considering that countries such as Kenya are carrying out free testing while Rwanda has been charging $50.
    
“You see, $15 (the amount of the reduction) might look small, but when the containers are many…. Every driver I pay $15 extra, it’s a lot of money. Because I pay them road toll, every container about $50. So, plus $65, I am going to around $115. And that reduction might seem small, but then, for us it’s big, according to continuous business we are doing.” Kenneth said.
 
With long lines and almost a week of waiting, especially at the Busia and Malaba crossings, as truck drivers waited for free COVID-19 testing by Kenya, those who had to test on the Ugandan side of the border allegedly started paying bribes to brokers.
 
The Health Ministry says, even though they have not gathered any evidence, they have found some forged COVID-19 test results.
    
“We are working with Kenyan government to ensure that we stamp out any area of the fraud. So, we cannot have someone coming, in claiming that these are tests done in Uganda and we are not able to detect,” Atwine said. He added that East African countries are working on a system that they can all use so that the results are uploaded to minimize fraud and other activities.
 
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Egypt is voting Saturday and Sunday in the first phase of parliamentary elections that are expected to produce a legislative body packed with supporters of President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, like the previous one.
 
Public criticism of the government in Egypt is strongly discouraged and authorities have ratcheted up their crackdown on dissent in recent years.  The crackdown targets not only the supporters of the banned Muslim Brotherhood group, but also secular pro-democracy activists, journalists and online critics, effectively leaving the president with no formal political opposition.
 
About 63 million voters are eligible to cast ballots in the two-stage election for 568 out of 596 total seats of the lower house of parliament.
 
Over 4,000 candidates are competing as individuals for 50% of the seats and 1,100 candidates are running on four party lists. Sissi will appoint 28 legislators to fill 5% of the seats for the total number of 596 deputies in the chamber.  
 
Fourteen of Egypt’s 27 provinces, including Giza and the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria are also voting this weekend.
   
The country’s 13 other provinces, including the capital Cairo and the two provinces in Sinai Peninsula, will vote in the second phase, scheduled for November 7 and 8.  
 
Each phase of the vote will be followed by runoff elections. The final results will be announced in December, with the inaugural session to follow shortly after.    
 
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International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach said the Olympic Games are not about politics and must guard against becoming a “marketplace of demonstrations.”
Against the backdrop of the Black Lives Matter movement to protest racial injustice, calls have increased this year for a change to Rule 50 of the Olympic Charter, which bans any form political protest during the Games.
World Athletics chief Sebastian Coe said earlier this month he believes athletes should have the right to make gestures of political protest during the Games, contrary to official IOC policy.
“The Olympic Games are firstly about sport. The athletes personify the values of excellence, solidarity and peace,” Bach wrote in The Guardian.
“They express this inclusiveness and mutual respect also by being politically neutral on the field of play and during the ceremonies. At times this focus on sport needs to be reconciled with the freedom of speech all athletes also enjoy at the Games.
“The unifying power of the Games can only unfold if everyone shows respect for and solidarity to one another. Otherwise, the Games will descend into a marketplace of demonstrations of all kinds, dividing and not uniting the world.”
Bach said he experienced the “political impotence” of sport when West Germany was among several countries to boycott the 1980 Moscow Games.
“As chair of the West German athletes’ commission I strongly opposed this boycott because it punished us for something we had nothing to do with – the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet army,” Bach, the winner of team fencing gold at Montreal 1976, wrote.
“It’s no consolation that we were ultimately proven right that this boycott not only punished the wrong ones, but that it also had no political effect… the Soviet army stayed nine more years in Afghanistan.
“The Olympic Games are not about politics. The IOC, as a civil non-governmental organization, is strictly politically neutral at all times.”
The COVID-19 pandemic forced the IOC to delay this year’s Tokyo Games until 2021. 
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Pacific Gas & Electric will cut power to more than 1 million people on Sunday to prevent the chance of sparking wildfires as extreme fire weather returns to the region, the utility announced Friday.The nation’s largest utility said it will black out customers in 38 counties — including most of the San Francisco Bay Area — as weather forecasts called for a return of bone-dry, gusty weather that carries the threat of downing or fouling power lines or other equipment that in recent years have been blamed for igniting massive and deadly blazes in central and Northern California.The safety shutoffs were expected to begin as early as Sunday morning and last into Tuesday, affecting 466,000 homes and businesses, or more than 1 million residents assuming between two and three people per home or business customer.Cuts are predicted to encompass parts of the Sacramento Valley, the northern and central Sierra Nevada, upper elevations of the San Francisco Bay Area, the Santa Cruz Mountains, the Central Coast and portions of southern Kern County.The shutoffs included 19,000 customers in parts of Butte County, where a 2018 blaze ignited by PG&E equipment destroyed much of the town of Paradise and killed 85 people.Forecasts call for the “the driest humidity levels and the strongest winds of the wildfire season thus far,” a PG&E statement said.The National Weather Service issued red flag warnings for many areas, predicting winds of 56 kph or higher in San Francisco and lower elevations and up to 113 kph in some mountains. The concern is that any spark could be blown into flames sweeping through tinder-dry brush and forestland.“On a scale of 1 to 10, this event is a 9,” Craig Clements, director of San Jose State University’s Fire Weather Lab, told the Bay Area News Group. “Historically our biggest fires are in October. We are in a critical period.”The National Weather Service said the conditions could equal those during devastating fires in California’s wind country in 2017 and last year’s Kincade Fire.Fire officials said PG&E transmission lines sparked that Sonoma County fire last October, which destroyed hundreds of homes and caused nearly 100,000 people to flee.The public safety power shutoff, or PSPS, would be the fifth this year, including one that began Wednesday and was scheduled to end late Friday.The upcoming weather forecast will be even more dangerous, said Scott Strenfel, the utility’s chief meteorologist.“We’re seeing four extremes in the weather for this potential PSPS event: extremely high winds, extremely low humidity, extreme dry fuels due to the hottest average temperatures over the last six months according to records that go back 126 years, and extreme drought across the territory given lack of rainfall,” he said in a statement.Southern California, meanwhile, continued to cool down with patchy drizzle. Forecasters said light rain was expected Saturday night through early Monday, with light mountain snow possible Sunday night, followed by Santa Ana winds.Eight of the 10 deadliest fires in California history have occurred in October or November. Some of the largest also have occurred since August of this year.The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, known as Cal Fire, said 5,500 firefighters were working Friday to fully contain 19 wildfires. Two-dozen new fires were contained Thursday despite red flag conditions.Numerous studies have linked bigger wildfires in America to climate change from the burning of coal, oil and gas.Scientists say climate change has made California much drier, meaning trees and other plants are more flammable.More 8,600 wildfires have scorched well over 16,576 square kilometers and destroyed about 9,200 buildings in California this year. There have been 31 deaths.All the huge fires have been fully or significantly contained, but more than 6,000 firefighters remain committed to 19 blazes, including a dozen major incidents, Cal Fire said.Many of this year’s devastating fires were started by thousands of dry lightning strikes. But some of the fires remain under investigation for potential electrical causes.
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Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari acknowledged Friday that “many lives have been lost” in weeks of unrest in the country but failed to denounce the police killing of peaceful protesters demanding an end to police brutality.Buhari made the comment in a meeting with former heads of state on how to address some of the country’s most intense violence in years.”In the mayhem that ensued, many lives had been lost and there are a number of public and private properties completely destroyed or vandalized… The mayhem has not stopped,” he said. “Through all the disturbances, security agencies observed extreme restraint.”The government “will not fold its arms and allow miscreants and criminals to continue to perpetrate these acts of hooliganism,” he said.Buhari did not, however, clarify how many people were killed, but after the meeting he said in a written statement that 51 civilians, 11 police officers and seven soldiers were killed during the violent confrontations.Major roads in Lagos, a major city and former capital of Nigeria, were blocked Friday by groups of people armed with knives and sticks, with many of them demanding more widespread reforms of the police and an end to corruption.U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Friday that Nigerian authorities must “not abuse force when dealing with demonstrations” and added that he received assurances from Buhari.“I heard from the president his strong commitment to do everything possible to avoid these kinds of incidents and I hope it will be the case in the future,” Guterres said.On Thursday, the United States condemned the police brutality in Lagos, with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo calling for an investigation.“We welcome an immediate investigation into any use of excessive force by members of the security forces. Those involved should be held to account in accordance with Nigerian law,” Pompeo said in a statement.Congressional Black Caucus member Sheila Jackson Lee, along with caucus members Barbara Lee and Frederica Wilson, has sent a letter to the Nigerian president demanding an end to the violence, the release of those who have been arrested and an investigation into the shootings at the toll plaza.Lee told VOA she and her colleagues also wrote to the U.N. Security Council “to ask for an investigation because this is a violation of human rights and the violation of human rights should not be tolerated by the United Nations.”Democratic members of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Africa also condemned the police brutality and called for “an immediate end to the violent crackdown on peaceful protestors.” “That security forces have used live ammunition against peaceful protestors demonstrating against police brutality is especially alarming. We urge security forces to act with restraint and for Nigerian authorities to deescalate the situation and hold perpetrators of violence to account,” Senators Chris Coons, Cory Booker, Tim Kaine and Chris Murphy said in a statement.Amnesty International on Wednesday reported that a total of 38 people died in protest-related incidents on Tuesday. Amnesty International also said at least 56 people have been killed over the past two weeks in protests directed at the police Special Anti-Robbery Squad, known as SARS, which the international rights group accused of torture and murders. The government disbanded SARS last week, but that has not tempered the outrage.Lagos authorities have not been able to fully enforce a curfew as anger continued to escalate. They said on Friday the curfew would be eased on Saturday, remaining in effect from 6 p.m. to 8 a.m. local time.
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A NASA spacecraft is stuffed with so much asteroid rubble from this week’s grab that it’s jammed open and precious particles are drifting away in space, scientists said Friday.Scientists announced the news three days after the spacecraft named Osiris-Rex briefly touched asteroid Bennu 321 million kilometers (200 million miles) away.The mission’s lead scientist, Dante Lauretta, said Tuesday’s operation collected far more material than expected for return to Earth — in the hundreds of grams. The sample container on the end of the robot arm penetrated so deeply into the asteroid and with such force, however, that rocks got sucked in and became wedged around the rim of the lid.The team was scrambling to put the sample container into the return capsule as early as Tuesday — much sooner than originally planned — for the long trip home. Particles are continuing to escape, and scientists want to minimize the loss.“Time is of the essence,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, chief of NASA’s science missions.A cloud of asteroid particles could be seen swirling around the spacecraft as it backed away from Bennu — at least 5 to 10 grams (half an ounce) at any one time. The situation appeared to stabilize, according to Lauretta, once the robot arm stopped moving and was locked into place.The requirement for Orisis-Rex — NASA’s first asteroid sample return mission, totaling more than $800 million — was at least 60 grams (2 ounces) of samples for return. The carbon-rich material holds the preserved building blocks of our solar system and could help scientists better understand how the planets were formed and how life originated on Earth.Launched in 2016, the spacecraft arrived at Bennu in 2018. Regardless of what’s on board, it will still leave the vicinity of the asteroid in March. The samples won’t reach Earth until 2023.Japan is awaiting its second batch of samples taken from a different asteroid, due back in December.
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U.S. President Donald Trump announced Friday that Sudan and Israel had agreed to normalize relations, and he touted it as his foreign policy achievement in the Middle East ahead of the November 3 U.S. presidential election.“The State of Israel and the Republic of Sudan have agreed to make peace,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “This will be the third country where we’re doing this, and we have many, many more coming.”Sudan is the third Arab country in recent months to establish ties with Israel, after Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates signed the Abraham Accords in September.The White House released a statement saying that “in the coming weeks, the two countries will begin negotiations on cooperation agreements in agriculture, economy, trade, aviation, migration issues, and other areas of mutual benefit.”During the announcement, Trump was joined on the phone by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok and Sudanese Chairman of the Sovereignty Council Abdel Fattah al-Burhan.Netanyahu hailed the announcement, calling it “another dramatic breakthrough for peace.”While Trump insisted that the Palestinians would eventually join in recognizing Israel, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ office released a statement condemning “normalization of ties with the state of the Israeli occupation, which occupies the land of Palestine.”Sudan and Palestinian causeSudan was a longtime ally of the Palestinian cause under President Omar al-Bashir, who was toppled in 2019 after 30 years in power.FILE – Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok addresses the press in Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, Aug. 15, 2020.Currently facing an economic crisis, the transitional government of Sudan under Abdalla Hamdok has welcomed the trade and investment incentives that come as part of the normalization deal with Israel. A joint statement by the three countries included a promise by the U.S. to secure international debt relief for Khartoum.Sudan is negotiating from an inherent position of weakness against two of the strongest countries in the region and in the world, said Cameron Hudson, senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center.“Many people will look at the decision by Sudan as one that they were forced into,” Hudson said. “People in the country are calling it bullying, others are calling it blackmail. It certainly doesn’t feel like it was arrived at through an agreement of equals.”But Hudson said the deal also reflected the transitional government’s efforts to renew its relationship with the rest of the world and create a more balanced foreign policy.State sponsor of terrorismOn Monday, Trump announced via Twitter his intention to remove Sudan from a list of state sponsors of terrorism.GREAT news! New government of Sudan, which is making great progress, agreed to pay $335 MILLION to U.S. terror victims and families. Once deposited, I will lift Sudan from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list. At long last, JUSTICE for the American people and BIG step for Sudan!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) President Donald Trump speaks while on a phone call with the leaders of Sudan and Israel in the Oval Office of the White House, Oct. 23, 2020, in Washington.Changing dynamic toward IranTrump said that other nations, including Saudi Arabia, would eventually establish relations with Israel, perhaps even including Iran.“I think, ultimately, Iran maybe will become a member of this whole thing, if you want to really know the truth,” Trump said. “And ultimately, they’ll all be one unified family. It’ll be an amazing thing, probably has never happened in the Middle East.”Iran’s rapprochement with Israel is unlikely to happen anytime soon, said Alex Vatanka, director of the Iran program at the Middle East Institute.“I don’t know where the president is getting that from, but I have seen zero indication that the Iranians are interested in joining this trend,” Vatanka said. “The opposite is true: They’re suggesting in all their statements and reactions so far that what is happening between Israel and UAE, Bahrain and now Sudan is not going to be sustainable.”Normalization between Israel and the three Arab states reflects a changing dynamic in the Middle East in which traditional Arab support for the Palestinians’ fight toward statehood has largely been surpassed by regional concerns about Iran.Vatanka said that regional thinking about hostility against Israel was also changing. “There is no military solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict,” Vatanka said. “It has been tried since the late ’40s for so many rounds, and each time it’s failed.”The Iranians need to ask themselves if they are the ones who are stuck in the past, Vatanka added.Foreign policy winWith less than two weeks until the U.S. election, the administration is touting the deal as another foreign policy win. In a statement, the White House said, “As more countries normalize relations with Israel, the region will become more stable, secure and prosperous.”U.S. support for Israel is particularly appealing to evangelical Christians, a key demographic among Trump supporters.FILE – Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announces full diplomatic ties will be established with the United Arab Emirates, during a news conference on Aug. 13, 2020, in Jerusalem.During his conference call with the leaders Friday, Trump took a jab at his opponent, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.“Do you think Sleepy Joe could have made this deal, Bibi? Sleepy Joe … somehow I don’t think so,” Trump asked Netanyahu, using the Israeli leader’s nickname. Netanyahu responded, “Uh … one thing I can tell you is we appreciate the help for peace from anyone in America.”Israel relies on bipartisan support from Washington. Biden has stated that he supports more countries recognizing Israel, but he also has said he is committed to a two-state solution, achieving Palestinian statehood as a broader part of peace in the Middle East.VOA’s Salem Solomon contributed to this report.
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Losses are mounting for the U.S. airline industry as the coronavirus pandemic continues to wreak havoc on the economy and hope dims for an immediate government aid package.  Karl Moore, associate professor at Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill University, says, “We’re looking at flights being down in the area of 90% less in March and April than they were the year before. So, it’s a time of enormous crisis. And there are hundreds of thousands of people who work in the airline industry.” For now, combined third-quarter losses for American, United, Delta, Southwest and Alaska Air have exceeded $11.5 billion. The industry’s downturn dwarfs previous crises such as SARS and the September 11 terrorist attacks of 2001, Moore says.WATCH: US Airlines Await Critical Aid DealSorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline.Download File360p | 10 MB480p | 14 MB540p | 19 MB720p | 33 MB1080p | 69 MBOriginal | 94 MB Embed” />Copy Download AudioEarlier this year, U.S. airline companies received billions from Congress through the CARES Act in the form of cash and loans that helped keep them afloat. The hope was that the virus would have subsided by now. It hasn’t.   “What we’ve seen is domestic travel in the U.S. has gone up some, but international travel is down horrifically, and even domestic travel is not anywhere near what it was last year. So, we have the ongoing crisis. We have maybe a second wave — certainly a lot more people getting sick than we had hoped at this time of year. So, it’s a thing where the industry’s troubles have not yet gone beyond six or seven months and it will go on for some months and perhaps a couple of years to come,” says Moore. Nearly 5 million air transport jobs globally are at risk, according to estimates by the Air Transport Action Group. Mask wearing is mandatoryTo bring passengers back, airlines have made mask wearing mandatory. They’ve also stepped up their cleaning of plane cabins. Some leave middle seats open to put more space between passengers.Negotiations between Congress and the White House on a new aid package continue with few signs that an agreement will be reached soon.   This has led airlines to cut jobs, offer early retirement and take other cost-cutting measures. But some experts note that with airlines raking in profits over the past decade, they could have made better decisions.Even though they could not foresee the pandemic and the fallout from COVID-19, Israel Shaked, a finance and economics professor at Boston University Questrom School of Business, says airlines’ own choices left them with little cash.Shaked is also the managing director of the Michel Shaked group, a consulting firm based in Boston. In a recent article, he argues that decisions made in the past few years by the airlines were short-sighted and that they could have saved for a so-called rainy day.    “If you take a look at 2019, for example, this industry paid itself, and I am only talking about American, United, Southwest, Alaska, JetBlue … and Delta. … They paid out dividends of $1.7 billion and the stock repurchase of $7.4 billion. If you combine these two, you’re talking about almost like a 7, 8, 9 billion dollars in one year going out of the company … and it was similar the year before.” Minimum of 80% capacity neededHe points out that airlines need minimum 80% capacity utilization to survive because they have huge fixed costs.He says he supports government aid in the short term, but authorities need to put some limits in what the airlines can do with that money.This month the number of people screened at U.S. airports is down 65%, compared with last October, but that’s better than the 68% decline in September, the 71% drop in August and the 96% plunge in mid-April.  
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As Europe tries to curtail a second wave of the coronavirus, many residents across the continent are facing more restrictions in their daily lives.Parts of Germany, Spain, France, Italy, the United Kingdom, Slovakia and other countries are imposing curfews and limits on social interaction as case numbers spike.Countries scrambled to look for ways to slow the spread but also to avoid the blanket lockdowns from earlier this year that have taken a massive economic toll and have little public support.Spreading fasterThe second wave has some leaders sounding the alarm. One French official said the virus was spreading faster now than it did during the first wave.“The virus is circulating more quickly than in the spring,” said epidemiologist Arnaud Fontanet, who sits on the scientific council advising the French government.Traffic passes a COVID-19 sign informing drivers of the upcoming lockdown that closes nonfood retailers, cafes, restaurants, pubs and hotels for two weeks in a bid to reduce soaring coronavirus cases, in Cardiff, Wales, Oct. 23, 2020.In Wales, for example, First Minister Mark Drakeford this week announced a severe two-week lockdown in which all nonessential businesses such as shops, restaurants and bars must shut down from late Friday until November 9.”A firebreak period is our best chance of regaining control of the virus and avoiding a much longer and much more damaging national lockdown,” he said.Other countries are taking less severe measures. Belgium, one of the hardest hit countries, restricted social contacts and banned spectators from sporting events. Poland said it would close restaurants and bars and limit public gatherings to five people. In Spain, some called for the central government to impose nighttime curfews.People sit outside a bar near Campo de’ Fiori before a curfew imposed by the region of Lazio from midnight to 5 a.m to curb the coronavirus disease infections in Rome, Italy, Oct. 23, 2020.Despite the jump in cases, hospitalizations in Europe are “still less than half of the peak in March and April” but are rising steadily each week, according to data from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, The New York Times reported.The Times reported that in the U.S., about 41,000 COVID sufferers were in hospitals, which represented a 41% increase from the past month. The northern Rocky Mountain states and the upper Midwest were seeing spikes in reported cases.Researchers around the world are racing to develop a safe, effective vaccine against COVID-19, which has killed more than 1.1 million people around the globe and sickened more than 41 million.Nations with 1M casesMeanwhile, the number of countries with more than 1 million confirmed coronavirus cases rose to seven, with France and Spain the latest nations to reach the mark.According to data compiled by the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center, the United States remained the country with the highest number of infections: more than 8.4 million total cases. Despite a massive increase in testing, however, the positivity rate in the U.S. was well below April peaks.
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United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres said it was very unfortunate that the 20 major industrialized nations did not come together in March, as he suggested then, to establish a coordinated response to suppress COVID-19 worldwide.In an interview with the Associated Press, Guterres said he hopes that as the G-20 summit is coming next month, the international community understand “they need to be much more coordinated in fighting the virus.”Guterres said the U.N. will be “strongly advocating” for a coordinated response to the disease, in addition to seeking a “guarantee” that any developed vaccine be treated as “a global public good” and be made “available and affordable for everyone, everywhere.”Scores of researchers around the world are racing to develop a safe and effective vaccine against COVID-19, which has killed more than 1.1 million people worldwide and sickened more than 41 million.Meanwhile, the number of countries with more than 1 million confirmed coronavirus cases has risen to seven, with France and Spain the latest nations to reach the mark.On Thursday, France extended curfews to about 65% of its population and Belgium’s foreign minister was hospitalized with COVID-19 and treated in the intensive care unit, as a second wave of the pandemic surged across Europe.However, according to data compiled by the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center, the United States remains the country with highest number of infections, more than 8.4 million total cases, followed by India, with 7.76 million; Brazil, with 5.32 million; Russia, with 1.45 million; and Argentina, which has 1,053,650. France is in sixth place with 1,041,991 cases, followed by Spain with 1,026,281.The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has revised its definition of close contact with a person infected with COVID-19.The agency had previously determined that close contact was spending 15 consecutive minutes within 2 meters of an infected individual. The revised changes announced Wednesday now defines a close contact as someone who spent a total of 15 minutes accumulated over a 24-hour period.The change by the CDC was prompted by a report of a prison officer in the northeastern U.S. state of Vermont who became infected with COVID-19 after more than 20 brief interactions with inmates who later tested positive for the virus. The brief visits added up to about 17 total minutes of exposure.
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President Donald Trump and his Democratic Party challenger, Joe Biden, met in Nashville, Tennessee, Thursday night for the final debate of the presidential campaign. VOA’s Mike O’Sullivan reports.
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