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Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said that he was aiming to begin a dialogue with the country’s political opposition next month in Mexico facilitated by Norway, a process he hoped the United States would embrace.

In May the opposition changed strategy and indicated its willingness to return to negotiations to resolve the political crisis in OPEC member Venezuela.

Maduro has overseen an economic collapse in once-prosperous Venezuela since taking office in 2013, and stands accused by his domestic opponents, the United States and the European Union of corruption, human rights violations and rigging his 2018 re-election. Maduro denies the accusations.

In June, top diplomats in Washington, Brussels and Ottawa said they would be willing to revise their sanctions on Maduro’s government if the dialogue with the opposition led to significant progress toward free and fair elections.

“I can tell you that we are ready to go to Mexico,” Maduro said in an interview on the state-funded Telesur television network late on Saturday. “We have begun to discuss a complicated, difficult agenda.”

Venezuela’s opposition, led by Juan Guaido, has accused Maduro of using previous rounds to buy time in the face of diplomatic and sanctions pressure by the United States and others. Guaido is recognized by Washington and several other Western democracies as the country’s rightful leader.

Opposition groups have said they are willing to negotiate the conditions for presidential and parliamentary elections with Maduro’s government.

Maduro, in turn, has said he wants the negotiations to focus on the lifting of U.S. sanctions targeting the financial and oil sectors.

He added that the negotiations would include “all the oppositions,” a reference to opposition politicians who broke with Guaido’s call to boycott the 2020 parliamentary elections, which were won handily by Maduro’s ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela.

 
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Ethiopia’s Amhara state on Sunday called on “all young people” to take up arms against Tigrayan fighters who are battling the federal government military and forces from all of Ethiopia’s other nine regions.

The call for mass mobilization against Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) fighters – whom Amhara’s military said were now attacking the state – expands the eight-month-old war and instability in the Horn of Africa country.

“I call on all young people, militia, non-militia in the region, armed with any government weapon, armed with personal weapons, to join the anti-TPLF war mission from tomorrow,” Agegnehu Teshager, president of Amhara regional government was quoted as saying by the region’s state media.

Calls to TPLF spokesman Getachew Reda, for a comment were not answered.

War erupted between the Ethiopian military and the TPLF, which rules Ethiopia’s northernmost region, in November.

Three weeks later, the government declared victory when it captured Tigray’s capital Mekelle, but the TPLF kept fighting. At the end of June, the TPLF seized control of Mekelle and most of Tigray after government soldiers withdrew.

This week, the Tigrayans pushed their offensive to Afar, their neighboring state to the east, where they said they planned to target troops from the Amhara region fighting alongside the federal military in the area.

Afar is a strategic region for landlocked Ethiopia because the main road and railway linking the capital, Addis Ababa, with the seaport of Djibouti runs through it.

On Saturday, Amhara’s special forces commander, Brigadier General Tefera Mamo, was quoted by the region’s state media as saying the war had expanded to the state.

“The terrorist group has started a war in the Amhara and Afar regions and is also harassing Ethiopians,” Tefera said, referring to TPLF. “Amhara Special Forces are fighting in coordination with other security forces.”

Thousands of people have died in the fighting, around 2 million have been displaced and more than 5 million rely on emergency food aid.

 
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Flames racing through rugged terrain in Northern California destroyed multiple homes Saturday as the state’s largest wildfire intensified and numerous other blazes battered the U.S. West.

The Dixie Fire, which started July 14, had already leveled over a dozen houses and other structures when it tore through the tiny community of Indian Falls after dark.

An updated damage estimate was not immediately available, though fire officials said the blaze has charred more than 73,200 hectares in Plumas and Butte counties and was 20% contained.

The fire was burning in a remote area with limited access, hampering firefighters’ efforts as it charged eastward, fire officials said. It has prompted evacuation orders in several small communities and along the west shore of Lake Almanor, a popular area getaway.

Meanwhile, the nation’s largest wildfire, southern Oregon’s Bootleg Fire, was nearly halfway surrounded Saturday as more than 2,200 crew members worked to corral it in the heat and wind, fire officials said. The growth of the sprawling blaze had slowed, but thousands of homes remained threatened on its eastern side, authorities said.

“This fire is resistant to stopping at dozer lines,” Jim Hanson, fire behavior analyst, said in a news release from the Oregon Department of Forestry. “With the critically dry weather and fuels we are experiencing, firefighters are having to constantly reevaluate their control lines and look for contingency options.”

In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom has declared a state of emergency for four northern counties because of wildfires that he said were causing “conditions of extreme peril to the safety of persons and property.” The proclamation opened the way for more state support.

Such conditions are often from a combination of unusual random, short-term and natural weather patterns heightened by long-term, human-caused climate change. Global warming has made the West much warmer and drier in the past 30 years.

On Saturday, fire crews from California and Utah headed to Montana, Gov. Greg Gianforte announced. Five firefighters were injured Thursday when swirling winds blew flames back on them as they worked on the Devil’s Creek Fire burning in rough, steep terrain near the rural town of Jordan, in the northeast part of the state.

They remained hospitalized Friday. Bureau of Land Management spokesperson Mark Jacobsen declined to release the extent of their injuries, and attempts to learn their conditions Saturday were unsuccessful. Three of the firefighters are U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service crew members from North Dakota, and the other two are U.S. Forest Service firefighters from New Mexico.

Another high-priority blaze, the Alder Creek Fire in southwest Montana, had charred over 2,750 hectares and was 10% contained Saturday night. It was threatening nearly 240 homes.

Elsewhere in California, the Tamarack Fire south of Lake Tahoe continued to burn through timber and chaparral and threatened communities on both sides of the California-Nevada state line. The fire, sparked by lightning July 4 in Alpine County, has destroyed at least 10 buildings.

Heavy smoke from that blaze and the Dixie Fire lowered visibility and may at times ground aircraft providing support for fire crews. The air quality south of Lake Tahoe and across the state line into Nevada deteriorated to very unhealthy levels.

In north-central Washington, firefighters battled two blazes in Okanogan County that threatened hundreds of homes and again caused hazardous air quality conditions Saturday. And in northern Idaho, east of Spokane, Washington, a small fire near the Silverwood Theme Park prompted evacuations Friday evening at the park and in the surrounding area. The theme park was back open on Saturday with the fire half contained.

Although hot weather with afternoon winds posed a continued threat of spreading blazes, weekend forecasts also called for a chance of scattered thunderstorms in California, Utah, Nevada, Arizona and other states. However, forecasters said some could be dry thunderstorms that produce little rain but a lot of lightning, which can spark new blazes.

More than 85 large wildfires were burning around the country, most of them in Western states, and they had burned more than 553,000 hectares. 
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As Zhengzhou residents wonder if the toll from record rainfall in China’s Henan province will exceed the latest tally of 58 deaths, authorities were estimating the province has incurred $10 billion (65.5 billion yuan) in economic losses in the manufacturing center.

Torrential rains have inundated the province since last weekend. As a result, supply chains have been disrupted for the region’s many factories, including a complex in Zhengzhou where almost half of Apple’s iPhones sold worldwide are produced. That’s why Zhengzhou is sometimes referred to as “iPhone City.”

Hon Hai Technology Group, a Taiwanese multinational electronics contract manufacturer better known as Foxconn, operates the Zhengzhou complex. Nikkei Asia reported that Foxconn Chairman Young Liu told the company’s annual shareholders meeting in Taiwan that the floods have had a limited impact on the complex.

A source familiar with Hon Hai Technology Group who was not authorized to speak to the press told VOA Mandarin that one of the group’s three plants in Zhengzhou had been flooded. The flooded plant produced PC connectors, not mobile phones, according to the VOA Mandarin source, who added that iPhone production was unlikely to be interrupted because no machinery was damaged and Foxconn maintains a full stock of required materials and parts.

Apple is scheduled to release the iPhone 13 in September, according to numerous press reports tracking the company. But as long as transportation resumes soon, the new iPhone 13 will not be delayed, the source said.

However, transit cleanup may be delayed by the scope of the devastation, and an analyst told VOA Mandarin that iPhone 13 production depends on whether the local transportation recovers quickly.

Travel snagged

Qiu Shi-Fang, senior analyst at the Taiwan Institute of Economic Research, told VOA Mandarin that iPhone components are usually shipped to the assembly plant in July and the first batch of iPhones is finished in August. She said the arrival of components would affect subsequent shipments of new phones.

However, streets have been turned into rivers, and flights and trains in many parts of Henan have also been suspended, creating uncertainty about iPhone production.

Foxconn has more than 90 production lines with about 350,000 workers at its Zhengzhou plants. Qiu said Foxconn is facing difficulties in hiring workers from outside Zhengzhou because of flood-related transit snarls.

Qiu said if Zhengzhou fails to return to normal by the end of July, iPhone 13’s production may be delayed.

The floods also damaged thousands of cars in Henan province. Multiple reports from the local car insurance industry suggest the floods damaged 30,000 to 80,000 cars, which may cost insurance companies more than $154 million (1 billion yuan) in compensation.

Throughout Henan province, 11 insurers had received claims for almost 32,000 damaged cars by Thursday, according to Reuters.

Zhengzhou, a traditional automotive industry hub, produces about 500,000 vehicles annually, accounting for about 3% of China’s output from large manufacturers, such as Yutong Bus, Haima Motor and Zhengzhou Nissan.

Agriculture in Henan was also hard hit by the rains, with more than 200,000 hectares of farmland underwater, according to Reuters. 

Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report.
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Guatemala’s top anti-graft investigator, Juan Francisco Sandoval, fled the country Saturday hours after he was fired, a move that sparked international backlash, a human rights official said.

Guatemalan Ombudsman Jordan Rodas accompanied Sandoval to the Salvadoran border “in light of the difficult decision to leave the country to safeguard his life and integrity due to recent events,” according to the Central American country’s human rights body.

Sandoval had been fired from his post as head of Guatemala’s Prosecutor Against Corruption and Impunity (FECI) on Friday by Attorney General Consuelo Porras.

Sandoval said he had encountered many obstacles in his work at FECI and that he was told not to investigate President Alejandro Giammattei without the attorney general’s consent, something he said went “against the autonomy and independence” of FECI.

The Attorney General’s Office said he had been let go because of “constant abuses and frequent violations” of the institution and that attempts had been made to “undermine” the “work, integrity and dignity” of Porras.

His firing sparked criticism from the U.S. State Department, which has called him an “anti-corruption champion,” as well as outcry from humanitarian groups, civil society and businesses.

Julie Chung, the acting assistant secretary for the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, condemned Sandoval’s sacking in a tweet on Friday, saying it was “a significant setback to rule of law.”

“It contributes to perceptions of a systemic effort to undermine those known to be fighting corruption,” she added.

The Center against Corruption and Impunity in the North of Central America also criticized Porras’ decision, saying it would create “setbacks in the fight against corruption in the region.”

FECI was initially created to work alongside the U.N. International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala to combat corruption and impunity, but the body’s work was stopped in 2019 under a decision by then-President Jimmy Morales, after he was singled out by both entities for electoral corruption.
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Several states scaled back their reporting of COVID-19 statistics this month just as cases across the country started to skyrocket, depriving the public of real-time information on outbreaks, cases, hospitalizations and deaths in their communities.

The shift to weekly instead of daily reporting in Florida, Nebraska, Iowa and South Dakota marked a notable shift during a pandemic in which coronavirus dashboards have become a staple for Americans closely tracking case counts and trends to navigate a crisis that has killed more than 600,000 people in the U.S.

In Nebraska, the state stopped reporting on the virus altogether for two weeks after Governor Pete Ricketts declared an end to the official virus emergency, forcing reporters to file public records requests or turn to national websites that track state data to learn about COVID statistics. The state backtracked two weeks later and came up with weekly reports of some basic numbers.

Other governments have gone the other direction and released more information, with Washington this week adding a dashboard on breakthrough cases to show the number of residents who contracted the virus after getting vaccines. Many states have recently gone to reporting virus numbers only on weekdays.

When Florida changed the frequency of its virus reporting earlier this month, officials said it made sense given the decreasing number of cases and the increasing number of people being vaccinated.

Cases started soaring soon afterward, and Florida cases earlier this week made up one-fifth of the country’s new coronavirus infections. As a result, Florida’s weekly releases — typically done on Friday afternoons — have consequences for the country’s understanding of the current summer surge, with no statewide COVID stats coming out of the virus hotspot for six days a week.

In Florida’s last two weekly reports, the number of new cases shot up from 23,000 to 45,000 and then 73,000 on Friday, an average of more than 10,000 day. Hospitals are starting to run out of space in parts of the state.

With cases rising, Democrats and other critics have urged state officials and Governor Ron DeSantis to resume daily outbreak updates.

“There was absolutely no reason to eliminate the daily updates beyond an effort to pretend like there are no updates,” said state Representative Anna Eskamani, a Democrat from the Orlando area.

Alarming trend

The trend of reducing data reporting has alarmed infectious-disease specialists who believe that more information is better during a pandemic. People have come to rely on state virus dashboards to help make decisions about whether to attend large gatherings or wear masks in public, and understanding the level of risk in the community affects how people respond to virus restrictions and calls to get vaccinated.

“We know that showing the data to others actually is important because the actions that businesses take, the actions that schools take, the actions that civic leaders take, the actions that community leaders take, the actions that each of us individually take are all influenced by our perception of what the risk is out there,” said Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, who leads the department of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California-San Francisco.

Reporting the numbers weekly still allows people to see the overall trends while smoothing out some of the day-to-day variations that come from the way cases are reported. And experts have long advised that it makes sense to pay more attention to the seven-day rolling average of new cases because the numbers can vary widely from one day to the next.

And Florida health officials say that they have not curtailed the sharing of data with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Overwhelmed staff

Maintaining daily updates on the virus does require significant resources for states. For instance, Kansas went to reporting virus numbers three times a week in May because the state health department said providing daily statistics consumed too much of its overwhelmed staff’s time.

In Nebraska, officials decided that continuing to update the virus dashboard daily wasn’t the best use of state resources now, partly because there had been a steady decline in the number of views of the website, indicating less interest in the numbers, spokeswoman Olga Dack said. The state could return to providing daily updates if the governor’s office decided that was needed, she said.

State health departments have a long history of providing the public regular updates on other diseases like flu and West Nile, but those viruses have none of the political baggage associated with COVID-19.

In Florida, a former health department employee was fired last year after publicly suggesting that managers wanted her to manipulate information on coronavirus statistics to paint a rosier picture. The employee, Rebekah Jones, did not allege any tampering with data, but her comments sowed doubts about the reliability of the metrics.

Weekly updates, no updates

Infectious-disease specialist Dr. David Brett-Major said that for many people, national websites such as the one run by the CDC can be a good source of data on the latest state trends, and that weekly updates could be OK. The World Health Organization often uses weekly updates, but he said they do that for practical data management reasons, not political ones.

He said the message Nebraska sent when it ended its dashboard — that the state emergency was over and conditions were returning to normal — was troubling.

“The main problem is that it reflects a disinterest in pandemic risk management,” said Brett-Major, with the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha.

Janet Hamilton, executive director of the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists, said part of the problem is that public health officials generally don’t have sophisticated data systems, which makes it more labor intensive to produce the daily dashboards. Even though public health agencies have money for operations at a time when pandemic government spending is flush, they haven’t necessarily had the chance to upgrade.

“It would be great if daily reporting could be made widely available, but public health would have to be funded better to do that and right now that is just not the case,” Hamilton said.

And even in states where virus numbers aren’t being reported publicly every day, health officials are still looking at the latest data, Hamilton said.

But at a time when the delta variant is, in the words of the CDC director, “spreading with incredible efficiency,” Bibbins-Domingo said it is important that everyone can see the latest trends and understand the risks.

“Even if we know that they are available to decision-makers on a daily basis, there is considerable value to providing the data to the public,” she said.
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Authorities in Afghanistan on Saturday enforced an indefinite nighttime curfew across most of the country as government forces struggle to curb Taliban advances.

The Islamist insurgent group has made rapid battlefield gains in recent weeks, bringing it close to capital cities of all 34 Afghan provinces and the nation’s capital, Kabul.

A spokesperson for the Afghan interior ministry told VOA that all provinces have been placed under the 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. curfew with the exception of Kabul, Nangarhar and Panjsher provinces.

“Terrorist groups often undertake terrorist and other subversive acts late in the night, so a nighttime restriction on public movement has been enforced to curb the violence,” said Ahmad Zia Zia.

The Taliban unleashed a widespread offensive in early May, when the United States and NATO allies began pulling their last remaining troops from Afghanistan. Since then the insurgents have overrun more than half of roughly 420 Afghan districts, without a fight in many cases.

As of last week, the U.S. military said 95% of its withdrawal had been completed and the process is on track to finish by the end of next month.

Stepped up Taliban attacks have forced the U.S. military in recent days to launch airstrikes to enable Afghan security forces to contain insurgent advances.

The Afghan government has blamed its battlefield losses on a lack of U.S. air support for security forces on the ground since May.

The Taliban denounced the latest U.S. airstrikes as a breach of the group’s February 2020 agreement with Washington that paved the way for the foreign forces’ withdrawal after nearly 20 years of war in Afghanistan.

“It is a clear violation of the signed agreement that will have consequences,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid warned in a statement.

U.S. officials have described Taliban offensives as a violation of the Islamist group’s agreement to support a peacefully negotiated resolution of the conflict, as outlined in that same February 2020 agreement.

General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Wednesday that about 212 district centers are currently in Taliban hands, and insurgent forces are advancing on the outskirts of 17 provincial capitals.

“Strategic momentum sort of appears to be sort of with the Taliban,” Milley told reporters during a briefing at the Pentagon.

“What they’re trying to do is isolate the major population centers,” he added. “They’re trying to do the same thing to Kabul, and roughly speaking … a significant amount of territory has been seized.”

The Afghan fighting largely subsided, as usual, during this week’s three-day Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha that ended on Thursday.

But both warring sides have since resumed attacks against each other.

Afghan Defense Ministry officials claimed Saturday that security forces killed nearly 300 insurgent fighters across several provinces in the past 24 hours, though Taliban and government officials routinely offer inflated battlefield claims.

U.S. President Joe Biden on Friday assured Afghan counterpart Ashraf Ghani of Washington’s diplomatic and humanitarian support.

A White House statement said the two leaders in a phone call “agreed that the Taliban’s current offensive is in direct contradiction to the movement’s claim to support a negotiated settlement of the conflict.”

Biden told Ghani that his administration would remain diplomatically engaged “in support of a durable and just political settlement” to the Afghan war.

The U.S. State Department noted on Friday the ongoing violence in Afghanistan was largely driven by the Taliban and called for an immediate end to it.

“We call on the Taliban to engage in serious negotiations to determine a political roadmap for Afghanistan’s future that leads to a just and durable settlement,” Jalina Porter, principal deputy spokesperson, told reporters in Washington.
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Cameroon’s government has sent Defense Minister Joseph Beti Assomo, to the border between the English- and French-speaking regions amid increasing English-speaking separatist incursions into French-speaking towns and villages.

Officials say many businesses have been abandoned and construction work on government buildings halted due to the increased separatist attacks.

Scores of people watch as members of the Cameroon military display military weapons in Foumban, a French-speaking town on the border with Cameroon’s English-speaking North-West region. 

Warrant Officer Bouba Dawanga Syraye, the ranking officer at the military post in Foumban., says the weapons were seized from suspected rebels.  

He says government troops arrested 10 suspects and recovered guns, ammunition and several locally made explosives. He says all the suspects and their accomplices have denied accusations of arms trafficking.

The military says arms proliferation in the French-speaking West region, where Foumban is located, has been on the rise since 2017. The military says English-speaking rebels fighting to create an independent state they call Ambazonia in French-majority Cameroon infiltrate French-speaking towns and villages with weapons.

The government says at least 40 deadly separatist incursions have been reported in the West region since 2017. Bamboutos, Noun and Menou administrative units, also known as divisions, bordering the North-West region are the hardest hit by the separatist fighters.

Awah Fonka, the governor of Cameroon’s West region, says the fighters attack and kill government troops, loot shops and destroy schools. He says the rebel incursions and killing have halted work on some government projects.  

“We have recorded attacks at the level of several projects which would have helped in the development of the region,” said Fonka. “The case of Babadjou, Bamenda, Bambotos [road projects], as well as the road leading from Kuikong to Bandjoun and especially the divisions bordering the [English speaking North-] West region and the South-West region.”

Fonka said the military has been deployed to protect engineers on roads whose construction has been abandoned. He pleaded with civilians to help stop separatist incursions by reporting strangers in their towns and villages.

Fonka did not say how many government troops, rebels and civilians have been killed, but said the military was deployed this week to stop the incursions.

On July 15, Cameroonian officials said anglophone rebels were disguising themselves as military troops and launching attacks on villages and towns in the West region.

This week, Cameroonian President Paul Biya sent Assomo to lead a high-profile military delegation to French-speaking areas bordering the English-speaking North-West and South-West regions.

During a meeting with local military officers and governors of the North-West and West regions on Friday, Assomo said he was asked to encourage troops fighting the separatists. He said the government adopted a new strategy to fight the rebels but did not say what the new strategy entails.

Rodrique Sufor, who sells chicken in Mbouda, where Assomo and his delegation visited, says he is one of the many people who have relocated their businesses from the town of Galim because of regular separatist incursions and killing there.

“When we hear Ambazonians [separatist fighters] beheading soldiers, the situation cannot leave [allow] us that we can stay in peace, so we want the government to take the situation seriously by reinforcing the security around the area,” said Sufor.

Sufor says many people have also fled from the town of Babadjou to safer French-speaking towns.

The government is asking the fleeing civilians to return and assuring them that the military will assure their security and safety.

Cameroon’s separatist conflict has cost more than 3,000 lives and forced 550,000 people to flee to French-speaking regions of Cameroon or into neighboring Nigeria, according to the United Nations.
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Linguists are to focus on rhyming slang in new research for the Australian National Dictionary.  They want to add to an existing and impressive lexicon of Aussie slang. 

Barry Crocker is an Australian singer and actor.  In the world of rhyming slang, his name is synonymous with having a bad time. 

Every year, the Australian National Dictionary Centre looks for new contributions for the Australian National Dictionary.  This year’s focus is on rhyming slang for future editions of the dictionary and its database.

Mark Gwynn, an editor at the center, talked about rhyming slang with VOA. 

“I’ve got plenty of favorites.  I’ve always loved Noah – Noah’s Ark, shark.  That’s a good example of the Australian one,” Gwynn said. “If someone mentioned Noah, you’d be worried.  But one of my favorites are Barry Crocker – shocker.”  

Gwynn believes that this type of slang probably emerged in east London in the middle of the 1800s.  It found its way from Britain to colonial Australia very soon afterward, where it has developed a distinctive style of its own, although it does have its critics.  

“People have made the comment that it is a very masculine thing.  People have also made the comment that it’s a very Anglo-Celtic thing,” Gwynn said. “So, we’d be interested to know if other communities in other ethnic groups in Australia have picked it up.  This is the kind of information we’re interested in, but, like I said, I think its heyday has gone.  There are various other forms of slang these days.” 

Poetic colloquialisms in Australia are refusing to go away quietly, though.   Gwynn says that even the pandemic has yielded more rhyming slang.

“We’ve had ‘My Sharona’ for corona, for the coronavirus from that 1970s song and I know we’ve also heard, and I think our friends in the U.K. also share, ‘Miley Cyrus’ for virus,” Gwynn said. “So, clearly rhyming is still an aspect of slang that is going on here and elsewhere.”  

Australians might not be familiar with less familiar slang terms such as ‘Merv Hughes’ – shoes – or a ‘Dad ‘n Dave,’ shave, but many might know about doing ‘the Harold Holt.’  It means to bolt or leave without explanation.  It refers to a former Australian Prime Minister – Harold Holt – who disappeared while swimming at a beach in the state of Victoria in 1967.

Researchers hope that public submissions will help them identify the extent to which rhyming slang is still used in Australia and add new terms to its database.

Any new additions could be included in the Australian National Dictionary to build on the publication’s collection of Australian words and their origins.
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Editor’s note: The U.S. departure from Afghanistan marks another major turning point for the Taliban, the militant group with a long history in Afghanistan and a complex relationship with Pakistan. VOA reporters are looking back at the Taliban’s rise to power and the group’s previous tenure as Afghanistan’s rulers.  

In late September 1996, after four years of civil war in Afghanistan, the Taliban succeeded in capturing Kabul and then tortured and killed former President Mohammad Najibullah before hanging his body from a traffic post.

Shocking images of the executed president sent a signal to Afghans and the world that the Taliban had taken charge and would be imposing what they called a “complete Islamic system” for Afghanistan. Taliban flags began flying over government offices in Kabul, and their military rivals fled to their strongholds in the north.

I arrived in Kabul on October 29, the start of the Taliban’s second month in power in the war-torn city. The so-called “moral police” of the Taliban government agency known as the Promotion of Virtue and Elimination of Vice were the most feared squads in the capital. The armed guards in traditional Afghan dress had, in a single month, forced quick changes on urban Afghan women and men. Every man had to wear a cap or turban and sport a beard long enough to be grabbed by a fist. During prayer times, all businesses were required to close.

The old-fashioned burqa, a mostly blue shuttlecock-shaped covering, was imposed on women. They were beaten with batons in public by the Virtue and Vice squads, sometimes for unknown reasons. Later they would find out that their ankles had been visible to men, or that they had been seen talking to a stranger. The Taliban would beat a woman if she was not accompanied by a mahram, a male member of the family with whom marital relations are considered haram (forbidden). Seeing Taliban beating women on Kabul streets became the new normal.

Schools closed, televisions were smashed, ancient relics at the Kabul Museum went missing, pictures and portraits of humans and animals in official buildings were torn into pieces.

Music was banned, so the sounds of chirping birds replaced the traditional instrumental music of Afghan drums and rabab (a local variant of guitar). Local music was replaced by the Taliban’s jihadi taranas (anthems) and sermons, heard on Radio Sharia, the new name of Afghanistan’s national radio and television.

Imposing official

The Taliban intensified the public’s fear by appointing the radical madrassa graduate Mullah Qalamuddin as deputy minister of the Virtue and Vice ministry. A graduate of the Darul Uloom Haqqania madrassa in Akora Khatak, Pakistan, where many Taliban leaders studied, Mullah Qalamuddin was an imposing official who had a reputation for personally leading the group’s fear campaign. He was over 6 feet (1.8 meters) tall, and when I met him at his ministry’s building, he used a love seat as his office chair as he directed his subordinates. He had only contempt for those who expressed concerns over women rights, saying that a woman has two abodes: a home and a grave.

Kabul’s landmarks at the time bore signs of the Taliban’s harsh views. At the city’s multistory Intercontinental Hotel, staff told visiting journalists about Mullah Qalamuddin getting angry when he had seen a small statue of Buddha in one of the halls of the hotel. He used an ax to smash it to pieces.

At the Afghan national bank building in downtown Kabul, where many women had worked, the top floor had been converted into a child care facility. But the bank was now closed, and the women had all been banished once the Taliban took power, leaving a floor strewn with empty cradles, pacifiers and toddlers’ toys. The bank’s civilian guardians, during a Taliban-escorted visit to the building, said they had no plan in place to reopen. Many other businesses and nongovernment organizations ended up losing all their female staffers, who had been banned from working under the Taliban’s puritan Sharia.

At the time, the Taliban’s founding leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, was running Kabul remotely from his southern stronghold Kandahar, then an 18-hour drive away. There was not much of an administrative state. His six-member high council led by Mullah Mohammad Rabbani, a former leader from Kandahar, had little say in making decisions.

Broadcast messages

For locals trying to understand their new leaders’ rapid changes, the international Pashto-language broadcasters VOA and BBC and the Taliban’s Radio Sharia were the main sources of information.

Radio Sharia taught them how to tailor themselves under the new Islamist laws of Taliban. The mullahs, graduates from Pakistani madrassas, were offering a menu of punishments in their sermons during primetime evening broadcasts.

Some of the messages warned people of the new social restrictions: “Satan urinates on the head of a woman who is not covering her head.” “God will pour hot lead into the ears of those who listen to music.” “Walking or driving on the left side of the road is un-Islamic.” “A man looking at a woman or vice versa is the fornication of eyes.”

Kabul was more tense at night. In the evenings, new warnings were broadcast via Radio Sharia, and Taliban fighters enforced a daily dusk-to-dawn curfew, patrolling the streets in pickup trucks. These nighttime patrols led to rumors of mass arrests or Taliban troop movements for northern battle lines. Some Kabul locals thought the Taliban were bringing in Pakistani fighters under the cover of night. At the start of the Taliban’s reign in Afghanistan, people in Kabul were already angry with Islamabad, believing that Pakistan’s support for the Taliban was undermining Afghans.

Pakistani officials at the time encouraged this perception. In Pakistan, the then interior minister and former army general, Naseerullah Babar, was not shy of being called the “architect of Taliban” in Afghanistan. He would take credit for helping to create the Afghan Taliban throughout his retired life.

Pakistan’s perceived role

I left Kabul for Kandahar, along with a Western journalist, on November 5, 1996. At the time, the drive was rough and around 480 kilometers long, and the needle on the speedometer rarely crossed 30 kilometers per hour. On the way, a radio bulletin brought news from Pakistan, saying the president had dismissed Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and dissolved her elected government over corruption allegations. That marked the second time that her government had been dismissed by a sitting president in Pakistan.

Bhutto’s first term ended over a costly military miscalculation in Afghanistan. In early 1989, her government directed pro-Pakistan Afghan fighters to try to take over Afghanistan’s eastern city of Jalalabad from the country’s Soviet-backed government. The operation was a debacle, and the plot was exposed, becoming a political liability for her government and contributing to the perception that Pakistan backs militants in Afghanistan as part of its foreign policy strategy.

Pakistan’s next government, that of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, solidified that perception in 1997 by becoming the first to officially recognize the Afghan Taliban government. Twenty-four years later, despite years of denials from Islamabad, most Afghans still see the Taliban as an arm of the Pakistani state.
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The United States will not reconsider the type of training it provides to foreign military members despite finding that seven of the 25 individuals arrested in the assassination of Haiti’s president were at one time trained by the U.S.

As VOA first reported, U.S. defense officials last week said that the seven received U.S. military training, both in the U.S. and in Colombia, between 2001 and 2015, when they were part of the Colombian military.

But Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said Thursday there was nothing to tie that training to the alleged participation in the plot that killed Haitian President Jovenel Moise earlier this month.

“We know that these seven individuals got nothing certainly related, at all, or that one could extrapolate, as leading to or encouraging of what happened in Haiti,” Kirby told reporters during a press gaggle.

“I know of no plans right now as a result of what happened in Haiti for us to reconsider or to change this very valuable, ethical leadership training that we continue to provide to partners in the Western Hemisphere and to partners around the world,” he added.

While some of the training took place in Colombia, Pentagon officials say some of the Colombian nationals were trained at seminars in Washington. Some also took courses at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), based at Fort Benning in the southern U.S. state of Georgia.

WHINSEC, established in January 2001, replaced the School of the Americas, which came under heavy criticism in the early to mid-1990s after its graduates were implicated in human rights violations, including murders and disappearances, in El Salvador, Colombia, Peru, Honduras and Panama.

In an interview with VOA in April, WHINSEC Commandant Colonel John Dee Suggs said the new school was designed with a focus on human rights and ethics.

“There is a pretty rigorous review of people and their human rights history,” Suggs told VOA. “We will only train people who have the same human rights values that we have, who have the same democratic values that we have.”

“We’re not shooting anybody. We’re not teaching anybody to … go into a house and take these folks down,” he added.

Pentagon officials told VOA this week that the Colombians who trained at WHINSEC took courses in cadet leadership, professional development, counter-drug operations and small unit leader training.

“All WHINSEC courses include human rights and ethics training,” one official added.

Pentagon and State Department officials have previously said they are continuing to review their records to determine whether any other suspects received training from the U.S.

Haitian President Moise was shot and killed in the predawn hours of July 7 at his private residence in a wealthy suburb of Port-au-Prince.

Earlier this week, Haiti sworn in a new prime minister, Ariel Henry, as part of an attempt to stabilize the country following Moise’s death.

Haitian authorities say they are continuing to investigate Moise’s assassination.

Officials have accused Christian Emmanuel Sanon, a Haitian doctor with ties to Florida, as being the plot’s mastermind.

Some information from AFP was used in this report.

 
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A measure that would have allowed the United States Senate to begin debating a $1 trillion package of spending on roads, public transit, broadband, and more was defeated on a party line vote Wednesday afternoon, adding another link to the yearslong chain of failed attempts to rebuild the country’s critical infrastructure. 

But the measure’s defeat masks the real possibility that Democrats and Republicans may yet be able to come together and pass the legislation. A number of Republicans who voted against beginning debate promised that they will support the measure early next week, saying that they were reluctant to begin debate on the measure because the legislative language hasn’t been finished yet, and analysis of its impact on the federal budget is still not available. 

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called the vote — which was widely expected to fail — for a number of reasons. One of those was to appease a restless core of left-leaning Democrats who believe the monthslong effort to find a bill that both sides of the political aisle can agree on is the result of delaying tactics by Republicans who do not plan to support it regardless of what the final package looks like. 

Frustrating delays 

If Americans are skeptical about Congress actually reaching a deal, they have good reason. The seeming inability of the U.S. government to act on the widely acknowledged need to update the country’s critical infrastructure has become a grim joke in Washington. 

The signs of infrastructure decay have been painfully obvious for years, from the widely publicized contamination of Flint, Michigan’s drinking water with lead, to the tens of thousands of bridges rated “structurally deficient,” to faulty water mains that leak an estimated 6 billion gallons of treated water each day. 

With the need so apparent, why has an agreement on an infrastructure package been so elusive? As with many things in Washington, there is no single reason, but rather a constellation of policy and political factors that have intertwined to thwart progress. 

Lack of trust 

The relationship between the two parties in Washington has become so toxic in recent years that few members of Congress from either party are willing to take political gambles that require support from the other side of the aisle to be successful. 

Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, the third-ranking Republican in the Senate, said that it was a lack of trust that kept many of his colleagues from voting to begin debate on the current infrastructure package without seeing the complete legislative language. “You can’t vote on a framework. There just isn’t the kind of trust around it right now that would allow that to happen,” he said. 

For their part, Democrats point to times when members of the GOP have participated in monthslong debates over legislation on health care and immigration reform, only to have the party’s leadership withhold its support when it came time for a final vote. 

Political calculation 

Even when the issue in question is something on which there is broad agreement in general, political calculations are never far from the surface in Washington, particularly when the margins of difference in the House of Representatives and the Senate are as slim as they are today. 

With their eyes on the 2022 elections, in which they hold a strong chance of winning back one or both houses of Congress, Republicans are going to be very judicious about when and how they give Biden a “win” on anything. 

However, in the case of this infrastructure bill, there seems to be a willingness on the part of a number of Senate Republicans — a total of 10 will be necessary to overcome the filibuster — to get a deal done. After the failed vote Wednesday, 11 GOP senators signed on to a letter to Schumer that said, in part, they are “optimistic that we will finalize, and be prepared to advance, this historic bipartisan proposal.” 

How will it be paid for? 

The largest sticking point in the ongoing negotiations is more concrete: how to pay for it. The proposal anticipates $1 trillion in spending, a little more than $400 billion of which would come from redirecting money that had been directed at other priorities. The remainder, nearly $600 billion, has to come from somewhere, and there is significant disagreement about where. 

Democrats had to shelve a plan to beef up the Internal Revenue Service’s enforcement arm, a measure that would have been expected to generate hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue from tax cheats, but Republicans balked at the plan, leaving a large hole in the funding element of the proposal. 

Negotiators are currently considering the repeal of a change to Medicare-related rules on payments for prescription drugs. Reversing the change, which would have cost the government money, would result in savings that could be applied to the infrastructure bill. 

Inflation worries 

One final concern that has some Republicans reluctant to support the measure is the fear of inflation. The federal government has spent an enormous amount of money — some $4 trillion so far — in efforts to help the country recover from the recession induced by the coronavirus pandemic. In addition, the Federal Reserve has flooded the economy with liquidity by keeping interest rates low and buying up mortgage-backed securities. 

That combination, some argue, leaves the U.S. open to a spiral of wage and price hikes that could force the Fed to sharply raise rates, triggering a recession in 2022. This has made some Republicans reluctant to sign off on still more spending. 

However, supporters of the infrastructure package say there is still considerable “slack” in the U.S. economy, and their position was backed up Wednesday when Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Analytics, released a 15-page analysis of the package in which he referred to the inflation concerns as “overdone.” 

Zandi argued that much of the infrastructure investment, which would stimulate long-term economic growth, would actually create downward pressure on inflation. 
 
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Almost 65 years after then-Canadian Prime Minister Lester Pearson won the Nobel Peace Prize for initiating the first U.N. peacekeeping mission, his country – which long prided itself on its role in subsequent missions — has only a few dozen remaining peacekeepers deployed around the world.

That is down from a record 3,300 Canadian troops deployed in peacekeeping missions in the early 1990s, part of a wider trend that Canadian military experts attribute to the changing nature of conflict in a post-Cold War world.

U.N. peacekeeping is “falling out of fashion,” says Major Tim Dunne, a retired public affairs officer in the Canadian Armed Forces who deployed in numerous peacekeeping missions beginning in the 1970s and is currently a research fellow with the Canadian Global Affairs Institute.

Until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Dunne tells VOA, most global conflicts were driven by competition between the United States and the Soviet Union, creating the need for an impartial army to stand between them.

But, he says, most modern conflicts – whether in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Rwanda during the 1990s or in Syria and Iraq today — are too messy and chaotic for the old model of peacekeeping to work.

“The factors that allow for effective peacekeeping aren’t there anymore,” Dunne says. “You don’t have the same factions that allow for an easy creation of a cease-fire. You descend into other kinds of conflict.”

It is not only Canada that is having second thoughts about the value of U.N. peacekeeping, which currently supports just 13 missions, seven of them in Africa.

“Another case you may consider is the Sahel,” says Emily Estelle of the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute. She points to the lack of public support in Western nations for the costly and sometimes dangerous missions.

“France leads the counterterrorism mission in Mali but is working to reduce its involvement and end the mission, in part because of domestic pressure and an upcoming election,” Estelle says in a telephone interview. That, she says, is “in line with what we’ve seen in Canada and the U.S.”

Estelle points to the struggles of the African Union’s mission to Somalia as another example.

“All in all, waning support for peacekeeping in the West is rippling into sub-Saharan Africa,” she says. “Neither Malian nor Somali forces are capable of filling the gap left by peacekeepers and other foreign forces if and when they withdraw.”

Charlie Herbert, a former senior NATO adviser to the Afghan Ministry of the Interior and a former director at the Defense Academy of the United Kingdom, points to the success of military might in overthrowing rogue regimes like Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and Moammar Gadhafi’s Libya, and the struggles to stabilize those nations afterward.

“It’s hard to imagine any Western nation committing to discretionary ‘wars of choice’ over the next decade or two, and with a rising China and a resurgent Russia both challenging the rules-based international order, it is perhaps inevitable that NATO nations are once more looking at a more traditional model of deterrence and competition,” he says.

“Operations in the so called ‘gray zone’ and hybrid warfare have become the lexicon of the 2020s in the way that COIN [counterinsurgency] and CT [counterterrorism] dominated thinking in the earlier years of this century.”

Herbert was referring to unconventional warfare and conflicts that fall short of war.

In the case of Canada, the nation’s long-standing commitment to U.N. peacekeeping operations has largely been replaced by involvement in NATO missions such as its participation in the coalition that defeated the Islamic State extremist group in Iraq and Syria, and the NATO mission now winding down in Afghanistan.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s administration has promised to commit more troops and police to international peacekeeping, but the proposed numbers remain only in the hundreds.

Britain, too, is showing some interest in a revival of U.N. peacekeeping, according to Herbert, who sees that as a reaction to the decision to pull NATO forces out of Afghanistan.

“The withdrawal from Afghanistan marks the end of an era, and for now the end of enduring stabilization operations in distant places,” Herbert says. “It provides an opportunity for all Western nations to reconsider the use of their military as an instrument of their foreign policy.

“In the UK, for example, it has been the catalyst to reinvest in high-end U.N. peacekeeping operations, after a hiatus throughout the Iraq and Afghan wars. The UK commitment to MINUSMA – the U.N. stabilization mission in Mali – is an interesting and positive example of a NATO member reinvesting in peacekeeping operations.”

Whether other Western nations will follow London’s lead remains to be seen.
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Colombian police said Wednesday that they had arrested 70 people following fresh anti-government protests that mobilized thousands countrywide the previous day and left dozens injured.

As Colombians returned to the streets after a weekslong hiatus, clashes with riot police occurred in the cities of Bogota, Medellin and Cali, according to the authorities.

The government has described the protests as largely peaceful.

Police said in a statement that they had “captured 70 people, 69 of them caught in the act, for crimes committed in several cities on July 20, and one more on a warrant for homicide.”

Charges included blocking public roads, damage to property, throwing dangerous objects or substances, and firearm possession.

The government contended that armed groups had infiltrated the protests.

Colombia’s human rights ombudsman reported 50 people were injured in Tuesday’s demonstrations — 24 civilians and 26 agents.

Weeks of protests broke out late April in opposition to a proposed tax hike, and the protests morphed into a mass movement against the right-wing administration of President Ivan Duque.

Police repression, poverty decried

The demonstrators demanded an end to police repression and more supportive public policies to alleviate the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, with more than 40% of the country’s 50 million inhabitants now living in poverty.

The international community has condemned a security response that left more than 60 people dead.

A major group representing protesters — the National Strike Committee — said on June 16 that it would suspend the demonstrations, even though smaller groups continued and roadblocks remained.

The committee called fresh protests for Tuesday, Colombia’s independence day, as the government put a new tax proposal to parliament.

On Wednesday, the government presented to lawmakers a bill to reform the police, who are accused of abuses against civilian protesters. It proposes better training for officers and sanctions for those who do not identify themselves when carrying out arrests, or who refuse to be filmed while carrying out their duties.

But it does not suggest removing the police from the control of the defense ministry, as demanded by protesters.

“The national police must be part of the ministry of defense because of the conditions of threat and violence that still exist in Colombia,” police chief Diego Molano told AFP. The institution “has functions in the fight against drug trafficking, in citizen security … in the fight against smuggling that require coordination with the military forces.”

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has criticized Colombia’s “disproportionate” and “lethal” response to the protests and has also recommended a police separation from the military.
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President Joe Biden aimed to rev up support for his economic agenda with a visit to Cincinnati on Wednesday, where he visited a union training center ahead of a CNN town hall.

The trip comes as the fate of his infrastructure proposal remains unclear after Senate Republicans rejected a $1 trillion blueprint in a key test vote Wednesday. A bipartisan group of 22 senators said in a joint statement after the vote that they were close to coming to terms on a deal and requested a delay until Monday.

Biden expressed confidence in the outcome, telling reporters when asked if he would land a deal on infrastructure, “Yes, we will.”

While lawmakers wrangle over the details of that proposal on Capitol Hill, Biden was expected to use the town hall, in part, to talk about the broad strokes of his economic vision, making the case that his nearly $4 trillion package is needed to rebuild the middle class and sustain the economic growth the country has seen during the first six months of his presidency.

First, Biden toured the IBEW/NECA Electrical Training Center on the west side of Cincinnati. He got a chance to get an up-close look at trainees working their way through five-year apprenticeships to learn the ins-and-outs of the sort of skilled, well-paid union jobs that he says will be in higher demand if his plan comes to fruition.

“There’s a reason why union workers are the best trained,” said Biden, as he met with apprentices.

It’s his third trip to the state — one he lost by about 8 points in 2020, but one that remains pivotal to the Democratic Party’s political future and a key test of whether Biden’s economic proposals have the broad appeal the White House hopes.

The state faces a heated Senate election next year with the retirement of Republican Rob Portman, who helped negotiate the infrastructure plan that now faces an uncertain future in the evenly split Senate.

The president’s visit took him near the dangerously outdated Brent Spence Bridge — a chokepoint for trucks and emergency vehicles between Ohio and Kentucky that the past two presidents promised without success to replace. But Republicans are more focused on the increase in shootings and crime in Cincinnati, which they blame on Democrats, although there are a host of factors, including the coronavirus pandemic.

Biden is likely to take questions on many of those issues during his Wednesday night town hall on CNN, at Mount St. Joseph University, a private Catholic college in Delhi Township, a western suburb of Cincinnati. 
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Brisbane was picked Wednesday to host the 2032 Olympics, the inevitable winner of a one-city race steered by the IOC to avoid rival bids.

The Games will go back to Australia 32 years after the popular 2000 Sydney Olympics. Melbourne hosted in 1956.

“We know what it takes to deliver a successful Games in Australia,” Prime Minister Scott Morrison told International Olympic Committee voters in an 11-minute live video link from his office.

When the award was later confirmed, winning the vote 72-5, Morrison raised both arms in the air and gave two thumbs up.

The victory led to a fireworks display in Brisbane that was broadcast to IOC members in their five-star hotel in Tokyo.

Brisbane follows 2028 host Los Angeles in getting 11 years to prepare for hosting the Games. Paris will host in 2024.

The 2032 deal looked done months before the formal decision at the IOC meeting, which was held ahead of Friday’s opening ceremony of the Tokyo Games.

The IOC gave Brisbane exclusive negotiating rights in February. That decision left Olympic officials in Qatar, Hungary and Germany looking blindsided with their own stalled bidding plans.

Though the result was expected, a high-level Australian delegation went to Tokyo amid the COVID-19 pandemic to present speeches, films and promises on stage.

The city of Brisbane sent Mayor Adrian Schrinner, the state of Queensland sent Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and Australia’s federal government sent sports minister Richard Colbeck to woo Olympic voters.

They were joined by long-time Australian Olympic official John Coates, now an IOC vice president who shaped the fast-track selection process two years ago.

The first-time format, designed to cut campaign costs, gives the IOC more control and removes the risk of vote-buying.

The project will see events staged across Queensland, including in Gold Coast, which hosted the 2018 Commonwealth Games.

Brisbane’s renowned cricket stadium, known as the Gabba, will be upgraded and may host the sport at the Games. Cricket was played once at the Olympics, at the 1900 Paris Games.

The next three Summer Games hosts — starting with Paris in 2024 — are now secured in wealthy and traditional Olympic host nations without any of the trio facing a contested vote.

The IOC and its hands-on president, Thomas Bach, have torn up the template of traditional bidding campaigns and hosting votes to lock down preferred cities with the minimum risk.

The future hosts offer stability for the IOC, which was stung by the two previous Summer Games contests being tainted by allegations of vote-buying when multiple cities were on the ballot.

The 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics and the postponed 2020 Tokyo Olympics are still under investigation by French prosecutors. They have implicated officials who then lost their place in the IOC family as active or honorary members.

A low-risk future beckons for the IOC following the often-troubled Tokyo Olympics and the 2022 Beijing Winter Games in February, which will throw scrutiny on China’s human rights record. 

Key partners have also been secured through 2032. The IOC’s signature broadcasting deal with NBC and top-tier sponsors Coca-Cola, Visa and Omega are tied down for the decade ahead.
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A study suggests Johnson & Johnson’s one-shot COVID-19 vaccine may be less effective against the emerging variants of the coronavirus.

Researchers at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine reached the conclusion after conducting laboratory testing of blood samples from volunteers.

Nathaniel Landau, the lead researcher, said the Johnson & Johnson vaccine does not provide the same protection against the variants as either the two-dose Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, which were developed differently, using the messenger RNA method.

The study, posted online Tuesday, has not been peer-reviewed nor published in a scientific journal, and does not reflect the real-world effects of the vaccine. But the findings are similar to other studies that show single-dose vaccines such as Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca do not produce enough antibodies to fight the delta and lambda coronavirus variants.

The delta variant, which was first detected in India, reportedly spreads more easily than other iterations of the virus. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said delta now accounts for 83% of new cases in the nation.

Johnson & Johnson recently published a study that shows a single dose of its vaccine is effective against the delta variant for up to eight months.

But Landau says the results of the NYU study bolster the growing theory that a follow-up shot of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is necessary.

The Johnson & Johnson vaccine has been plagued with problems since it was approved by the Food and Drug Administration. The vaccine has been linked to a rare but serious blood-clotting disorder, plus a rare neurological condition. Millions of doses were ruined earlier this year when a Baltimore-based manufacturing plant mixed the Johnson & Johnson vaccine with ingredients from the AstraZeneca vaccine.

The Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center reported that there are 191.4 million total confirmed COVID-19 infections in the world, including 4.1 million global fatalities as of Wednesday.

South Korean health officials reported a new single-day record of 1,784 new COVID-19 infections Wednesday as the country struggles to contain a wave of infections linked to the delta variant, with more than 1,000 new cases recorded each day for the past two weeks.

The surge has been centered mainly in the capital, Seoul, which has been put under a variety of restrictions and more cases have been reported outside the city.

South Korea has recorded 182,265 total coronavirus cases, including 2,060 deaths.  Only 32% of the country’s 52 million people have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, with 6.6 million fully vaccinated.

Health officials are also dealing with an outbreak on a naval warship that has been patrolling the waters off the coast of Africa that has sickened at least 270 crewmen.

(Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.)
 
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