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Pakistan’s top diplomat on Saturday publicly stated for the first time that his ministry had severed ties with Afghanistan’s national security adviser, Hamadullah Mohib, over incendiary remarks about its southern neighbor that undermined regional peace efforts.Shah Mehmood Qureshi made the disclosure a week after a highly placed Pakistani official told VOA that Islamabad had conveyed to Kabul “through informal channels” it would no longer conduct official engagements with Mohib.FILE – Pakistan army chief Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa addresses the Islamabad Security Dialogue conference, March 18, 2021. (Courtesy PTV)Diplomatic sources told VOA that during a recent visit to Kabul, Pakistan’s military chief, General Qamar Javed Bajwa, raised concerns about Mohib’s “undignified remarks” in his meeting with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani in the presence of General Nick Carter, the head of Britain’s military and key player in peace negotiations ahead of the U.S.-NATO troop withdrawal.A senior Pakistani official privy to the matter told VOA on condition of anonymity his government had lodged a strong protest with the Afghan side and had conveyed “deep resentment” in Pakistan over Mohib’s “undignified” remarks.Washington also had stopped meetings with the Afghan national security adviser over controversial remarks he made on a visit to the U.S. two years ago, though contact with him has since resumed.Mohib had accused Zalmay Khalilzad, U.S. special representative for Afghanistan reconciliation, of undercutting the Kabul government in U.S.-Taliban peace negotiations.Accord set stage for drawdownKhalilzad was leading the talks that culminated in an agreement with the insurgents in February 2020, setting the stage for the foreign troop drawdown from the war-torn nation, which began May 1 and is expected to be completed by September 11.While Afghan leaders accuse Pakistan of being behind the Taliban’s violent campaign in their country, U.S. officials, including Khalilzad, have persistently praised Islamabad for bringing the insurgents to the negotiating table to discuss a peace arrangement with the Afghan government to end the war.The controversy stemming from Mohib’s remarks again has highlighted political tensions and historic mistrust plaguing relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan, which share a nearly 2,600-kilometer border.
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Female Cameroonian activists and opposition members have appealed to the United Nations Security Council, meeting Monday, to discuss possible solutions to escalating Boko Haram terrorism and the separatist crisis in the central African state. They are also asking the U.N. to force Cameroon to respect human rights, release political prisoners and negotiate a cease-fire with armed groups. The government has refused to respond to their appeal.Twenty female leaders say in a letter to the U.N. Security Council that Cameroon, once the bastion of stability in Central Africa, is today conflict-ridden and on the brink of catastrophe.They say that more than 10,000 Cameroonians have died in the Boko Haram conflict on Cameroon’s northern border with Nigeria and the separatist crisis in the central African state’s English-speaking western regions. They accuse Cameroon’s government and rebels of gross human rights violations.Edith Kah Walla is the president of the Cameroon People’s Party and founding member of Stand Up for Cameroon, which advocates for a peaceful transition to rebuild Cameroon.She says the women want the Security Council to include Cameroon on their agenda. “We want the U.N. to give us help now,” said Walla. “We do not want them to wait till the situation is so bad, and then to start telling us that they are bringing U.N. soldiers [peace keeping troops] here. We want them to act now. Our population is dying. Over a million children are out of schools. We cannot sit by as our country falls apart. There is no peace without respect for human rights, without justice.”Walla said the women want the U.N. to require Cameroon to respect human rights and release all nonviolent political prisoners linked to Boko Haram, separatists and the political crisis in the central African state.The women say that for the sake of peace, U.N. member states should ask Cameroon to allow free public discussions on political transition. Cameroon’s 88-year-old President, Paul Biya, has been in power for close to 40 years and is accused of wanting to hang on to power until he dies.  Ejani Leonard Kulu is a Cameroonian political analyst at the U.N. University for Peace in Addis Ababa. He says it is very unlikely that the United Nations will take up the female leaders’ proposals.  He says the U.N. has already helped Cameroon, Chad, Nigeria, Niger and Benin contribute troops to a joint task force to fight Boko Haram.”The U.N. is a partner in managing the crises in Cameroon,” said Kulu. “If we should take Boko Haram, remember the Multinational Joint Task Force. It is financed and supported by the U.N. The crisis in the North West and South West, the U.N. has pronounced itself on several occasions that it is an internal problem which Cameroon can solve.”Kulu said Cameroon female leaders should have carried out advocacy with the five permanent members of the Security Council – China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States to ensure discussion of Cameroon at the Security Council. In another letter, the female leaders ask International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva to stop disbursing funds until the Cameroon government shows proof of transparent management.Tomaino Ndam Njoya is mayor of the western town of Foumban, an official of the Cameroon Democratic Union and a former lawmaker in Cameroon’s National Assembly.Njoya says the female leaders are not indifferent to the high wave of corruption and theft of public funds in Cameroon. She says many government ministers have been asked to explain what happened to a $335 million IMF loan intended to stop the spread of COVID-19. She says it would be unfair to continue to give loans to Cameroon when the government has not accounted for amounts already received.Cameroon government spokesperson Rene Emmanuel Sadi did not respond when contacted by VOA about Njoya’s comments.  In a release read on state radio, Cameroon promised to investigate corruption and punish those found guilty.Cameroon, a majority French-speaking country, is facing several problems, including the separatist crisis in its English-speaking western regions and Boko Haram terrorism on its northern border with Nigeria.Cameroon also suffers the spillover of the crisis in the Central African Republic, with attacks by rebels on its eastern border and political tensions from Biya’s long stay in power.
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Authorities in Cameroon are battling vaccine hesitancy with only eleven percent of doses received since April dispensed, most of them due to travel requirements. Cameroon’s government and clergy have been struggling to get the public to accept that the vaccines are safe.A group of 70 Cameroonian Muslims gathered at the Djoungolo government hospital in Yaoundé Friday to be vaccinated against COVID-19.Coordinator of the Council of Imams and Muslim Dignitaries of Cameroon, Moussa Oumarou says vaccine hesitancy meant he had to convince the group.He says Cameroon’s government asked the clergy to convince their followers that the vaccines could save their lives.Oumarou says every religion that puts God first seeks to protect human lives. He says it is both a divine and civic obligation to protect lives by accepting to be vaccinated against the coronavirus. Oumarou says the council has asked all Imams and Muslim dignitaries in Cameroon to accept to be vaccinated and to encourage all their faithful to be vaccinated.Cameroon health officials say only 75,000 people have been inoculated since April, when the government received 700,000 doses.And most of the doses administered, say officials, went to people who were planning to travel outside of Cameroon, including expatriates.37-year-old college teacher in Yaoundé Rigobert Fonbanla says many Cameroonians don’t trust authorities’ urging the jab after a COVID funds scandal and seizure of fakes. Cameroon Investigates Missing $335 Million in COVID Funds Official statement urging calm comes after rights groups and opposition asked government to explain what happened money loaned by International Monetary Fund to fight COVID-19″The same government that is asking people to accept to be vaccinated against COVID-19 is the same government that is investigating the authenticity and origin of the coronavirus vaccines,” said Fonbanla. “There is a possibility that corrupt government officials may have imported fake COVID-19 vaccines or produced dubious COVID-19 vaccines. I will wait for investigations announced by the government to be complete before I can decide whether I will be vaccinated or not.”Most of a $335 million International Monetary Fund loan to Cameroon to fight COVID disappeared.Last week at least 15 ministers were called up at the supreme state audit office to justify their management of the funds.In December, Cameroon announced that its military seized several tons of fake COVID drugs and vaccines from neighboring Nigeria, raising fears that other fakes might be in circulation.Cameroon’s Health Minister Manaouda Malachie says the COVID vaccines being used are good quality and recommended by the World Health Organization.He says the vaccines are not obligatory but will be administered freely to all civilians who want to save their lives from the deadly coronavirus. Malachie says Cameroon’s President Paul Biya is very keen to have transparency on all COVID-19 vaccination procedures. He says the state of Cameroon cannot joke with the lives of its citizens.To encourage Cameroonians to get the jab, hospitals in the northwest region in April said they would wave a usual $2 consultation fee.In May, Cameroon’s government instructed all its ministers and senior officials to be vaccinated in public.
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Facebook said Friday it would suspend Donald Trump’s accounts for at least two years, retaining a ban on the former U.S. president that it imposed after determining he incited the deadly January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. “At the end of this period, we will look to experts to assess whether the risk to public safety has receded,” Facebook Vice President Nick Clegg wrote in a blog post Friday.  The social media giant’s independent oversight board upheld its block on Trump, which was enacted after the riot because the company said his posts were inciting violence. On January 6, Trump implored thousands of supporters who had come to Washington for a “Save America March” to “fight like hell” to overturn his defeat, just before the riot aimed at preventing the certification of Joe Biden’s presidential victory. Five people died, including a federal police officer. The ban expires on January 7, 2023, two years after Facebook first blocked the former president. The timing of Facebook’s decision will reduce Trump’s ability to influence midterm congressional elections in November 2022, but his account could be restored well before voters go to polls in 2024 should Trump decide to seek the presidency again that year. In response to Facebook’s decision, Trump said in a statement it is “an insult to the record-setting 75M people, plus many others, who voted for us in the 2020 Rigged Presidential Election. They shouldn’t be allowed to get away with this censoring and silencing and ultimately, we will win.” FILE – The founder and CEO of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg speaks during the 56th Munich Security Conference in Munich, Germany, Feb. 15, 2020.In a separate statement he added, “Next time I’m in the White House there will be no more dinners, at his request, with Mark Zuckerberg and his wife. It will be all business!” Zuckerberg is the co-founder and chief executive officer of Facebook. At the White House briefing Friday, press secretary Jen Psaki said the ban was the company’s decision. “Our view continues to be, though, that every platform, whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, any other platform that is disseminating information to millions of Americans, has a responsibility to crack down on disinformation, to crack down on false information whether it’s about the election or even about the vaccine, as we are trying to keep the American public safe.” 
 
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Shops remained shuttered, some government workers hadn’t been paid and the town’s main hospital was laid to waste. But the Tigrayan fighters still claimed victory, swaggering through the streets of Hawzen with their guns.It wouldn’t last long.Hawzen, a rural town in the ethnic Tigray region of northern Ethiopia, is a microcosm of the challenge facing Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed — and a warning that the war here is unlikely to end soon.When The Associated Press arrived in May, Tigrayan fighters had recently retaken Hawzen from Ethiopian government troops, laying claim again to land that has switched control multiple times since the war began in November.Ethiopian government soldiers ride in the back of a truck on a road near Agula, in the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia, May 8, 2021.To the Ethiopian government, the fighters are terrorists who have defied the authority of Abiy in the federal capital, Addis Ababa.But almost everyone the AP spoke with in Hawzen supported them and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, or TPLF, the party of the region’s ousted and now-fugitive leaders.”The people elected us, so we are not terrorists,” said fighter Nurhussein Abdulmajid, standing confidently in the middle of the road with a gun on his shoulder, as a crowd listened. “He [Abiy] is the one who is the terrorist. A terrorist is someone who massacres people.”Larger warThe battle for Hawzen is part of a larger war in Tigray between the Ethiopian government and the Tigrayan rebels that has led to massacres, gang rapes and the flight of more than 2 million of the region’s 6 million people.While the government now holds many urban centers, fierce fighting continues in remote rural towns like Hawzen.The AP was able to get through an Ethiopian military roadblock and cross the front line to get a rare look at a town held by Tigrayan fighters, who carried light weapons they said they had seized from opponents.If anything, recent atrocities appear to have increased support for the TPLF.One 19-year-old said she had been raped by an Ethiopian soldier and was now six months pregnant. After trying and failing to terminate the pregnancy herself, she is now desperately hoping someone in a local hospital will help her.A pharmacist, center, speaks to patients as he sits among the packages of medicine able to be recovered in Hawzen, in the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia, May 7, 2021. The hospital was damaged and looted by Eritrean soldiers, witnesses said.As soon as possible, she said, she wants to join the rebels.”I want to go,” she said, as she broke down in tears. “You will die if you stay home, and you will die if you go out there. … I would rather die alongside the fighters.”The AP does not name victims of sexual abuse.The TPLF was on top of a coalition that ruled Ethiopia for nearly three decades. That changed in 2018, when Abiy rose to power as a reformist. He alienated the TPLF with efforts to make peace with its archenemy, Eritrea, and rid the federal government of corruption.   Tigray’s leaders fought back. In 2020, after a national vote was suspended because of the pandemic, the TPLF went ahead with its own elections in the region.Asserting that Tigrayan fighters had attacked a military base, Abiy sent federal troops into Tigray in November. Government forces are now allied with militias from the rival Amhara ethnic group as well as soldiers from neighboring Eritrea, who are blamed for many atrocities.’Protracted’ conflictAbiy acknowledged recently that the highly mobile Tigrayan guerrillas were stretching the Ethiopian military, springing ambushes from the rugged highlands where they hide.In April, the International Crisis Group predicted that entrenched resistance on both sides meant “the conflict could evolve into a protracted war.”Billene Seyoum, a spokeswoman for Abiy’s office, told reporters on Thursday that “the suffering of Ethiopians who are victims of a situation that is not of their choosing is a source of pain.” Efforts to alleviate the suffering of Tigrayans “have been marred by various challenges given the complexity of any armed engagement,” she said.Residents of Hawzen said the town of a few thousand people had seen fighting four times since November. Many spoke disapprovingly of Abiy, saying they no longer trusted him to keep them safe. Mikiele Kahsay, 16, sits in a wheelchair at the Ayder Referral Hospital in Mekele, in the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia, May 6, 2021. The teenager was wounded when a shell landed near him as he was kicking a ball at a school field in Bizet.As the two sides fight, civilians are suffering heavily. More and more children are caught up in shelling in Hawzen and other nearby areas, with at least 32 admitted to the regional Ayder Hospital in Mekelle for blast injuries from December to April. Thirteen left with limbs amputated, according to official records.Some of those victims might have had limbs saved if they had received first aid at the nearest health centers. But such facilities are shells right now — systematically looted, vandalized and turned upside down.Eritrean soldiers set up camp in the Hawzen Primary Hospital, which once boasted of equipment ranging from X-ray machines to baby incubators. Now it is trashed and looted, and heaps of stones litter the compound where fighters had set up defensive positions.Many Tigrayans from contested towns like Hawzen end up in camps for the internally displaced in Mekelle, mostly women and children. And so the fight continues.
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Ray Cordeiro considers himself the luckiest radio DJ in the world.
 
In a storied career spanning over 70 years in Hong Kong, Cordeiro has interviewed superstars including the Beatles and Elton John, and even received an MBE — an order of the British empire for outstanding achievement or service to the community — from Queen Elizabeth.
 
Cordeiro, who holds the Guinness world record for the world’s longest-working DJ, retired last month at the age of 96.
 
“I’ve been talking all my life about music and all, and I’d never thought that I would retire. I never thought that I was getting older,” he said.
 
Cordeiro was born in 1924 in Hong Kong and is of Portuguese descent. His musical tastes as a child were influenced by his brother who was 10 years older and collected records from groups like the Mills Brothers and the Andrews Sisters.
 
Back then records were breakable, Cordeiro said.
 
“When he’s not home and I played his records, I had to be very, very careful, because if I broke it he would get awfully angry,” Cordeiro said. “I grew up with his music.”  
 
In his youth, Cordeiro worked as a warden at a local prison and a clerk at an HSBC bank. His love for music eventually led him to pursue a career in radio, where he joined public broadcaster Radio Hong Kong, now known as Radio Television Hong Kong.
 
It was during a three-month study course in London with the BBC in 1964 that Cordeiro landed the interview that kickstarted his career — with the Beatles, the biggest band in the world at the time.
 
He had some free time after the end of the course before he had to return to Hong Kong and didn’t want to “sit around for two weeks doing nothing.”
 
“So, I said, why don’t I grab the chance of finding some peeps, some pop groups or singers that I can interview and bring back (tapes) to Hong Kong,” he said.
 
During those two weeks, Cordeiro traveled to venues where groups were performing and interviewed them afterward.
 
The Beatles had become wildly popular and Cordeiro wanted to interview them the most. Armed with a notebook and a pen, he went to the offices of the band’s record label, EMI, to ask for an interview with the group.
 
By a stroke of luck, he was told to return the next day for an interview, with EMI loaning him a tape recorder for it. He bought a magazine with a picture of the Beatles on the cover and took it with him to the interview and got all the members to autograph it.
“Altogether I have some 26 signatures of all the Beatles, and it’s probably worth a fortune,” he said.
 
The interview was short because he didn’t have a lot of tape in the tape recorder, but Cordeiro managed to spend time with each member of the Beatles. He said John Lennon recounted the Beatles’ early days in Hamburg, Germany, where they lived in relative poverty and played in clubs.
 
He later interviewed the Beatles again when they visited Hong Kong. The interviews shot him to fame, and he quickly became Hong Kong’s top DJ, armed with interviews he had conducted in London with the popular music groups at the time.
 
“I had a career before that, because I was interviewing local pop stars, but when you compare them to the Beatles it is something quite different,” he said.  
 
As the city’s most recognizable DJ, he also got to know other stars such as Elton John and Tony Bennett.
 
Known for his deep, calm voice, flat cap and easy listening repertoire, Cordeiro garnered a loyal following of listeners who would tune in to his weekday radio show “All the Way with Ray,” which ran from 1970 until last month.  
 
“I fulfilled my work as a DJ, did what I had to do and the audience followed me, grew up with me, and they’re all over the world now,” he said. “They’re all over and they still listened to me on the internet.”
 
Asked if he were to do it all over again if he would pick being a DJ as a career, Cordeiro doesn’t hesitate.
 
“I don’t think I have to actually think about it, the answer is yes,” he said.
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An ideologically broad group of Israeli political parties struck a fragile deal late Wednesday that could unseat longtime Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Less than an hour before a midnight deadline, Yair Lapid, the head of the Yesh Atid party, announced that he had secured the support of the majority of the 120-seat Knesset.  Naftali Bennett, who leads the hardline nationalist Yamina party, announced his support for Lapid’s coalition on Sunday. The agreement between the two would see Bennett serve the first two years as prime minister before Lapid rotates into the role. But Lapid’s fragile eight-party coalition has a thin majority in the Knesset. Labor Party leader Merav Michaeli, whose party is a member of Lapid’s coalition, expressed hope that their shared animosity toward Netanyahu will provide enough incentive to find some common ground.“Throughout the last campaign and also for the last two months, I reiterated and promised that the Labor party would make every effort to form a government that would replace the Netanyahu regime,” he said. “There were days that were very, very uneasy. Today, we succeeded, we made history, we held our promise. As we always promised you to tell the truth and to do what we said we will do, tonight, we’ve succeeded.”President Reuven Rivlin gave Lapid the opportunity to bring together a coalition of parties after Netanyahu failed to do so in early May. The Knesset is now required to hold a vote of confidence in the new government, a procedure that cannot be approved until the next plenum session, which is scheduled for Monday. FILE – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gestures as he speaks at a military base in Tel Aviv, Israel, May 19, 2021.Israel has been in a period of political turmoil for two years, during which the country has held four elections.  After two 2019 elections, Netanyahu failed to form a coalition but stayed on as caretaker prime minister. A year ago, he formed a coalition government with rival Benny Gantz, but that fell apart in December as parliament failed to pass a budget.  The 71-year-old Netanyahu has been prime minister since 2009 after holding the same office for three years in the 1990s. He is on trial facing criminal corruption charges but has denied any wrongdoing.   
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As gunfire crackled outside, Genet Webea huddled with her husband and seven-year-old daughter, praying they would be spared in the latest bout of ethnic strife to rock central Ethiopia.
But that morning in April, around a dozen gunmen broke down the front door and, ignoring Genet’s pleas for mercy, fatally shot her husband in the chest and stomach.
He was one of more than 100 civilians to die in a recent flare-up of violence in the town of Ataye that also saw the assailants torch more than 1,500 buildings, leaving once-bustling streets lined with charred and twisted metal.
The destruction continues a pattern of unrest that has blighted the tenure of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, winner of the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize, and now threatens to disrupt elections in which he will seek a new term.
Ethiopia’s polls are scheduled for June 21, but officials say insecurity and logistical challenges make voting impossible — at least for now — in at least 26 constituencies across the country.
That includes Ataye, where Abiy’s vision of unity for Ethiopia’s diverse population of 110 million can seem like a distant dream.
Since Abiy became prime minister in 2018, the town has endured at least six rounds of ethnic killings, and ties between members of the country’s two largest groups, the Oromos and Amharas, have visibly frayed, said mayor Agagenew Mekete.
Genet, an ethnic Amhara, told AFP that since the April attack she blanches when she hears the language of her husband’s ethnic Oromo killers, saying it conjures the painful image of him bleeding out on their kitchen floor.
“I don’t want to see or hear them,” she told AFP.‘It was a war’
A lowland farming town 270 kilometers (167 miles) northeast of Addis Ababa, Ataye’s population of 70,000 is majority Amhara, but it borders Oromo settlements in three directions. For Agagenew, the mayor, the relentless violence reflects tensions over lush land used to grow wheat, sorghum and maize.
Ethiopia is Africa’s second most-populous country, with different ethnic groups living cheek by jowl in some areas, straining ties as they jostle for land and resources.
In recent years tensions have worsened in parts of the country, leading to deadly violence and displacing millions.
Abiy took office vowing to put an end to the government’s iron-fisted rule, yet this has created space for violent ethno-nationalists to wreak havoc, Agagenew said.
“There has been a looseness after Abiy came to office, in the name of widening the democracy,” he said.
“There is looseness in enforcing the rule of law.”
Like Genet, he blames the killings partly on the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA), a rebel group that lawmakers last month designated a terrorist organization.
But the OLA denies any presence in the area and says officials falsely invoke the rebels to justify “ethnic cleansing” against ordinary Oromos.
Boru, who gave only his first name for safety reasons, is one of several Oromo residents of Ataye who said the OLA were not involved.
Instead, he said, the carnage was set off when Amhara security forces shot dead an Oromo imam outside a mosque, then prevented mourners from retrieving the body.
“It did not come out of the blue,” he said. “It was a war. Each side was attacking the other.”
This jibes with accounts from officials in nearby Oromo communities, who note that the violence extended beyond Ataye and claimed many Oromo victims.
Ethiopia’s chief ombudsman, Endale Haile, told AFP more than 400 were killed in total and more than 400,000 displaced, declining to provide an ethnic breakdown.Election apathy  
Whoever bears responsibility, there is no disputing the killings have left Ataye resembling a ghost town.
The hospital and police station were both ransacked, and demolished storefronts offer only scattered clues — burnt shoeboxes, the ripped sign of a beauty salon — to what they once contained.
Most residents have fled, with crowds gathering only when officials hand out sacks of wheat as food aid.
Ethiopia’s electoral board insists voting will take place in Ataye and other violence-wracked constituencies before a new parliamentary session opens in October.
But no preparations are under way and residents have little enthusiasm.
“Why would we vote in elections? We have no interest in elections,” said 19-year-old Hawa Seid. “We’ve lost our homes.”‘Politicized’ deaths  
The Ataye violence spurred days of protests in cities across the Amhara region, where the bloodshed could shape the election.
“For people whose basic existence is questioned and being violated, I think the security of Amharas all over Ethiopia will determine how people vote,” said Dessalegn Chanie, senior member of the National Movement for Amhara, an opposition party.
The Amhara Association of America, a Washington-based lobbying firm, says more than 2,000 Amharas have been killed in dozens of massacres going back to last July.
The regional spokesman, Gizachew Muluneh, accused rival parties of “trying to politicize the killings and get something from the deaths of others,” adding, “It is not morally good.”
Genet, whose husband was shot dead in their kitchen, participated in the protests herself.
“I was happy to be there because I wanted to show how much they are hurting us and to ask the government to stop the Amhara genocide,” she said.
But she has not given up on the idea that Amharas and Oromos could one day live together in harmony.
She noted that after her husband was killed, Oromo neighbors briefly housed her and her daughter until it was safe to leave.
It was a gesture of kindness that reminded her of a more peaceful era she would like to return to.
“Once,” she said, “we all lived together like a family.”
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It went down to the wire on Wednesday, but Israel has a new government after 2 years and 4 elections. The new governing coalition effectively ends Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s 12 years in office.
 
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President Joe Biden is launching a monthlong nationwide push to get 70% of American adults vaccinated by Independence Day on July 4. But the administration has not yet outlined its vaccine-sharing strategy with the rest of the world. White House correspondent Patsy Widakuswara has this report.
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U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has called on Central American leaders to tackle corruption, poverty and drug trafficking to improve the lives of their citizens and stem migration to the United States. Blinken made the appeal in Costa Rica, where he met with the region’s leaders, as VOA’s Senior Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports.
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Authorities in Australia’s southern state of Victoria have extended a one-week lockdown for its capital, Melbourne, to contain the spread of a new COVID-19 outbreak. The lockdown was initially imposed across the entire state last week after health officials detected a highly infectious variant of the coronavirus that was rapidly spreading across Victoria state.  The latest outbreak has been linked to an overseas traveler who became infected with a variant first detected in India during his mandatory hotel quarantine phase. FILE – A mostly-empty city street is seen on the first day of a seven-day lockdown as the state of Victoria looks to curb the spread of a coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Melbourne, Australia, May 28, 2021.Health officials announced six new locally acquired COVID-19 cases on Wednesday, bringing the total number of confirmed infections to 60.   “If we let this thing run its course, it will explode,” Victoria state Acting Premier James Merlino told reporters in Melbourne.  “We’ve got to run this to ground because if we don’t, people will die.”   Although Melbourne’s 5 million residents will remain under strict restrictions until June 10, the lockdown measures have been lifted for residents in regional Victoria, with limits on public and private gatherings and restaurant capacity.   The new lockdown is the fourth one imposed on Melbourne and Victoria state since the start of the pandemic.  The most severe period occurred in mid-2020, which lasted more than three months as Victoria was under the grip of a second wave of COVID-19 infections that killed more than 800 people. Moderna seeking full FDA authorization
In the United States, Moderna said Tuesday it is seeking full authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for its COVID-19 vaccine for adults 18 years old and older. The Moderna two-shot vaccine is one of three coronavirus vaccines the FDA authorized for emergency use in the United States, playing a major role in the steadily declining number of new infections in the country.  The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say more than 150 million doses of the Moderna vaccine have been distributed since the emergency use authorization was granted last December.   FILE – A nurse draws a Moderna coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccine, in Los AngelesModerna announced last week that it will apply for emergency use authorization this month to administer the vaccine to young people after discovering it was safe and effective for children between 12 and 17 years old.  If approved, it will join the two-shot vaccine developed by Pfizer and Bio N Tech that was authorized for use in 12 to 15 years old last month.   Brazil to host soccer tournamentBrazil confirmed Tuesday that it will host the troubled Copa America soccer tournament despite warnings of an upcoming new wave of new infections.   President Jair Bolsonaro said the tournament, which will take place from June 13 to July 10, will be held in the capital Brasilia, Rio de Janeiro, Cuiaba and Goiania.   The tournament’s organizers, the South American Football Confederation (CONMEBOL), announced Monday it was moving the upcoming event to Brazil due to a surge of new COVID-19 infections in Argentina, which was co-hosting the tournament with Colombia, which is unable to stage the tournament because of massive anti-government street protests.   Scientists in Brazil are concerned about hosting a tournament in a nation with a more transmissible COVID-19 variant, with many predicting another wave of the disease to hit the country in a matter of weeks.  The opposition Workers Party has filed an injunction with the Brazilian Supreme Court to block the tournament.  FILE – Demonstrators shouts slogans during a protest against the government’s response in combating COVID-19, demanding the impeachment of President Jair Bolsonaro, in Rio de Janeiro, May 29, 2021.President Bolsonaro has come under heavy criticism for his apparently dismissive attitude toward the pandemic, and is the subject of a congressional investigation over his government’s management of the crisis.   Brazil trails only the United States and India in the total number of coronavirus cases with more than 16.6  million, and is second only to the U.S. in deaths at more than 465,199, according to Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.
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On Tuesday, Joe Biden became the first sitting American president to commemorate the anniversary of the destruction of a prosperous Black community by a white mob that left up to 300 people dead and 10,000 homeless.
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On Tuesday, Italy lifted restrictions on indoor dining, Germany downgraded the coronavirus risk level from very high to high, and Israel lifted almost all pandemic restrictions. More from VOA’s Mariama Diallo.
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Greece, Germany and five other European Union nations introduced a vaccination certificate system for travelers on Tuesday, weeks ahead of the July 1 rollout of the program across the 27-nation bloc.The other countries starting early were Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Croatia and Poland, according to the European Commission.Greece, which depends heavily on tourism, has been pressing for the commonly recognized certificate that uses a QR code with advanced security features. The certificates are being issued to people who are fully vaccinated, as well as those who have already contracted the virus and developed antibodies, and others who have had a PCR test within the last 72 hours.The documents will have both digital and paper forms. They’ll be free of charge, distributed in the national language plus English and be valid in all the bloc’s countries.”EU citizens are looking forward to traveling again, and they want to do so safely. Having an EU certificate is a crucial step on the way,” EU Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides said.Greece’s digital governance minister, Kyriakos Pierrakakis, said easier travel will open up within the EU as nations adopt the new verification standard.”What will happen is that countries will stop issuing certificates using their own convention and adopt the common convention. That will simplify things considerably, because you can imagine the number of bilateral agreements that would otherwise need to be worked out,” Pierrakakis told private Skai television.Kyriakides said in the next few weeks, all EU nations need to “fully finalize their national systems to issue, store and verify certificates so the system is functioning in time for the holiday season.”Countries will be allowed to add extra vaccines to their individual entry list, including those that have not been formally approved for use across the EU.The EU Commission believes that people who are vaccinated should no longer have to be tested or put into quarantines, regardless of where they are traveling to or from, starting 14 days after receiving their second shot. Member countries, however, have not yet endorsed that recommendation.
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Israel’s defense minister on Monday distanced himself from comments made by his military chief after Israel bombed a Gaza Strip high-rise housing an Associated Press office and other news outlets, saying the remarks were not meant to be taken literally.In an article published on the website of Channel 12 news over the weekend, the military chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Aviv Kohavi, was quoted as saying that “the building was destroyed justly” and he did not have a “gram of regret.”The article claimed that the Hamas militant group that rules Gaza used various floors of the Jalaa Tower for “significant electronic warfare” meant to disrupt Israeli air force GPS communications.The article then said Kohavi had told “a foreign source” that AP journalists drank coffee each morning in a cafeteria in the building’s entrance with Hamas electronics experts, whether they knew it or not.The AP called the comments ” patently false,” noting that “there was not even a cafeteria in the building.”Asked about Kohavi’s comments, Defense Minister Benny Gantz told foreign journalists that the military chief was only speaking in figurative terms.”When the chief of staff talked about it, he was trying to portray the atmosphere, not the actual aspects,” Gantz said.Gantz again alleged that “there was Hamas infrastructure in offices that operated from this building.”Asked to respond to Gantz’s comments, the military spokesman’s office also said Kohavi’s statements were meant to be figurative.”It was never claimed that AP journalists were knowingly interacting with Hamas personnel. On the contrary, due to the nature of Hamas’ activities, AP journalists had no means of knowing that Hamas personnel were in the building,” it said.”The chief of the general staff explained the possible circumstances of such an encounter where the terrorist organization Hamas embeds itself within the civilian population and uses civilian buildings for military purposes,” it said.The Israeli army gave occupants of the building one hour to evacuate before the May 15 airstrike. No one was injured, but the high-rise was reduced to rubble.The AP has said it had no indication of a Hamas presence in the building and was never warned of any possible presence before that day. It has called for an independent investigation and urged Israel to make public its intelligence.Gantz said Israel has shared its intelligence with the U.S. government. But he indicated that Israel has no intention of making the information public, saying it did not want to divulge its sources.
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Nigerian political observers are expressing concern over the many attacks on the facilities of Nigeria’s electoral body – the Independent National Electoral Commission, or INEC. INEC officials say the commission has recorded at least 42 attacks on its facilities since the last polls in 2019.
 
Nine attacks occurred in 2019 and 21 others took place last year. But in the last four weeks, 12 more offices of the commission have either been set ablaze or vandalized.
 
The latest incident occurred Sunday in southeastern Imo state. Ballot boxes, voting cubicles, power generators and utility vehicles were destroyed.
 
Election officials are evaluating the extent of the damage but say an initial assessment shows it could significantly affect their ability to conduct credible elections in the affected places.
 
Political analysts like Jibrin Ibrahim, a senior fellow at the Center for Democracy and Development, agree that attacks on facilities coupled with Nigeria’s general security challenges and separatist calls in two areas will affect polls.
 
“When some people are saying, ‘We want out of the nation,’ others are saying let’s just vote and keep the nation, it becomes a difficult context to ensure that there’s a level playing ground for election,” Ibrahim said.
 
Officials blame unidentified armed groups and the separatist group Indigenous People of Biafra, or IPOB, for the latest attacks. IPOB advocates for an independent state in a part of Nigeria that tried to break away more than 50 years ago.  
 
The government has not commented on the attacks.
 
In recent months, Nigeria has seen an escalation in violence by armed criminal groups, as well as the rising profile of IPOB and another separatist movement in southwestern Nigeria.  
 
But political analyst and co-founder Youth Hub Africa Rotimi Olawale says insecurities can only delay elections but not hinder them.  
 
“I am assured that the 2023 general elections will hold as scheduled. In 2019, the election was moved for a couple of weeks to allow for better management of the security architecture in the northeastern part of Nigeria. At the very worst-case scenario, I suspect that the elections in 2023 might also be moved for a few weeks,” Olawale said.
 
Last week, INEC chief Mahmood Yakubu declared attacks on election offices a national emergency and met with top security chiefs to address the problem.
 
At a meeting Thursday, Nigerian security units pledged to support the commission by beefing up security around election offices.
 
However, expert Ezenwa Nwagwu says the attacks are politically driven and will likely escalate before the next polls.
 
“The Nigerian political elite [is] not innovative. They have not found any other means of negotiating for power except violence. You’re going to see that towards next year, there will be the escalation of this violence,” Nwagwu said.
 
INEC is approaching a major gubernatorial election, set for this November. Next month, the commission will begin a voter registration process for Nigeria’s general polls in 2023.
 
Experts say the security situation will determine both turnout and the credibility of the process.
 
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