An earthquake shook some buildings in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Kashmir state in India on Friday, witnesses said.

The magnitude 6.1 quake was centered in mountainous Hindu Kush region in Afghanistan, at a depth of 210 km (130 miles), the U.S. Geological Survey said.

Officials in Kabul said they were assessing damage in areas around the sparsely populated epicenter.

In Pakistan, tremors shook furniture and power cable poles.

There were no immediate reports of casualties.

Waseem Ahmad, spokesman for the National Disaster Management Authority in Islamabad, estimated the quake to be about 6.4 magnitude.

“I was with my kids at a badminton court when we felt strong jolts,” said Nusrat Jabeen in Pakistan’s capital. “It was very scary. We felt everything was shaking. We ran out for safety.”

Tremors were also felt in India’s mountainous Kashmir state where people rushed out of their homes and offices.

The Indian subcontinent has suffered some of the largest earthquakes in the world.
 

…

French President Emmanuel Macron will be sharing a holiday meal Friday with French forces stationed in Ivory Coast as he begins his visit to West Africa where he also plans to concentrate over the weekend on how to confront the rising jihadist violence imperiling the region. 

The trip is providing a respite for Macron from the ongoing strikes back home over his plans to raise the retirement age, which have paralyzed transport ahead of the holiday season.

France has some 4,500 military personnel stationed throughout West and Central Africa, where Islamic extremist groups have carried out unprecedented attacks this year against local armies in Mali and Niger. Attacks are multiplying, too, in Burkina Faso.

The security situation Africa’s Sahel region is deteriorating by the day, said Ivorian political analyst Geoffroy Julien Kouao. Ivory Coast is not only home to a French military base, it is also the region’s economic powerhouse and it came under attack in 2016 when al-Qaida-linked militants sprayed gunfire at a popular beach, killing 19 people.

“Let’s not forget that Ivory Coast shares 800 kilometers (500 miles) of border with Mali and Burkina Faso so the military component dominates this visit by the French president,” Kouao said.

Macron was to meet with leaders of the Sahel countries in France earlier this month but the meeting was postponed when an Islamic State affiliate carried out the deadliest assault on Niger’s military in recent memory. Officials said 71 soldiers were killed when their army camp was overpowered near the volatile border with Mali.

During his first stop Friday evening at a French military base, Macron plans to meet with those on the front lines of the fight including some commandos who were involved in the operation in Mali during which 13 soldiers died in a helicopter collision.

On Saturday, Macron plans to help launch the International Academy to Fight Terrorism, which will focus on regional strategies and training those involved in the fight against extremism, according to the French presidency.

He also will pay a visit to Niger’s President Mahamadou Issoufou in Niamey on Sunday before returning to France, where the summit with West African leaders has been rescheduled to mid-January.

Macron’s high-profile visit to Ivory Coast’s commercial capital also comes ahead of pivotal elections scheduled for October 2020. The former colonizer has substantial economic interests there, and past outbreaks of violence have seen French expatriate civilians targeted.

Ivorians remain scarred by the post-election bloodshed in 2010-2011 that left more than 3,000 people dead after then-President Laurent Gbagbo refused to concede defeat to Alassane Ouattara, who ultimately prevailed and then was reelected in 2015.

Initially Ouattara was limited to two terms, meaning the 2020 election would be a wide open field. Ivorian elections, though, have proven to be anything but predictable: Ouattara recently has given signs he might consider a third bid if his nemesis gets involved.

Gbagbo, who was accused of unleashing violence to cling to office after losing the runoff vote, remains popular among some Ivorians and it’s unclear what kind of influence he could have. He has been acquitted of criminal charges at The Hague in connection with the violence, though International Criminal Court prosecutors have launched an appeal.

Before that electoral crisis Ivory Coast already had suffered through a civil war that began in 2002 and left the country with a rebel-controlled north and a loyalist south until a 2007 peace deal. During the crisis a 2004 bombing killed nine French soldiers and an American scientist who had sought refuge at the base amidst the fighting.

On Sunday, Macron will pay tribute to the victims of a 2004 bombing during Ivory Coast’s civil war this weekend in Bouake. A trial is to begin in France next year, 15 years after the attack that killed nine French soldiers and an American civilian who had sought shelter at the French army base. 

The Belarussian pilot and two Ivorian co-pilots who carried out the bombings are accused of murder and attempted murder, but will not be there because the international arrest warrants were never carried out.

The American victim, Robert Carsky, 49, grew up in Syracuse, N.Y. and spent most of his adult life working in West Africa as a soil scientist and crop researcher. A representative from the U.S. Embassy in Ivory Coast is expected to join Macron and his entourage at the site.

“These events took place in a context of war and relations between Paris and Abidjan were abysmal at that time,” Kouao said. “Macron and Ouattara want to erase this difficult moment and show that the two countries have excellent relations today.”

…

Boeing’s new Starliner capsule rocketed toward the International Space Station on its first test flight Friday, a crucial dress rehearsal for next year’s inaugural launch with astronauts.

The Starliner carried Christmas treats and presents for the six space station residents, hundreds of tree seeds similar to those that flew to the moon on Apollo 14, the original air travel ID card belonging to Boeing’s founder and a mannequin named Rosie in the commander’s seat.

The test dummy — named after the bicep-flexing riveter of World War II — wore a red polka dot hair bandanna just like the original Rosie and Boeing’s custom royal blue spacesuit.

“She’s pretty tough. She’s going to take the hit for us,” said NASA’s Mike Fincke, one of three astronauts who will fly on the next Starliner and, as test pilots, take the hit for future crews.

As the astronauts watched from nearby control centers, a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket carrying the capsule blasted off just before sunrise from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The rocket was visible for at least five minutes, its white contrail a brilliant contrast against the dark sky. Thousands of spectators jammed the area, eager to witness Starliner’s premiere flight.

It was a one-day trip to the orbiting lab, putting the spacecraft on track for a docking Saturday morning.

This was Boeing’s chance to catch up with SpaceX, NASA’s other commercial crew provider that completed a similar demonstration last March. SpaceX has one last hurdle — a launch abort test — before carrying two NASA astronauts in its Dragon capsule, possibly by spring.

The U.S. needs competition like this, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said Thursday, to drive down launch costs, boost innovation and open space up to more people. 

“We’re moving into a new era,” he said.

The space agency handed over station deliveries to private businesses, first cargo and then crews, in order to focus on getting astronauts back to the moon and on to Mars. 

Commercial cargo ships took flight in 2012, starting with SpaceX. Crew capsules were more complicated to design and build, and parachute and other technical problems pushed the first launches from 2017 to now next year.

It’s been nearly nine years since NASA astronauts have launched from the U.S. The last time was July 8, 2011, when Atlantis — now on display at Kennedy Space Center — made the final space shuttle flight. 

Since then, NASA astronauts have traveled to and from the space station via Kazakhstan, courtesy of the Russian Space Agency. The Soyuz rides have cost NASA up to $86 million apiece.

“We’re back with a vengeance now,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said from Kennedy, where crowds gathered well before dawn.

Chris Ferguson commanded that last shuttle mission. Now a test pilot astronaut for Boeing and one of the Starliner’s key developers, he’s assigned to the first Starliner crew with Fincke and NASA astronaut Nicole Mann. A successful Starliner demo could see them launching by summer.

“This is an incredibly unique opportunity,” Ferguson said on the eve of launch.

Mann juggled a mix of emotions: excitement, pride, stress and amazement.

“Really overwhelmed, but in a good way and really the best of ways,” she said.

Built to accommodate seven, the white capsule with black and blue trim will typically carry four or five people. It’s 16.5 feet (5 meters) tall with its attached service module and 15 feet (4.5 meters) in diameter. 

Every Starliner system will be tested during the eight-day mission, from the vibrations and stresses of liftoff to the Dec. 28 touchdown at the Army’s White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. Parachutes and air bags will soften the capsule’s landing. Even the test dummy is packed with sensors.

Bridenstine said he’s “very comfortable” with Boeing, despite the prolonged grounding of the company’s 737 Max jets. The spacecraft and aircraft sides of the company are different, he noted. Boeing has long been involved in NASA’s human spacecraft program, from Project Mercury to the shuttle and station programs. 

Boeing began preliminary work on the Starliner in 2010, a year before Atlantis soared for the last time. 

In 2014, Boeing and SpaceX made the final cut. Boeing got more than $4 billion to develop and fly the Starliner, while SpaceX got $2.6 billion for a crew-version of its Dragon cargo ship.

NASA wants to make sure every reasonable precaution is taken with the capsules, designed to be safer than NASA’s old shuttles.

“We’re talking about human spaceflight,” Bridenstine cautioned. “It’s not for the faint of heart. It never has been, and it’s never going to be.”

…

An Indonesian prosecutor charged five men and a woman with treason on Thursday, accusing them of organizing a protest in Jakarta demanding independence for the easternmost province of Papua.

The peaceful protest of about 100 people had been held outside the presidential palace and military headquarters on Aug. 28 and followed a period of unrest in Papua.

Prosecutor P.  Permana read out the indictment in the Central Jakarta court saying the six defendants had organized a rally demanding the Indonesian government allow a vote in Papua to let it separate from Indonesia One of the six waved the “Morning Star” flag, while dancing and singing, the indictment said. The flag is a banned symbol of Papuan nationhood.

“The action by the defendants is treason with the aim to separate Papua province and West Papua province from the unitary state of Indonesia,” said Permana.

There was a small protest outside the court on Thursday held by pro-Papuan activists calling for the release of the six.

The six could face up to 20 years in jail if found guilty.

A hearing for the defense is due on Jan. 2, but the six have said it was their constitutional right to participate in the rally.

Resource-rich Papua was a Dutch colony that was incorporated into Indonesia after a controversial U.N.-backed referendum in 1969. The region has since endured decades of mostly low-level separatist conflict.

…

One day after U.S. President Donald Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives, Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she will not send the articles of impeachment to the Senate or choose impeachment prosecutors until the Senate agrees on rules governing the process.

“When we see what they have, we’ll know who and how many to send over,” Pelosi said at her weekly Capitol Hill news conference.
 
The Senate is not authorized to begin a trial until it receives the articles from the House. 

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US House Impeaches President Trump 

On a near party-line vote, Democrat-controlled House approves two articles of impeachment against Trump, a Republican, making him only third US president to be impeached in country’s 243-year history 

On a near straight party line vote, the Democrat-controlled House approved two articles of impeachment against Trump, a Republican, making him only the third U.S. president to be impeached in the country’s 243-year history. He is accused of abusing the power of the presidency to benefit himself politically and then obstructing congressional efforts to investigate his actions.

Top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell said on the Senate floor Thursday that Pelosi is afraid to send the Democrats’ “shoddy work product to the Senate” after declaring the Democratic Party-led impeachment hearings an “unfair” process that has created “a toxic new precedent that will echo well into the future.”

A trial in the Senate, which McConnell has said would be a top priority in January, is likely to end with Trump’s acquittal by the majority-Republican body. 

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Nine Questions About the Senate Impeachment Trial

The Senate operates under its own set of rules established by members, which means they can also change the rules if the majority chooses

When asked about the prospects of a fair Senate trial as mandated by the Constitution, Pelosi took aim at both Trump and McConnell, stating she does not think the Founding Fathers ever “suspected that we could have a rogue president and a rogue leader in the Senate at the same time.”

On Twitter, Trump charged that “Pelosi feels her phony impeachment HOAX is so pathetic she is afraid to present it to the Senate, which can set a date and put this whole SCAM into default if they refuse to show up!”

Senator Lindsey Graham, a staunch ally of Trump, tweeted early Thursday that Pelosi’s failure to send the articles to the Senate “would be a breathtaking violation of the Constitution, an act of political cowardice, and fundamentally unfair” to Trump. 

The White House released a statement shortly after the vote to impeach Trump on Wednesday, calling it a “sham impeachment” and the culmination of “one of the most shameful political episodes in the history of our Nation.”

The statement added Trump “is prepared for the next steps and confident that he will be fully exonerated.”

The House debated the merits of Trump’s impeachment for more than six hours before voting. Democratic lawmakers pointedly advanced the case for Trump’s impeachment. They alternated with Republicans, who said Trump had done nothing wrong in his months-long push to get Ukraine to investigate one of Trump’s chief 2020 Democratic challengers, former vice president Joe Biden, his son Hunter Biden’s lucrative work for a Ukrainian natural gas company and a debunked theory that Ukraine meddled in the 2016 election that Trump won to undermine his campaign.

Trump made the appeal for the Biden investigations directly to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in a late July phone call at a time when he was temporarily withholding $391 million in military aid Kyiv wanted to help fight pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.

Trump eventually released the money in September without Zelenskiy launching the Biden investigations, proof, Republicans said during the House floor debate, that Trump had not engaged in a reciprocal quid pro quo deal, the military aid in exchange for the Biden investigations.

One of the articles of impeachment approved by the House accused Trump of abusing the power of the presidency by soliciting a foreign government, Ukraine, to undertake the investigations to help him run against Biden, who is leading national polls of Democrats in the race for the party’s presidential nomination to oppose Trump next year.

In the 230-197 vote on Article I, all but two Democrats voted for approval, and all Republicans voted against it.

The second impeachment allegation said Trump obstructed Congress by withholding thousands of Ukraine-related documents from House impeachment investigators and then blocking key officials in his administration from testifying during weeks of hearings Democratic-controlled committees conducted into Trump’s actions related to Ukraine.

In the 229-198 vote on Article II, all but three Democrats voted for approval, and all Republicans voted against it.

The two other U.S. presidents who have been impeached were Andrew Johnson in the mid-19th century and Bill Clinton two decades ago. Both were acquitted in the Senate and remained in office.

The impeachment votes were held about the same time Trump began to speak at a campaign rally in the Midwestern state of Michigan, one of the pivotal states he won in the 2016 election.

“This lawless, partisan impeachment is a political suicide march for the Democrat Party. Have you seen my polls in the last four weeks?” he said at the rally.

Trump has on countless occasions described his late July call with Zelenskiy as “perfect,” when he asked him to “do us a favor,” to investigate the Bidens and Ukraine’s purported role in the 2016 election. As the impeachment controversy mounted,Trump has subsequently claimed the “us” in his request to Zelenskiy referred not to him personally but to the United States.

…

The son of Russian spies who was born in Canada and was stripped of his citizenship after his parents were arrested for espionage in the United States is a Canadian national, the country’s top court ruled  Thursday.

Canada’s Supreme Court unanimously upheld an earlier federal court ruling that said a 2014 administrative decision to strip Alexander Vavilov of his citizenship was unreasonable. Vavilov was born in Canada in 1994, as was his brother, Timothy, four years earlier.

“The judges said that Mr. Vavilov was a Canadian citizen,” according to the ruling.

The hit TV series The Americans was based partly on the story of Vavilov’s family. His parents came to Canada in the 1980s under deep cover and assumed names, with the mission to immerse themselves in Western society. The family later moved to Boston, where Vavilov’s parents were arrested in 2010 and charged with spying.

Vavilov’s parents returned to Russia in a spy swap. Both brothers were also sent to Russia. Alexander said he had no idea that his parents were spies until they were arrested.

Children born in Canada normally automatically become Canadian citizens, but the country’s Registrar of Citizenship said Alexander was an exception because his parents had been like diplomats — representatives or employees of a foreign government.

The Supreme Court upheld a previous federal appeals court ruling saying that Vavilov’s parents did not enjoy the “privileges and immunities” of diplomats and so the exception could not be applied to their son.

Andrey Bezrukov and Elena Vavilova used the aliases Donald Heathfield and Tracey Ann Foley — names lifted from two Canadian children who had died in infancy. They later admitted their real names to U.S. authorities.

…

Warring parties in Yemen’s Taiz governorate have exchanged dozens of prisoners in a locally-mediated swap, the Iran-aligned Houthi movement and government sources said Thursday.

The local deal coincided with renewed diplomatic efforts by the United Nations this week and as Saudi Arabia carries out informal talks with the Houthis about a possible cease-fire.

Seventy-five detainees affiliated with the internationally-recognized government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi were released, local government sources said. In exchange, 60 people affiliated with the Houthi group were also released, according to Houthi-run al-Masirah TV and the local sources.

Yemen has been mired in almost five years of conflict since the Houthi movement ousted Hadi’s government from power in the capital Sanaa in late 2014, prompting intervention in 2015 by a Saudi-led military coalition in a bid to restore his government.

Yemen’s third city of Taiz is a volatile front line. A U.N.-mediated deal reached in Stockholm last December aimed to set up a committee to establish humanitarian corridors to the city, but no progress has been made so far.

U.N. efforts

The United Nations has been trying to re-launch political negotiations to end the war, which has killed tens of thousands of people and pushed millions to the brink of famine.

A year on from Stockholm, U.N. Yemen envoy Martin Griffiths visited officials in Yemen and Riyadh this week.

U.N.-mediated talks between warring parties in the strategic port city of Hodeidah also took place for the first time since September. The United Nations has sought to implement a local truce and troop withdrawal from the port agreed at Stockholm.

Meanwhile, Riyadh has been holding informal talks with the Houthis since late September about a wider cease-fire, sources familiar with the discussions have said, as it seeks to exit an unpopular war after its main coalition partner the United Arab Emirates withdrew troops earlier this year.
 

…

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) says it is “appalled” by a Tehran court’s decision to uphold prison sentences for four journalists from the Gam (Step) online magazine.

However, the appeals court in Tehran reduced the length of the jail terms from 18 to five years for each journalist — Amirhossein Mohammadifard, Sanaz Allahyari, Amir Amirgholi, and Assal Mohammadi — for a combined total of 20 years, the Paris-based media freedom watchdog said on December 18.

The initial sentences were passed by a Tehran revolutionary court in September.

The journalists were arrested a year ago on what Amnesty International called “spurious” national security charges related to their reporting on workers’ rights protests in Khuzestan Province over grievances concerning unpaid wages and poor conditions.

“Their prosecution forms part of a wider crackdown on labor rights activists and journalists covering the protests at Haft Tappeh [sugar] company in late 2018,” the London-based group said in July. 

RSF said on December 18 that the same appeals court in Tehran also upheld a prison sentence for Marzieh Amiri, a journalist for the reformist Shargh newspaper, but reduced her sentence from 10 years in prison and 148 lashes to five years in prison.

Amiri was arrested in May after covering a demonstration outside parliament in the capital.

She and the other four journalists were released in October pending the decision by the appeals court, RSF said.

The rulings come as Iran is facing international condemnation for its crackdown on the protests that rocked more than 100 cities across the country last month that were triggered by gasoline-price hikes and a rationing plan.

Amnesty International this week said at least 304 people had been killed during the several days of protests and that the authorities were continuing to carry out a “vicious crackdown,” arresting thousands of protesters, journalists, human rights defenders, and students to “stop them from speaking out about Iran’s ruthless repression.”

Iranian officials have dismissed Amnesty’s death toll figures as “lies.”

…

Citing 400 years of tradition, Puerto Rico Governor Wanda Vasquez on Wednesday challenged the federal ban on cockfighting.

Vasquez signed a bill that seeks to sidestep the ban signed into law by President Donald Trump last year that was set to take effect on Friday.

“This measure is not meant to be a confrontation,” she said. “If they [the federal government] understand this as a conflict, then we ask them to come talk to us. Let’s talk it through. This is an industry that represents the income for thousands of families, and we have to take them into consideration.”

Puerto Rican officials say cockfighting generates an estimated $18 million a year and employs 27,000 people. There are 71 licensed cockpits across the island that are regulated by the Department of Sports and Recreation.

The blood sport was introduced to the island by Spanish colonists 400 years ago. The ban “is an abuse the U.S. government is committing against our culture,” said  cock owner Carlos Junior Aponte Silva.

Animal rights activists say cockfighting is cruel. Owners attach spikes to the birds’ legs to cause more damage to opponents during the 12-minute bouts. Cock deaths during a fight or shortly afterward are common.

Vasquez expects the law she signed to be challenged.

“Obviously, the final decision belongs to the court,” she said.

…

Tens of thousands of hectares of farmland is being destroyed as desert locusts swarm over Somalia, in the worst invasion in 25 years. 
 
The locusts have damaged about 70,000 hectares of farmland in Somalia and neighboring eastern Ethiopia, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said Wednesday. 
 
VOA’s Harun Maruf tweeted dramatic videos of the insects flying over the central Somali town of Adado:

Video: Huge locust swarm over Adado town today. Somalia faces the worst Desert Locust outbreak in over 25 years according to @FAOSomaliapic.twitter.com/2ZuI0vEhDI

— Harun Maruf (@HarunMaruf) December 18, 2019

The FAO said the locust invasion was worse than had been predicted and was likely to spread to other nations in the Horn of Africa, including Kenya, Djibouti, Eritrea, South Sudan and Sudan. 
 
“As the weather seems favorable for the locust breeding, there is a high probability that the locust will continue to breed until March-April 2020,” FAO regional coordinator David Phiri said. 
 
“I was supposed to get up to 3,000 kilograms of teff [a cereal grass] and maize this year, but because of desert locusts and untimely rains, I only got 400 kilograms of maize and expect only 200 kilograms of teff,” Ethiopian farmer Ashagre Molla, 66, said. “This is not even enough to feed my family.” 

…

In mid-June, Abdulrasoul Ibrahim Omar, 38, hired smugglers to transport him, his pregnant wife and his two small daughters out of Libya. 
 
Speaking over WhatsApp during the journey, he would not say where he was going. 
 
“No safety in Libya. I fled to … ,” he texted, not completing the thought. 

Before arriving in Libya, Omar fled genocide in Darfur and Sudan, and survived one of the world’s most dangerous migration routes.   
 
Almost all the people traveling to Libya’s coast in hopes of making it to Europe face beatings, rapes, torture or kidnappings, according to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. Smugglers demand heavy ransoms from the usually impoverished families in exchange for their loved ones’ lives. 
 
“[They are] suffering some of the gravest human rights abuses in the world today,” said Charlie Yaxley, a UNHCR spokesperson in Geneva. “We don’t know how many people are dying on the way.” 
 
At the U.N. Refugee Conference on Wednesday, Libya’s permanent representative to the U.N. office at Geneva said the world’s wealthy nations should take more preventive actions for people feeling the need to flee their countries in the first place. 
 
“Prior to official refugee status, refugees face terrible tragedies through migration and displacement,” said Ambassador Tamim M. Baiou. “As a transit country, Libya is deeply familiar with the first two phases.” 
 
Danger in Libya 
 
Despite the danger of traveling, staying in Libya was not an option, Omar said. 
 
In April, his neighborhood was bombed in the war between the country’s eastern and western governments. He and his neighbors took up residence in a makeshift camp inside a schoolhouse in Tripoli.

Months later, as Omar and his family traveled out of the country, bombs hit a detention center holding refugees and migrants on the other side of town, killing more than 50 people. Most had been arrested after the boats they were trying to take to Europe wrecked in the Mediterranean Sea. 
  
The victims were among the thousands of refugees and migrants detained in Libya above the objections of the UNHCR, which calls the arrests arbitrary and advocates for the release of all the detainees. 
 
Omar’s teenage cousin, Abdullah, was a detainee in the center and survived the blast. 
  
As he searched for a safe place, Omar continued to text. He said the trip was too dangerous to reveal his route.   
   
“When I reach wherever, I will [send] you my location,” he texted. 
  
Dreams of resettlement 
  
Before he left Libya, Omar, his family and his neighbors described their journey into the country. Many wept as they told their stories in a crowded room in the schoolhouse. 
  
One woman was raped by a smuggler. At the time, she was pregnant, and miscarried after the attack. She later found she was pregnant with her rapist’s child. Her husband abandoned her, apparently ashamed.   
   
Another woman pointed out scars on her teenage son’s arms. He had been kidnapped and beaten until she gathered enough money to pay the ransom.   
   
Once in Libya, the families were among the luckier travelers, taking odd jobs and apartments while they continued efforts to get to Europe or other Western countries. Like Omar, they all wanted to be resettled by the U.N., but the wait is long, and there is no guarantee. 

Only 5% of the people determined to be eligible for resettlement are placed, according to Yaxley, because wealthier countries offer too few spaces. 
 
“It’s incredibly challenging,” he said. 
   
The families all said they would not return to their homes and would not stay in Libya. They said that if they were not resettled, they would try to get to Europe on a smuggler’s boat. So far this year, more than 1,200 people have died trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea, according to the International Organization for Migration. 
  
“We follow the media, and we see that many ships collapse,” Omar said. “The only thing I’m looking for is freedom.” 

On the move   
   
As the war continued in Libya, the schoolhouse where Omar’s neighbors were staying was evacuated. The residents took shelter in a parking lot.   
   
But Omar and his family found shelter in Tunisia. To get there, the family hired smugglers and walked 25 kilometers through the desert. Mahasen, Omar’s wife, was six months pregnant and exhausted when they arrived. 
  
Now, he is still waiting for resettlement, despite being told months ago that his family was eligible. 
 
“It’s shame from the world to keep silent as we die,” he said in a text on Wednesday.      

His new son, Ibrahim, was born in September and is now also waiting to be resettled. 
  
“We are ordinary people,” Omar said. “Only persecuted and fled from war.” 

…

The bodies of two people missing and presumed dead since a New Zealand volcano erupted last week  may never be found, authorities said Wednesday.

Deputy Police Commissioner Mike Clement said he was “deeply sorry” that the bodies of local tour guide Hayden Marshall-Inman, 40, and Australian tourist Winona Langford, 17, have not been recovered.

He said the bodies were probably swept out to sea. “The reality is we have to wait for Mother Nature to produce those bodies. It may and it may not,” Clement said.

The White Island Volcano, also known as “Whakaari” in the Maori language, erupted on Dec. 9 while dozens of tourists were visiting the island, located about 48 kilometers off the coast of New Zealand’s North Island.

At least 16 other people were killed and more than 20 survivors suffered severe burns.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said this week that official inquiries by coroners and work safety regulators into the eruption could take up to a year, and will carry potential criminal penalties of up to five years in jail.

There has been much criticism of why tourists were allowed on to the country’s most active volcano.
 

…

Yemenis are facing a new battle: Dengue Fever, a potentially fatal illness that spreads in the unsanitary conditions and decimated infrastructure of their conflict-torn country. The World Health Organization says nearly 59,500 suspected cases, including 219 deaths, were recorded in the first 11 months of 2019. VOA’s Mariama Diallo reports on this new challenge for a country that has endured five years of war that have killed thousands and pushed millions to the brink of famine.

…

The U.S. House of Representatives is expected to vote in favor of impeaching President Donald Trump late Wednesday, making him the third president in the country’s history to face an impeachment trial and the potential punishment of being removed from office.

The House, according to rules adopted Tuesday, will spend six hours debating the impeachment articles that accuse Trump of abusing the powers of the presidency by soliciting Ukraine’s interference in the 2020 U.S. election and of obstructing Congress by defying subpoenas seeking testimony and documents as lawmakers investigated the matter.

A vote is expected in the evening, around the same time Trump is scheduled to be speaking at a campaign rally in the state of Michigan.

With Democrats controlling the House, the impeachment articles are expected to pass over the objection of minority Republicans. A Senate trial would follow in January, but with Republicans in control of that chamber and a two-thirds majority required to convict the president, Trump is likely to remain in office.

Ahead of the House vote, Trump used a series of tweets to criticize the investigations against him and reiterate his defense that he has done “nothing wrong.”

“I’m not worried!” he wrote.

He also sent a six-page letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi saying it is Democrats, and not Trump, who have committed the acts alleged in the impeachment articles.

“You are the ones interfering in America’s elections. You are the ones subverting America’s Democracy. You are the ones Obstructing Justice. You are the ones bringing pain and suffering to our Republic for your own selfish personal, political, and partisan gain,” Trump wrote.

Pelosi sent her own letter to House Democrats saying that in voting to approve the impeachment articles, they will be exercising “one of the most solemn powers granted to us by the Constitution.”

“Very sadly, the facts have made clear that the President abused his power for his own personal, political benefit and that he obstructed Congress as he demanded that he is above accountability, above the Constitution and above the American people,” Pelosi wrote. “In America, no one is above the law.”

One of the articles of impeachment accuses Trump of trying to get Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to launch investigations of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, his son Hunter Biden’s work for a Ukrainian natural gas company, and a debunked theory that Ukraine tried to undermine Trump’s 2016 campaign.

The second impeachment article accuses Trump of obstructing Congress by refusing to turn over thousands of pages of Ukraine-related documents to House impeachment investigators and blocking key aides from testifying at the weeks-long impeachment inquiry.

…

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan lashed out Tuesday at Western nations for their lack of support for his so-called Operation Peace Spring, which he launched in October in Kurdish-controlled areas of northeastern Syria. 

Speaking at the Global Refugee Forum in Geneva, Erdogan described the difficulties encountered by the millions of refugees forced to flee war and persecution, and the need for universal solidarity to support them.  

The Turkish president, who said his country has welcomed more than 5 million displaced individuals — 3.7 million of them Syrian refugees, criticized the European Union for its lack of financial support and the member nations’ unwillingness to share the burden of welcoming refugees inside their own borders.

Erdogan also criticized Western leaders, whom he said have failed to support his military offensive against the Kurds in northern Syria. He has accused the Kurds of being allied with PKK terrorists in Turkey, and said his reason for launching Operation Peace Spring was to clear a 120-kilometer area in Syria of what he called a terrorist presence.

“Let us declare these areas as safe zones,” Erdogan said through an interpreter. “Let us implement resettlement and housing projects altogether. Let us have hospitals. Let us have schools there and let the refugees go back to their motherland peacefully and in a dignified fashion. But nobody seems to be inclined to help us. Why? Because oil is a much more needed commodity.”  

President Donald Trump announced in November his decision to post U.S. soldiers in Syria to guard oil fields. The Trump administration previously had been criticized by allies for allowing Turkey’s military assault to go forward by withdrawing U.S. troops allied with the Kurds in the region. The Kurds have called the move a betrayal.

Erdogan said he will go ahead with his plans to resettle about 1 million Syrian refugees in this so-called peace zone in northern Syria, despite international criticism. 

“The YPG and PKK terrorist organizations are attacking civilians, but despite that fact, these areas are now the safest and most stable zones of Syria, which are inhabitable,” Erdogan said. “The Syrian refugees should go back on a voluntary basis, but we know what powers around the world would be disturbed by their resettlement peacefully and in a dignified fashion.”  

Western powers and humanitarian organizations have expressed alarm at Turkey’s insistence on relocating the refugees across the border into the area once controlled by the Syrian Kurds. They warn this will lead to enduring ethnic tensions between the two groups, leading to permanent instability in the region.
 

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U.S. lawmakers granted formal recognition to the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians on Tuesday and directed federal officials to acquire land on the tribe’s behalf, following a decades-long struggle by its members scattered across the Northern Plains of the U.S. and Canada.

A provision to recognize the tribe and make it eligible for millions of dollars annually in federal assistance was included in a defense bill approved in the Senate on a vote of 86 to 8. The measure now goes to President Donald Trump to be signed into law.

Most of the tribe’s more than 5,000 members are in Montana, descendants of Native Americans and early European settlers.

They have a headquarters in Great Falls, Montana but have been without a recognized homeland since the late 1800s, when the tribe’s leader, Chief Little Shell, and his followers in North Dakota broke off treaty negotiations with the U.S. government.

Tribe members later settled in Montana and southern Canada, but they struggled to stay united because they had no land to call their own.

Formal government recognition gives cultural validation to a tribe whose members have long lived on the fringes of society and were sometimes shunned by whites. More practically, it makes its members, many of them poor, eligible for government benefits ranging from education and health care to housing.

“It’s truly amazing. I’m almost speechless that this has finally come to fruition for us,” Little Shell Chairman Gerald Gray said. “Besides the dignity part and us fighting for this for over 150 years, it’s going to provide access to services our people have never had access to but have always deserved”

Providing services to the tribal members through the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Indian Health Service would cost roughly $40 million over five years, or about $8 million a year, the Congressional Budget Office said in a March report. That figure was based on an enrollment of roughly 2,600 members, a number that Gray said was outdated and too low.

Tribal leaders first petitioned for recognition through the Interior Department in 1978. Members trace their other attempts back to the 1860s, when the Pembina Band of Chippewa signed a treaty with the U.S. government.

Recognition was granted by the state of Montana in 2000, but denied by the U..S. Interior Department in 2009.

Montana U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, a Democrat, said he worked with Montana Republican Sen. Steve Daines to convince Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to get language recognizing the tribe into the defense bill.

“There were no deals cut here,” Tester said moments after Tuesday’s vote. “This happened because Leader McConnell made it a priority.”

Daines said the Senate vote marked a “historic day for the state of Montana” and had been one of his main priorities.

Legislation recognizing the tribe was approved by the House last year but later blocked in the Senate.

 Tester said a similar measure was the first piece of legislation he introduced after being first elected in 2006. Daines and Republican Rep. Greg Gianforte, Montana’s sole member of the House, also took up the Little Shell’s cause after taking office.

The House passed the defense bill with the Little Shell provision included in a vote last week. It calls on the U.S. Department of the Interior to acquire 200 acres (80 hectares) for the Little Shell’s members that could be used for a tribal government center, health clinic, housing or other purposes.

Gray said the tribe will work in coming months to identify the location of that land. The legislation says is must be within a four-county area of north-central Montana that includes Great Falls.

“It’s going to take some time,” Gray said. “We want to build a nation and you’ve got to get it right.”

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One of the biggest refugee crises is about to take place because of recent actions by the Indian government, Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan warned delegates Tuesday at the Global Refugee Forum.

Khan said India’s revocaton of Kashmir’s special status on Aug. 5 aims to change the demographics of the region from a Muslim-majority to a Muslim-minority state, which is likely to provoke a refugee crisis that will dwarf previous ones.

“I would like the world community to take notice of what is happening,” Khan said. “We in Pakistan are not just worried that there will be a refugee crisis. We are worried that this could lead to a conflict, a conflict between two nuclear-armed countries.”

Khan pointed to India’s new Citizenship (Amendment) Act in Assam state as another flash point. Under this act, he said, Muslims must prove they are citizens of India or will be stripped of their nationality.

“Please understand the implications,” Khan said. “There are 200 million Muslims in India. … If two or three percent of them cannot prove their citizenship, where will they go?”

Khan warned that the riots in opposition to the new legislation are likely to worsen, but said that Pakistan, which already hosts around three million Afghan refugees, cannot accommodate more.

Khan urged nations to pressure the Indian government to reverse its discriminatory policies against Muslims.
 

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The sixth and final Democratic presidential debate of the year will be held Dec. 19, 2019, on the campus of Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. Only seven of 15 candidates seeking the nomination to challenge President Donald Trump will be on stage this time, as the first primary contests early next year draw closer. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee has more on the significance of this debate and the issues young student voters want to hear from the candidates.

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Spanish police retrieved a body from a boat off the southern coast on Tuesday, the eighth migrant killed at sea in a 24-hour period while trying to reach the country.

The boat was spotted in the western Mediterranean off the coast of the southern region of Andalusia before dawn and 47 survivors — 30 men and 17 men — were taken to the port of Motril, a spokesman for Spain’s Guardia Civil police force said.

A Moroccan coastguard vessel had earlier retrieved seven bodies and rescued 70 migrants after they got into difficulty in the Alboran Sea in the western Mediterranean, a Moroccan military source said.

The survivors, including 10 women and a baby, were found in a “very poor state” and were taken for medical treatment in Nador in northern Morocco, the source added.

The boat capsized carrying around 100 migrants headed towards Spain, according to Spanish NGO Caminando Fronteras, which added that 24 people were still missing. 

Over 98,000 people have reached Europe by sea this year, including around 25,000 who arrived in Spain, according to the International Organization for Migration.

More than 1,200 migrants have died or are missing at sea after attempting to cross the Mediterranean this year, UN figures show.

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Pope Francis has abolished the “pontifical secret” used in clergy sexual abuse cases, after mounting criticism that the high degree of confidentiality has been used to protect pedophiles, silence victims and keep law enforcement from investigating crimes.

In a new document, Francis decreed that information in abuse cases must be protected by church leaders to ensure its “security, integrity and confidentiality.” But he said “pontifical secret” no longer applies to abuse-related accusations, trials and decisions under the Catholic Church’s canon law.

The Vatican’s leading sex crimes investigator, Archbishop Charles Scicluna, called the reform an “epochal decision” that will facilitate coordination with civil law enforcement and open up lines of communication with victims.

While documentation from the church’s in-house legal proceedings will still not become public, Scicluna said, the reform now removes any excuse to not cooperate with legitimate legal requests from civil law enforcement authorities.

Prominent Irish survivor Marie Collins said the reform was “excellent news” that abuse survivors and their advocates had been pressing for. “At last a real and positive change,” she tweeted.

Francis also raised from 14 to 18 the cutoff age below which the Vatican considers pornographic images to be child pornography.

The new laws were issued Tuesday, Francis’ 83rd birthday, as he struggles to respond to the global explosion of the abuse scandal, his own missteps and demands for greater transparency and accountability from victims, law enforcement and ordinary Catholics alike.

The new norms are the latest amendment to the Catholic Church’s in-house canon law — a parallel legal code that metes out ecclesial justice for crimes against the faith — in this case relating to the sexual abuse of minors or vulnerable people by priests, bishops or cardinals. In this legal system, the worst punishment a priest can incur is being defrocked, or dismissed from the clerical state.

Pope Benedict XVI had decreed in 2001 that these cases must be dealt with under “pontifical secret,” the highest form of secrecy in the church. The Vatican had long insisted that such confidentiality was necessary to protect the privacy of the victim, the reputation of the accused and the integrity of the canonical process.

However, such secrecy also served to keep the scandal hidden, prevent law enforcement from accessing documents and silence victims, many of whom often believed that “pontifical secret” prevented them from going to the police to report their priestly abusers.

While the Vatican has long tried to insist this was not the case, it also never mandated that bishops and religious superiors report sex crimes to police, and in the past has encouraged bishops not to do so.

According to the new instruction, which was signed by the Vatican secretary of state but authorized by the pope, the Vatican still doesn’t mandate reporting the crimes to police, saying religious superiors are obliged to do so where civil reporting laws require it.

But it goes further than the Vatican has gone before, saying: “Office confidentiality shall not prevent the fulfillment of the obligations laid down in all places by civil laws, including any reporting obligations, and the execution of enforceable requests of civil judicial authorities.”

The Vatican has been under increasing pressure to cooperate more with law enforcement, and its failure to do so has resulted in unprecedented raids in recent years on diocesan chanceries by police from Belgium to Texas and Chile.

But even under the penalty of subpoenas and raids, bishops have sometimes felt compelled to withhold canonical proceedings given the “pontifical secret,” unless given permission to hand documents over by the Vatican. The new law makes that explicit permission no longer required.

“The freedom of information to statutory authorities and to victims is something that is being facilitated by this new law,” Scicluna told Vatican media.

The Vatican in May issued another law explicitly saying victims cannot be silenced and have a right to learn the outcome of canonical trials. The new document repeats that, and expands the point by saying not only the victim, but any witnesses or the person who lodged the accusation cannot be compelled to silence.

Individual scandals, national inquiries, grand jury investigations, U.N. denunciations and increasingly costly civil litigation have devastated the Catholic hierarchy’s credibility across the globe, and Francis’ own failures and missteps have emboldened his critics.

In February, he summoned the presidents of bishops conferences from around the globe to a four-day summit on preventing abuse, where several speakers called for a reform of the pontifical secret. Francis himself said he intended to raise the age for which pornography was considered child porn.

The Vatican’s editorial director, Andrea Tornielli, said the new law is a “historical” follow-up to the February summit and a sign of openness and transparency.

“The breadth of Pope Francis’ decision is evident: the well-being of children and young people must always come before any protection of a secret, even the `’pontifical secret,'” he said in a statement.

Also Tuesday, Francis accepted the resignation of the Vatican’s ambassador to France, Archbishop Luigi Ventura, who is accused of making unwanted sexual advances to young men.

Ventura turned 75 last week, the mandatory retirement age for bishops, but the fact that his resignation was announced on the same day as Francis’ abuse reforms didn’t seem to be a coincidence.

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Almost 200 Rohingya Muslims sailed more than 1,500 kilometres to escape Bangladesh refugee camps only to be arrested by Myanmar’s navy, the country’s military said Tuesday.

The boat seizure came just days after Myanmar’s leader and Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi addressed the U.N.’s top court to deny allegations of a genocidal campaign against the ethnic minority.

With the monsoon over and seas relatively calm, increasing numbers of Rohingya Muslims are once again risking their lives attempting to reach Malaysia or Indonesia.

Bangladeshi authorities say they are stopping one or two boats a week leaving the country’s shores, and many more are thought to evade patrols.

Few make it as far south as Kawthaung, Myanmar’s southern-most tip, where on Sunday the country’s navy picked up the 173-strong Rohingya group, including 69 women and 22 children, a military spokesman told AFP.

“We will hand them over to immigration authorities and police to take action,” said Zaw Min Tun, adding they had come from camps in Bangladesh and were heading to Malaysia.

Seven boatmen were also arrested in the vessel’s seizure some 135 miles (217km) off Myanmar’s coast, he said.

Life is becoming increasingly difficult in the sprawling camps that are home to nearly one million Rohingya, around 750,000 of whom fled a crackdown by Myanmar’s military in 2017.

Officially they are forbidden to leave the settlements, but the camps’ vast size means they are difficult to police.

Bangladesh has stoked fear among the Rohingya by erecting barbed-wire fences around the sites and installing checkpoints on nearby roads.

Rights groups condemn the move, saying it transforms the camps into a “big prison”.

An internet blackout, the confiscation of SIM cards and phones, and a clampdown on illegal documentation papers are also making refugees’ lives even less bearable.

Frustration is also growing in Bangladesh about hosting the refugees, especially after failed attempts to repatriate them.

The Rohingya refuse to return to Myanmar until their security and rights are guaranteed.

Last week Suu Kyi rejected allegations of genocide against Myanmar at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), despite admitting the army may have used excessive force against the Rohingya.

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A Russian woman jailed in the United States for working as a foreign agent and deported to Moscow has been hired by Russia’s state-funded RT television as a host for an online show that mocks the opposition, the station said on Tuesday.

Maria Butina, 31, pleaded guilty in a U.S. court last December to one count of conspiring to act as an agent for Russia by infiltrating a gun rights group and influencing conservative activists and Republicans.

She was deported in October after serving most of an 18-month sentence and met with fanfare in Moscow where officials had called the charges against her ridiculous and said she had been forced to confess.

“Well, I’m home now,” Butina says with a grin and wearing a “foreign agent” T-shirt in a promotional clip for the show aired on Tuesday.

The show is called “Wonderful Russia Bu Bu Bu,” a play on words mocking a similar slogan by prominent Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny who talks of the “Wonderful Russia of the future” when President Vladimir Putin is no longer in power.

“Bu bu bu” roughly translates as “blah blah blah.”  But “bu” is also the beginning of the word for “future.”

RT said Butina had taken part in the show last week and defended the jailing of several Russian opposition activists at anti-Kremlin protests earlier this year.

Russia’s human rights commissioner last month gave Butina a job helping campaign for and defend Russians who have been imprisoned abroad.

Putin has in the past warmly welcomed home alleged Russian agents arrested abroad and said in 2010 he had sung patriotic songs with Anna Chapman, a Russian spy arrested in the United States and then freed as part of a major swap.

Chapman herself later received a job as a television presenter on Russia’s privately owned Ren TV channel.

Officials in Moscow say RT, which broadcasts news in English, Arabic and Spanish, gives Russia a way to compete with the dominance of global media companies based in the United States and Britain, which they say offer a biased world view.

But critics say the channel functions like a propaganda arm of the Russian state, an assertion the station rejects.

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