Lebanese security forces fired tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannons Sunday to disperse hundreds of protesters for a second straight day, ending what started as a peaceful rally in defiance of the toughest crackdown on anti-government demonstrations in two months.
The violence comes on the eve of a meeting between the president and parliamentary blocs in which resigned Prime Minister Saad Hariri is widely expected to be renamed to the post. The tension also reflects deepening divisions in the country that is grappling with a severe liquidity and foreign currency crunch.

Hariri resigned Oct. 29 amid nationwide protests that have accused the entire political elite of corruption and mismanagement amid Lebanon’s worst economic crisis in decades. The protesters say they won’t accept Hariri as prime minister, demanding an independent head of government not affiliated with existing parties.

“Saad, Saad, Saad, don’t dream of it anymore,” protesters chanted Sunday.

After weeks of bickering, the political parties failed to put forward independent names, most of them insisting on keeping their political share in the government.

The protests Sunday were largely peaceful, but some demonstrators lobbed water bottles and firecrackers at security forces guarding parliament. After a couple of hours, security forces chased the the protesters away, using batons and tear gas. The protesters dispersed in central Beirut. At one point, someone set fire to two tents set up by protesters in Martyrs’ Square, the epicenter for the anti-government protests for 60 days.
After hours of clashes, the army deployed around central Beirut, putting an end to the pitched street battles. The Lebanese Civil Defense said it transferred 20 injured to hospitals while it treated over 70 protesters on site. A news photographer was among the injured.

The army first deployed to separate protesters and rival supporters of political groups, according to reports on al-Jadeed. The local TV station filmed soldiers forcing protesters to retreat from central Beirut’s squares.

Tension has surfaced between protesters and supporters of the Shiite groups Hezbollah and Amal, after the later rejected criticism of their leaders. Meanwhile, the protesters were angered by what they said was the security forces’ harsh crackdown on their rallies while treading lightly when dealing with supporters of the powerful political groups.

Divisions also surfaced among the protesters who rallied in central Beirut. Some promoted confrontation with security forces to express anger at the crackdown and the government’s “business as usual” approach. Many protesters came prepared with helmets and tear gas, and they used plant pots and bins to throw up a barricade in the street.

“We have reclaim our country from this occupation,” one angry protester told LBC TV, referring to what he called a corrupt government in place for decades. Another told Al-Jadeed that on Sunday the protesters started the friction “as a reaction to unjust crackdown” the day before.

Thousands had gathered peacefully earlier Sunday dispersed by evening.

Security forces chased protesters in central Beirut, firing tear gas and rubber bullets. Some protesters hid in the commercial area surrounding the parliament and others in masks pelted officers with stones.

Demonstrators had chanted against the security crackdown. One raised a poster saying the tear gas won’t keep them away. “We are crying already,” it added, in a jab at the deep economic crisis Lebanese are facing.

The streets leading to parliament were filled with men, women and even children. Some huddled in smaller groups while others were lifted on shoulders chanting in megaphones.

“I came back today to pressure the parliament to make the right choice tomorrow and choose a prime minister from outside the political parties. If they don’t choose someone acceptable, we will be back to the streets again and again,”said Chakib Abillamah, a businessman who was demonstrating Saturday when violence broke out.

Another protester, Huda Kerbagi, said she expected violent protests for some more days, warning that violence will beget violence, particularly in a diverse society like Lebanon. “In other revolutions you have one bloc against one bloc and in this country we have many blocs.”

One protester from southern Lebanon, who gave his name as Ali, said he came to the Beirut protest to change the rulers because “none of them feels their offenses or have any conscience. Not one of them offered an apology.”

Saturday night into Sunday saw one of the most violent crackdowns on protesters since nationwide anti-government demonstrations began two months ago. The overnight confrontations in Beirut left more than 130 people injured, according to the Red Cross and the Lebanese Civil Defense. The Red Cross said none of the injured were in serious condition and most of them were treated on the spot.

Attackers in northern Lebanon also set fire to the offices of two major political parties early Sunday, the state-run National News Agency said.

In one attack, assailants broke the windows and set fire to the local office of Hariri’s political party in the town of Kharibet al-Jundi in the northern Akkar district. Photos circulated on social media of shattered glass and the aftermath of the fire.

In a separate attack also in Akkar, assailants stormed the local office of the largest party in parliament, affiliated with President Michel Aoun and headed by Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil. The party said the contents of the office in the town of Jedidat al-Juma had been smashed and burned.

Interior Minister Raya al-Hassan on Sunday ordered an investigation into the Beirut overnight clashes, which she said injured both protesters and security forces. She said she watched the confrontations “with concern, sadness and shock.”

Al-Hassan blamed “infiltrators” for instigating violence and called on the demonstrators to be wary of those who want to exploit their protests for political reasons. She didn’t elaborate.

The head of the Internal Security Forces, Maj. Gen. Imad Osman, turned up at the protest rally Sunday. He told reporters on the scene that the right to protest was guaranteed by the law. “But calm down, no need for violence,” he said, appealing to protesters.

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Chinese state television pulled the scheduled live broadcast of a football (soccer) game following one of the players’ comments online criticizing the government’s treatment of its Muslim Uighur minority.

China’s CCTV was scheduled to broadcast the football game between Arsenal and Manchester United, but instead decided to show a taped game between Tottenham Hotspur and the Wolverhampton Wanderers.

Arsenal footballer Mesut Ozil posted on Twitter Friday comments condemning China’s crackdown on Muslim minorities in the Western region, while also criticizing other Muslim countries for not speaking up against abuses.

“Korans are being burnt… Mosques are being shut down… Muslim schools are being banned… Religious scholars are being killed one by one… Brothers are forcefully being sent to camps,” Ozil wrote in Turkish on his Twitter account Friday.

#HayırlıCumalarDoğuTürkistan ?? pic.twitter.com/dJgeK4KSIk

— Mesut Özil (@MesutOzil1088) December 13, 2019

The U.S., the United Nations and various human rights groups have accused China of detaining an estimated one million ethnic Muslims in so-called “re-education camps” in the remote Western province of Xinjiang in an attempt to force them to renounce their religion and heritage.

Chia’s state-run Global Times said on its Twitter account Sunday that CCTV made the decision to pull the game after Ozil’s comments had “disappointed fans and football governing authorities”.

Arsenal posted on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like platform, that the the content Ozil shared was “entirely Ozil’s personal opinion”. The team has not posted a response on Twitter or released and official statement.

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Protests against a divisive new citizenship law raged Saturday as Washington and London issued travel warnings for northeast India following days of violent clashes that have killed two people.

Many in the far-flung, resource-rich northeast fear the new legislation will grant citizenship to large numbers of immigrants from neighboring Bangladesh, whom they accuse of stealing jobs and diluting the region’s cultural identity.

Several thousand protesters rallied in New Delhi late Saturday to urge Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government to revoke the law, some holding signs reading: “Stop Dividing India.”

“People are not gathered here as Hindus or Muslims; people are gathered here as citizens of India. We reject this bill that has been brought by the Modi government and we want that equal treatment as is enshrined in our constitution,” said protester Amit Baruah, 55, a journalist.

Protests turned violent in West Bengal state, a hotbed of political unrest, with at least 20 buses and parts of two railway stations set on fire as demonstrators blocked roads and set fire to tires. No injuries were reported.

Epicenter of unrest

Tensions also simmered in Guwahati in Assam state, the epicenter of the unrest, where medical staff said two people were shot dead and 26 hospitalized late Thursday after security forces fired live rounds.

Assam police chief Bhaskar Jyoti Mahanta told the Press Trust of India late Saturday that 85 people had been arrested in connection with the protests, and that officials were working to identify violent demonstrators caught on video.

Friday’s funeral procession for Sam Stafford, 18, who was killed in the demonstration, was attended by hundreds of angry and distraught mourners who shouted, “Long live Assam.”

“We were watching news all day on TV about the protests when my nephew left home in the evening. We asked him not to go but he went with his friends,” the student’s aunt, Julie Stafford, told AFP.

Anticipating further unrest, authorities extended an internet ban across Assam until Monday. Most shops were shut and anxious residents stocked up on supplies Saturday when the curfew was relaxed during the day.

The Citizenship Amendment Act allows for the fast-tracking of applications from religious minorities, including Hindus and Sikhs from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh, but not Muslims.

Samujjal Bhattacharya from the All Assam Students Union, which has been at the forefront of the protests, told AFP the group would continue its fight against the new law “in the streets and in the court.”

‘Exercise caution’

Modi and Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe postponed a summit that was reportedly due to be held in Guwahati beginning Sunday, and the United States and Britain warned their nationals to “exercise caution” if traveling to the wider northeast region.

Islamic groups, the opposition and rights organizations say the law is a part of Modi’s Hindu nationalist agenda to marginalize India’s 200 million Muslims.

He denies this and says that Muslims from the three countries are not covered by the legislation because they have no need of India’s protection.

Modi’s right-hand man, Amit Shah, on Saturday sought to reassure the northeastern states, saying the government would protect their “culture, social identity, language and political rights.”

Nellie massacre

Assam has long been a hotbed of ethnic tensions. In 1983, 2,000 people, mainly Bengali Muslims, were butchered in what became known as the Nellie massacre.

This year a citizenship registry left off 1.9 million people — many of them Muslims — unable to prove that they or their forebears were in Assam before 1971, leaving them to face possible statelessness.

“There has been this agitation [against] illegal migration from Bangladesh over many years,” Sanjoy Hazarika, a professor at Delhi’s Jamia Millia Islamia University, told AFP. “They feel that their rights to land, to jobs, and the entire social fabric, education, existing social services and so on will be impacted by this.”

On Friday, university students in Delhi clashed with police, who used batons and tear gas shells to quell the protests.

The passage of the bill also sparked angry scenes in both houses of parliament this week, with one lawmaker likening it to anti-Jewish legislation by the Nazis in 1930s Germany.

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Green activists dumped horse manure and staged a mock hanging outside the venue of a U.N. climate summit in Madrid on Saturday, airing their frustration at the failure of world leaders to take meaningful action against global warming.

Led by grass-roots group Extinction Rebellion, the actions were timed to coincide with the closing of the COP25 summit, where negotiators have been unable to agree on how to implement the 2015 Paris climate agreement.

“Just like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, this COP’s fiddling of carbon accounting and negotiating of Article 6 is not commensurate to the planetary emergency we face,” Extinction Rebellion said in a statement.

Twelve members of the group stood on melting blocks of ice, nooses drawn tight around their necks to symbolize the 12 months remaining until the next summit, when the Paris deal enters a make-or-break implementation phase.

Attached to the pile of manure was a short message to leaders saying, “The horses— stops here.”

In contrast to a protest held last weekend, in which hundreds of demonstrators blocked one of Madrid’s central shopping streets for a mass disco dance, the mood at the gathering was subdued.

‘Nothing has really changed’

“Even if they reach an agreement, it’s still not enough. This is the 25th COP they’ve had and nothing has really changed,” protester Emma Deane told Reuters from her perch atop an ice block, holding her young daughter in her arms. “She’s going to grow up in a world where there’s no food on the shelves, and that breaks my heart.”

Still, Extinction Rebellion spokesman Ronan McNern stressed the importance of humor in the face of the climate crisis.

“Out of s— comes the best roses. We hope that the international community comes together to create a beautiful future,” McNern said.

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North Korea says it successfully performed another “crucial test” at its long-range rocket launch site that would further strengthen its “reliable strategic nuclear deterrent.”

The announcement on Saturday comes as North Korea continues to pressure the Trump administration over an end-of-year deadline set by leader Kim Jong Un to salvage faltering nuclear negotiations.

North Korea’s Academy of Defense Science did not specify what was tested on Friday. Just days earlier, the North said it conducted a “very important test” at the site, prompting speculation that it involved a new engine for either a space launch vehicle or an intercontinental ballistic missile.

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Pentagon Tests Long-Banned Ballistic Missile Over Pacific

The Pentagon says it’s conducted a flight test of a missile that had been banned under a treaty that the United States and Russia abandoned last summer

The North Korean announcement suggests that the country is preparing to do something to provoke the United States if Washington doesn’t back down and make concessions in deadlocked nuclear negotiations.

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The Xinjiang regional government in China’s far west is deleting data, destroying documents, tightening controls on information and has held high-level meetings in response to leaks of classified papers on its mass detention camps for Uighurs and other predominantly Muslim minorities, according to four people in contact with government employees there.

Top officials deliberated how to respond to the leaks in meetings at the Chinese Communist Party’s regional headquarters in Urumqi, Xinjiang’s capital, some of the people said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because of fears of retribution against themselves, family members and the government workers.

The meetings began days after The New York Times published last month a cache of internal speeches on Xinjiang by top leaders including Chinese President Xi Jinping. They continued after the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists worked with news organizations around the world including The Associated Press to publish secret guidelines for operating detention centers and instructions on how to use technology to target people.

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Families of Uighurs Abroad Increasingly Targeted by China

There are an estimated 13 million Uighurs and other Turkic Muslim minorities living in the Xinjiang region in northwest China

The Chinese government has long struggled with its 11-million-strong Uighur population, an ethnic Turkic minority native to Xinjiang, and in recent years has detained 1 million or more Uighurs and other minorities in the camps.

Xinjiang officials and the Chinese foreign ministry have not directly denied the authenticity of the documents, though Urumqi Communist Party chief Xu Hairong called reports on the leaks “malicious smears and distortions.”

The Xinjiang government did not respond to a fax for comment on the arrests, the tightened restrictions on information and other measures responding to the leaks. The Chinese Foreign Ministry did not have an immediate comment.

Xinjiang’s government had already mandated stricter controls on information in October, before the news reports, according to three of the people, all Uighurs outside Xinjiang.

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Egyptian Police Said to Detain Chinese Uighurs in Wide Sweep

Chinese students from the Uighur ethnic minority have been detained in Egypt in a broad police sweep that has shaken the country’s sizeable Uighur student and expatriate community, activists said Thursday.

Egyptian police have detained scores of Uighur students, including 20 from Cairo’s Al-Azhar University who were stopped in the city of Alexandria on their way out of the country late Wednesday and told they would be deported to China, said Abduweli Ayup, a Uighur activist in Turkey.

Ayup said he…

They include orders for community-level officials to burn paper forms containing sensitive personal details on residents in their area such as their detention status, and for various state offices to throw away computers, tighten management of classified information, and ensure all information related to the camps is now stored on databases disconnected from the internet in special, restricted-access rooms to bar hackers, the Uighurs said.

“They became much more serious about the transfer of information,” one said.

Publication of the classified documents prompted the central government in Beijing to put more pressure on Xinjiang officials, several of the Uighurs said.

Restrictions on information appear to be tightening further. Some university teachers and district-level workers in Urumqi have been ordered to clean out sensitive data on their computers, phones and cloud storage, and to delete work-related social media groups, according to one Uighur with direct knowledge of the situation.

In other cases, the state appears to be confiscating evidence of detentions. Another Uighur who had been detained in Xinjiang years before said his ex-wife called him two weeks ago and begged him to send his release papers to her, saying eight officers had come to her home to search for the papers, then threatened she’d be jailed for life if she couldn’t produce the papers.

“It’s an old matter, and they’ve know I’ve been abroad for a long time,” he said. “The fact that they suddenly want this now must mean the pressure on them is very high.”

Some government workers have been rounded up as the state investigates the source of the leaks. In one case an entire family in civil service was arrested. Abduweli Ayup, a Uighur linguist in exile, said his wife’s relatives in Xinjiang – including her parents, siblings, and in-laws – were detained shortly after the leaks were published, although Ayup said they had no relation to the leaks as far as he was aware. Some people in touch with relatives outside China were also investigated and seized, Ayup said.

It is unknown how many have been detained since the leaks.

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Stepped-up Surveillance of Uighurs Sends ‘Relatives’ into Homes

Authorities in Xinjiang launched what they call a new “relatives’ week” program this month, which requires local civil servants to spend a week with Uighur families in rural areas by the year’s end. While officially trumpeted as a way to promote ethnic harmony, the move is widely seen by observers as stepped-up surveillance of the Muslim minority that may instead fuel, rather than ease, inter-racial tensions.Beginning December 11, thousands of cadres from the northwestern province traveled to the…

Earlier this week, a Uighur woman in the Netherlands told a Dutch daily, de Volkskrant, that she was the source of the documents published by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. The woman, Asiye Abdulaheb, said that after she posted one page on social media in June, Chinese state agents sent her death threats and tried to recruit her ex-husband to spy on her.

The leaked documents lay out the Chinese government’s deliberate strategy to lock up ethnic minorities even before they commit a crime, and to rewire their thoughts and the language they speak. They reveal that facilities Beijing calls “vocational training schools” are forced ideological and behavioral re-education centers run in secret.

The papers also show how Beijing is pioneering a new form of social control using data and artificial intelligence. Drawing on data collected by mass surveillance technology, computers issued the names of tens of thousands of people for interrogation or detention in just one week.

The leaks come at a delicate time in relations between Washington and Beijing, amid ongoing negotiations to end a trade war and U.S. concerns about the situation in Hong Kong, a semi-autonomous Chinese territory where police have clashed with pro-democracy protesters.

Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved the Uighur Human Rights Policy Act, aimed at pressuring China over the mass detentions in Xinjiang. Beijing swiftly denounced the bill as foreign meddling. State media reported that the Chinese government was considering retaliatory measures including visa bans on U.S. officials.

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As Kenya marks the anniversary of the end of British colonial rule more than five decades ago (Dec 12, 1963), two communities in the Great Rift Valley want the United Nations to investigate a colonial-era land grab.  The Kipsigis and Talai communities accuse the British of collective punishment by forcefully evicting them off their land, which was turned into profitable tea farms. Mohammed Yusuf reports from Kericho, Kenya.  

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Nearly a year and a half after India scrapped controversial legislation criminalizing homosexuality, the Indian capital has hosted its first ever queer literature festival. Turning the focus on stories and experiences of the community, the two day meet explored common ground between different identities of society. Anjana Pasricha reports from New Delhi.

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Fears mounted Wednesday that a deadly shooting at a Jewish market in Jersey City was an anti-Semitic attack as authorities recounted how a man and woman deliberately pulled up to the place in a rental van with at least one rifle and got out firing.

A day after the gun battle and standoff that left six people dead — the two killers, a police officer and three people who had been inside the store — state and federal law enforcement officials warned they have not established the motive for the attack.

“The why and the ideology and the motivation — that’s what we’re investigating,” New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal said, adding that authorities are also trying to determine if anyone else was involved.

But Mayor Steve Fulop said surveillance video of the attackers made it clear they targeted the kosher market, and he pronounced the bloodshed a hate crime against Jews, as did New York’s mayor and governor.

Also, investigators believe the two dead attackers — who were believed to be a couple — identified themselves in the past as Black Hebrew Israelites, a movement whose members have been known to rail against whites and Jews, according to a law enforcement official who was briefed on the matter but was not authorized to discuss the case publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

In addition, authorities have found social media postings from at least one of the killers that were anti-police and anti-Jewish, the official said. The FBI on Wednesday searched the Harlem headquarters of the Israelite Church of God in Jesus Christ, which is the formal name of the Black Hebrew group, according to the official.

The killers were identified as David N. Anderson, 47, and Francine Graham, 50 — both of them also prime suspects in the slaying of a livery driver found dead in car trunk in nearby Bayonne over the weekend, Grewal said. Anderson served about four months in prison in New Jersey on weapons charges and was paroled in 2011, authorities said.

Two of the victims at the store were identified by members of the Orthodox Jewish community as Mindel Ferencz, 31, who with her husband owned the grocery, and 24-year-old Moshe Deutsch, a rabbinical student from Brooklyn who was shopping there. The Ferencz family had moved to Jersey City from Brooklyn. Authorities identified the third victim as Miguel Douglas, 49.

“The report from the Jersey City mayor saying it was a targeted attack makes us incredibly concerned in the Jewish community,” said Evan Bernstein, regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish civil rights organization. “They want answers. They demand answers. If this was truly a targeted killing of Jews, then we need to know that right away, and there needs to be the pushing back on this at the highest levels possible.”

The bloodshed in the city of 270,000 people across the Hudson River from New York City began at a graveyard, where Detective Joseph Seals, a 40-year-old member of a unit devoted to taking illegal weapons off the street, was gunned down by the assailants, authorities said. They then drove the van about a mile to the kosher market.

Grewal said that within seconds of pulling up to the market, Anderson got out with a rifle and immediately began shooting, and Graham followed him into the store. He would not say whether Graham had a weapon.

A pipe bomb was found in the van, FBI agent Gregory Ehrie said.

Jersey City’s mayor said it was clear that the killers deliberately made their way toward the kosher market, passing many other possible targets along the way, and calmly and promptly opened fire.

“We shouldn’t parse words on whether this is a hate crime at this point. This was a hate crime against Jewish ppl + hate has no place,” he tweeted, adding: “Some will say don’t call it anti-semitism or a hate crime till a longer review but being Jewish myself + the grandson of holocaust survivors I know enough to call it what this is.”

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio likewise said the attack was a “premeditated, violent, anti-Semitic hate crime,” while New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo called it a “deliberate attack on the Jewish community.” They announced tighter police protection of synagogues and other Jewish establishments in New York as a precaution.

The drawn-out battle with police filled the streets with the sound of high-powered rifle fire and turned the city into what looked like a war zone, with SWAT officers in full tactical gear swarming the neighborhood. The attackers were killed in the shootout with police.

A fourth bystander was shot at the store when the attackers burst in, but escaped, Grewal said. His name was not released.

Rabbi Moshe Shapiro said he spoke with the survivor at a hospital. “He said the guy next to him fell to the ground,” Shapiro said. “He suffered two gunshot wounds but managed to run out of the store and climb over fences.”

In the deadliest attack on Jews in U.S. history, 11 people were killed in an October 2018 shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh. Last April, a gunman opened fire at a synagogue north of San Diego, killing a woman and wounding a rabbi and two others.

The kosher grocery is a central fixture in a growing community of Orthodox Jews who have been moving to Jersey City in recent years and settling in what was a mostly black section of Jersey City, causing some resentment.

Mordechai Rubin, a member of the local Jewish emergency medical services, said the small Jewish community has grown over the past three or four years, made up mostly of people from Brooklyn seeking a “nicer, quieter” and more affordable place to live. Next to the store is a synagogue with a school and day care center where 40 students were present at the time of the shooting, he said.

“It’s unfortunate what happened, but we don’t even want to think about what would have happened if they made their way up to the day care or to the synagogue,” he said.

Authorities also warned that several fake Go Fund me pages have popped up purporting to be raising funds for the family of the slain officer, a father of five.

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George Laurer, who invented the universal product code, has died at his home in North Carolina. He was 94. 

The UPC or bar code is the unique marking — made up of black stripes of varying thicknesses and a 12-digit number — allotted to products sold worldwide. It allows retailers to identify each product and its price by using a scanner. 

Laurer, who died Dec. 5, was working as an electrical engineer at IBM when he was assigned to the project, an idea pioneered by colleague Norman Woodland, who died in 2012.

Laurer brought Woodland’s idea to fruition in the 1970s with the help of lasers and computers. 

Laurer said retailers spent millions in time and labor putting price tags on every item. The bar code allowed them to reduce pricing errors and keep an accurate count of inventory. 

The first product scanned, in June 1974, was a pack of Wrigley’s chewing gum. It is now on display at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington. 
 

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More than 70% of the African forest elephant species has been wiped out, primarily by poachers slaughtering them for their ivory.  Park rangers are on the front lines defending them. But in the Central African country of Gabon these park rangers, also known as eco-guards, aren’t going it alone. Now the U.S military is joining the fight by helping to train the rangers who protect the elephants. VOA Pentagon correspondent Carla Babb gives us an exclusive look at the counter-poaching effort in central Gabon.

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American billionaire and Democratic presidential contender Michael Bloomberg says that the next U.S. president should halt fossil fuel subsidies altogether.

Bloomberg, who launched his campaign less than three weeks ago, is attending a United Nations global climate conference in Madrid that is kicking into high gear.

Ministers from nearly 200 countries are arriving on Tuesday to tackle some of the tough issues that negotiations couldn’t resolve over the past week, including finalizing the rules for international carbon markets that economists say could help drive down emissions and help poor countries to cope with the effects of rising temperatures.     

Opening an event on sustainable finances organized by the summit host, Spain, Bloomberg said that “the next president of the United States should end all subsidies for fossil fuel companies and fossil fuel extraction, and that includes tax breaks and other special treatment.”

“He or she should reinvest that funding into clean energy, which will also create a lot of new jobs,” he added.

The 77-year-old businessman and former New York mayor is expected to share the results of his private push to organize thousands of U.S. cities and businesses to abide by the terms of a global climate treaty that the Trump administration is working to abandon.

 “Americans are willing to continue to work even with a climate change denier in the White House,” Bloomberg told a room packed of journalists and officials.

 “The White House matters, but sometimes not too much,” he added.

The Democrat has vowed to rejoin the Paris climate agreement if he’s elected as president. He recently stepped down as the U.N.’s special envoy for climate action.

Unlike at many past climate summits, few heads of government are joining the talks in Madrid. The U.S. has sent a career diplomat, Ambassador Marcia Bernicat, as head of its delegation.

John Kerry, the former Secretary of State under the last Democrat administration, is also attending events on the sidelines of the Madrid conference, and said the absence of any representative from the White House at the talks “speaks for itself.”

 “It’s an absence of leadership,” Kerry told The Associated Press. “It’s a tragedy.”

Most other countries are sending environment ministers or other senior officials instead of prime ministers or presidents, worrying some observers.

“It shows that there has not yet been an internalization of the emergency situation that we are in, that so few heads of state are coming to Madrid and ready to roll up their sleeves and do what it takes to actually respond to the science,” said Jennifer Morgan, executive director of Greenpeace International.

She also accused some governments, such as Brazil and Saudi Arabia, of trying to weaken the agreements, and called on the European Union to work with vulnerable nations to counter those efforts.

Environmental campaigners are hoping the EU will present an ambitious plan this week for cutting emissions in the medium- and long-term that would send a message of hope to weary negotiators in Madrid.

The new head of the bloc’s executive Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has backed a call for the EU to stop all net emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050.

Scientists say emissions worldwide need to start falling sharply from next year onward if there is to be any hope of achieving the Paris climate accord’s goal of capping global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit).

Negotiators in Madrid had worked until 3 a.m. to prepare the ground for ministers, said said Sigrid Kaag, the Dutch minister for foreign trade and development cooperation.
“Let’s hope to see that we can … really sort of give shape and meaning to the call ‘Time for action,'” said Kaag, referring to the motto of the U.N. talks. “It’s now or never.”

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Finland’s parliament chose Sanna Marin as the country’s new prime minister Tuesday, making the 34-year-old the world’s youngest sitting head of government.

Marin is heading a five-party, center-left coalition. The four other parties in the coalition are headed by women _ three of whom are in their early 30s.

The Nordic country’s Parliament, the 200-seat Eduskunta approved Marin in a 99-70 vote. The government has a comfortable majority of 117 seats.

President Sauli Niinisto will formally hand Marin her mandate later Tuesday, after which she will officially become prime minister.

The appointment of Marin and her new government on Tuesday allows Marin to represent Finland at the European Union summit in Brussels later this week . Finland currently holds the bloc’s rotating presidency until the end of the year.

…

Thick reindeer fur boots and a fur hat covering most of his face shielded Niila Inga from freezing winds as he raced his snowmobile up to a mountain top overlooking his reindeer in the Swedish arctic.
                   
His community herds about 8,000 reindeer year-round, moving them between traditional grazing grounds in the high mountains bordering Norway in the summer and the forests farther east in the winter, just as his forebears in the Sami indigenous community have for generations.
                   
But Inga is troubled: His reindeer are hungry, and he can do little about it.  Climate change is altering weather patterns here and affecting the herd’s food supply.
                   
“If we don’t find better areas for them where they can graze and find food, then the reindeers will starve to death,” he said.
                   
Already pressured by the mining and forestry industry, and other development that encroach on grazing land, Sami herding communities fear climate change could mean the end of their traditional lifestyle.
                   
Slipping his hand from a massive reindeer skin mitten, Inga illustrated the problem, plunging his hand into the crusted snow and pulling out a hard piece of ice close to the soil.
                   
Unusually early snowfall in autumn was followed by rain that froze, trapping food under a thick layer of ice. Unable to eat, the hungry animals have scattered from their traditional migration routes in search of new grazing grounds.
                   
Half the herd carried on east as planned, while the rest retreated to the mountains where predators abound, and the risk of avalanches is great.
                   
Elder Sami herders recall that they once had bad winters every decade or so, but Inga said that “extreme and strange weather are getting more and more normal, it happens several times a year.”
                   
The arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the globe. Measurements by the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute show the country has warmed 1.64 degrees Celsius (2.95-degree Fahrenheit) compared with pre-industrial times. In Sweden’s alpine region, this increase is even greater, with average winter temperatures between 1991 and 2017 up more than 3 degrees Celsius (5.4-degree Fahrenheit) compared with the 1961-1990 average.
                   
Snowfall is common in these areas, but as temperatures increase, occasional rainfall occurs, and `rain-on-snow’ events are having devastating effects. The food is still there, but the reindeer can’t reach it. The animals grow weaker and females sometimes abort their calves while the survivors struggle to make it through the winter.
                   
“We have winter here for eight months a year and when it starts in October with bad grazing conditions it won’t get any better,” Inga said.
                   
That is devastating to Sami herders, a once-nomadic people scattered across a region that spans the far north of Sweden, Norway, Finland and the northwestern corner of Russia. Until the 1960s, this indigenous minority were discouraged from reindeer herding and their language and culture were suppressed. Today, of the 70,000 Sami, only about 10% herd reindeer, making a limited income from meat, hides and antlers crafted into knife handles.
                    
“Everyone wants to take the reindeers’ area where they find food. But with climate change, we need more flexibility to move around,” said Sanna Vannar, a young herder from a community living in the mountains surrounding Jokkmokk, an important Sami town just north of the Arctic Circle. “Here you can’t find food, but maybe you can find food there, but there they want to clear-cut the forest and that’s the problem.”
                   
The 24-year-old is the president of the Swedish Sami Youth organization and, together with eight other families elsewhere in the world, they launched a legal action in 2018 to force the European Union to set more ambitious targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Earlier this year, the European General Court rejected their case on procedural grounds, but the plaintiffs have appealed.
                   
“We’ve said we don’t want money because we can’t buy better weather with money,” Vannar said. “We’ve said we need that the EU take action and they need to do it now.”
                   
The EU’s new executive Commission is expected to present a `European Green Deal’ on Wednesday, to coincide with a U.N. climate conference in Madrid.
                   
Herders have also started working with Stockholm University, hoping to advance research that will broaden understanding about changing weather patterns.
                   
As part of this rare collaboration between Sami and science, weather stations deep in the forests of the Laevas community are recording air and ground temperature, rainfall, wind speed and snowfall density. Sami ancestral knowledge of the land and the climate complements analysis of data gathered, offering a more detailed understanding of weather events.
                   
“With this data we can connect my traditional knowledge and I see what the effects of it are,” says Inga who has been working on the project since 2013 and has co-authored published scientific papers with Ninis Rosqvist, a professor of Natural Geography at Stockholm University.
                   
Rosqvist directs a field station operating since the 1940s in the Swedish alpine region measuring glaciers and changes in snow and ice. But through the collaboration with Inga, she realized that less “exciting” areas in the forests may be most crucial to understanding the impacts of changing climate.
                   
“As a scientist I can measure that something is happening, but I don’t know the impact of it on, in this case, the whole ecosystem. And that’s why you need their knowledge,” she said.
                   
Rosqvist hopes this research can help Sami communities argue their case with decision-makers legislating land use rights.
                   
Back in the forest, Inga is releasing onto the winter pastures a group of reindeer that had been separated from the herd when the animals scattered earlier in autumn.
                   
Several other herders have spent more than a week high in the mountains searching for the other half of the herd and trying to bring the animals down, to no avail.
                   
“As long as they are forced to stay there, they’ll get into worse and worse condition,” he warned.

…

During his recent visit to Washington, Sudan’s Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok said one goal looms above all others as he leads the country’s transitional government: bringing peace to the war-ravaged nation.
 
“Our number one top priority is to stop the war and build the foundation of sustainable peace,” he said. “Essentially to stop the sufferings of our people in the IDP camps and the refugee camps. We think the opportune time of stopping this war is now.”
 
Hamdok did not specify which war he meant; Sudan’s government has been fighting rebels in the Darfur, South Kordofan and Blue Nile regions for years. The capital, Khartoum, saw deadly conflicts between protesters and the military earlier this year.
 
He did say he was heartened by the resiliency on display when he visited the Zam Zam camp for internally displaced people in Darfur, where a war that began in 2003 has never entirely stopped.
 
“It was a very moving moment but the climax of it was… a woman who took the floor and delivered the first speech. She articulated so well their interest, their expectations about the transitional government, how they see the peace process. After that, she was followed by six speakers… They all said our sister articulated our issues and were very satisfied with what she said.
 
“All the sufferings and the miseries they went through, it taught them, educated them and made them strong enough to be able to say from now onwards we know what is good for ourselves and nobody can dictate on us anything. This is very liberating,” Hamdok said.
 
Unlike the administration of his predecessor, Omar al-Bashir, Hamdok’s government has pledged to allow unfettered access for aid organizations to reach those in need.

Hamdok spoke at the Atlantic Council, a foreign policy think tank in Washington. He visited the American capital in an effort to repair Sudan’s relationship with the U.S., which was strained to nonexistent during the entire 30-year reign of former Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir, who the military ousted in April after months of mass protests.
 
One of Hamdok’s goal’s is for the U.S. to remove Sudan from the list of state sponsors of terrorism.  Sudan was put on the list in 1993, at a time when al-Qaida founder Osama bin Laden was living in Khartoum.

 Although Sudan is still on the list, the two countries agreed to resume diplomatic relations and exchange ambassadors.
 
U.S. officials have said the process of removing Sudan from the terrorism list will be a long one. Hamdok stressed that his country is prepared to meet the requirements which may include paying restitution to victims of terrorist attacks.
 
“We Sudanese as a people have never supported terrorism before. It was a former regime that supported this,” he said. “We are also as a nation, victims of terrorism that was inflicted on us by the regime. But we accepted this as a corporate responsibility. And we are negotiating.”
 
Hamdok, an economist and diplomat who has worked for the U.N., was named the country’s transitional prime minister in August. In deference to the leading role women played in the revolution, Hamdok made history by naming four women to his cabinet.

Walaa Esam AbdelRahman, Minister of Youth and Sport, was an activist who participated in sit-ins and street protests. She and other activists faced live fire and tear gas and were forced to go into hiding in between protests in fear of reprisals from security forces.
 
“It was very dangerous. But the more that they were aggressive, the more that we went to the street. That’s why we went so far,” she told VOA.
 
Now AbdelRahman and others are seeking to institute a series of changes, including legal and political reforms, paving the way for a democratic, free and fair election in 2022.
 
“The road is not easy but we went so far and we were very determined to reach to the final destination of this transitional period because I always say that these [upcoming] three years is part of the revolution. It’s another level,” she told VOA. “We will finish the level of protesting and marching. Now we need to build the new Sudan.”

…

House Democrats have reached a tentative agreement with labor leaders and the White House over a rewrite of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade deal that has been a top priority for President Donald Trump. That’s according to a Democratic aide not authorized to discuss the talks and granted anonymity.

Details still need to be finalized and the U.S. Trade Representative will need to submit the implementing legislation to Congress. No vote has been scheduled.

The new, long-sought trade agreement with Mexico and Canada would give both Trump and his top adversary, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a major accomplishment despite the turmoil of his likely impeachment.

An announcement could come as early as Monday. Pelosi, D-Calif., still has to officially sign off on the accord, aides said. The aides requested anonymity because the agreement is not official.

The new trade pact would replace the 25-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement, which eliminated most tariffs and other trade barriers involving the United States, Mexico and Canada. Critics, including Trump, labor unions and many Democratic lawmakers, branded NAFTA a job killer for America because it encouraged factories to move south of the border, capitalize on low-wage Mexican workers and ship products back to the U.S. duty free.

Weeks of back-and-forth, closely monitored by Democratic labor allies such as the AFL-CIO, have brought the two sides together. Pelosi is a longtime free trade advocate and supported the original NAFTA in 1994. Trump has accused Pelosi of being incapable of passing the agreement because she is too wrapped up in impeachment.

Democrats from swing districts have agitated for finishing the accord, in part to demonstrate some accomplishments for their majority.

By ratifying the agreement, Congress could lift uncertainty over the future of U.S. commerce with its No. 2 (Canada) and No. 3 (Mexico) trading partners last year and perhaps give the U.S. economy a modest boost. U.S. farmers are especially eager to make sure their exports to Canada and Mexico continue uninterrupted.

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer last year negotiated the replacement agreement with Canada and Mexico. But the new USMCA accord required congressional approval and input from top Democrats like Pelosi and Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal of Massachusetts, who have been engaged in lengthy, detailed negotiations over enforcement provisions and other technical details.

The pact contains provisions designed to nudge manufacturing back to the United States. For example, it requires that 40% to 45% of cars eventually be made in countries that pay autoworkers at least $16 an hour — that is, in the United States and Canada and not in Mexico.

The trade pact picked up some momentum after Mexico in April passed a labor-law overhaul required by USMCA. The reforms are meant to make it easier for Mexican workers to form independent unions and bargain for better pay and working conditions, narrowing the gap with the United States.

Mexico ratified USMCA in June and has budgeted more money later this year to provide the resources needed for enforcing the agreement.

…

Minutes before a recent show, “VOD Roundtable” host Lim Thida readied notes and warmed up the day’s guests. Control room staffers prepped to go live with all the trappings of the kind of on-air radio broadcast that, until a few years ago, was typical for the longtime Voice of Democracy program.

But this was 2019, and instead of radio, “VOD Roundtable” was being reborn online. Producer Srey Sopheak ran a final check with the engineers, then gave Lim a go-ahead via walkie-talkie.

“Hi, this is me, Thida, welcoming all TV viewers who are watching this live ‘VOD Roundtable’ show, which is broadcast via the Facebook page of vodkhmer.news. Today, we will look at measures to eliminate corruption in Cambodia’s judicial system.”

Over the next hour, the panelists included a top government spokesperson, a prominent human rights activist, and a member of an advisory body representing a consortium minority parties – a mix underscoring the balance and independence that have been VOD’s hallmark.

A glimmer of hope in an otherwise bruising environment for independent media in Cambodia, VOD is one of multiple outlets whose operations were threatened in the run-up to the 2018 elections, as the incumbent government of President Hun Sen sought to smother dissent.

Some news outlets were hit with exorbitant tax bills, while others, including five VOD radio affiliates, saw their broadcast licenses revoked, costing them millions of listeners.

This, said Daniel Bastard, Asia-Pacific chief for Reporters Without Borders, was part of a broader campaign that has “led to the quasi-total destruction of independent media” in Cambodia.

Among the casualties: closure of the venerable Cambodia Daily and dozens of radio stations; silencing of foreign media outlets, including Radio Free Asia (a sister broadcaster to Voice of America); and sale of the Phnom Penh Post to a Malaysian investor whose public relations firm worked for Hun Sen.

“Media like Cambodia Daily, Radio Free Asia or VOD helped Cambodians to access non-government-controlled information,” Bastard said. “Most Cambodian citizens are deprived of [access] now, and have to cope with official propaganda.”

‘People’s voice’

VOD aims to change that. Launched in 2003 by the Cambodian Center for Independent Media (CCIM), a Phnom Penh non-governmental organization, VOD aimed to air “educational, informative and unbiased public service radio in Cambodia.”

Human rights and democracy-themed programming became a staple as VOD worked to live up to the “People’s Radio” logo on its control room walls. The line-up includes “VOD Roundtable,” a call-in show where listeners engage with guest panelists on a range of news-related topics.

Prior to Hun Sen’s 2017 crackdown, VOD boasted an extensive network of provincial radio stations across several provinces and a stable of pioneering citizen journalists. Audience reach was deep – an estimated 7 million of Cambodia’s 9 million registered voters.

In part, VOD may have survived the crackdown because its parent entity, CCIM, is registered with the Cambodian government and is supported by a smorgasbord of international foundations and organizations. Among its founders are the U.S.-based Open Society Foundations, Bread for the World, Sweden’s Diakonia, and Denmark’s DanChurchAid.

In suspending five FM radio frequencies across rural provinces, the government stripped VOD of its audience without shuttering VOD itself. Left with a staff of radio producers but no airwaves, VOD was forced to rethink its strategy, CCIM Media Director Nop Vy said.

“We had to immediately organize a series of consecutive trainings in early 2018, and from that time on we quickly evolved into digital,” said Nop, adding that VOD focused on video broadcast production while repurposing traditional radio shows for online dissemination.

For the flagship “VOA Roundtable,” the decision was to relaunch as a live-video broadcast on Facebook and YouTube in 2018.

Fraught topics

Operating out of a studio tucked away in Phnom Penh’s trendy Boeung Keng Kang neighborhood, the show continues to tackle topics considered politically taboo.

Lim — one of a trio of hosts for the show — looked tired but pleased after wrapping up a recent one-hour panel discussion on judicial corruption, a fraught topic in a country where even high-level officials tasked with rooting out malfeasance in the courts are suspected of complicity.

“We are proud when we’re able to broadcast news and people’s concerns that officials higher up have to find a solution for,” said Lim, savoring a small journalistic triumph of sorts.

Only moments earlier, one of Lim’s guest panelists, Justice Ministry spokesperson Chin Malin, took the unusual step of acknowledging that Hun Sen’s government has a less-than-perfect record when it comes to disciplining its own officials.

“We have taken measures and solved many cases,” Chin said during the broadcast, explaining that nearly 20 judges and prosecutors alone received disciplinary action in 2018. “But we acknowledge that problems remain.”

It was then that another of the show’s panelists, Pich Sros, called Chin out. Sros is the head of a minority party and member of the Supreme Consultative Council — a government-sanctioned advisory body consisting of minority parties that contested but failed to win any seats in the 2018 elections. Sros said the government’s disciplinary measures were insufficiently transparent.

Lim then took a few callers and concluded the audience participation in the show by reciting comments from a Facebook viewer.

“Corruption in the legal system is laughable,” she said, quoting the viewer. “Even the legal system that is responsible for enforcing the [anti-]corruption law [is itself corrupt], so we can only imagine how deeply corrupt other public administrative bodies are.”

Common solutions

So far, Lim’s roundtable discussion programs haven’t prompted run-ins with government officials, something she attributes to the show’s consistently balanced curation of views.

Even Chin, who appeared to discuss judicial corruption alongside Yi Soksan, a senior investigator with the human rights group Adhoc credited “VOD Roundtable” with helping to get his government message out.

“We had a good discussion,” Chin told VOA. “Like our guest [today] from civil society, we all work for the same social development goals, but the ways we work are different and our challenges are different. So it is good to sit down for a discussion, exchange concerns, and come to a common solution.”

If “VOD Roundtable” represents a flicker of hope in Cambodia’s otherwise darkened media landscape, it has yet to prove that its online format can regain the millions of radio listeners lost in the crackdown.

“As radio, we had a lot of fans and we could receive up to five or six callers during the one hour [show],” Lim said. “But after our transition, there are fewer callers.”

Facebook recently surpassed television and radio as a primary news source for many Cambodians, but digital media remains a new beast. Advertising and hidden algorithms decide what gets visibility as controversies about censorship and disinformation swirl.

Bastard, of Reporters Without Borders, is a skeptic about the potential for digital media to grow.

“Things could have been much worse without the internet, of course, but radios were a great way to inform communities in remote areas and to reach people who are not literate enough to read written articles,” he told VOA.

“Online information cannot replace this,” he said, “especially given the biases indicated by the platforms themselves.”

Government officials routinely deny that there are any efforts to suppress media. Phos Sovann, director-general of the Ministry of Information’s department of information and broadcasting, told VOA that radio license revocations during the 2017 crackdown were justifiable “legal enforcement measures and nothing else.”

Nop Vy, the media director of VOD’s parent, said he’s hopeful that ongoing digital innovation, including plans for an English website, can generate an audience that compensates for the millions of listeners lost in the crackdown.

And if “VOD Roundtable” continues to foster public debate by involving citizens and the government alike, he said, it can survive by having an impact.

“We will have to take it step by step,” he said.

This story originated in VOA’s Khmer Service.

…

Hong Kong police have conducted raids ahead of Sunday afternoon’s protest rally, uncovering several weapons, including a pistol with more than 100 bullets.

Eleven people were arrested during the raids.

Daggers, swords, batons and pepper spray were also recovered in the raids at several locations.

The city’s organized crime bureau said it believed protesters planned to use the weapons during the demonstration “to  incite chaos” and “impugn the police.”

The territory is bracing for a large turnout for Sunday’s protest.  Hong Kong has given its approval for the rally called by the Civil Human Rights Front, a group that has organized some of the city’s biggest demonstrations.

Monday marks the sixth month anniversary of the rallies that were initially mounted to rally against a now-withdrawn government proposal that would have allowed Hong Kong criminal suspects to be spent to mainland China’s Communist-controlled courts to stand trial.

The demonstrations have transformed into a push for democratic elections for the city’s leader and legislature and an investigation into what protesters say has been excessive force used against them.   

…

Myanmar leader and Nobel peace prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi  departed on Sunday for the U.N.’s top court in The Hague to defend the country against charges of genocide of its Rohingya Muslim minority.

Suu Kyi was pictured smiling as she walked through the airport in the nation’s capital, Naypyitaw, flanked by officials, a day after thousands rallied in the city to support her and a prayer ceremony was held in her name.

Crowds are expected to gather again in the afternoon to send off several dozen supporters who will travel to The Hague in the Netherlands and demonstrations are planned throughout the coming week, with hearings set for Dec. 10 to 12.

Gambia, a tiny, mainly Muslim West African country, filed a lawsuit in November accusing Buddhist-majority Myanmar of genocide, the most serious international crime, against its Rohingya Muslim minority.

During three days of hearings, it will ask the 16-member panel of U.N judges at the International Criminal Court of Justice to impose “provisional measures” to protect the Rohingya before the case can be heard in full.

More than 730,000 Rohingya fled Myanmar in 2017 after a brutal military-led crackdown the U.N has said was executed with “genocidal intent” and included mass killings and rape.

Despite international condemnation over the campaign, Suu Kyi, whose government has defended the campaign as a legitimate response to attacks by Rohingya militants, remains overwhelmingly popular at home.

On Saturday, thousands rallied in Naypyitaw while senior officials held a prayer ceremony at St Mary’s Cathedral in the former capital of Yangon.

Among them was religion minister Thura Aung Ko, who was been vocal in his disdain for the minority and last year said refugees in the camps in Bangladesh were being “brainwashed” into “marching” on Buddhist-majority Myanmar.

Suu Kyi spent the eve of her departure meeting with Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi, with both countries pledging stronger ties, according to Zhao Lijian, deputy director general of the information department at China’s foreign ministry.

“Aung San Suu Kyi thanked China for its strong support and help in safeguarding national sovereignty, opposing foreign interference, and promoting economic and social development,” he said on Twitter on Sunday.

Pro-Suu Kyi demonstrations have been held in major towns and cities since the news was announced that she would attend the hearings in person.

Billboards with her picture and the words”stand with Suu Kyi” have also been erected around the country, including in historic former capital Bagan, the country’s major attraction for tourists who come to see the centuries-old temples.

…

The FBI has officially identified the shooter at the U.S. naval base in Pensacola, Florida who shot and killed three people Friday.

The shooter was Mohammed Alshamrani, a 21-year-old second lieutenant in the Royal Saudi Air Force who was a student naval flight officer at the Naval Aviation Schools Command at Naval Air Station Pensacola.  The FBI has not determined a motive for Alshamrani’s rampage.  

The victims were also students at the flight school.  They have been identified as Ensign Joshua Kaleb Watson, 23, from Coffee, Alabama; Airman Mohammed Sameh Haitham, 19, from St. Petersburg, Florida; and Airman Apprentice Cameron Scott Walters, 21, from Richmond Hill, Georgia.

“The sorrow from the tragic event on NAS Pensacola will have a lasting impact on our installation and community,” Captain Tim Kinsella, the commanding officer of the naval base said in a statement.

Eight people were wounded in the shooting naval base, officials say.

The shooter, who was also killed in the incident, is reported to have hosted a dinner party earlier in the week where he showed videos of mass U.S. shootings to his guests, according to media reports. At least one of his guests is reported to have videotaped Friday’s massacre.  Several Saudi students are being held for questioning.  

Before the pilot opened fire at the base, he tweeted a will and quoted Osama bin Laden in justifying his actions, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which translates jihadist threats and communications.

In the Twitter post, he said America “has turned into a nation of evil.”  He condemned the U.S. for its support of Israel and its invasion of Muslim countries and many other countries.  Using a bin Laden quote, he also said that the security of the U.S. and Muslims is a “shared destiny.”  He added, “You will  not be safe until we live it as reality in pleastain [sic], and American troops get our of lands.”

Guns are not permitted at the Pensacola Naval Air Station, but Escambia County Sheriff David Morgan said the shooter managed to get a handgun onto the base before targeting individuals at one of the buildings. Officials said the rampage ended when a sheriff’s deputy cornered and shot the suspect in a classroom.
 
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said the nature of the investigation would be different due to the involvement of the Saudi air force pilot.
 
“There is obviously going to be a lot of questions about this individual being a foreign national, being a part of the Saudi air force,” he told reporters.
 
“The government of Saudi Arabia needs to make things better for these victims,” he added. “They are going to owe a debt here, given that this was one of their individuals.”
 
U.S. President Donald Trump tweeted Friday that he had been in contact with Saudi King Salman, who offered condolences.
 
“The King said that the Saudi people are greatly angered by the barbaric actions of the shooter,” Trump said.
 

King Salman of Saudi Arabia just called to express his sincere condolences and give his sympathies to the families and friends of the warriors who were killed and wounded in the attack that took place in Pensacola, Florida….

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 6, 2019

 
Later, Trump told reporters at the White House, “It’s a horrible thing that took place and we’re getting to the bottom of it.”
 

“It’s a horrible thing that took place and we’re getting to the bottom of it,” @POTUS tells reporters.

— Steve Herman (@W7VOA) December 6, 2019

In a statement, Salman called the shooting a “heinous crime” and said he expressed his sorrow over the attack in his phone call with Trump. The king said he has directed Saudi security services to cooperate with American agencies to uncover information that will help determine the cause of the “horrific attack.”
 
Hours after the shooting at the Pensacola Naval Air Station, a bomb threat at Patrick Air Force Base, also in Florida, forced authorities to evacuate parts of the base. Authorities later determined there was “no credible threat” and normal base operation resumed.
 
The shooting at the Pensacola Naval Air Station is the second deadly shooting at a U.S. naval facility in the week.
 
A U.S. sailor shot three civilians at a base in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, Wednesday, killing two of them before committing suicide.
 
In a response to both shootings, U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper said in a statement Friday, “The Department of Defense continues to monitor the situation in Pensacola and gather all the facts of each attack.”
 
He said he is “considering several steps to ensure the security of our military installations and the safety of our service members and their families.”
                         
“These acts are crimes against all of us,” Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly said in a statement.  

…

U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday called for the World Bank to stop loaning money to China, one day after the institution adopted a lending plan to Beijing over Washington’s objections.

The World Bank on Thursday adopted a plan to aid China with $1 billion to $1.5 billion in low-interest loans annually through June 2025. The plan calls for lending to “gradually decline” from the previous five-year average of $1.8 billion.

“Why is the World Bank loaning money to China? Can this be possible? China has plenty of money, and if they don’t, they create it. STOP!” Trump wrote in a post on Twitter.

“World Bank lending to China has fallen sharply and will continue to reduce as part of our agreement with all our shareholders including the United States,” the World Bank said in an emailed statement to Reuters.
“We eliminate lending as countries get richer.”

Spokespeople for the White House declined to comment on the record.

The World Bank loaned China $1.3 billion in the fiscal 2019 year, which ended on June 30, a decrease from around $2.4 billion in fiscal 2017.

But the fall in the World Bank’s loans to China is not swift enough for the Trump administration, which has argued that Beijing is too wealthy for international aid.

…

One hundred forty bushfires continue to burn across eastern Australia.  A huge blaze near Sydney is bigger in size than the city itself and could take weeks to put out.  Conditions have eased Saturday but the dangers persist.  

Sydney is again shrouded in a toxic, smoky haze.  Health warnings have been issued and many weekend sporting activities have been cancelled.  Several blazes have combined to create a “mega fire” north of Australia’s biggest city. The fire’s front is 60 kilometers long and officials warn it is simply too big to put out.

<!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

Unstoppable ‘Mega fire’ Forms North of Sydney

A New South Wales fire official said firefighters can do little more than help residents flee

Lauren McGowan works in a bar in the nearby city of Cessnock.

“Everyone is a bit on edge, getting a little bit too close to home for around here.  Like, even with people we have working here the fires are practically on their doors,” she said.

There are 95 bushfires here in the drought-hit state of New South Wales.  Half are burning out of control.  More than 2,000 firefighters are on the ground.  Their task is unrelenting, but reinforcements have arrived from overseas, including Canada, New Zealand and the United States.  

Morgan Kehr, a senior firefighter from Edmonton, has flown in to join his Australian counterparts, who have in previous years battled blazes in Canada.

“First time away from Christmas, as it is with all of these guys.  Certainly a tough conversation but we’re happy,” said Kehr. “We’ve been assisted four times out of the last five years.”
 
There are hazardous conditions in Queensland, to the north.  Parts of that state are blanketed in smoke, and dozens of blazes still rage.  The World Health Quality index, a nonprofit environmental project based in China that measures global pollution, has shown unhealthy levels of air quality in many areas.

Authorities say that only heavy rain will put some of the fires out, but, ominously, the forecast is for more hot and dry conditions over the Australian summer.

…

South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in and US President Donald Trump agreed during a phone conversation to maintain dialogue with the nuclear-armed North, Seoul said Saturday, with the two allies noting the situation had become “grave”.

Denuclearisation negotiations have been at a standstill since a summit in Hanoi broke up in February and pressure is rising as an end-of-year deadline to offer concessions, set by Pyongyang for Washington, approaches.

The 30-minute talk was the first conversation between the US President and the South Korean leader since they met at the UN General Assembly in New York in September.

“The two leaders shared an assessment that the current situation on the Korean peninsula is grave,” said Ko Min-jung, the spokeswoman of the South’s presidential office.

“They agreed momentum for dialogue to achieve prompt results from denuclearisation negotiations should be continued,” she went on to say, adding that Trump had requested the call.

The discussion came after a week in which exchanges between Trump and North Korea raised the prospect of a return to a war of words, culminating in Pyongyang’s threats to resume referring to the US president as a “dotard” and to take military action if the US military moves against it.

The South Korean leader was instrumental in brokering the landmark summit between Trump and Kim in Singapore last year which produced only a vaguely worded pledge about denuclearisation.

…

VOA Connect Episode 99 – We look at different educational settings, from Native American studies to training veterans about beekeeping to kids learning how to code.  

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