Hong Kong’s celebratory mood on the first day of 2020 was marred by tear gas and water cannons deployed by police on a largely peaceful crowd, and the arrest of some 400 people at a march attended by hundreds of thousands in what has been a months-long anti-government movement.

Senior Superintendent Ng Lok Chun told reporters late Wednesday that police arrested about 400 people during the New Year’s Day march on charges including illegal assembly and the possession of offensive weapons. He said police fired tear gas after being surrounded by protesters who were throwing objects at them. He blamed radical protesters for “hijacking” and disrupting the march.

The Asian financial hub has been roiled by civil unrest for seven months, and protesters say they will not back down in their demands for universal suffrage and an independent probe into police brutality against the movement that saw nearly 6,500 people arrested. The anti-government movement was sparked by a controversial extradition law that allowed individuals to be sent to China for trial.

Hong Kong’s New Year’s Eve fireworks display had been canceled for the first time in its 10-year history by officials who cited public safety concerns, but revelers converged nonetheless on the streets of Hong Kong on Tuesday night. 

Police deployed a water cannon vehicle to disperse protesters, while armored vehicles cleared roadblocks set up earlier by protesters. 

Shortly after midnight, as shouts of “Happy New Year!” rang across the city, police in the bustling downtown district of Mongkok fired tear gas at a crowd that set off fireworks and burned roadblocks.

On Wednesday afternoon, hundreds of thousands of people attended an organized demonstration pre-approved by police. The mood at the march, attended by individuals, families and the elderly, was peaceful at the outset. Many chanted slogans, including “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our era!”  

The atmosphere turned tense shortly after 5 p.m. local time, when police arrested several people for allegedly vandalizing an HSBC bank in Wanchai district, and angry protesters threw objects and began shouting. Riot police then fired rounds of tear gas, and some protesters retaliated by throwing firebombs.

The organizer of the march, Civil Human Rights Front, called off the demonstration at the request of police, but many protesters remained. Police threatened them with warnings, accusing them of taking part in an illegal assembly. The group later said an estimated 1 million people had taken part in the march.

Later that night, police used water cannons on crowds in Wanchai and the financial hub of Central. Protesters had laid bricks across the main road in Central in an attempt to block police from entering the area. A police statement said protesters blocked roads with barricades, dug up bricks from the pavement, and set fire to banks and ATMs.

The Civil Human Rights Front condemned police for using “absurd excuses” to terminate the march and accused them of failing to listen to the people’s voices and infringing upon their right of assembly.

“Hong Kongers shall not back down and peace shall not resume with the ongoing police brutality,” Civil Human Rights Front said in a statement.  

Although many Hong Kongers say they remain determined in their fight for democracy under Chinese rule, some are voicing doubts about the effectiveness of the violent confrontations. Others are calling on fellow Hong Kongers to put pressure on the government by boycotting pro-Beijing businesses and joining labor unions for more effective collective actions, such as strikes.

“I don’t want to back down, I feel antagonized by the authorities but I am also hoping for a new direction in the movement,” said an office administrator who joined the march. “I hope people can also use other means to put pressure on the government.”
 

Iranian-backed paramilitary groups protesting against U.S. air strikes in Iraq began to withdraw from the U.S. embassy in Baghdad on Wednesday, even as Tehran and Washington traded threats.

A small group of protesters remained at the embassy and said they would not leave until U.S. forces were expelled from Iraq, but most moved to a new protest camp in front of a nearby hotel.

Earlier, U.S. security personnel fired tear gas and rubber bullets at hundreds of demonstrators on the second day of protests at the American embassy, after protesters hurled rocks at the building and tried to set fire to its walls and security booths at the compound’s main entrance.

The protests targeted the U.S. in response to American airstrikes on an Iranian-backed militia group, Kataeb Hezbollah, on Sunday, which Washington in turn said was a response to the killing of a U.S. contractor in a rocket attack last week.

Brian Hook, the U.S. special representative for Iran, told CNN, “Our diplomats are safe and so is our embassy. Today the situation is much better. There is no imminent threat to American property or personnel.”

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in a speech on state television, denounced the American attack on the Hashed al-Shaabi paramilitary network in western Iraq.

“I and the government and the nation of Iran strongly condemn this American crime,” Khamenei said.

The Iranian leader claimed Tehran had nothing to do with the Baghdad protests, condemning U.S. President Donald Trump’s New Year’s Eve threat that Iran “will pay a very big price” if it damaged the U.S. embassy or injured American personnel stationed there. “This is not a warning,” Trump said. “It is a threat.”

“Be logical,” Khamenei told Trump. “The people of this region hate America. Why don’t Americans understand this? You Americans have committed crimes in Iraq, you have committed crimes in Afghanistan. You have killed people.”

Despite the conflict, Trump said he did not see the demonstrations escalating into a war.

“I don’t think Iran would want that to happen. It would go very quickly,” Trump said, touting superior U.S. military strength.

The U.S. Defense Department is sending an additional 750 troops to the Middle East in what Defense Secretary Mark Esper called “an appropriate and precautionary action.”

“We rely on host nation forces to assist in the protection of our personnel in country, and we call on the government of Iraq to fulfill its international responsibilities to do so,” he said.

Trump spoke Tuesday with Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi about the need to protect U.S. personnel and facilities in Iraq, and in his late-night comments to reporters he thanked the Iraqi government.

“They stepped up very nicely,” Trump said.

Tuesday’s incident involved the pro-Iranian protesters using battering rams to smash through a steel door at a visitors center, setting fires and burning a security post before Iraqi security forces drove them back with tear gas and stun grenades. The embassy building itself was not damaged, and none of the crowd entered.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tweeted that terrorists orchestrated the attack. He named Kataeb Hezbollah militia commander Abu Mahdi al Muhandis, along with Qays al-Khazali, Hadi al-Amari, and Faleh al-Fayyad, and posted a picture of all four outside the embassy.

Pompeo stressed that the attack “should not be confused with the legitimate efforts of Iraqi protesters who have been in the streets since October, working for the people of Iraq to end the corruption exported there by the Iranian regime.”

 

Turkey may hold off from sending troops to Libya if forces loyal to eastern commander Khalifa Haftar halt their offensive against the internationally recognized government in Tripoli and pull back, the Turkish vice president said Wednesday.

The Turkish parliament is due to debate and vote on a bill mandating the deployment of military forces to Libya on Thursday after Fayez al-Serraj’s Government of National Accord (GNA) requested support as part of a military cooperation agreement.

“After the bill passed from the parliament … it might happen that we would see something different, a different stance and they would say, ‘OK, we are withdrawing, dropping the offensive,’” Fuat Oktay said in an interview with Andalou news agency. “Then, why would we go there?”

Oktay also said that Ankara hoped the Turkish bill would send a deterrent message to the warring parties.

Ankara has already sent military supplies to the GNA despite a United Nations embargo, according to a U.N. report seen by Reuters, and has said it will continue to support it.

Haftar’s forces have received support from Russia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan.
 

Syrian government forces shelled a rebel-held village in the country’s northwest on Wednesday, hitting a school and killing at least six people, opposition activists said.

The attack in Idlib province, the last rebel stronghold in Syria, was part of an ongoing offensive in which Syrian troops have captured more than 40 villages and hamlets over the past two weeks.

Idlib is dominated by al-Qaida-linked militants and is also home to 3 million civilians. The United Nations has warned of the growing risk of a humanitarian catastrophe in the region, which lies along the Turkish border.

A war-monitoring group, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said a teacher and four students were killed in Sunday’s government shelling of the village of Sarmin.

Hadi Abdullah, an Idlib-based opposition activists, gave a slightly higher death toll, saying seven people were killed, including a woman and four children. Different death tolls are common in the immediate aftermath of bombings.

Syrian troops have been bombarding parts of Idlib since last month, with the shelling and airstrikes intensifying since the ground offensive began on Dec. 19.

The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said that as a result of hostilities, more than 235,000 people had been displaced between Dec. 12 and Dec. 25. Many of them have fled from the town of Maaret al-Numan, toward which the Syrian troops have been steadily advancing.

Elsewhere in northern Syria, a car bombing on Wednesday in the town of Suluk, controlled by Turkey-backed opposition fighters, killed three people, according to Syrian state media and the Observatory.

Areas controlled by Turkey-backed fighters have witnessed several explosions, with dozens killed and wounded in the past weeks. Turkey has blamed Syrian Kurdish fighters for the attacks. They deny the charges.
 

The world rang in a new year and decade Wednesday with fireworks, music and all-night parties.

The celebrations included the usual massive gathering in New York’s Times Square where people counted down the remaining seconds of 2019 and cheered as 2020 officially arrived.

Several million people gathered in Rio de Janeiro for a massive celebration featuring fireworks and music on Brazil’s famous Copacabana beach.

In Paris, fireworks lit up the Champs-Elysees area as France took its turn welcoming the new year.

The huge clock looming over the Kremlin in Moscow chimed in 2020 with fireworks in the sky and fake snow on the ground. Unusually warm temperatures has made it a wet, not white New Year’s Eve, leading Russian authorities to spread artificial snow around Moscow to create the proper New Year’s atmosphere.

A 10-minute fireworks show delighted revelers in Dubai, while in Japan, celebrants took turns in striking Buddhist temple bells, an ancient tradition.

Fireworks brightened the skies elsewhere in Asia and the Pacific, including Sydney Harbor in Australia.

Fireworks were canceled in other parts of the country because of the extremely dry conditions that led to devastating wildfires.

Pro-democracy demonstrators broke out in chants as midnight approached in Hong Kong. Authorities there canceled the traditional fireworks over the city for “security reasons,” replacing them with a light show beamed against skyscrapers.

Tens of thousands of anti-government protesters began marching in Hong Kong on New Year’s Day, demanding concessions from the city’s embattled government as the civil unrest that convulsed the Chinese-ruled city for more than half a year spills into 2020.

Gathering on a grass lawn in Victoria Park under grey skies, citizens young and old, many dressed in black and some masked, carried signs such as “Freedom is not free” before setting off.

“It’s hard to utter ‘Happy New Year’ because Hong Kong people are not happy,” said a man named Tung, who was walking with his 2-year-old son, mother and niece.

“Unless the five demands are achieved, and police are held accountable for their brutality, then we can’t have a real happy new year,” he added, referring to the push for concessions from the government including full democracy, an amnesty for the more than 6,500 people arrested so far, and a powerful, independent investigation into police actions.

The pro-democracy march is being organized by the Civil Human Rights Front, a group that arranged a number of marches last year that drew millions.

Along the route, a number of newly elected pro-democracy district politicians mingled with the crowds on their first day in office, some helping collect donations to assist the movement.

“The government has already started the oppression before the new year began … whoever is being oppressed, we will stand with them,” said Jimmy Sham, one of the leaders of the Civil Human Rights Front.

Thousands of Hong Kong revelers had earlier welcomed in 2020 on neon-lit promenades along the iconic skyline of Victoria Harbor, chanting the movement’s signature eight-word Chinese protest couplet — “Liberate Hong Kong. Revolution of our Time.” — for the final eight seconds before clocks struck midnight.

A sea of protesters then surged down Nathan Road, a major boulevard, blocking all lanes in a spontaneous march breaking out within minutes of the new decade. Some held signs reading “Let’s keep fighting together in 2020.”

Overnight, police fired tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannons during some brief standoffs.

China’s President Xi Jinping said in a New Year’s speech that Beijing will “resolutely safeguard the prosperity and stability” of Hong Kong under the so-called “one country, two systems” framework.

Many people in Hong Kong are angered by Beijing’s tight grip on the city, which was promised a high degree of autonomy under this framework when the former British colony returned to Chinese rule in 1997.

Beijing denies interference and blames the West for fomenting the unrest.

A group of 40 parliamentarians and dignitaries from 18 countries had written an open letter to Hong Kong’s leader Carrie Lam on New Year’s Eve, urging her to “seek genuine ways forward out of this crisis by addressing the grievances of Hong Kong people.”

The protest movement is supported by 59% of the city’s residents polled in a survey conducted for Reuters by the Hong Kong Public Opinion Research Institute.

Demonstrations have grown increasingly violent in recent months, at times paralyzing the Asian financial center.

Protesters have thrown petrol bombs and rocks, with police responding with tear gas, water cannon, pepper spray, rubber bullets and occasional live rounds. There have been several injuries.

China confirmed its lead this year in Asia’s biggest maritime sovereignty dispute by sending nonmilitary ships to waters normally controlled by other countries, allowing it to flex muscle without conflicts or diplomatic losses.

Pushback from Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam kept Beijing from adding artificial islets or control over existing features in the resource-rich South China Sea in 2019, analysts say.

Citing dynastic-era maritime records, China claims 90% of the 3.5 million-square-kilometer tropical waterway that stretches from Hong Kong to Borneo, while Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam claim waters that overlap China’s. They all value the sea for fisheries, fossil fuel reserves or both.

“Compared to the previous years, there was relatively less militarization by China,” said Aaron Rabena, research fellow at Asia-Pacific Pathways to Progress Foundation, a Manila research organization. “Still we see standoffs taking place, so there are still challenges.”

China was once more aggressive. Vietnam and China clashed in two deadly incidents in the 1970s and 1980s. In 2012, Chinese ships entered into a prolonged standoff with the Philippines at a shoal near Luzon Island and eventually took control of it. Two years later, Vietnamese and Chinese ships rammed each other over the location of an offshore Chinese oil rig.

Over the past decade, China has alarmed the other claimants by using landfill to create or expand three tiny islets, in the sea’s Spratly Islands and others in the Paracel chain. Some of those islets now support hangars and radar equipment.

“You had two, maybe three, cable-cutting incidents, you had over the years Chinese fishermen being rapacious with Vietnamese, boarding ships and seizing things,” said Carl Thayer, emeritus professor with the University of New South Wales in Australia, recalling a more assertive China 10 years ago. “That seems to have died down,” he said.

Pressure without firefights

Chinese coast guard ships, survey vessels and informal fishing boat flotillas still appear in the sea tracts claimed by other governments. China used all three this year to assert existing claims but occupied no new islets and got into no firefights.

To avoid angering the other claimants, China worked with them economically, for example by financing infrastructure construction in the Philippines. That cooperation lowers odds that the other governments will grow cozier with the United States, which has the world’s strongest armed forces and resents Chinese maritime expansion, analysts have said.

China, however, positioned vessels this past year in the waters within 370 kilometers of Malaysia, Vietnam and the Philippines, possibly to flex muscle. That distance normally gives coastal nations an exclusive economic zone.

Around Malaysia, “they’ve sailed ever more closely to our platforms, so that particular aspect has changed,” said Shahriman Lockman, senior foreign policy and security studies analyst with the research organization the Institute of Strategic and International Studies in Kuala Lumpur. “They’ve not interrupted operations, they just sail closer, that’s all. It’s more a show of force rather than anything else.”

For much of the year, China’s coast guard made its presence felt in waters claimed by Malaysia, the most active explorer of undersea natural gas in the disputed region.

In January, China moved as many as 90 ships around the Manila-controlled Thitu Island to monitor construction of a beaching ramp. A Chinese fishing boat sank a Philippine vessel in June near the disputed sea’s Reed Bank, raising questions about whether the capsized boat was rammed.

Vietnam and China got into the most heated dispute of the year.

It started when a Chinese energy survey ship began patrolling in July near Vanguard Bank and a seabed tract about 352 kilometers off the coast of southeastern Vietnam. The patrol circled an oil and gas block on the Vietnamese continental shelf, also within China’s claim. A standoff followed and ended in October when the survey ship left, apparently after completing a mission.

Diplomatic fixes

Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed has asked China to clarify its intent in the sea and this month his government submitted documentation to the United Nations suggesting it extend rights over a larger part of the continental shelf. China protested. Mahathir’s government also set aside a railway project funded by China, but it resumed in late 2019.

In the Philippines, legislators and military officials want President Rodrigo Duterte to step up resistance to China; however, his administration has agreed with Beijing to joint oil and gas development. The two sides started intergovernmental committee talks this year to oversee projects. They separately pledged to investigate the ship collision.

Vietnam contacted numerous Western nations about the Vanguard Bank standoff, Thayer said.

Much of Southeast Asia still expects the United States will keep China in check, as needed, by sending naval ships into the sea, Lockman said. Washington calls the events “freedom of navigation operations” and carried out several in 2019.

China and the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which includes four maritime claimants, often discuss the maritime disputes but made little headway this year. They are due to talk eventually about signing a code of conduct that would help avert mishaps.

“I wouldn’t say there’s been reconciliation,” said Alan Chong, associate professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore. “It’s been a fluid situation and the jury is still out.”

Dry conditions, hot weather and strong winds keep the wildfires in Australia going, with new blazes sparking almost every day. Officials say more than 200 bushfires are burning throughout the country. Since early September, fires have killed 12 people, destroyed more than 4 million hectares of land, surrounded cities, forced evacuations and killed wildlife. But as VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports, that did not stop  Sydney from staging its world-renowned fireworks display to usher in the new year.

The hundreds of Iraqi Shi’ite protesters and militiamen who tried to storm into the U.S. embassy in Baghdad on Tuesday were led by a powerful pro-Iran militant group Kataeb Hezbollah.

Kataeb Hezbollah commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis joined the attackers as they torched a security post and hurled stones at the U.S. compound, enraged by U.S. airstrikes in Iraq and Syria that killed at least 25 members of the group on Sunday.

Here is a look at the history and facts of the Iranian-backed Iraqi group:

‘Brigades of the Party of God’

Kataeb Hezbollah, or Brigades of the Party of God, is an Iran-sponsored Shi’ite paramilitary group in Iraq. Although the group was officially founded in April 2007, its leaders have been actively engaged in anti-Western pro-Iran activities since the 1980s and expanded their influence beginning in 2003 following the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

The U.S. State Department describes Kataeb Hezbollah as “a radical Shia Islamist group with an anti-Western establishment and jihadist ideology.” The U.S. State Department designated the group as a terrorist organization in July 2009.

On its official website, the group says it is an Islamic jihadist organization striving to, among other objectives, “foil the American project in the region, by defeating the occupation and expelling it from Iraq, failed and humiliated.”

The Shi’ite group publicly supports the Guardianship of the Jurist, a system of governance in Shi’ite Islam that gives the Islamic jurist guardianship over people and by which the Iranian theocrats rule. As such, Kataeb Hezbollah’s members see Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as their own spiritual leader.

“The establishment of the Islamic Republic in Iran is only an essential stage in preparing the ground for the State of Divine Justice and an example of the rulings of Islam and the Guardianship of the Jurist,” the group says on its website.

Structure

Kataeb Hezbollah is a part of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), an umbrella organization of several Iraqi Shi’ite militias formed in 2014 to push back against the Sunni extremist group Islamic State (IS) following the collapse of the Iraqi army in 2014.

An August report by the U.S. Military Academy’s Combating Terrorism Center said Kataeb Hezbollah had only about 400 active members in Iraq in 2011, while it now controls several PMF brigades with about 10,000 fighters. Of that number, some 2,500 fighters have been assigned to Syria while the rest are engaged in operation in Iraq, according to the report.

Little is known about the organization’s leadership structure due to its secretive nature, but Jamal Jaafar Ibrahimi, more commonly known by his nom de guerre Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, is at the top of its pyramid.

Al-Muhandis, a U.S. designated terrorist, is accused by the U.S. and its Arab allies of participating in the bombing of Western embassies in Kuwait and the attempted assassination of the Emir of Kuwait in the early 1980s. He is technically the deputy commander of the PMF, but his strong influence within the group has made him its de facto leader.

Since the defeat of the Islamic State in Iraq in December 2017, Kataeb Hezbollah has increased its efforts to gain political representation by directly participating in Iraqi parliamentary elections. The Fatih Alliance, a political alliance of Shi’ite militias that entered the 2018 elections with Kataeb Hezbollah’s participation, gained the second most popular votes for the Iraqi parliament.

Additionally, the group has expanded its outreach to Iraqi society by establishing groups that recruit Shi’ite intellectuals, women and youths, such as the Academic Elites Foundation and al-Zainabiyat Foundation.

Ties to Iran and foreign Shi’ite groups

Kataeb Hezbollah is seen by many Iraq observers as the central nervous system of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Quds Force (IRGC-QF) in Iraq.

According to the U.S. government, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis is an adviser to IRGC-QF commander Qassem Soleimani. It accuses the IRGC-QF of providing Kataeb Hezbollah with “lethal support” to target U.S.-led coalition and Iraqi security forces.

Financially, the group is believed by the U.S. to have received millions of dollars from Tehran to fund its various operations through Iraq and Syria. A lawsuit in November 2014 by U.S. veterans and family members of American soldiers killed in Iraq alleged that Iranian banks had funneled more than $100 million to militant groups such as Kataeb Hezbollah in Iraq.

The U.S. officials believe that Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group has also provided weapons and training for Kataeb Hezbollah members in Iran.

Future influence

Since defeating the Islamic State group, Iraqi officials have said one of their main priorities is to rebuild the country by putting paramilitary groups under the full control of the Iraqi Ministry of Defense.

Following several unclaimed attacks by suspected Shi’ite militias against Iraqi military bases hosting U.S. personnel, Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi in July issued a decree asking all PMF groups, including Kataeb Hezbollah, to become an “indivisible part of the armed forces and be subject to the same regulations.” He threatened that any group failing to comply by July 31 will be treated as an outlaw.

However, five months into the decree, militant groups such as Kataeb Hezbollah continue to operate outside of the Iraqi government control with no meaningful curtailment in their power, experts say.

Michael Knights, an Iraq military expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told VOA Persian that Tuesday’s violent scenes at the gates of the U.S. embassy in Baghdad have embarrassed Iraqi government officials who face pressure from the U.S. to act against anti-American militias. But, he said, it is unlikely that the Iraqi government can restrain Kataeb Hezbollah anytime soon.

“KH [Kataeb Hezbollah] can shoot dead policemen on the streets of Baghdad and refuse to surrender the murderers to Iraqi justice. KH can threaten ministers, can take over the Civil Aviation Authority of Iraq, and nobody will stand in their way. As a result, KH is very unlikely to face any negative action as a result of either the killing of a U.S. contractor or the blockading of the U.S. embassy in Baghdad,” Knights told VOA.

Iraqi bases housing U.S. personnel have been attacked at least 10 times since October, with U.S. officials mostly blaming Iran-backed Iraqi Shi’ite militias.

An assault last Friday on a military base in Kirkuk province killed an American contractor and wounded several U.S. and Iraqi military personnel, prompting the U.S. to respond by striking five Kataeb Hezbollah facilities in Iraq and Syria on Sunday.

Clare Lopez, a former CIA career operations officer and an analyst at the Center for Security Policy, said that by responding to the attack in Kirkuk, the U.S. wanted to convey to Iran and its proxies that it is willing to respond should its interests be targeted in the region.

“The Iraqi people know that Washington has always supported Baghdad’s government and provided with them the security and military aid they asked for,” Lopez told VOA. “The U.S. strikes on Kataeb Hezbollah should not be construed as a violation of the Iraqi people’s rights or an insult to them, but as a proper response to Iran’s bullying via its proxies in Iraq.”
 

 A stalled Rohingya refugee repatriation plan and the start of a judicial process by the West African nation Gambia for genocide charges against Myanmar marked the troubled end of the second year since more than 700,000 Rohingya Muslims fled a brutal Burmese army “clearance operation” in Myanmar’s Rakhine State, crossing over to Bangladesh. Steve Sandford has this report for VOA from Bangkok.

In 2019, Afghanistan witnessed two major events. The first was an initial step towards a possible peace deal between the Taliban and the United States. The second was a closely monitored presidential election. Both events directly affect Afghans and in particular Afghan women. VOA’s Najiba Khalil and Lima Niazi spoke to both U.S. and Afghan representatives and filed this report.

One of Washington’s most unique museums – called The Newseum – closes its doors on New Year’s Eve. For 12 years, the museum has served as an interactive environment dedicated to journalism and promotion of free speech. Mariia Prus has the story, narrated by Anna Rice.

Before June 2017, when Qatar’s neighbors severed diplomatic and trade ties, the oil-rich Arab gulf state imported nearly all its food through the Saudi border crossing at Salwa, and by ship from Dubai’s Jebel Ali Port.

Doha food distributor Ahmed Al-Khalaf remembers the first stressful days after Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain imposed a blockade.

“It was a big surprise for Qatar to wake up and find that the border was closed,” said Al-Khalaf, the CEO of International Projects Development Company, a food importer and investor in local greenhouses.

Egypt, which has the biggest army in the Arab world and 20,000 nationals working in Qatar, quickly joined the embargo, accelerating a sense of shock and vulnerability.

“We had more than a thousand trucks waiting to come inside waiting at the Salwa Border gate and five thousand containers in Jebel Ali, most of them containing foodstuffs,” Al-Khalaf said.

Qatar continues to refuse the blockading states’ demands that it shut down broadcaster al-Jazeera, reduce diplomatic and economic ties with Iran, and send back the nearly 3,000 Turkish troops stationed in the emirate.

But even without an embargo, Qatar’s harsh climate, sandy soil, and water scarcity challenge its food security, especially when it comes to growing greens and vegetables or producing milk.

“This all happened during Ramadan when everybody is consuming three times more than normal. I had to fly from Qatar to Iran and other countries to buy food, and we paid twice, sometimes three times the usual price to bring it here by airplane and ships,” Al-Khalaf recalls.

Those difficulties are tackled at Al-Khalaf’s farm in Al Khor, where hydroponic greenhouses are yielding cherry tomatoes, chard, mushrooms, and eggplants.

“Today Qatar is covering almost 30 percent of the demand for vegetables,” said agronomist Fahd Bin Salah. “The irrigation is computerized; this is an organic farm where we don’t use chemical pesticides or fertilizers. Our aquaponic system uses fish waste to feed the plants, and we use beneficial insects that feed off harmful pests.”

With desalination plants, Qatar can supply enough drinking water for its population. Still, when it came to milk, it relied for 80 percent of it on product trucked in from Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia’s Almarai Dairy is double the size of the largest dairy farm in the U.S. It produces more than 58 million gallons of milk yearly. It also receives financial support from the government in Riyadh.

“Before 2017, it wouldn’t have been worth the marketing costs to compete with Saudi brands,” said Mouatz Al Khayyat, Chairman of Power Holding International, which founded the Baladna dairy with the inception of the blockade.

The company has over 40,000 employees on its payroll, mostly in the construction business.

Before the blockade, Power Holding was best known locally as the builder of the Khalifa International Stadium, one of the main venues for the 2022 FIFA’s World Cup.

“When the embargo came, we worked with our government to bring in 4,000 American cows by air and another 16,000 by boat,” Al Khayyat said. “Our dairy began producing milk 35 days after the blockade started, and today, we have one of the biggest state-of-the-art farms in the Middle East.”

Keeping the cows fresh and fed is expensive.

Between March and October, the average high temperature in Doha hovers around 37 degrees C. Industrial fans cool Al Hayyat’s herd with a constant breeze and a massive network of mist-producing water pipes.

Even though Qatar dedicates 54% of its cropland to producing animal fodder, there is still not enough hay for the country’s growing herds of cattle, goats, and sheep.

“We are spending up to $100 million a year to import feed from the U.S.,” added Al Hayyat.

It’s a reciprocal relationship.

The U.S. airbase at Al Udeid is now relying on Baladna for its dairy requirements instead of trucking it in from Saudi or flying it from Germany.

The embargo and the resulting self-sufficiency drive have not only expanded Qatar’s agricultural landscape. It’s also reconfiguring the country’s financial markets.

Qatar’s government-run sovereign wealth fund is valued at around $320 billion. But it’s vested almost entirely in holdings outside the country. A growing stock exchange is listing more companies that produce for the local market.

“We are encouraging family-owned companies to come to the stock exchange,” said QSE CEO Rashid Bin Ali Al Mansoori. “These companies are mainly in the non-oil sector, such as health care, construction, and consumer products.”

In November, the Al Khayyat family put up 75 percent of their dairy company on the Qatar stock exchange.

“Listing our shares will help make Baladna more sustainable, to prepare it for the future after the blockade ends,” said Al Khayyat.

The November IPO for Baladna was oversubscribed, a positive sign for the Qatar stock exchange looking to attract international investors.

But Qatari consumers are simply relieved by their nation’s newfound food self-sufficiency.

“It’s better to feel independent and have your own products in your country,” said 41-year-old homemaker Aman Qadodora. “You feel safer.

 

Authorities in Indian-controlled Kashmir will restore text messaging services in the disputed region on Wednesday, almost five months after India’s government downgraded its semi-autonomy and imposed a strict security and communications lockdown, an official said Tuesday.

Local government spokesman Rohit Kansal said the decision was made after a review of the situation.

He said broadband internet services in government-run hospitals will also be restored. The curbs on broadband internet and mobile internet services for other users will remain.

Authorities fear that insurgents and separatists demanding independence from Indian rule will use the internet to provoke protests in the region that could morph into large-scale street demonstrations.

Tensions in Kashmir, which is divided between Pakistan and India but claimed by both in its entirety, have escalated since New Delhi’s surprise decision in early August to downgrade the region’s semi-autonomy.

India followed the move by sending in tens of thousands of extra troops, detaining thousands of people and blocking cellphone and internet services.

The government had earlier said the restrictions on communication services were “in the interest of maintenance of public order.”

Some communications services, like post-paid and landline phones, were restored in October in a phased manner.

Kashmir’s troubles began in 1947, with the first days of Indian and Pakistani independence, as the two countries both claimed the region in its entirety. They have since fought two of three wars over their rival claims, with each administering a part of the territory, which is divided by a heavily militarized line of control.

On the Indian side, most public protests were peaceful until 1989, when armed rebels rose up demanding the region’s independence or merger with Pakistan. Nearly 70,000 people have been killed in that uprising and the ensuing military crackdown.

The year 2019 saw a totally preventable disease claim the lives of more than 140,000 people, mostly children and babies. It happened as unvaccinated children created a pathway for measles outbreaks globally. Some of the outbreaks are still continuing.

Samoan Emite Talaalevea lost her daughter. She says she never expected to see such grief.

“I was shocked, it was very hard to me to accept what happened,” she said.

Measles claimed the lives of some 81 people on the island, mostly children and infants. Robert Linkins, an expert on measles in the Global Immunization Division at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said the deaths were completely preventable.

“Two shots of a vaccine could have saved those children’s lives.”

The vaccination rate in Samoa dropped to about 30% after two children died from a measles vaccine that was mistakenly mixed with a muscle relaxant. People wrongly attributed the deaths to the vaccine, stopped vaccinating their children, then measles exploded on the island.

Samoa has a population of 200,000. Some 5,600 people caught the virus. Linkins said because measles is so highly infectious, the disease spread rapidly.

“The hospitals and health clinics were overrun with very sick children, and there weren’t enough health care workers and hospital beds to adequately deliver the services that they needed,” Linkins said.

Medical teams went door-to-door with the vaccine. The goal was to get 95% of the population vaccinated. The Samoan government, Linkins said, turned to the CDC for help in stemming the epidemic.

“[The] CDC also was asked to do training of health care workers to ensure safe vaccine delivery, as well as to monitor the quality of the immunization campaign that took place,” Linkins said.

In 2019, more 400,000 cases of measles were reported globally, with an additional 250,000 cases in the Democratic Republic of Congo alone.

In the first three months of 2019, the number of measles cases tripled over the same period of 2018. Dr. Kate O’Brien, an immunization expert with the World Health Organization, cites many reasons children are not getting vaccinated.

“The main reason for failure to vaccinate against measles is families, communities are not having access to the vaccine,” O’Brien said.

Conflict and poor health systems in low income countries prevent families from vaccinating their children. But in rich countries, some parents are opting out of immunizations. The United States tops the list with 2.5 million children missing their first dose of the measles vaccine. Two doses are essential for immunization.

The CDC reported more than 1,200 cases of measles in 31 U.S. states by late December, the highest number in 25 years. Dr. Peter Hotez, a vaccinologist at Baylor College of Medicine, says the numbers are alarming.

“In the United States now, measles epidemics are becoming the new normal in this country, after we eliminated measles in 2000,” Hotez said.
 
In 2019, four European countries — Britain, Albania, the Czech Republic and Greece — lost their measles eradication status, meaning measles is now considered endemic in these countries.

“In other words, we’re backsliding,” said Kate O’Brien with the WHO.

Samoa ended its state of emergency over its measles outbreak just days before 2019 ended. But the resurgence of measles is still a global health problem. Some parents are complacent about the vaccine. Others have come to fear it more than the deadly virus itself. Unless this changes, experts say, there will be more deaths, and more outbreaks in 2020.

 

Chinese President Xi Jinping has called for Hong Kong to return to stability following months of pro-democracy protests.

In a New Year’s address Tuesday evening, Xi said a peaceful, harmonious environment was key to the Asian financial hub’s prosperity.

“Hong Kong’s prosperity and stability is the wish of Hong Kong compatriots and the expectation for the people of the motherland,” Xi said in the televised address.

The protests broke out in June over proposed legislation that could have extradited suspects in Hong Kong to face trials in mainland China.

Though the legislation was withdrawn, the protests have continued with demands for democratic reforms and an investigation into alleged abuses by police against protesters. The often violent disturbances have sent Hong Kong’s economy into recession and tarnished the city’s reputation as one of the world’s safest.

The former British colony was handed over to Chinese rule in 1997 with a promise it could retain its own capitalist economy, legal system and civil liberties, although many see those as eroding as Beijing tightens its grip.

 Xi also reiterated China’s rigid opposition to independence for Taiwan, the self-governing island republic that Beijing claims as its own territory. Taiwan holds elections for its president and legislature on Jan. 11, with independence-leaning leader Tsai Ing-wen expected to win a second term.

In his speech, Xi dwelt heavily on economic topics, saying that China’s gross domestic product in 2019 was on track to near 100 trillion yuan ($14.37 trillion), while per capita GDP was likely to reach $10,000.
The coming year will be decisive in China’s battle to alleviate poverty for rural residents, Xi said. In 2019, around 10 million people were lifted out of poverty, he said.

Chinese experts are investigating an outbreak of respiratory illness in the central city of Wuhan that some have likened to the 2002-2003 SARS epidemic.

The city’s health commission said in a statement Tuesday that 27 people had fallen ill with a strain of viral pneumonia, seven of whom were in serious condition.

It said most had visited a seafood market in the sprawling city, apparently pointing to a common origin of the outbreak.

Unverified information online said the illnesses were caused by Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, which emerged from southern China and killed more than 700 people in several countries and regions. SARS was brought under control through quarantines and other extreme measures, but not before causing a virtual shutdown to travel in China and the region and taking a severe toll on the economy.

However, the health commission said the cause of the outbreak was still unclear and called on citizens not to panic.

Wildfires burning across Australia’s two most-populous states Tuesday trapped residents of a seaside town in apocalyptic conditions, destroyed many properties and caused at least two fatalities.

In the southeastern town of Mallacoota, around 4,000 residents fled toward the waterside as winds pushed an emergency-level wildfire towards their homes. The town was shrouded in darkness from the smoke before turning an unnerving shade of bright red.

Victoria state Premier Daniel Andrews said there were plans to evacuate the trapped people by sea. There were grave fears remain for four people missing. “We can’t confirm their whereabouts,” Andrews told reporters on Tuesday.

He has requested assistance from 70 firefighters from the United States and Canada.

Victoria Emergency Services Commissioner Andrew Crisp confirmed “significant” property losses across the region.

Fire conditions worsened in Victoria and New South Wales states after oppressive heat Monday mixed with strong winds and lightning strikes.

New South Wales Police confirmed Tuesday that two men, believed to be father and son, died in a house in the wildfire-ravaged southeast town of Cobargo, while there are fears for another man missing.

“They were obviously trying to do their best with the fire as it came through in the early hours of the morning,” New South Wales Police Deputy Commissioner Gary Worboys said. “The other person that we are trying to get to, we think that person was trying to defend their property in the early hours of the morning.’’

The two confirmed deaths raise the toll to at least 12 in Australia’s wildfires, which also have razed more than 1,000 homes in the past few months.

A firefighter died Monday when extreme winds flipped his truck. Samuel McPaul, 28, was the third volunteer firefighter in New South Wales to have died in the past two weeks. He was an expectant father.

The state’s Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons said a “significant” number of properties had been destroyed.

Some communities have canceled New Year’s fireworks celebrations, but Sydney’s popular display over its iconic harbor front will go ahead. The city was granted an exemption to a total fireworks ban that is in place there and elsewhere to prevent new wildfires.

Hot temperatures were expected, as was the thick smoke that has shrouded views of the harbor and Sydney Opera House in recent weeks.

The popular celebrations are expected to attract around a million spectators and generate 130 million Australian dollars ($91 million) for the state’s economy.

Ride-share company Uber and on-demand meal delivery service Postmates sued Monday to block a broad new California law aimed at giving wage and benefit protections to people who work as independent contractors.

The lawsuit filed in U.S. court in Los Angeles argues that the law set to take effect Wednesday violates federal and state constitutional guarantees of equal protection and due process.

Uber said it will try to link the lawsuit to another legal challenge filed in mid-December by associations representing freelance writers and photographers.

The California Trucking Association filed the first challenge to the law in November on behalf of independent truckers.

The law creates the nation’s strictest test by which workers must be considered employees and it could set a precedent for other states.

The latest challenge includes two independent workers who wrote about their concerns with the new law.

“This has thrown my life and the lives of more than a hundred(equals)thousand drivers into uncertainty,” ride-share driver Lydia Olson’s wrote in a Facebook post cited by Uber.

Postmates driver Miguel Perez called on-demand work “a blessing” in a letter distributed by Uber. He said he used to drive a truck for 14 hours at a time, often overnight.

“Sometimes, when I was behind the wheel, with an endless shift stretching out ahead of me like the open road, I daydreamed about a different kind of job — a job where I could choose when, where and how much I worked and still make enough money to feed my family,” he wrote.

The lawsuit contends that the law exempts some industries but includes ride-share and delivery companies without a rational basis for distinguishing between them. It alleges that the law also infringes on workers’ rights to choose how they make a living and could void their existing contracts.

Democratic Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez of San Diego countered that she wrote the law to extend employee rights to more than a million California workers who lack benefits, including a minimum wage, mileage reimbursements, paid sick leave, medical coverage and disability pay for on-the-job injuries.

She noted that Uber had previously sought an exemption when lawmakers were crafting the law, then said it would defend its existing labor model from legal challenges. It joined Lyft and DoorDash in a vow to each spend $30 million to overturn the law at the ballot box in 2020 if they don’t win concessions from lawmakers next year.

“The one clear thing we know about Uber is they will do anything to try to exempt themselves from state regulations that make us all safer and their driver employees self-sufficient,” Gonzalez said in a statement. “In the meantime, Uber chief executives will continue to become billionaires while too many of their drivers are forced to sleep in their cars.’’

The new law was a response to a legal ruling last year by the California Supreme Court regarding workers at the delivery company Dynamex.

A federal judge on Monday dismissed a lawsuit from a former White House official who had challenged a congressional subpoena in the impeachment inquiry involving President Donald Trump.

Charles Kupperman, a former deputy national security adviser, sued in October after being subpoenaed by House Democrats to testify in their impeachment investigation into Trump’s interactions with Ukraine. He had asked a judge to decide whether he had to comply with that subpoena from Congress or with a conflicting directive from the White House that he not testify.

Both the House of Representatives, which withdrew the subpoena, and the Justice Department, which had said it would not prosecute Kupperman for contempt of Congress for failing to appear, had asked the court to dismiss the case as moot.

U.S. District Judge Richard Leon agreed Monday in throwing out the case. He noted that the House had stated explicitly that it would not reissue a subpoena to Kupperman and had not mentioned him by name in an impeachment article this month that accused Trump of obstructing Congress and its investigation.

“This conduct is of course entirely consistent with the repeated representations that counsel for the House has made to this Court,” Leon wrote. “The House clearly has no intention of pursuing Kupperman, and his claims are thus moot.”

The lawsuit was closely watched since it was a rare challenge of a congressional subpoena in the impeachment inquiry and because of the potential implications it carried for another witness whose testimony has been highly sought by Democrats: former national security adviser John Bolton.

Kupperman and Bolton have the same lawyer. Bolton was not subpoenaed by the House but, as a senior adviser to the president on matters of national security, had similar arguments at his disposal. Senate Democrats have identified Bolton as among the current and former Trump administration officials they would like to hear from in a trial.

Charles Cooper, a lawyer for Bolton and Kupperman, did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.

Though Leon said he did not need to resolve Kupperman’s case now, he acknowledged that the conflict could potentially resurface.

“Have no doubt though, should the winds of political fortune shift and the House were to reissue a subpoena to Dr. Kupperman, he will face the same conflicting directives that precipitated this suit,” Leon wrote.

“If so, he will undoubtedly be right back before this Court seeking a solution to a Constitutional dilemma that has long-standing political consequences: balancing Congress’s well-established power to investigate with a President’s need to have a small group of national security advisors who have some form of immunity from compelled congressional testimony,” Leon wrote.