Dramatic changes jolted the Arab world in 2019 after veteran Arab leaders in Algeria and Sudan were forced to step down amid widespread popular protests. Similar protests later erupted in Iraq and Lebanon, forcing forced prime ministers to step down and threatening to erode their strong ties to Iran. Meanwhile, in Libya and Yemen, turmoil continued unabated.
 
Observers are calling the 2019 movements the second wave of the Arab Spring which began in 2011, ousting rulers in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, and igniting civil wars in Syria, Yemen, and Libya.  

The new phase of the Arab Spring began in December 2018 with protests against veteran Sudanese leader Omar al Bashir, culminating with his ouster in June by Sudan’s military.

In April, protests forced ailing Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika to step down, foiling plans to have him run for a fifth term.

Protests in Algeria and Sudan were carried live on Arab TV causing a ripple effect elsewhere and stoking the fervor of a large youth population.

Efforts to spark a revolution in Egypt against President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi fizzled out quickly, however, despite efforts by a little-known businessman to accuse him of corruption.

Tunisia also saw change, with voters electing a new leader after ailing President Baji Caid Essebsi died in July. Tunisians chose an outsider after support for high profile candidates waned. 

Khattar Abou Diab, who teaches at the University of Paris, told VOA that efforts to refashion the Middle East began under former U.S. President George W. Bush, before hitting a snag in 2011 when Islamists tried to hijack Arab Spring revolutions.

But, he said, protest movements in 2019 are more nationalistic and less ideological.

Pan-Arab protests spread to Iraq and Lebanon in October, as public ire focused on meddling by regional power-broker Iran and brutal behavior by pro-Iranian Shi’ite militias.

Dr. Paul Sullivan, a professor at the U.S. National Defense University, says “it is hard to tell where protests will lead (because they) are organic and fluid (and) even the leadership of them is (often) unclear.”

Even Iranians, frustrated by the pain of U.S. economic sanctions, took to the streets in November, but the regime quickly regained control.

Abdiwahid Moalim Ishaq contributed to this report from Galkayo.

The al-Shabab militant group claimed responsibility for a suicide car bomb that targeted military commanders in the central Somali town of Galkayo, killing at least eight people and wounding 55 others Saturday evening.  

Witnesses told VOA Somali that the vehicle exploded as the military officials were leaving a hotel to attend a reconciliation meeting.

Commander of Somali land forces Brigadier General Abdihamid Mohamed Dirir and commander of the 21st Division General Abdulaziz Abdullahi Qoje survived the attack.

Officials said four civilians and four soldiers were killed in the explosion.

“At about 8:30pm last night this car you see its remains exploded, it was targeting military vehicles,” says the Mayor of Galkayo’s southern half Hersi Yusuf Barre. “There is a significant casualties, a lot of civilians were hurt.”

Residents started cleaning up the site and collected the body of the suicide bomber for burial.

A doctor at Galkayo hospital Mohamed Abdi Ahmed told VOA Somali some of the injured are in serious condition.

It is the second major attack by al-Shabab this month in Somalia. A complex attack on a Mogadishu hotel on December 10 killed five people.

US airstrikes

Meanwhile, the U.S. military has conducted a record number of attacks against al-Shabab and pro-Islamic militant groups in Somalia this year.

With just few days left in 2019, the U.S. military has carried out 60 airstrikes, the vast majority of them against al-Shabab militants. Last year, the U.S. conducted 47 strikes and more than 30 the previous year.

The 60th strike this year occurred on December 16 in Dujuma village area in Middle Jubba region, killing one al-Shabab militant.

Sudan has opened an investigation into crimes committed in the Darfur region by members of the regime of ousted former president Omar al-Bashir, the state prosecutor said Sunday.

The conflict between pro-government forces and ethnic minority rebels left around 300,000 people dead and 2.5 million displaced, according to the United Nations.

“We have launched an investigation into the crimes committed in Darfur from 2003,” prosecutor Tagelsir al-Heber said on his arrival in Khartoum after a trip to the United Arab Emirates.

He added that these were “cases against former regime officials” tied to Bashir, who is sought by the International Criminal Court for his role in the Darfur conflict.

Warrants for the ex-dictator’s arrest were issued by the ICC in 2009 and 2010 on charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity but Bashir has not been extradited to The Hague, the seat of the ICC.

Sudan’s new transitional government, brought to power after the protest movement toppled Bashir, has vowed to establish peace in conflict-hit regions, including Darfur.

On December 14, Bashir was sentenced by a court in Khartoum to two years’ detention in a correctional centre for corruption in the first of several cases against him.

Bashir is also being investigated for his role in the 1989 coup that brought him to power.

The lawyer of an Iranian-British woman convicted on spying charges in Iran has asked that she be released after serving half of her sentence, a request that was immediately rejected by the Tehran prosecutors’ office, the state IRNA news agency reported Sunday.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who works for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, was sentenced to five years for allegedly planning the “soft toppling” of Iran’s government while traveling with her young daughter in Iran at the time. She was was arrested in April 2016. Her sentence has been widely criticized and her family has denied all the allegations against her.

The report by IRNA quoted her lawyer, Mahmoud Behzadi Rad, as saying that he had submitted a request for what Iran’s judiciary calls “conditional release” — when a convict has served half his or her sentence, the person can apply for such a release and the courts have the power to grant it for “good behavior.”

“According to the law, she is entitled to apply for a conditional release,” the lawyer said.

IRNA did not say why the request was denied. Behzadi Rad said he had applied for a conditional release for another of his clients, prominent Iranian human rights activist Narges Mohammadi who is serving a 10-year sentence. Behzadi Rad is her lawyer, too. The request for her release was also denied, he said.

The lawyer also said that Zaghari-Ratcliffe has had several psychiatric evaluations recently while in prison but did not elaborate on her condition or the state of her health.

In England, Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s husband, Richard Ratcliffe, has been leading a campaign to try to win his wife’s release from prison. British officials are also calling for her release.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe went on a 15-day hunger strike in June, to call attention to her plight. In July, she was moved to the mental health ward of Imam Khomeini hospital under the control of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

The Free Nazanin Campaign said in a statement at the time that it does not know what treatment she is receiving or how long she is expected to remain in the hospital.

Iran has also detained at least one other Iranian-British national, anthropologist Kameel Ahmady, who has been accused of spying and of links to foreign intelligence agencies.

Iran does not recognize dual nationality for its citizens.

It took a blaze that nearly destroyed Paris’ most famous cathedral to reveal a gap in global safety regulations for lead, a toxic building material found across many historic cities.

After the Notre Dame fire in April spewed dozens of tons of toxic lead-dust into the atmosphere in just a few hours, Paris authorities discovered a problem with the city’s public safety regulations: There was no threshold for them to gauge how dangerous the potentially-deadly pollution was from the dust that settled on the ground.

Since then, The Associated Press has found this regulatory gap extends far beyond France. Officials in other historic European capitals such as Rome and London, as well as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the World Health Organization also have no such outdoor lead dust hazard guidelines.

The reason, they say, is that although there are lead regulations, no one contemplated a conflagration on a lead-laden building the scale of Notre Dame — whose spire towered nearly 100 meters (330 feet) high.

Poisoning from lead dust can cause permanent loss to cognitive ability, seizures, coma, or death — and exposure is of greatest risk to pregnant mothers and to young children, who can easily transfer toxic dust into their mouths.

After 250 tons of lead on Notre Dame’s spire and roof was engulfed in flames in central Paris on April 15 and authorities alerted Parisians to an environmental health risk, they were forced to cobble together disparate and incomplete research to set a makeshift safety level in an attempt reassure the public.

“When the Notre Dame fire happened, we didn’t have any threshold for what represented dangerous lead levels outdoors,” Anne Souyris, the Paris City Hall deputy mayor in charge of public health, told the AP. “It was a wake-up call … the amount of lead that was burned in Notre Dame was unprecedented.”

Officials were surprised to discover that while safety guidelines exist in France for lead levels inside buildings and schools, as well as in paint, soil and air pollution, there were zero hazard guidelines for lead accumulations in public spaces, such as dust on the ground.

The inherent danger and the regulatory gap for lead dust became impossible to ignore for French officials as it collected as a toxic film on the cobblestones of Paris’ Ile-de-la-Cite following the fire.

“The authorities basically tried to create safety guidelines after the fire by piecing together a mixture of old fragments of data and reports,” Souyris said. “But there was really nothing official … we simply didn’t realize that lead outside might be a problem.”

On July 18 — three months after the inferno — Paris’ Regional Health Agency (ARS) said it designated 5,000 micrograms per square meter (4,180 mg per square yard) as a concerning level for lead dust in public spaces. It also acknowledged there was an “absence of regulatory thresholds … regarding the presence of lead in dust deposited on roads.”

AP learned from health officials that this figure was compiled by using incomplete data, including a French Culture Ministry report assessing lead levels in Paris monuments.

Some media outlets reported that registered levels of lead contamination in locations surrounding the fire-damaged cathedral ranged between 500 and 800 times the official safe levels.

But health officials told the AP that Paris still does not have any official regulatory threshold.

The World Health Organization told AP it also has no outdoor safety guidelines for lead dust and has no “immediate” intention to create any.

New legislation for hazard safety in Britain following the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire also did not cover lead-dust hazards. The U.K. Environment Ministry told AP it doesn’t “have a specific threshold for unsafe lead dust levels in the U.K. in public places.” It said the hazard focus after Grenfell, an apartment building constructed in the 1970s, “was more on asbestos than lead due to the age of the building.”

In the U.S., where many buildings were constructed after lead hazards were widely recognized, the Environmental Protection Agency has no lead dust hazard standards for outdoor public spaces.

Lead is ubiquitous in Paris’ 19th-century architecture — in roofs, gilded balconies, floors and terraces — and not just in its most famous cathedral. In 1853, Napoleon III chose Baron Haussmann to carry out a near-total renovation of Parisian boulevards and parks in an era that used lead prolifically — designs that still dominate the city.

French officials say there are so few guidelines on lead dust levels because it was not a problem they had to confront until the unprecedented Notre Dame fire.

It took four months for the city to complete a deep-clean operation of the sidewalks even as tourists, residents and merchants walked streets around the cathedral daily.

Paris City Hall issued a new action plan this fall to address lead — including cleaning and testing in places that host children, increased monitoring of children with high levels of lead in their blood and an independent epidemiological study of lead health impacts in a city that has used the toxic element since the Middle Ages.

“Paris is a beautifully preserved city,” Souyris said. “But we realize we have also beautifully preserved its lead.”

Experts say Paris’ rare status as a highly conserved historic city makes it a particular danger spot for lead.

“Preservation does make Paris unusual,” said Neil M. Donahue, a chemistry professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburg. “Incineration of one of the most famous roofs in the world may be especially dramatic, but there is no alchemy in this world. Lead will remain lead forever.”

The fire in Paris’ spiritual heart increased awareness among authorities and the public to the dangers of lead.

In June, Paris’ Regional Health Agency advised that all pregnant women and children under 7 years old living near the site take a test for lead levels.

The agency said 12 children in the surrounding areas tested positive for elevated lead levels in their blood since the fire. None have been hospitalized or prescribed medication, but officials said it was impossible to predict the long-term health consequences of the fire.

One child’s lead exposure came from a source other than the cathedral: the lead balcony of his family’s apartment. But it illustrates how the fire awakened Parisians to the dangers of lead. It’s unlikely the child would have been tested at all without the catastrophe.

Despite the lead fallout from the fire, experts say tourists should not alter travel plans to one of the most visited cities in the world.

But toxic lead dust remains a problem inside the burned-out cathedral, after tons of molten and airborne lead contaminated its interior. The inside clean-up is a delicate and painstaking process, complicated by French President Emmanuel Macron’s five-year timeline for the restoration to be completed — a deadline many experts say is unrealistic.

Aline Magnien, director of the Historic Monuments Research Laboratory, recently dispatched her team of scientists to figure out how to remove the toxic lead from inside the 855-year-old UNESCO world heritage site without damaging it.

“It’s a race against the clock,” she said. “The lead is a real problem. The cathedral is exceptionally precious. And we don’t have the luxury of time.”

Many experts say the most remarkable news from the recently held NATO summit in London is that NATO, history’s most lasting and effective alliance, for the first time defined China as a strategic challenge. They contend that Beijing aims to dominate the world’s high-tech industry through its technology giant Huawei, forge a military on par with the United States, and connect the majority of the world’s population under its Belt and Road Initiative. VOA’s Jela de Franceschi talks with two former NATO supreme commanders about the geostrategic risks posed by China

Hakki Akdeniz arrived in New York from the Middle East many years ago. Once homeless, he is now a millionaire and has returned to the streets to help those who less fortunate than him.  Anna Nelson has the story narrated by Anna Rice

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un held a meeting of top military officials to discuss boosting the country’s military capability, state news agency reported on Sunday amid heightened concern the North may be about to return to confrontation with Washington.

Kim presided over an enlarged meeting of the ruling Workers’ Party’s Central Military Commission, KCNA news agency said, to discuss steps “to bolster up the overall armed forces of the country … militarily and politically.”

“Also discussed were important issues for decisive improvement of the overall national defense and core matters for the sustained and accelerated development of military capability for self-defense,” KCNA said.

It did not give details on when the meeting was held nor what was decided.

The commission is North Korea’s top military decision-making body. Kim rules the country as its supreme military commander and is the chairman of the commission.

North Korea has set a year-end deadline for the United States to change what it says is a policy of hostility amid a stalemate in efforts to make progress on their pledge to end the North’s nuclear program and establish lasting peace.

Kim and U.S. President Donald Trump have met three times since June 2018, but there has been no substantive progress in dialogue while the North demanded crushing international sanctions be lifted first.

On Saturday, the state media said the United States would “pay dearly” for taking issue with the North’s human rights record and said Washington’s “malicious words” would only aggravate tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

North Korea has also repeatedly called for the United States to drop its “hostile policy” and warned about its “Christmas gift” as the end-year deadline it set for Washington to change its position looms.

Some experts say the reclusive state may be preparing for an intercontinental ballistic missile test that could put it back on a path of confrontation with the United States.

The U.S. envoy for North Korea, Stephen Biegun, has visited South Korea and China in the past week, issuing a public and direct call to North Korea to return to the negotiating table, but there has been no response.

At the end of a difficult year, Queen Elizabeth has posed for photographs with her son Prince Charles, grandson Prince William and great-grandson Prince George in an apparent message about the continuity of the British royal family.

Buckingham Palace released photographs on Saturday of the Queen and the three immediate members of the line of succession as they prepared traditional Christmas puddings.

Prince George, 6, is the focus of attention for his older relatives as he stirs pudding mixture in a bowl.

The palace said the four generations of royals represented a cross-section of people helped by a charity for serving and former members of the armed forces – the Royal British Legion – which the queen has supported since 1952.

The family scene struck a happy note for Queen Elizabeth, 93, after a difficult year.

Over the past 12 months, her husband Prince Philip got a police warning for his involvement in a car crash, grandsons Princes William and Harry publicly fell out and her second son Prince Andrew became more entangled in the furor over his links to disgraced U.S. financier Jeffrey Epstein.

On Friday, 98-year-old Philip was taken to hospital for treatment of an existing condition, Buckingham Palace said.

Lebanon’s new prime minister consulted Saturday with parliamentary blocs, discussing the shape of the future government, and said afterward that legislators all had one concern: to get the country out of its “strangling“ economic crisis. 

Hassan Diab, a university professor and former education minister, will have to steer Lebanon out of its worst economic and financial crisis in decades. He’s also taking office against the backdrop of nationwide protests against the country’s ruling elite. 

“Lebanon is in the intensive care unit and needs efforts” by all sides, from political groups to protesters, Diab said. 

Consultations began a day after scuffles broke out in Beirut and other areas between supporters of outgoing Prime Minister Saad Hariri and Lebanese troops and riot police. The ex-premier’s supporters were protesting Diab’s nomination. At least seven soldiers were injured. 

Urgency

Diab told reporters later that all members of Parliament encouraged him to form a cabinet “as soon as possible.“ Cabinets usually take months to form in Lebanon because of bargaining among rival groups. 

Diab said he hoped to form a government of about 20 ministers made up of independents and technocrats within few weeks. “It’s time to work and we ask God to make us successful,” he said. 

He added that the situation in Lebanon could not stand any delays amid its worst economic and financial crisis since the end of the 1975-90 civil war. 

Lebanese banks have imposed unprecedented capital controls in recent weeks. Thousands have lost their jobs and the economy is expected to contract in 2020. 

Diab began his meetings Saturday at Parliament with Speaker Nabih Berri, then held talks with former prime ministers, including caretaker Hariri. He later met with blocs at the legislature. 

Militant Hezbollah and its allies had previously insisted that a new government consist of politicians and experts, but on Saturday, Diab said “all parties agree with me regarding a government made up of independents and experts, including Hezbollah.” 

Legislator Paula Yacoubian, who backs the protest movement, said Diab told her “the government will be fully made up of independents and that he will step down if there is going to be members of the state’s political parties.” 

She added: “I heard very nice talk similar to what the people have been demanding.” 

Protesters’ demand

The protesters have been demanding a government that does not include members of political parties whom they blame for widespread corruption. Diab said he would meet with the protesters in the coming days, without elaborating. 

Earlier Saturday, Hariri cautioned supporters against violent protests, saying: “The army is ours and police forces are for all Lebanese.” 

Shortly before sunset Saturday, scores of protesters, including Hariri supporters, closed two major intersections in Beirut, demanding that Diab step aside and saying he failed to win wide support from Sunni legislators. 

Saturday’s protests were peaceful, unlike those of the night before, when stones and firecrackers were hurled at security forces. 

The new prime minister won a majority of lawmakers’ votes after receiving backing from powerful Hezbollah and its allies, which have a majority of seats in Parliament. 

However, he lacks the support of major Sunni figures, including the largest Sunni party, headed by Hariri. That’s particularly problematic for Diab, who, as a Sunni, doesn’t have the backing of his own community. And under Lebanon’s sectarian power-sharing agreement, the prime minister must be Sunni. 

The head of Hezbollah’s 12-member bloc, Mohammad Raad, said the group wants a government that preserves what the Lebanese have achieved in “victories during the confrontation with the Israeli enemy and to maintain our national sovereignty, our maritime [oil and gas] wealth and land and to prevent the enemy from undermining its sovereignty and the national dignity.” 

Anti-corruption efforts

A lawmaker from the bloc led by the Shiite Amal group — headed by Berri, the Parliament speaker — said the incoming government should focus on fighting corruption. 

“It should be an emergency government that works on solving the economic, financial, social and banking crisis,“ Anwar al-Khalil said after the meeting with Diab. 

Samir al-Jisr of Hariri’s bloc said they would not take part in Diab’s government. 

Hezbollah’s ally, Gebran Bassil, who heads the largest bloc in Parliament, said the future government “is not Hezbollah’s Cabinet but of all Lebanese and it is not against anyone.” 

Michel Moawad, a harsh critic of the militant group, said Diab told him the new government will not be controlled by “Hezbollah and will not be confrontational.” 

Hezbollah had backed Hariri for prime minister from the start, but the group differed with him over the shape of the new government. 

Lebanon’s sustained, leaderless protests erupted in mid-October and forced Hariri’s resignation within days. But politicians were later unable to agree on a new prime minister. Protests and paralysis have worsened the economic crisis. 

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo denounced Russia and China on Saturday after the two countries vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution on allowing cross-border humanitarian aid to Syria. 
 
“The Russian Federation’s and China’s veto yesterday of a Security Council resolution that allows for humanitarian aid to reach millions of Syrians is shameful,” Pompeo said in a statement. 
 
“To Russia and China, who have chosen to make a political statement by opposing this resolution, you have blood on your hands,” Pompeo said. 
 
The resolution would have extended for one year cross-border aid deliveries from Turkey and Iraq to 4 million Syrian civilians who have been victimized by the Syrian conflict that began in 2011. 
 
The vetoes raised fears that U.N.-funded aid would be prevented from entering the Idlib region and other opposition-controlled areas of Syria unless an alternative deal is reached before the current resolution expires in less than three weeks. 
 
The ongoing assault by the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Russian bombardments have intensified in the jihadist-held Idlib region since December 16, forcing tens of thousands of people from their homes, the U.N. said. 
 
The U.N. has called for an “immediate de-escalation” in Syria and has warned of other mass displacements if the violence continues. 
 
More than 6 million people have been displaced in Syria since the war began, the world’s largest “internally displaced population,” according to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. 
 
The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said airstrikes by the Syrian government and Russia on Saturday killed 12 civilians and wounded dozens of others. 

A company has agreed to pay the state of Georgia $4 million for environmental cleanup of a former chemical plant. 
 
The Brunswick News reported that Honeywell International had filed the settlement with the state Department of Natural Resources in federal court in Atlanta. 
 
The money will cover cleanup costs related to the former LCP Chemicals plant, as well as pay the state for lost fishing opportunities from chemicals polluting nearby marsh and waterways. 
 
The site is now being cleaned up under the federal Superfund law. Honeywell and Georgia Power Co. in 2016 agreed to pay the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency $29 million to clean up 760 acres (308 hectares) of marshland.

Officials are deciding what to do about land at the site. They’ve recommended that no further action be taken and no residential use of the site be allowed. That’s because an extensive amount of contaminated soil has already been removed and local officials plan to zone the site for industrial use. 
 
Later, officials must decide what to do about contaminated groundwater at the site and mercury-containing soil under some buildings. 
 
Pollution remains high enough that people are warned not to eat seafood from the marsh. Estuarine dolphins known to feed in the area have tested positive for unhealthy levels of PCBs and other contaminants that can be traced back to the LCP site. 
 
The state doesn’t yet have a plan for spending the money. Georgia’s natural resources commissioner will select projects after future public input and consultation with Honeywell, local governments and others. 
 
According to the consent decree, the state will create a restoration plan describing how the funds dedicated for natural resources restoration efforts under this section will be used to restore lost recreational uses. 
 
All of the money is to go toward “restoration, rehabilitation or replacement of injured natural resources and/or acquisition of equivalent resources related to lost recreational uses.” 
 
The public can comment on the consent decree and the court has not yet approved it. 

Cameroon’s Parliament approved legislation granting two English-speaking regions in the country special status. But lawmakers representing the Northwest and Southwest regions says the law will not solve the ongoing separatist crisis there.

Aboubakary Abdoulaye, the French-speaking senior vice president of Cameroon’s Senate, the legislature’s upper house, who presided over Friday’s closing plenary session of an extraordinary session of Parliament, said approval of the bill should end the violence over the issue.

“Permit me to particularly point out the special status which the Northwest and the Southwest regions will henceforth be entitled to. It is therefore high time to silence the guns. It is therefore high time to stop the killings, violence and destruction.”

The extraordinary sessions of the upper and lower houses of Parliament were convened a week ago following instructions from Cameroon’s President Paul Biya.

Biya’s bill, which was voted on by both houses, would create assemblies of chiefs, regional assemblies and regional councils for the two English-speaking regions, with each of them having elected presidents, vice presidents, secretaries, public affairs management controllers and three commissioners responsible for what the bill describes as economic, health, social, educational, sports and cultural development affairs. It would also delegate more powers to elected mayors and give them the authority to recruit hospital staff and teachers.

Cavaye Yegui Djibril, speaker of the National Assembly, the lower house of Parliament, says the new law reflects the views of a majority of those consulted by Biya and Prime Minister Joseph Dion Ngute prior to the extraordinary sessions.

He said the special status for the English-speaking Northwest and Southwest regions will consolidate national unity and integration and the will of Cameroonians to live together as an indivisible people. He said the law will boost economic and cultural integration.

French-speaking lawmakers, who constitute more than 80% of the 180-member lower house and 85% of the upper house, largely voted the bill into law. The opposition Social Democratic Front, which has 13 English-speakers out of its 19 members in the lower house and seven English-speakers from the Northwest region in the upper house, refused to back the bill, with some refusing to vote and others voting against it.

SDF spokesperson Denis Kemlemo described the special status by phone to VOA by phone as an insult to English-speaking Cameroonians who want more autonomy in the majority French-speaking country.

“They have deliberative powers and not legislative powers which means that they cannot make laws. This is terrible. Another very vexing clause in that status is that there is no financial autonomy. What goes to the Southwest and Northwest, the special status regions, still depends on the political whims and caprices of the president [of Cameroon] and the government in place at the moment,” he said.

Kemlemo said most English-speakers expect the creation of a federal state recognizing their cultural and linguistic identity. He said the French-speaking regions should constitute one state while the English speakers form another in a federal republic. Kemlemo said the bill, a majority of the English-speaking lawmakers refused to vote for or voted against, cannot solve the crisis in the English-speaking regions.

The special status for the English-speaking regions was proposed during the so-called grand national dialogue called by Biya last Sept. 30 through Oct. 4 to propose solutions to the crisis in the country’s English-speaking regions.

Separatist leaders invited to the national dialogue refused to take part. On social media, they have called the special status a non-event, indicating that they want nothing but total independence for the English-speaking regions.

Violence erupted in 2017 in Cameroon’s English-speaking regions when teachers and lawyers protested alleged discrimination at the hands of the French-speaking majority. The crisis has killed at least 3,000 people and displaced over 500,000, according to the United Nations.

The U.N. Human Rights Office warns that Poland’s new law, which makes it easier to fire judges, risks further undermining the independence of the judiciary in that country. The law, which had been proposed by Poland’s ruling Law and Justice Party, was passed Friday by the country’s lower house of parliament.

U.N. officials say the law puts further constraints on the independence of judges by restricting their fundamental rights to freedom of association and freedom of expression.  

U.N. Human Rights Office spokesperson Rupert Colville says judges should not be politicized and should not bring politics into the court. Nevertheless, he told VOA, just like everybody else, judges have a right to hold their own opinions and seek membership in associations of their choosing.  He noted the new law seriously restricts these activities.

“Of course, the overall effect of that is really a very chilling effect on the judiciary. It is so restrictive that it may impact very much on their willingness to get involved in important and legitimate legal arguments and discussions,” he said.  

Colville said the law also may prevent judges from fulfilling their legal obligations under European Union law and even from applying EU law properly.  He added it also runs astray of international human rights law.

“According to the Human Rights Committee, for example, the requirement of independence in Article 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights refers in particular to the procedure and qualifications for the appointment of judges, guarantees relating to their security of tenure until the mandatory retirement age will expire their term of office,” Colville said.

Poland was elected to the 47-member U.N. Human Rights Council for a two-year term beginning 2020.  As an incoming member, Colville said Poland is expected to set a high standard of compliance with international human rights law.  He said it is expected to uphold human rights and fundamental freedoms around the world.

The new law now goes to the Senate, however, the upper house cannot block the legislation, only delay it.  

A court in Pakistan Saturday sentenced a 33-year-old scholar, accused of blasphemy, to death after a trial that lasted six years and was mired by delays due to multiple changes in judges and the murder of a defense lawyer.
 
Junaid Hafeez was charged with insulting the religious beliefs of Muslims of Pakistan, claiming the Quran was derived from Mesopotamian folk tales, and keeping material in his computer that included derogatory remarks about the prophet of Islam.
 
The initial police report also accused him of running two Facebook groups that posted blasphemous content.
 
His family and lawyers claimed the charges against him are fabricated and a result of politics at the university where he was teaching as a visiting lecturer.
 
Hafeez’s father told German news outlet Deutsche Welle that his son was disliked by a conservative Islamist student organization at Bahauddin Zakariya University in Multan, one of the biggest cities in the southern Punjab region, because of his liberal views.

“In 2013, the university advertised a post for a lecturer. The members of the Islami Jamiat-e-Talaba organization told him to not apply for the job as they wanted their own people to get it,” Hafeez-ul Naseer told Deutsche Welle earlier this year, adding that fake blasphemy charges were logged when his son refused.

The independent nonprofit group Human Rights Commission of Pakistan expressed dismay at Saturday’s verdict, saying, “In five years, at least eight judges have heard Mr Hafeez’s case, making a fair trial virtually impossible.”

On the other hand, the prosecutor, Chaudhry Ziaur Rehman, said the case was decided on merit.

“Three students of the English department and a Ph.D. professor gave testimony as to how the defendant committed blasphemy,” he said.

Hafeez, who was indicted in 2014, was kept in jail in solitary confinement because of threats to his life. The issue was so sensitive in religiously conservative Pakistan that even his trial was held inside the jail.  
 
In addition, lawyers defending Hafeez faced serious threats. In 2014, defense counsel Rashid Rehman was threatened during a hearing of the trial in front of the judge.
 
One month later, he was murdered.
 
One of the lawyers, Zulfiqar Sidhu, who publicly threatened Rehman in a press conference in 2014, aided the prosecution in this case.
 
Human rights groups from around the world have demanded swift a remedy for Hafeez.
 
“Junaid’s lengthy trial has gravely affected his mental and physical health, endangered him and his family and exemplifies the misuse of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws. The authorities must release him immediately and unconditionally and drop all charges against him,” Amnesty International said in a statement issued in September.
 
Multiple governments from around the world, including the United States government, also demanded relief for him.
 
“In Pakistan, Professor Junaid Hafeez remains in solitary confinement on unsubstantiated charges of blasphemy,” U.S. Vice President Mike Pence told a religious freedom summit in Washington earlier this year.  
 
A Fulbright scholar, Hafeez briefly attended Jackson State University in the U.S. state of Mississippi before returning to Pakistan in 2010. He was often accused by Islamist student groups on campus of being too liberal.
 
Human rights activists claim that blasphemy accusations in Pakistan are often misused to target religious minorities, threaten, blackmail, or settle other scores.
 
Pakistan’s Supreme Court, in a judgment last year acquitting a Christian woman, Aasia Bibi, in a blasphemy case said fake accusations against were leveled against her after a fight between her and some Muslim women.
 
The issue is so explosive that scores of people in Pakistan have been murdered by individuals or lynched by a mob over mere accusations of blasphemy over the years.  
 
In 2017, an angry mob in a university in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province not only killed a student, Mashaal Khan, over suspicion of blasphemy, but defiled and dragged his body around. Police could not find any evidence of blasphemy against him, but his friends claimed he was a frequent critic of the university administration over mismanagement.
 
In 2011, a powerful political figure, Salman Taseer, was gunned down by his own bodyguard for supporting a Christian woman, Aasia Bibi, facing a blasphemy trial, and demanding a change in the country’s blasphemy laws.
 
The gunman Mumtaz Qadri was hailed as a hero by many in the country and dozens of lawyers were willing to fight his case free of charge.
 

Three people died during clashes between demonstrators and police in northern India on Saturday, raising the nationwide death toll in protests against a new citizenship law to 17.

O.P. Singh, the chief of police in Uttar Pradesh state, said the latest deaths have increased the death toll in the state to nine. “The number of fatalities may increase,” Singh said.

He did not give further details on the latest deaths.

Police said that over 600 people in the state have been taken into custody since Friday as part of “preventive action.”

Protesters are angered by a new law that allows Hindus, Christians and other religious minorities who are in India illegally to become citizens if they can show they were persecuted because of their religion in Muslim-majority Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan. The law does not apply to Muslims.

President Donald Trump on Friday celebrated the launch of Space Force, the first new military service in more than 70 years.

In signing the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act that includes Space Force, Trump claimed a victory for one of his top national security priorities just two days after being impeached by the House.

It is part of a $1.4 trillion government spending package — including the Pentagon’s budget — that provides a steady stream of financing for Trump’s U.S.-Mexico border fence and reverses unpopular and unworkable automatic spending cuts to defense and domestic programs.

“Space is the world’s new war-fighting domain,” Trump said Friday during a signing ceremony at Joint Base Andrews just outside Washington. “Among grave threats to our national security, American superiority in space is absolutely vital. And we’re leading, but we’re not leading by enough, and very shortly we’ll be leading by a lot.”

Later Friday, as he flew to his Florida resort aboard Air Force One, Trump signed legislation that will keep the entire government funded through Sept. 30.

Space Force has been a reliable applause line at Trump’s political rallies, but for the military it’s seen more soberly as an affirmation of the need to more effectively organize for the defense of U.S. interests in space — especially satellites used for navigation and communication. Space Force is not designed or intended to put combat troops in space.

Defense Secretary Mark Esper told reporters Friday, “Our reliance on space-based capabilities has grown dramatically, and today outer space has evolved into a warfighting domain of its own.” Maintaining dominance in space, he said, will now be Space Force’s mission.

Space has become increasingly important to the U.S. economy and to everyday life. The Global Positioning System, for example, provides navigation services to the military as well as civilians. Its constellation of about two dozen orbiting satellites is operated by the 50th Space Wing from an operations center at Schriever Air Force Base in Colorado.

In a report last February, the Pentagon asserted that China and Russia have embarked on major efforts to develop technologies that could allow them to disrupt or destroy American and allied satellites in a crisis or conflict.

“The United States faces serious and growing challenges to its freedom to operate in space,” the report said.

When he publicly directed the Pentagon in June 2018 to begin working toward a Space Force, Trump spoke of the military space mission as part of a broader vision of achieving American dominance in space.

Trump got his Space Force, which many Democrats opposed. But it is not in the “separate but equal” design he wanted.

Instead of being its own military department, like the Navy, Army and Air Force, the Space Force will be administered by the Secretary of the Air Force. The law requires that the four-star general who will lead Space Force, with the title of Chief of Space Operations, will be a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but not in Space Force’s first year. Trump said its leader will be Air Force Gen. John W. Raymond, the commander of U.S. Space Command.

Space Force is the first new military service since the Air Force was spun off from the Army in 1947. Space Force will be the provider of forces to U.S. Space Command, a separate organization established earlier this year as the overseer of the military’s space operations.

The division of responsibilities and assets between Space Force and Space Command has not been fully worked out.

Space Force will be tiny, compared to its sister services. It will initially have about 200 people and a first-year budget of $40 million. The military’s largest service, the Army, has about 480,000 active-duty soldiers and a budget of about $181 billion. The Pentagon spends about $14 billion a year on space operations, most of which is in the Air Force budget.

Kaitlyn Johnson, a space policy expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, sees the creation of Space Force as an important move but doubts it will prove as momentous as Trump administration officials suggest. Vice President Mike Pence has touted Space Force as “the next great chapter in the history of our armed forces.” And Esper earlier this week called this an “epic moment” in recent American military history.

Johnson says Democrats’ opposition to making Space Force a separate branch of the military means it could be curtailed or even dissolved if a Democrat wins the White House next November.

“I think that’s a legitimate concern” for Space Force advocates, she said. “Just because it’s written into law doesn’t mean it can’t be unwritten,” she said, adding, “Because of the politics that have started to surround the Space Force, I worry that that could damage its impact before it even has time to sort itself out” within the wider military bureaucracy.

Some in Congress had been advocating for a Space Force before Trump entered the White House, but his push for legislation gave the proposal greater momentum.

Trump’s first defense secretary, Jim Mattis, was initially cool to the idea, arguing against adding new layers of potentially expensive bureaucracy. Mattis’ successor, Esper, has been supportive of Space Force. In September he said it will “allow us to develop a cadre of warriors who are appropriately organized, trained and equipped to deter aggression and, if necessary, to fight and win in space.” He added, “The next big fight may very well start in space, and the United States military must be ready.”

Near-simultaneous attacks believed to have been carried out by drones hit three government-run oil and gas installations in central Syria, state TV and the Oil Ministry said Saturday.

No one claimed responsibility for the attacks, which targeted the Homs oil refinery — one of only two in the country — as well as two natural gas facilities in different parts of Homs province.

Syria has suffered fuel shortages since earlier this year amid Western sanctions blocking imports, and because most of the country’s oil fields are controlled by Kurdish-led fighters in the country’s east.

State TV said it believes the attacks were carried out by drones and happened at the same time. It said a fire at the Homs oil refinery was soon put under control. The report said the Rayan gas facility and a third installation, also in Homs province, were hit.

Syria’s Oil Ministry said the attacks damaged some “production units” in the facilities. It said fires were being fought, and that repairs were already underway in some places.

The city of Homs and its suburbs have been fully under Syrian government control since 2017. However, some parts of the province near the border with Jordan remain in rebel hands.

In June, sabotage attacks damaged five underwater pipelines off the Mediterranean coastal town of Banias in Tartous province.

Syria’s oil imports dropped in October 2018 and shortages began in early 2019, largely the result of tighter Western sanctions on Syria and renewed U.S. sanctions on key Syrian ally Iran.

Before the Syrian conflict erupted in 2011, the country exported around half of the 350,000 barrels of oil it produced per day. Now its production is down to around 24,000 barrels a day, covering only a fraction of domestic needs.

In September, a drone and missile attack in Saudi Arabia hit the world’s largest crude oil processing plant, dramatically cutting into global oil supplies. Saudi Arabia says “Iranian weaponry” was used. Iran denies its weapons were involved.

House Democrats asked for documents from federal prosecutors and Florida law enforcement officials on Friday as part of a probe into how financier Jeffrey Epstein received a secret plea deal more than a decade ago after he was accused of molesting underage girls.

The House Committee on Oversight and Reform sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General William Barr, asking for all emails about the plea deal and how victims should have been notified.

Earlier this year, a federal judge ruled Epstein’s victims should have been consulted under federal law about the deal.

Epstein reached the deal in 2008 with then-Miami U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta’s office to end the federal probe that could have landed him in prison for life. Epstein instead pleaded guilty to lesser state charges, spent 13 months in jail, paid financial settlements to victims and registered as a sex offender.

Acosta was appointed Labor Secretary by President Donald Trump, but he resigned in July amid renewed scrutiny of the secret plea deal.

The House committee asked for the documents by the first week in January.

The House committee also sent a letter to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement Commissioner Richard Swearingen, asking for documents related to its investigation into the deal and Epstein’s work-release arrangement at Palm Beach County’s jail.

Two spokeswomen for the FDLE, Florida’s top law enforcement agency, didn’t return emails seeking comment.

During his 13-month stay at the jail, Epstein spent most days at his office. His driver would pick him and a guard up in the morning and he would spend the day working and meeting with visitors, before returning to the jail to sleep. Epstein was also able to visit his Palm Beach mansion, despite restrictions on home visits.

Epstein, 66, killed himself in his New York City jail cell in August after federal agents arrested him on new sex trafficking charges.