In allowing Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to walk out of jail last week, Brazil’s Supreme Court has blown open a legal labyrinth that could see the leftist former president return to prison just as easily as run for election again.

The second chamber of the Supreme Court will soon hear an appeal from Lula’s defense team that Sergio Moro, the judge in the wide-ranging “Car Wash” corruption probe who secured Lula’s conviction and who is now justice minister in far-right President Jair Bolsonaro’s cabinet, did not act impartially.

The Supreme Court on Friday ruled that a person can only be imprisoned once all appropriate avenues of appeal are exhausted, so-called “res judicata”, which overturned the court’s opinion three years ago that convicted criminals face mandatory imprisonment if they lose their first appeal.

Seventy-four year old Lula had been imprisoned for 19 months on corruption convictions carrying a nearly nine-year sentence.

He is also facing several other corruption charges.

If the Supreme Court’s second chamber annuls Lula’s conviction, he will once again be eligible to run for office, potentially opening the way for him to stand as the Workers’ Party (PT) candidate in the 2022 presidential election.

On the other hand, if he loses an appeal relating to one of his other charges known as the “Atibaia” case, Lula could return to prison. Following last week’s Supreme Court ruling, lawmakers have advocated speeding up a constitutional amendment reinstating automatic jail time for convicts who lose their first appeal.

Both the Lower house and Senate are currently analyzing constitutional amendments on this subject. Because they take longer to go through the legislative process than ordinary bills, nothing is likely to happen until next year.

The case against Moro and his alleged political bias in Lula’s conviction had been stalled since December last year, when justices Edson Fachin and Carmen Lucia took a stand against it and justice Gilmar Mendes requested a review of the case.

“Annuling (Lula’s) conviction, if that’s what eventually transpires as a result of (Moro’s role), will lead to a new trial. That could happen,” justice Mendes said in an exclusive interview with Reuters in August.

“It is important to do this analysis in a detached way. The media became very oppressive. The right verdict is not just a guilty verdict. This is not correct. We have to recognize that we owe Lula a fair trial,” Mendes said at the time.

 

Protections for 660,000 immigrants are on the line at the Supreme Court.

The justices are hearing arguments Tuesday on the Trump administration’s bid to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that shields immigrants brought to the U.S. as children from deportation and allows them to work in the United States legally.

The program was begun under President Barack Obama. The Trump administration announced in September 2017 that it would end DACA protections, but lower federal courts have stepped in to keep the program alive.

Now it’s up to the Supreme Court to say whether the way the administration has gone about trying to wind down DACA complies with federal law.

A decision is expected by June 2020, amid the presidential election campaign.

Some DACA recipients who are part of the lawsuit are expected to be in the courtroom for the arguments. People have been camping out in front of the court since the weekend for a chance to grab some of the few seats that are available to the general public. Chief Justice John Roberts has rejected a request for live or same-day audio of the arguments. The court will post the audio on its website .

A second case being argued Tuesday tests whether the parents of a Mexican teenager who was killed by a U.S. border patrol agent in a shooting across the southern border in El Paso, Texas, can sue the agent in American courts.

If the court agrees with the administration in the DACA case, Congress could put the program on surer legal footing. But the absence of comprehensive immigration reform from Congress is what prompted Obama to create DACA in 2012, giving people two-year renewable reprieves from the threat of deportation while also allowing them to work.

Federal courts struck down an expansion of DACA and the creation of similar protections for undocumented immigrants whose children are U.S. citizens.

Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric was a key part of his presidential campaign in 2016, and his administration pointed to the invalidation of the expansion and the threat of a lawsuit against DACA by Texas and other Republican-led states as reasons to bring the program to a halt.

Young immigrants, civil rights groups, universities and Democratic-led cities and states sued to block the administration. They persuaded courts in New York, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., that the administration had been “arbitrary and capricious” in its actions, in violation of a federal law that requires policy changes be done in an orderly way.

Indeed, the high court case is not over whether DACA itself is legal, but instead the administration’s approach to ending it.

A Los Angeles gallery is preparing to auction more than 1,500 rare items from Disneyland and Walt Disney World, dating back to the theme park’s founding in the 1950s.

Mike Van Eaton, co-owner of Van Eaton Galleries, said on Monday that the auction traces the history of the famed park, featuring items such as the original 1953 prospectus that Walt Disney used to pitch to financiers ahead of the park’s 1955 opening in southern California, an original map of Disneyland, and other signage.

There will also be familiar characters up for sale, including animatronic birds from the Enchanted Tiki Room, a bronze statue of Mickey Mouse, and an “It’s a Small World” animatronic doll.

The animatronic birds are estimated to sell between $80,000 and $100,000, while the doll is estimated to sell for between $15,000 and $20,000.

A Star Jets original attraction vehicle is expected to sell for $10,000 to $15,000. The Walt Disney-signed opening day guidebook is estimated to sell somewhere between $7,000 and $9,000.

The History of Disneyland and Walt Disney World auction will be held in Los Angeles over two days starting on Dec. 7.

 

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter was admitted to an Atlanta hospital on Monday for a procedure to relieve brain pressure from bleeding caused by recent falls, the Carter Center said in a statement.

Carter, 95, the country’s oldest living president, was admitted to Emory University Hospital about three weeks after falling at his home in Plains, Georgia. He was released from the hospital a few days after that accident.

A previous fall earlier in October required stitches to Carter’s face. In May, the former president broke his hip, also at home, requiring him to undergo surgery.

The procedure to relieve pressure on his brain was scheduled for Tuesday morning, the Carter Center said, adding that he was “resting comfortably,” and that his wife, Rosalynn, 92, was with him.

Carter, a Democrat, was the 39th president of the United States, serving one term from 1977 until 1981. He was defeated in his re-election bid by Republican Ronald Reagan in 1980.

Carter, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his humanitarian work, has lived longer after leaving the White House than any former president in U.S. history.

Cuba is in party mode this week, despite tough economic times worsened by tighter U.S. sanctions, as it prepares for its first state visit by a Spanish king, to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the founding of Havana, the capital.

Spain’s King Felipe and Queen Letizia arrived late on Monday for a three-day stay to commemorate the Cuban capital, founded by a Spanish conquistador on Nov. 16, 1519 and considered one of the architectural jewels of Latin America.

The royal trip also underscores Europe’s rapprochement with Cuba’s Communist government, even as the United States doubles down on a decades-old policy of sanctions.

Events to mark Havana’s anniversary include the inauguration of renovated landmarks, concerts, the illumination of city fortifications and a rare fireworks display over the Malecon seafront boulevard.

“We Cubans like to party,” said trade union worker Miryelis Hernandez, 32. “Even if we are feeling low, we know we have to pick ourselves up, so it’s good Havana is celebrating its 500 years and there is a party.”

The royal couple will tour Havana’s old historic center, a UNESCO World Heritage site boasting an eclectic mix of colonial, Art Deco and other styles that has been undergoing a slow facelift since the 1990s.

Cuba focused more on building infrastructure in the impoverished countryside than on maintaining its cities in the early decades of Fidel Castro’s leftist 1959 revolution, allowing its punishing tropical climate to wreak havoc.

“Havana luckily conserved its valuable architectural patrimony, unlike other Latin American cities that lost a good part of their historic centers’ patrimony due to real estate development,” said Cuban urban planning specialist Gina Rey.

“But paradoxically this patrimony is very deteriorated, and (renovation) efforts have not been enough so far.”

The only big recent changes to Havana’s urban landscape are the construction of a handful of hulking luxury hotels.

One of the main buildings on show for the celebrations will be the Capitol, a neoclassical gem built in 1929 and inspired by Washington’s Capitol.

Reflecting a new geopolitical order, the gilded roof of its cupola was restored with the help of Russia.

Just blocks away, though, are buildings that have collapsed or crumbling, such as the former Hotel Surf on the Malecon, clad in blue and salmon pink ceramic tiles and divided into apartments after the revolution.

“It’s good they are doing restoration work,” said resident Mario Macias, pointing to rotten beams and holes in the ceiling where rain dripped through. “But maybe they should have started a long time ago.”

 

The United States government is applauding the resignation of Bolivian President Evo Morales and rejecting assertions by several countries, including Mexico, that he was forced out by a coup.

U.S. President Donald Trump, in a statement, calls Morales’ departure “a significant moment for democracy in the Western Hemisphere. After nearly 14 years and his recent attempt to override the Bolivian constitution and the will of the people, Morales’s departure preserves democracy and paves the way for the Bolivian people to have their voices heard.”

The White House statement adds that the events in Bolivia “send a strong signal to the illegitimate regimes in Venezuela and Nicaragua that democracy and the will of the people will always prevail. We are now one step closer to a completely democratic, prosperous, and free Western Hemisphere.”

A senior State Department official told reporters Monday afternoon on a conference call that Washington does not consider the resignation of Morales to have resulted from a coup, but rather from an expression of the Bolivian people fed up with government ignoring their will.

“There were protesters from all walks of life,” said a senior administration official, denying that it was mainly the Bolivian middle class on the streets demanding Morales’ ouster. “It’s probably a little bit simplistic to boil this down to class or perhaps ethnicity in a complex set of circumstances.”

A senior U.S. official added that “there’s been too much violence on both sides.”

But, Mexico is describing the ouster of Morales as a military coup and on Monday granted his request for asylum, according to Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard. Some of Morales’ ministers and senior officials who stepped down are currently seeking refuge in the Mexican ambassador’s residence.

At the request of United States, as well other countries, including Brazil, Canada, Colombia and Peru, the Organization of American States is to hold a special meeting on the Bolivian situation on Tuesday afternoon.

The Morales presidency abruptly ended Sunday, hours after he had accepted calls for a new election by an OAS team that found a “heap of observed irregularities” in the Oct. 20 election.

The delayed results of the balloting, which fueled suspicion of vote rigging, showed Morales getting just enough votes to avoid a runoff against a united opposition trying to prevent him from winning a fourth term.

Morales on Monday called on the opposition to keep the peace.

Mesa y Camacho, discriminadores y conspiradores, pasarán a la historia como racistas y golpistas. Que asuman su responsabilidad de pacificar al país y garanticen la estabilidad política y convivencia pacífica de nuestro pueblo. El mundo y bolivianos patriotas repudian el golpe

— Evo Morales Ayma (@evoespueblo) November 11, 2019

According to the Bolivian constitution, the vice president is next in line to take power when the president steps down. The head of the country’s Senate is third in line, but both of them, as well as a number of other top ministers, resigned shortly after Morales, leaving a power vacuum.

Opposition leader Jeanine Anez said Sunday she would assume the interim presidency of Bolivia, but Congress must first be convened to vote her into power.

The U.S. government is calling for Bolivia’s legislative assembly to quickly convene to accept Morales’ resignation and follow the constitution to fill the political vacuum.

“What’s important is to reconstitute the civilian government,” said a senior State Department official.

Morales, the first member of Bolivia’s indigenous population to become president, announced his resignation on television shortly after the country’s military chief, General Williams Kaliman, called on him to quit to allow the restoration of peace and stability. 

Bolivian opposition leader Carlos Mesa credits a popular uprising, not the military, for forcing Morales to step aside.

The military made a decision not to deploy in the streets because “they didn’t want to take lives,” according to Mesa.

Mexico is describing the ouster of Morales as a military coup and offering him political asylum. Some of his ministers and senior officials who stepped down are currently seeking refuge in the Mexican ambassador’s residence.

“What happened yesterday is a step back for the whole continent,” Mexican Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard said. “We’re very worried.”

A high-profile freshman opposition member of the U.S. House is also rejecting the Trump administration’s characterization of events in Bolivia.

“What’s happening right now in Bolivia isn’t democracy, it’s a coup,” tweeted Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Monday. 

What’s happening right now in Bolivia isn’t democracy, it’s a coup.

The people of Bolivia deserve free, fair, and peaceful elections – not violent seizures of power.

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) November 11, 2019

Egyptian lawmakers said Monday that the late President Mohammed Morsi was treated well in prison, just days after a U.N. report attributed Morsi’s death to “brutal” conditions inside the country’s jails.

Alaa Abed, head of the Parliament’s human rights committee, told The Associated Press that allegations of Morsi’s mistreatment were an attempt to slander the government.

As defense minister, Egypt’s President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi led the 2013 military overthrow of Morsi in 2013. Morsi collapsed and died in a courtroom in June.

“They are talking about Morsi, and they are trying to tell the world in a way or another that Morsi died due to prison conditions,” he said. “But I had visited Morsi several times … and he was staying in a big room, he had all his medications, food, drinks and everything he needed.”

Morsi, who hailed from the now-outlawed Muslim Brotherhood group, became Egypt’s first democratically elected president in 2012, a year after the Arab Spring uprisings. But his one-year rule proved divisive, sparking massive nationwide protests in 2013.

U.N. rights experts said Friday that while in jail he was denied medical care, lost vision in one eye and suffered recurrent diabetic comas. The experts concluded that the conditions he endured “could amount to a state-sanctioned arbitrary killing,” according to the statement by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

The U.N. report warned that thousands more prisoners in Egypt are at risk from “gross violations.”

In response, Egyptian authorities organized a carefully scripted trip for journalists to Cairo’s Tora prisons complex on Monday, along with dozens of celebrities and pro-government TV hosts.

Speaking during the prison visit, another lawmaker, Mostafa Bakry, decried the U.N. report’s findings. He said Morsi received “very good treatment, and everything that’s being said is just allegations and lies, the aim of which is mainly political.”

El-Sissi’s government is scheduled to undergo its Universal Periodic Review at the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva on Wednesday.

Gen. Ashraf Ezz el-Arab, head of prisons department at the interior ministry, said the trip came “in response to critics and rumors designed to portray a fabricated, untrue mental image.”

Prison authorities presented reporters with scenes of prisoners playing sports on a green lawn, as well as meals of meat and rice being prepared in the canteen. The trip also included a visit to an animal farm inside the complex that houses cows and ostriches.

Reporters however were not allowed to visit the overcrowded cells described by former detainees, in which their feet are crammed into each other’s faces and where their few belongings must be hung from the walls.

Rights activists say conditions in Egypt’s prisons are catastrophic, with allegations of torture and beatings. These groups say tens of thousands are currently locked away, often for months or years without charge.

A former prisoner told AP in October last year about the feeling of claustrophobia he experienced while sharing a 6- by 15-meter (yard) cell with nearly 30 other inmates — Islamists, jihadis, liberal leftists and, he said, people who were simply at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Prominent rights lawyer Gamal Eid said the trip was “an attempt to glitz up the deteriorating conditions of the prisons.”

At the dawn of the 20th century, a railway was born. It connected Austria and Germany with a major port in the Adriatic Sea. The railway carried critical World War I supplies, but it fell out of favor by the 1940s. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi takes us on a coal-powered ride on a train that tourism may just save.

Recently, a film studio in Albuquerque, New Mexico, signed a billion dollar contract with entertainment giant Netflix and a $500 million deal with NBC Universal Studios.  These agreements with Albuquerque Studios come on the heels of New Mexico granting enhanced tax incentives to production companies that film in the state and hire local talent.  One of the seedbeds for such talent is the Central New Mexico Community College. VOA’s Penelope Poulou visited the school and has this report

Lebanon’s central bank, seeking to shore up battered confidence in the financial system amid the worst economic crisis in decades, said on Monday bank deposits are secure and it had the ability to preserve the stability of the pegged Lebanese pound.

In a televised news conference, governor, Riad Salameh, said capital controls were not on the table because Lebanon depended on free movement of money, adding that the central bank had taken steps to safeguard deposits and there would be no haircut.

Already in deep economic turmoil, Lebanon has been plunged deeper into trouble since Oct. 17 when an unprecedented wave of protests against the ruling elite erupted across the country and prompted the resignation of Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri.

Lebanon is in urgent need of a new government to enact emergency economic measures. The head of the powerful, Iran-backed Shi’ite group Hezbollah, said he wanted to avoid public  discussion of closed-door talks over the new government, saying he wanted to leave the door open for an agreement.

Three senior sources told Reuters on Sunday the talks were still deadlocked.

A big part of Lebanon’s economic crisis stems from a slowdown of capital inflows which has led to a scarcity of U.S. dollars and spawned a black market where the Lebanese pound has weakened below its official pegged rate.

Since reopening on Nov. 1 after a two-week closure, banks have been seeking to stave off capital flight by blocking most transfers abroad and imposing curbs on hard-currency withdrawals.

Referring to these restrictions, Salameh said the central bank had asked banks to review what he described as somewhat “conservative” steps taken because of instability that was prevailing at the time banks had reopened.

Salameh said the banks would meet immediately to review and implement the central bank’s request. He said that banks managing their liquidity did “not mean the solvency of the banking sector was reduced or poses dangers to deposits.”

Salameh said the central bank was allowing banks to borrow dollars without limits at 20 percent interest to secure depositors’ needs on condition such funds were not sent abroad.

“The mechanism we put in place to protect the depositor is through preventing any bank from failing,” he said.

In a further potential disruption to bank operations, a union representing bank staff urged them to strike, starting on Tuesday, because of security concerns stemming from protests at banks and depositors demanding withdrawal of their funds.

Stagnant local economy

Salameh said the central bank hoped for the formation of a new government as soon as possible. The central bank would seek to lower interest rates through liquidity management, he added.

“We are today in a new phase,” Salameh said. “We will preserve the stability of the exchange rate of the pound, this stability is present,” he said, noting that banks were still dealing dollars at the official pegged rate.

The difference between the official rate and that on the parallel market was due to “supply and demand”, he said. The central bank would not go to exchange dealers to give them dollars to preserve the official rate, he said.

This “phenonmeon” would retreat when there is more “relief” in the situation, he said.

Salameh said a round of so-called “financial engineering” in July had led to a $2 billion increase in its reserves, but the “exceptional circumstances” in Lebanon today did not allow for financial engineering and instead required liquidity management.

One dollar bought 1,800 pounds or more on Friday compared to 1,740 on Thursday, two market sources said. The pegged rate is 1,507.5 pounds. Banks on Monday were closed for a holiday.

Salameh said the central bank had a usable foreign cash reserve of $30 billion and total assets of $38 billion.
A stagnant local economy and a slowdown in cash injections from Lebanese abroad have put pressure on the central bank’s foreign currency reserves in recent years. Recent months have seen the emergence of a parallel exchange market for dollars.

The build-up of economic and political pressure has made dollars harder to come by and weakened the pound against the dollar on the parallel exchange market with a discount to the official two-decade old peg around 20%.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said fighting corruption in Lebanon must be through the judicial system. He called on judges to bring forward corruption cases including against state officials, even if they were Hezbollah officials.    

He also accused Washington of seeking to deepen Lebanon’s economic woes, including through sanctions and preventing Chinese, Iranian and other firms from investing in Lebanon.

 

There’s a building boom on the Tibetan plateau, one of the world’s last remote places. Mountains long crowned by garlands of fluttering prayer flags are newly topped with sprawling steel power lines. At night, the illuminated signs of Sinopec gas stations cast a red glow over newly built highways.

Ringed by the world’s tallest mountain ranges, the region long known as “the rooftop of the world” is now in the crosshairs of China’s latest modernization push, marked by multiplying skyscrapers and expanding high-speed rail lines.

But there’s a difference: This time, the Chinese government wants to set limits on the region’s growth in order to implement its own version of one of the U.S.’s proudest legacies – a national park system.

In August, policymakers and scientists from China, the United States and other countries convened in Xining, capital of the country’s Qinghai province, to discuss China’s plans to create a unified system with clear standards for limiting development and protecting ecosystems.

China has previously undertaken vast resettlement programs to clear land for large infrastructure projects such as Three Gorges Dam, which left many farmers in new homes without suitable agricultural fields or access to other livelihoods.

But in developing the national parks, the government is giving conservation-related jobs to at least a swath of people living in the Qinghai pilot park – called Sanjiangyuan – to stay and work on their land. The “One Family, One Ranger” program hires one person per family for 1,800 yuan a month ($255) to perform such tasks as collecting trash and monitoring for poaching.

Kunchok Jangtse is a Tibetan herder who earns money cleaning up rubbish through the program. He has an additional volunteer position installing and maintaining motion-activated camera traps, which help scientists monitor endangered species in Qinghai.

“Our religion is connected with wild animals, because wild animals have a consciousness and can feel love and compassion,” he says.

From his main work raising livestock and collecting caterpillar fungus for folk medicines, Kunchok Jangtse says he can make about 20,000 yuan ($2,830) annually. He is grateful for the additional income from the ranger program, but hopes his main livelihood won’t be impeded – and that he won’t eventually be forced to leave.

“I’m not a highly educated person, and I am very concerned it may bring many difficulties in my life if I would switch my job and move to another place,” he says.

The creation of protected areas is not a new idea in China. In fact, roughly 15% of the country’s land already is assigned to a bewildering patchwork of local and regional parks. But many existing reserves are simply parks on paper, run by various agencies without enforceable guidelines.

In contrast, the national parks system is being designed from the ground-up to incorporate global best practices and new science.

Ouyang Zhiyun, deputy director at the Chinese Academy of Science’s Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, was the lead scientist for a recent sweeping “national ecosystems assessment”that used 20,000 satellite images and 100,000 field surveys to examine how China’s land changed between 2000 and 2010.

Now Ouyang is drawing upon that work to map priority areas for conservation and advise park planners, focusing on habitats of endangered species that live only in China.

“If we lose it here, it’s gone,” he says.

The first parks to be formally incorporated into China’s national park system will showcase the country’s vast and varied landscapes and ecosystems – from the granite and sandstone cliffs of Wuyishan in eastern China to the lush forests of southwestern Sichuan province, home to giant pandas, to the boreal forests of northeastern China, where endangered Siberian tigers roam.

When it comes to ecology, few countries have more to lose, or to save, than China.

“A huge country like China literally determines the fate of species,” says Duke University’s Pimm.

 

Authorities declared a state of emergency across a broad swath of Australia’s east coast on Monday, urging residents in high risk areas to evacuate ahead of looming “catastrophic” fire conditions.

Bushfires burning across New South Wales (NSW) and Queensland states have already killed three people and destroyed more than 150 homes. Officials expect adverse heat and wind conditions to peak at unprecedented levels on Tuesday.

Bushfires are a common and deadly threat in Australia’s hot, dry summers but the current severe outbreak, well before the summer peak, has caught many by surprise.

“Everybody has to be on alert no matter where you are and everybody has to be assume the worst and we cannot allow complacency to creep in,” NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian told reporters in Sydney.

The country’s most populous city has been designated at “catastrophic fire danger” for Tuesday, when temperatures as high as 37 degrees Celsius (98.6 degrees Fahrenheit) are forecast to combine with powerful winds for potentially deadly conditions. It is the first time Sydney has been rated at that level since new fire danger ratings were introduced in 2009.

Home to more than 5 million people, Sydney is ringed by large areas of bushland, much of which remains tinder dry following little rain across the country’s east coast in recent months.

“Tomorrow is about protecting life, protecting property and ensuring everybody is safe as possible,” Berejiklian said.

Lawmakers said the statewide state of emergency – giving firefighters broad powers to control government resources, force evacuations, close roads and shut down utilities – would remain in place for seven days.

On Monday afternoon, the fire service authorized use of the Standard Emergency Warning Signal, an alarm and verbal warning that will be played on radio and television stations every hour.

NSW Rural Fire Service (RFS) Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons urged people to evacuate before conditions worsened, warning that new fires can begin up to 20km (12 miles) ahead of established fires.

“Relocate while things are calm without the pressure or anxiety of fires bearing down the back door,” he said.

Authorities stressed that even fireproofed homes will not be able to withstand catastrophic conditions, which Fitzsimmons described as “when lives are lost, it’s where people die.”

More than 100 schools will be closed on Tuesday. On Monday afternoon, rescue services were moving large animals from high risk areas, while health officials warned that air quality across NSW will worsen as winds blow smoke from the current mid-north coast bushfires south.

The fires have already had a devastating impact on Australia’s wildlife, with about 350 koalas feared dead in a major habitat.

Climate change debate

Australia’s worst bushfires on record destroyed thousands of homes in Victoria in February 2009, killing 173 people and injuring 414 on a day the media dubbed “Black Saturday.”

The current fires, however, come weeks ahead of the southern hemisphere summer, sharpening attention on the policies of Australia’s conservative government to address climate change.

Environmental activists and opposition lawmakers have used the fires to call on Prime Minister Scott Morrison, a supporter of the coal industry, to strengthen the country’s emissions targets.

Morrison declined to answer questions about whether the fires were linked to climate change when he visited fire-hit areas in the north of NSW over the weekend.

Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack on Monday accused climate activists of politicizing a tragedy at the expense of people in the danger zones.

“What we are doing is taking real and meaningful action to reduce global emissions without shutting down all our industries,” McCormack told Australian Broadcasting Corp radio.

“They don’t need the ravings of some pure, enlightened and woke capital city greenies at this time, when they’re trying to save their homes.”

Just 25 years ago, women were not allowed to fly battle planes and operate tanks. Yet, despite generations of physical and cultural obstacles, women have been drawn to the military. Iuliia Iarmolenko met with a WWII veteran who found a way to make her military dream come true when it seemed impossible. Anna Rice narrates her story.  

Ecologists are urging creative solutions to clean up plastic waste choking waterways and threatening ecosystems across the globe. The United Nations Children’s Fund partnered with a Colombian company to turn piles of plastic into the building blocks of education in Africa. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi takes us to school.

Hong Kong police opened fire on protesters early on Monday, Cable TV reported, as chaos erupted across the city, a day after officers fired tear gas to break up rallies as activists blocked roads and trashed shopping malls in the financial hub.

Police fired live rounds at protesters on the eastern side of Hong Kong island, local media reported.

Police declined to comment when contacted by Reuters.

Bolivian president Evo Morales announced his resignation in a televised address Sunday after weeks of protests around “irregularities” in last month’s elections.

Earlier in the day, he agreed to call new elections after the Organization of American States released the results of its audit into the October 20 vote, which Morales narrowly won. The OAS found irregularities in nearly every area which it reviewed.

But within hours, Bolivia’s military chief General Williams Kaliman said holding a new election was not enough.  “After analyzing the situation of internal conflict, we ask the president to resign, allowing peace to be restored and stability to be maintained for the good of our Bolivia,” Kaliman said.

The announcements by Kaliman and the OAS led to the resignation of several senior ministers as well as the head of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal.

The United States welcomed the decision to hold a new vote.

“Fully support the findings of the @OAS_official report recommending new elections in #Bolivia to ensure a truly democratic process representative of the people’s will. The credibility of the electoral system must be restored,” U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tweeted.

Fully support the findings of the @OAS_official report recommending new elections in #Bolivia to ensure a truly democratic process representative of the people’s will. The credibility of the electoral system must be restored.

— Secretary Pompeo (@SecPompeo) November 10, 2019

Morales, who is serving his fourth term as president, had previously called the protests around his election a coup.

The long-time president did not indicate whether he would once again be running in the new elections. Despite Sunday’s announcement, opposition leaders have continued to call for him to step down.

Latin America’s longest-serving leader went into the election needing a 10 percentage-point lead to avoid a runoff and secure his fourth term in office.

Partial results released after the election had predicted Morales would face a December runoff election against his main rival, former President Carlos Mesa.

Then, less than 24 hours later, the electoral commission released new numbers that showed with 95% of votes counted, Morales was just a 0.7 percentage point short of the 10 percentage-point mark.

The announcement prompted opposition complaints of fraud, and triggered violent protests in several cities.

 

A Hong Kong police officer shot at masked protesters on Monday morning, hitting at least one in the torso, as anger sparked by the recent death of a student spilled into the rush hour commute.

The shooting, which was broadcast live on Facebook, is the latest escalation in more than five months of seething pro-democracy protests that have engulfed the international financial hub and battered its reputation.

Footage showed a police officer drawing his sidearm in the district of Sai Wan Ho as he tried to detain a masked person at a junction that had been blocked by protesters.

Another masked individual then approached the officer and was shot in the chest area, quickly falling to the ground, clutching their left side.

Seconds later, two more live rounds were fired by the officer during a scuffle and another masked protester went to ground, although the footage was less clear as to whether he was struck.

Police then detained the two people on the ground.

A pool of blood could be seen near the first individual whose body initially appeared limp, although the person was later filmed conscious and even trying to make a run for it.

The second man was conscious, shouting his name to reporters as he was handcuffed.

A police source, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed to AFP that live rounds were fired at more than one protester in Sai Wan Ho and that a statement would be issued.

Hospital authorities said three people were admitted from the incident, one with a gunshot wound.

Commuter chaos

Hong Kong has been upended by 24 consecutive weeks of huge and increasingly violent rallies, but Beijing has refused to give in to a movement calling for greater democratic rights and police accountability.

Tensions have soared in recent days following the death on Friday of a 22-year-old student who succumbed to injuries sustained from a fall in the vicinity of a police clearance operation the weekend before.

The city has seen four days of violent protests since Alex Chow’s death as well as tens of thousands attending peaceful mass vigils.

Using online messaging forums, activists had called for a general strike on Monday morning.

Flashmob protests sprung up in multiple districts during the commuter period, with small groups of masked protesters targeting subway stations and building barricades on road junctions.

Even before the shooting in Sai Wan Ho, tear gas had been fired in at least two other locations.

One video circulated by protesters on messaging channels from Kwai Fong district showed a police officer trying to drive his motorbike multiple times into protesters who had gathered on a road.

Unpopular police force

Monday’s shooting is the third time protesters have been shot with live rounds by police. The two previous instances last month came as protesters attacked police officers and the victims, both teenagers, survived their wounds.

With no political solution on the table, officers have been left to battle violent protesters and are now loathed by large chunks of the deeply polarized population.

Immediately after Monday’s shooting, crowds of locals gathered to hurl insults at officers who responded with pepper spray and made multiple arrests.

Police have defended their tactics as a proportionate response to protesters who have embraced throwing bricks and petrol bombs as well as vandalizing pro-China businesses and beating opponents.

But an independent inquiry into the police has become a core demand of the protest movement, with public anger fuelled by weekly videos of controversial police tactics and aggressive interactions with locals.

In one incident which sparked uproar, a police officer on Friday evening shouting at protesters that he and his colleagues were “opening a bottle of champagne” after the death of the student.

The force said the officer was later reprimanded for his language.

Both Beijing and Hong Kong’s unelected leader Carrie Lam have rejected an independent inquiry, saying the city’s current police watchdog is up to the task.

But last week, in an embarrassing setback, an international panel of experts appointed by authorities to advise the watchdog said it did not currently have the capability or resources to carry out such a huge probe.

Bolivian President Evo Morales has announced his resignation, seeking to calm the country after weeks of unrest over a disputed election that he had claimed to win.

He made the move Sunday hours after the Organization of American States called for a new a presidential election, citing irregularities in the Oct. 20 vote.

Bolivia’s political crisis deepened Sunday as the country’s military chief called on President Evo Morales to resign after his reelection victory touched off weeks of fraud allegations and deadly violence.

The appeal from Gen. Williams Kaliman came after Morales, under mounting pressure, agreed earlier in the day to hold a new presidential election.

“After analyzing the situation of internal conflict, we ask the president to resign, allowing peace to be restored and stability to be maintained for the good of our Bolivia,” Kaliman said on national television.

He also appealed to Bolivians to desist from violence.

Morales’ claim to have won a fourth term last month has plunged the country into the biggest crisis of the socialist leader’s nearly 14 years in power. The unrest has left three people dead and over 100 injured in clashes between his supporters and opponents.

Morale agreed to a new election after a preliminary report by the Organization of American States found a “heap of observed irregularities” in the Oct. 20 election and said a new vote should be held.

“We all have to pacify Bolivia,” Morales said in announcing plans to replace the nation’s electoral tribunal and urging the country’s political parties to help bring peace.

Bolivians honked car horns and broke into cheers and applause in the streets as the OAS findings came out.

“The battle has been won,” said Waldo Albarracín, a public defender and activist. “Now, the duty is to guarantee an ideal electoral tribunal.”

Adding to the leadership crisis, however, the two government ministers in charge of mines and hydrocarbons, as well as the Chamber of Deputies president and three other pro-government legislators announced their resignations. Some said opposition supporters had threatened their families.

Also Sunday, the attorney general’s office said it will investigate judges on the Supreme Electoral Tribunal for alleged fraud following the OAS report.

The man Morales claimed to have defeated, opposition leader and former President Carlos Mesa, said the OAS report showed “monstrous fraud,” and he added that Morales “can’t be a candidate in new elections.”

Morales did not say whether he will run again.

“The priority is to choose a new electoral tribunal and figure out when we’ll have the new elections,” he told local radio Panamericana.

Morales, 60, became the first president from Bolivia’s indigenous population in 2006 and presided over a commodities-fed economic boom in South America’s poorest country. The former leader of a coca growers union, he paved roads, sent Bolivia’s first satellite into space and curbed inflation.

But many who were once excited by his fairy-tale rise have grown wary of his reluctance to leave power.

He ran for a fourth term after refusing to abide by the results of a referendum that upheld term limits for the president. He was able to run because Bolivia’s constitutional court disallowed such limits.

After the Oct. 20 vote, Morales declared himself the outright winner even before official results indicated he obtained just enough support to avoid a runoff with Mesa. A 24-hour lapse in releasing results fueled suspicions of vote-rigging.

The OAS sent a team to conduct what it called a binding audit of the election. Its preliminary recommendations included holding new elections with a new electoral body.

“Mindful of the heap of observed irregularities, it’s not possible to guarantee the integrity of the numbers and give certainty of the results,” the OAS said in a statement.

Pressure on Morales increased ominously on Saturday when police on guard outside Bolivia’s presidential palace abandoned their posts and police retreated to their barracks in at least three cities.

On Sunday, the police commander, Gen. Yuri Calderón, instructed protesting officers to get back on the street and prevent attacks by thugs loyal to the president. And Bolivia’s military said it ordered operations to counter armed groups that have attacked opposition supporters.

During the unrest since the election, protesters have torched the headquarters of local electoral tribunal offices and set up roadblocks that paralyzed parts of Bolivia.

“The question now is if the opposition will accept new elections called by Evo after he had already attempted to steal the election,” said Christopher Sabatini, a lecturer at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University in New York and a senior research fellow at the Chatham House think tank.

“They have good reason to be wary that this time will be cleaner. In fact, given what’s at stake and Morales’ actions up until now, there’s even more reason to believe that he’s going to pull out all the stops to ensure reelection.”

The U.S.-South Korean alliance is strained by their differences over military pacts, and if the allies fail to reach agreements, Seoul’s national security could be at risk, experts said.

The pressure stems from two military agreements nearing expiration: Seoul’s intelligence sharing pact with Tokyo, set to expire Nov. 23, and Seoul’s defense cost sharing deal with Washington, expiring Dec. 31.

“There’s a lot of pressure on the alliance right now,” said Bruce Bennett, a senior defense analyst at the Rand Corp. research center. “Because of that pressure, the alliance is not quite as strong as it’s been at some points in the past.”

Seoul has been refusing Washington’s demands to reverse its decision to terminate an intelligence-sharing pact with Tokyo.

Withdrawal from GSOMIA

In August, Seoul announced it would withdraw from General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA) with Tokyo. That came during a trade row that broke out in the summer, a disagreement rooted in South Korea’s historical grievances over forced labor during the Japanese colonial period from 1910 to 1940.

Washington sees GSOMIA as a crucial vehicle for its two allies to share sensitive military information, such as threats from North Korea or to communicate during a crisis.

“The U.S. government has ratcheted up considerable public pressure on South Korea not to go through with its GSOMIA nonrenewal decision,” said Scott Snyder, director of the Program on U.S.-Korea Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations.

“The U.S. sees GSOMIA less as a Japan issue than a regional security issue, while South Korea seems to be approaching GSOMIA solely in the context of bilateral relations with Japan,” he said.

Defense cost sharing

Adding to the pressure is Washington’s push for Seoul to pay $5 billion next year to share the costs of maintaining 28,500 American troops in South Korea.

The U.S. made the request during the last round of negotiations for the Special Measures Agreement (SMA) in Honolulu in October, and the increase is more than five times the $924 million that South Korea agreed to shoulder this year.

“Seoul and Washington will have to eventually compromise on defense cost sharing,” Snyder said, adding, “But how the issue is managed will have an impact on the quality of the relationship. Both sides need to bear that in mind.”

In considering how to reconcile the differences, Bennett said the allies have to bear in mind Pyongyang’s objective, which is to break the alliance so North Korea can have military superiority over South Korea, which it sees as a threat.

North Korea’s objective “has been to break the alliance totally, have U.S. forces completely withdrawn from Korea, no plan to bring them back to Korea, end the nuclear umbrella,” Bennett said. “If it’s got military superiority, the question is how does it decide to use that superiority? Does it invade the South? Perhaps, but maybe it only coerces the South and tells the South, ‘Look, we’re prepared to live peacefully. Just give us a hundred trillion won (about $85 billion) a year to help us build up our economy.’”

David Stilwell, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, met with South Korean officials in Seoul this week to discuss GSOMIA.

James DeHart, U.S. negotiator in the defense cost-sharing talks with South Korea, is in Seoul to gauge public sentiment ahead of another round of negotiations to take place in Seoul later this month.

According to a survey published by the government-funded Korea Institute for National Unification (KINU), 96% of South Koreans do not want Seoul to pay an increased share of its defense cost, although 91% think the U.S. military presence is necessary in South Korea.

Annual defense talks

The Pentagon on Thursday said Secretary of Defense Mark Esper will be in Seoul Nov. 15 to attend annual defense talks, the Security Consultative Meeting. He will meet with South Korean Defense Minister Jeong Kyeong-doo and discuss security issues surrounding the alliance and “bilateral defense cooperation.”

Experts think Seoul should renew GSOMIA but that the U.S. has overburdened Seoul with a steep increase in SMA.

David Maxwell, a former U.S. Special Forces colonel and current fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said the relationship of the allies could be further strained if Seoul does not renew GSOMIA.

“The best way out of this is for [South Korean] President Moon [Jae-in] to seize the moral high ground, and he needs to stand up and say he is not going to withdraw from GSOMIA because he is going to put the national security of Korea and the alliance with the United States and trilateral coordination with the United States and Japan first,” Maxwell said.

He continued, “If he doesn’t, I think there will be further strain in the ROK-U.S. alliance … because I think the United States is going to remain very disappointed.”

Gary Samore, White House coordinator for arms control and weapons of mass destruction during the Obama administration, expects the GSOMIA issue to be resolved but said, “SMA is more difficult to resolve because [President Donald] Trump is asking for an unreasonable increase.”

Bennett thinks Seoul would not be able to meet the increased cost demand in SMA because of constraints in its defense budget.

“That’s a major hit and a major disruption of the alliance for South Korea to have to give up that much money,” he said. “I just don’t see that as being feasible. If you look at the defense budget, you can’t cut salaries. You can’t do much to cut operations and maintenance. Acquisition [for weapons] is what you’d have to cut to provide even one trillion won [$850 million], and there’s just no slack there.”

If Seoul does not renew GSOMIA with Tokyo against the U.S., and if Washington and Seoul do not come to a compromise on SMA by the deadline, experts believe South Korean national security could be at risk.

Far-reaching effect

Consequences of Seoul’s permanent decision to terminate GSOMIA could have a far-reaching effect in a wartime crisis, Bennett said, because Japan plays a critical role in the U.S. military support for South Korea. He added GSOMIA is more than just for sharing intelligence during peacetime.

“If a war suddenly broke out, it gives us a vehicle through which other sensitive information about military operations and so forth could be shared. This is really about can the U.S. support Korea as well as it would like to given that it needs Japan’s assistance to do that?” Bennett said.

GSOMIA is particularly crucial, he said, when South Korea is expected to slash its military manpower by 2020 and American troops would need to be brought from the U.S. through Japanese military bases to reinforce military forces on the Korean Peninsula in wartime, which requires Seoul to share information with Tokyo.

“The question is: Does South Korea really want to delay the deployment of U.S. forces to South Korea when it’s also reducing its own ability to repel a North Korean invasion?” Bennett said.

The South Korean government said it will reduce the number of its troops to 500,000 by 2020. In 2018, it had 599,000 troops, and the number is expected to fall to 225,000 in 2025 because of the country’s declining fertility rate.

As a tradeoff, South Korea is looking into reforming its military to rely more on technologies such as unmanned aircrafts and weaponized drones.

However, this clashes with Washington’s demand that Seoul pay more for its share of defense costs, which Bennett said most likely needs to come out of Seoul’s defense budget marked for the research and development and acquisition of weapons. In that case, Seoul’s ability to devote funds to develop and purchase military technologies could be curtailed.

“Everything South Korea is trying to acquire are critical systems,” Bennett said. “It would be interesting to ask the Americans to propose what exactly [South] Korea should cut from its defense budget in order to provide the money that President Trump is asking because that puts it into more realistic terms.”

If the allies do not come to a comprise on SMA, Seoul faces a potential risk of U.S. troops being withdrawn from South Korea, Maxwell said.

If the SMA expires Dec. 31, U.S. forces in Korea will be not be able to function normally because military personnel will need to be diverted from their regular duties, such as performing military operations and trainings, to support logistics and administrative work provided by South Korean workers who will be furloughed, Maxwell said.

“If there is not an agreement, then we are in a real difficult situation because we cannot leave the U.S. military forces on the peninsula and not be able to train and maintain readiness,” he said. “The question is going to be how long will the U.S. government, the U.S. military in the U.S. government allow that to go on before they make a decision [to withdraw], which of course, is the most damaging thing to the alliance.”

Thousands of people marched in Paris and other French cities against Islamophobia targeting Western Europe’s largest Muslim population.

Muslims joining the march through the rainy streets of the capital say they have had enough.

Mohamed, here with his sister Khadija, says the two feel completely integrated in French society. But he says he’s faced discrimination — including being asked to change his name during a job interview to something more traditionally French.

A recent IFOP poll finds four in 10 French Muslims also believe they are discriminated against because of their religion. Another survey finds more than 60 percent of respondents considered Islam incompatible with French values.

While anti-Islamic attacks are not new, several recent events helped catalyze this protest. Last month, two Muslims were shot and seriously wounded outside a mosque in southwestern France.

France’s conservative Senate also approved an amendment banning veiled women from accompanying their children on school outings. The lower house is unlikely to pass it. But it followed an incident where a far-right lawmaker demanded a woman visiting a regional council to remove her headscarf — leaving her son in tears.

Wafa, a mother of three, says she’s had a similar experience. She’s a trained computer technician, but she says she can’t find a job because of her veil.

Sixty-eight-year-old Julia Fernandez was among the many non-Muslims who joined the march.

She likened the current climate to the anti-Semitism of the 1930s, before the Holocaust.

Still the march was controversial, with some of the organizers accused of ties to fundamentalist Islam. A number of leftist politicians opted not to join the protest.