Gambia’s first president after independence from Britain in 1965, Dawda Jawara, was buried Thursday in Banjul, the capital.
Speaker of The Gambia National Assembly, Mariam Jack Denton, said he was known for his integrity, kindness and sense of humour.
Dawda Jawara, Gambia’s first post-independence president, is pictured in this handout picture obtained by Reuters on Aug. 27, 2019.
“Our hearts are heavy with this lost. He was an ardent promoter of human rights. He was a patriot and a true son of this country.”
Sedia Jatta, one of the opposition leaders who contested 1987 elections against Dawda Jawara, described his former opponent as a democrat and a tolerant person.
“We are not only here to pay homage to who brought independence to this country, but to learn from the challenges he faced as a leader. We have to learn tolerance from him.”
Gambia President Adama Barrow said: “It is with deep regret that I deliver this statement on this solemn occasion. The entire Gambian nation is in a state of mourning. We are mourning because our nation has lost its first premier, prime minister and president for over 30 years.”
Dawda Jawara, who died Tuesday at age 95, was a Glassgow trained veterinary doctor who ruled the small West African country from independence to 1994 when he was overthrown in a bloodless military coup led by Yahya Jammeh who ruled the country for 22 years.
He sought refuge in the U.K. where he lived with his family up to 2002, when he returned home after President Yahya Jammeh granted him amnesty and returned his assets, which were seized by a Commission of Inquiry established by the military junta to investigate cabinet members and officials of the previous regime.
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks in a bilateral meeting with Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (not pictured) during the G7 summit in Biarritz, France, Aug. 25, 2019.
The conciliatory remarks followed a fractious G-7 summit in Biarritz, where President Donald Trump’s openness to a proposed summit with Iranian leaders — an idea proposed by French President Emmanuel Macron — was a rare moment of political comity.
But according to some experts, U.S.-EU differences over the 2015 deal known formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) may undercut any progress toward U.S.-Iran talks.
“The U.S., without really consulting anybody, pulled out of the JCPOA, and as a result we now have a major crisis in Iran,” American Foreign Policy Council senior fellow Stephen Blank told VOA’s Russian service earlier this week, calling differences over the JCPOA emblematic of deeper “divisive tendencies in the G-7.”
“[G-7] is supposed to be an effort to coordinate among the seven largest economies in the world … a common approach to major international programs, and they’re having great difficulty doing this,” he said. “This tells you that this institution is subject to the same kinds of divisive pressures and failures that we see in other major international security institutions — the U.N., for example — and that it’s therefore much less effective than it could be.”
European countries have attempted to craft a workaround for businesses to bypass sanctions that the U.S. reimposed on Iran after the Trump White House withdrew from the agreement, citing concerns that Tehran had done nothing to curtail expansionist behavior in the Middle East and was still determined to build nuclear weapons.
“The Europeans did not want to pull out of the JCPOA and, led by Macron, many of the members are trying to keep that in play, whereas the United States is opposed to that,” Blank said. “And then of course you have the surprise visit of the Iranian foreign minister, which caught the U.S. by surprise.”
Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif holds a lecture at Stockholm International Peace Research Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, Aug. 21, 2019.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif stopped in Biarritz on Sunday, his first stop of an Asia swing, to canvass for support for the nuclear deal. An Iranian source said the switch to the French resort was a last-minute decision after Zarif’s French counterpart extended the invitation, which one U.S. official called “a surprise.”
“So, again, we see that this is part of the lack of cohesion of the [G-7] institution,” said Blank. “It’s also a failure of American policy to bring its allies on board or to coordinate with them beforehand, and also that they spring these surprises on President Trump. That normally doesn’t happen. So that already tells you a great deal. Now, will this lead to some sort of negotiation? I’m skeptical, but it remains to be seen. You can’t rule it out. To me, the main thing is that it highlights that there’s no unity among the allies on these issues.”
Differences on Russia
Blank’s comments largely reflected those by other observers, such as former U.S. Ambassador to Moscow Alexander Vershbow, now with the Atlantic Council research institute, who described Trump as a solitary figure in Biarritz.
As fellow G-7 leaders discussed issues like Iran and fires in the Amazon rainforest, Trump raised cackles when he asked why Russia should not be included in the talks, given its size and role in global affairs.
U.S President Donald Trump, left, and French President Emmanuel Macron shake hands after their joint press conference at the G-7 summit, Aug. 26, 2019 in Biarritz, France.
“It’s clear Trump was largely isolated at the G-7 meeting on this issue, despite some conflicting signals beforehand about the French position,” Vershbow told VOA. “But Macron, as I understand it, was as firm as others, including [German Chancellor Angela] Merkel, [British Prime Minister Boris] Johnson, [Canadian Prime Minister Justin] Trudeau, that the whole reason for Russia being ejected was the aggression against Ukraine, and that nothing has fundamentally changed since then.”
Macron has advocated inviting Putin to the 2020 G-7 summit, which, by rotation, is scheduled to be held in the United States.
“But for Trump, part of this is ‘being the anti-Obama,’ to the point that he even blames [former President Barack] Obama for the loss of Crimea rather than Putin,” he added, referring to Russia’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Black Sea peninsula.
“At the same time, it reflects his pattern of having only praise and admiration for Putin,” Vershbow said. “But in practice, I don’t think it’s going to be any consensus to bring Russia back into the G-8.”
Central to the question of readmitting Russia to the intergovernmental organization of the world’s largest economies is what the world would stand to gain from such a move.
“In terms of economic power, [Russia] has a smaller GDP than the other G-7 members and has never been a real player in determining the international financial and economic policy,” Vershbow said. “And on the geopolitical issues, [Russia] is mostly a spoiler rather than a contributor to solutions on issues that the G-7 have traditionally discussed, whether it’s climate change, Iran, stability in Africa, or particular crises like the Amazon fires.
“But Trump has kind of this simplistic view of the world that Russia is still a superpower,” he said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks at a meeting with members of the Security Council in the Kremlin in Moscow, Aug. 23, 2019.
Stephen Sestanovich, a former U.S. ambassador at large for the former Soviet Union, called Trump’s musings on Russia “designed to stir up controversy.”
“[Trump] knows, and the Russians know, that you need the consensus of the G-7 in order to admit someone as a member as opposed to just inviting them as a guest,” Sestanovich, who is now a Columbia University professor and Council on Foreign Relations fellow, told VOA. “Trump has the ability, as the host [of the G-7] next year, to invite guests, but he also acknowledged that this would be somewhat insulting for Putin to be merely a guest.
“If one really wanted to make something happen, you would not just say, ‘I think we should invite Putin.’ You would take seriously the reasons that Putin was kicked out … and on this, as far as I can tell, the president is not actually trying to address the problem,” he said. “So I think he’s not serious about this. And I think the Russians have figured that out.”
Asked why, in his assessment, the U.S. president would make such a remark, Sestanovich said that question assumes “the president has a reason as opposed to an uncontrollable impulse.”
“If the president wants to gain some favor with Putin, he can’t do it by raising the idea in public in a way that everyone else then opposes,” he said. “Sometimes people say the president raises outrageous ideas so as to deflect attention from something else.”
Sestanovich then paused silently for several seconds.
“I don’t have an answer for you because a serious politician would know that you can’t just raise this and expect to solve the problem,” he said. “But the president is not a serious politician.”
Serious efforts to readmit Russia to the organization, Sestanovich said, entails formally addressing the reasons underlying Russia’s expulsion from the G-8.
“He doesn’t seem to be interested in doing that because it’s hard, it might offend Putin, and it might demonstrate that he can’t achieve real results,” he said. “So he just raises it as though it were a matter of kind of cocktail party conversation.”
On Wednesday, the House Judiciary Committee announced plans to investigate Trump’s proposal to host the 2020 G-7 summit at his Miami golf resort.
The owner of Timberland, Vans and several other shoe and clothing brands says it has stopped buying leather from Brazil as fires continue to destroy the Amazon rainforest in that country.
VF Corp. says it won’t purchase leather and hide from Brazilian suppliers until it’s assured that the materials “do not contribute to environmental harm in the country.”
The current fires in the Amazon were set by those who are clearing the forest for cattle ranching and crops. About 60% of the Amazon rainforest is in Brazil.
VF, based in Greensboro, North Carolina, says a small amount of the leather it buys comes from Brazil, but didn’t provide specific numbers.
Besides Timberland boots and Vans sneakers, VF also makes The North Face jackets, Eastpak backpacks and Dickies clothing.
Australian universities will be required to work with security agencies to ensure they guard against undue foreign interference, Minister for Education Dan Tehan said on Wednesday.
Foreign students are worth about A$35 billion ($23.64 billion) a year to the Australian economy, with Chinese students accounting for about a third of that figure.
But after a spate of cyberattacks and fears that China could influence research and students, Tehan said a task-force of university representatives and security agencies would be set up.
“Universities are an attractive target given their research across a range of fields and the intellectual property this research generates,” Tehan said in a speech in Canberra. The task-force would ensure universities had sufficient cyber defenses, he said.
In June, the Australian National University said hackers had in 2018 breached its cyber defenses to obtain sensitive data, including students’ bank account numbers and passport details, going back 19 years.
Australia has not identified the culprits behind that attack.
The task-force would also ensure academic research and students are free from any undue influence, Tehan said.
This month, Australia’s most populous state said it was scrapping a Chinese-funded education program that teaches Mandarin in several university amid fears of foreign influence. Asked about the steps, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said it was nonsense to suggest China was seeking to infiltrate Australia.
“Politicizing cooperation in education and artificially putting up barriers is not good for either side and does not enjoy popular support,” he told a daily news briefing.
“We hope the Australian side can objectively view China-Australia cooperation in all areas, cherish the fruits of bilateral cooperation and do more to benefit Sino-Australia friendship and mutual trust.”
Relations between Australia and China have been strained in recent years over Australian fears of Chinese activity, both in Australia and the Pacific region.
In 2017, then prime minister Malcolm Turnbull accused China of meddling in domestic affairs. China denied it.
Tension between the two countries was exacerbated again this week with confirmation of the arrest in China of a Chinese-born Australian writer on suspicion of espionage.
Haiti’s president says he will serve out his term despite rising violence, poor economic performance and months of protests over unresolved allegations of corruption in his predecessor’s administration.
President Jovenel Moise pledged in an interview with The Associated Press on Wednesday to respect the findings of a commission investigating the corruption allegations.
“It takes a lot of courage to stay in power, but I am pledging to you to have the courage to continue moving forward,” Moise said, saying he would resist pressure to resign.
Moise was named in two reports resulting from a corruption investigation by judicial authorities into the spending of funds from Petrocaribe, a Venezuelan government program that provided subsidized oil to Caribbean nations. Protesters have repeatedly taken to the streets in recent months in demonstrations prompted by the findings of widespread fraud in government contracts awarded to contractors to build roads, buildings and administer social programs.
Moise was described as receiving potentially improper payments as a private contractor to build a road in northern Haiti before he became president.
The audits revealed millions of dollars of aid money siphoned off by contractors for shoddy and substandard work, like an overpass built over busy Delmas avenue that cost more than $30 million, but should have cost around $2 million.
Once revealed, the extent of the corruption sparked widespread protests and street violence, and calls for Moise to step down.
Moise has refused to resign, though he promised to criminally charge anyone found by the audit board to have stolen funds from the government.
“Of course we must know the truth and the truth about this investigation must be released. That is very important. The investigation must reveal the truth so that justice can be served and the guilty jailed. Those who misspent the government’s money, they should be arrested and locked up,” Moise said Wednesday.
The protests, economic downturn and increasing insecurity and gang-related crime have made Moise’s political future uncertain despite his determination to stay in power.
Moise said he was not concerned about more allegations of his involvement in potentially improper contracting, saying: “The judicial audit does not involve the executive branch. This is a concern of the judicial branch.”
The president insisted that Haiti must move beyond the crisis and let the judicial process play out.
“We must go beyond talking about the survival of the government, because political stability in Haiti is the most important thing for us,” he said. “If the opposition wants power they must participate in democratic elections and win the vote of the people.”
The World Health Organization warns of serious consequences if nations do not take immediate action to stop the escalation of measles infections, which have reached alarming new heights.
Nearly 365,000 cases of measles have been reported globally so far this year, the highest number since 2006. The World Health Organization says that is almost three times as many cases than at the same time last year. And, with four more months left in 2019, it warns more bad news is in store.
The WHO said measles is increasing in all regions of the world, with the exception of the Americas. WHO Director of the Department of Immunization Vaccines and Biologicals Kate O’Brien said the world is backsliding and is not on track to eliminate the dangerous, but largely preventable disease by 2020.
“We are absolutely backsliding on the measles situation and that is extremely worrying for, certainly the health of children,” O’Brien said. “Absolutely the health as well of adolescents and adults as I mentioned … And, it also signals that there is a complacency in some way about our immunization systems.”
FILE PHOTO: A vial of the measles, mumps, and rubella virus (MMR) vaccine is pictured at the International Community Health Services clinic in Seattle, Washington, March 20, 2019.
A European regional report finds four countries, Albania, Czech Republic, Greece and Britain have lost their measles elimination status. However, Austria and Switzerland attained elimination status, having interrupted transmission of the disease for at least 36 months.
O’Brien said children are not getting vaccinated against the disease for a variety of reasons. She told VOA it sometimes is physically difficult for parents to go to a clinic to have their child vaccinated. She said vaccine hesitancy and complacency, as well as misinformation about the safety of vaccines play a role.
“We do see in high income countries to some degree there are small, well-defined communities that have religious or ethnic or social beliefs where a community as a whole is declining vaccines,” O’Brien said.
On the other hand, O’Brien notes in countries of conflict and other fragile settings, getting and delivering life-saving vaccines to the populations is often very difficult.
She said she is very concerned about the politicization of vaccines. She said vaccines have no role in political conflict and should never be used in this way.
Jet-car speed racer Jessi Combs, known by fans as the “fastest woman on four wheels,” has died in a crash in Oregon’s Alvord Desert while trying to break a speed record, local authorities said Wednesday.
Combs, 39, died Tuesday afternoon while racing in a dry lake bed in a desert in remote Harney County, sheriff’s Lt. Brian Needham said in a statement. The cause is under investigation.
Terry Madden, Combs’ teammate on the North American Eagle racing team, said in an Instagram post Wednesday that he was heartbroken and added a video collage of photos and video clips of Combs with various team members.
“She was the most amazing spirit that I have ever or will ever know,” Madden wrote.
“Unfortunately we lost her yesterday in a horrific accident, I was the first one there and trust me we did everything humanly possible to save her.”
Combs was widely known in the niche sport of jet-car racing and was attempting to break the Women’s Land Speed Record of 512 mph (823 kph) set in 1976 by Kitty O’Neil when she died. Jet cars are race cars propelled by jet engines.
She currently held the record as the fastest woman on four wheels — O’Neil piloted a three-wheeled vehicle — for a 398 mph performance in 2013 and had driven even faster in follow-up runs, but mechanical problems prevented those from making the record books.In an Instagram post on Sunday, Combs indicated that she hoped to break O’Neil’s record in the Oregon desert.
She wrote, “People say I’m crazy. I say, ‘thank you.’”
In a statement, Combs’ family said her “most notable dream was being the fastest woman on Earth.”
Combs, who was born in Rapid City, South Dakota and lived in Long Beach, California, dabbled in snowboarding earlier in life and was also an accomplished artist and craftswoman, according to a biography on North American Eagle, her racing team.
She studied automotive design and fabrication and appeared as a host on Spike TV’s Extreme 4X4 before a freak accident with a piece of heavy machinery that broke her spine.
After months of rehabilitation, Combs recovered and appeared on and guest hosted a number of TV shows, including Discovery Channel’s “Mythbusters” while honing her skills as a professional driver for movies and commercials.
The Alvord Desert is an extremely remote and sparsely populated region in southeastern Oregon, about 400 miles (643 kilometers) southeast of Portland.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif says if the United States wants to engage in negotiations, it must observe the 2015 agreement that limited Iran’s nuclear activity in exchange for sanctions relief.
Speaking Thursday during a visit to Malaysia, Zarif accused the United States of “engaging in economic terrorism against the Iranian people.”
He pointed to U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the 2015 deal, which Iran agreed to after two years of talks with the United States, Britain, China, France, Russia, Germany and the European Union.
“We did not leave that mechanism. We are still sitting around the table with five other countries and the EU. The United States was the sixth country, which decided to leave,” Zarif said. “So if it wants to come back to the room, there is a ticket that they need to purchase, and that ticket is to observe the agreement.”
FILE – President Donald Trump speaks with reporters on the South Lawn of the White House, in Washington, Aug. 21, 2019.
Trump has been a sharp critic of the nuclear deal, saying it was too friendly to Iran and left it with too easy of a potential path to developing nuclear weapons. Iran has repeatedly said its nuclear program is solely for peaceful purposes.
Trump said earlier this week that in new negotiations his administration would be focused on not only banning Iran from developing nuclear weapons, but also place limits on its ballistic missile program, which is not included in the 2015 agreement. He also wants the measures to be in place for longer than the 10-year period called for in the original deal.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said if new talks are to take place, Trump must “take the first step” and lift economic sanctions against Iran.
The two countries do not have diplomatic relations, and as they stake out their positions with public statements both have said this week they are not looking to ratchet up tensions.
“We are not seeking conflict with Iran,” Defense Secretary Mark Esper told reporters at the Pentagon on Wednesday.
That followed Zarif’s comments Tuesday stating that while Iran is not seeking to intensify disagreements with the United States, Iran believes “every nation should be allowed to exercise its own rights under international law.”
China’s military has rotated a new batch of troops into Hong Kong describing the move as routine, state media said Thursday, as protests against Beijing continue to rock the Asian financial hub.
Asian and Western diplomats in Hong Kong watching the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) movements had been expecting a routine rotation about this time and will be looking closely for any sign of increased numbers or unusual activity.
Hong Kong has been engulfed in angry and sometimes violent protests against the government for three months, sparked by a now-suspended extradition bill and concerns that Beijing was trying to bring the territory under greater mainland control.
The protests are the greatest political threat to Hong Kong’s government since the territory returned to Chinese rule in 1997, and one of the biggest popular challenges to Chinese leader Xi Jinping since he came to power in 2012.
Puerto Ricans are breathing sighs of relief after Hurricane Dorian brushed by the U.S. territory, but now has its sights set on Florida.
Dorian caused some flooding and power outages on two Puerto Rican islands, but spared the entire territory from any major damage.
All hurricane and tropical storm watches and warnings for Puerto Rico and throughout the Caribbean have been discontinued.
Dorian is a Category 1 hurricane with top sustained winds of 130 kilometers per hour.
Category 1-strength winds bend palm trees as Hurricane Dorian slams into St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, Aug. 28, 2019, in this still image taken from social media video.
Parts of Puerto Rico are still not recovered from Hurricane Maria, which devastated the island in 2017, killing about 3,000 people.
Thousands of homes still have no roofs and kilometers of roads are still torn up.
Meanwhile, Governor Ron DeSantis has declared a state of emergency in Florida, which is bracing for what forecasters say will be a powerful and dangerous Hurricane Dorian.
The National Hurricane Center in Miami says the storm may hit as early as this weekend as a Category 3.
Officials up and down the coast are warning residents to be prepared with sandbags and plenty of food and bottled water.
“All Floridians on the East Coast should have seven days of supplies, prepare their homes and follow the track closely,” DeSantis tweeted Wednesday.
Chinese investment in Nigeria’s oil and gas industry has reached $16 billion, according to Nigeria’s state-run oil company. While Nigeria’s oil industry welcomes China’s interest, analysts worry about a lack of transparency in the sector and slow development of the country’s renewable energy market.
When a top official with China’s third-largest national oil company paid a visit to Abuja, Nigeria this month, he was recommended by a top official of Nigeria’s state-run oil company to increase investment in Nigeria’s petroleum industry.
Mele Kyari, the managing director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, or NNPC, thanked the China National Offshore Oil Corp., or CNOOC, for its continued support of Nigeria’s oil and gas sector. Chinese investments in the sector have reached $16 billion. Kyari added that Nigeria needs partners like China.
The two countries need each other to reach their oil production targets. Africa’s largest oil producing nation pumps 2 million barrels a day and has a goal of producing 3 million barrels a day by 2023. China’s domestic oil production has been on a steady decline because of natural depletion and other geological challenges. So experts predict that up to 80 percent of China’s crude oil supply will be imported by 2030.
In comes Nigeria.
CNOOC started doing business in Nigeria in 2005 and is the largest Chinese entity investor in Nigeria. With a focus on overseas investment, it’s also China’s largest offshore oil and natural gas developer.
The company’s executive vice president, Lu Yan Ji, said during the meeting that Nigeria is one of the company’s largest investment destinations. He also said that CNOOC is producing 800,000 barrels per day, but it wants to reach 1.2 million. Ji hopes Nigeria can help with that.
But there’s skepticism.
Nigeria has had a hard time reaching its production targets. There’s sporadic militancy in the oil-producing region, as young people often take violent action to demand more access to the country’s oil wealth. There’s theft happening right at the pipelines. Fires often burn at rusted pipes, and oil operations in Nigeria are disrupted several times a year.
Also there’s a serious lack of transparency. The NNPC has a long history of scandals, with ongoing accusations of corruption.
Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari reads a document during the African Union summit at the Palais des Congres in Niamey, July 7, 2019.
Crude oil is Nigeria’s most lucrative export, and the NNPC has not been able to account for billions of dollars in revenue. President Muhammadu Buhari has not appointed anyone as the oil minister. He handles that highly sought after portfolio himself in his second term as president, just as he did in his first.
Corruption is also why some Nigerians aren’t applauding China for pouring money into Nigeria’s murky oil industry.
A host on Nigeria’s popular Wazobia TV network, Uvbi Ehigiamusoe, put it this way.
She says the Chinese oil company will not monitor how Nigeria will use $16 billion in investments. And it is known how it goes in Nigeria, she says.
Some say it’s high time Nigeria moves away from its dependence on oil. Revenue from the oil industry accounts for almost 75 percent of the federal budget, according to the Nigerian financial watchdog group BudgIT.
Dr. Nwoke Okala, an energy specialist at the Center for Research and Development at the University of Nigeria Nsukka, says Nigeria should follow the global trend of exploring renewable energy sources as oil becomes less attractive.
But for now, Nigeria will continue to set its ambitions on oil. Nigerian business mogul and the richest man in Africa, Aliko Dangote, is building what will be Africa’s largest oil refinery in the Nigerian commercial city of Lagos.
With an expected annual refining capacity of 10.4 million tons of gasoline, the new refinery will double Nigeria’s refining capacity and help in meeting the increasing domestic demand for fuel.
The $9 billion mega-complex is expected to be complete at the end of 2020 and could take Nigeria from a fuel importer to a fuel exporter.
After celebrating her two-decade-plus career at the MTV Video Music Awards with a performance featuring a slew of her hits, Missy Elliott knew she did a great job when the first text she received after the performance was from another musical icon and longtime friend: Janet Jackson.
“She was like, ‘You shut that [expletive] down,’” Elliott said, laughing in a phone interview with The Associated Press on Tuesday, a day after the VMAs. “And just to know that Janet even said that word was amazing. And I was like, ‘OK, I must have done good for her to use that [word].’”
FILE – Janet Jackson accepts the ultimate icon: music dance visual award at the BET Awards at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles, June 28, 2015.
Elliott, who has collaborated musically with Jackson in the past, received the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award on Monday night for the eccentric and vibrant music videos that helped establish her as a trailblazer on the music scene.
The 48-year-old Grammy winner said the road to creating iconic videos was not easy. She said in the “She’s a B—h” clip, which includes a scene where she and others are submerged, two of the dancers “had asthma attacks just from being underwater.”
For “The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)” — her 1997 debut single where she wore an inflated trash bag — she recalls walking “to the gas station to use the air pump … in Brooklyn to pump up the suit, and then realized I was too big to fit in the car, so we had to walk … on the main street in this outfit all the way to set, and it had deflated.”
She confirmed that the bees in the “Work It” video were in fact real. And in the “Pass that Dutch” clip when she was lifted up and rapping from a cornfield, “they dropped me on my knees; I thought my kneecaps had broken.”
“I was just doing these videos and … it wasn’t like I was doing them and trying to make a point for later down the line. I was just doing it,” she said. “A lot of people say, ‘Hey you should have gotten [this award] a long time ago and I realize that I’m a spiritual person and so I always say, ‘I’m on God’s time.’ And so whenever God says it was time for me to have it is the correct time.”
FILE – Alyson Stoner arrives at the season three premiere of “Stranger Things” at Santa Monica High School in Santa Monica, Calif., June 28, 2019.
Elliott’s VMA performance also included the well-known hits “Lose Control” and “Get Ur Freak On,” as well as “Throw It Back,” the first single from her new EP “Iconology,” released last week. Her performance also featured dancer and actress Alyson Stoner, who first gained fame as the young child who danced with skill in the “Work It” video.
“It’s been 17 years since we shot that video,” Elliott said. “I couldn’t have done it without [Alyson]. I was like, ‘I’ve got to have Alyson in here because everywhere I went since then people have always been like, ‘What happened to that little girl that used to be in your ‘Work It’ video?’”
At the VMAs, Elliott also honored late R&B singer Aaliyah when she gave her acceptance speech. Elliott and Timbaland wrote and produced a number of hits for Aaliyah, from “One In a Million” to “4 Page Letter.”
“I always pay tribute to her. And I’m always in contact with her brother, you know, checking on them. Even though each year makes it a year longer, it always still feels like it was yesterday,” Elliott said of Aaliyah, who was killed in a plane crash 18 years ago last Sunday.
“I could still hear her laughter and I could see her smile and almost kind of could sense what she would be like today. She’s always been a risk taker and never a follower because when she chose to work with Timbaland and myself, we had style that was so different; she could have picked any other producer and writer that was already hot and popping,” she continued. “We hadn’t had anything out but she heard something in us and so I know that she would have just been setting the bar high.”
Pinterest said it would try to combat misinformation about vaccines by showing only information from health organizations when people search.
Social media sites have been trying to combat the spread of misinformation about vaccines. Pinterest previously tried blocking all searches for vaccines, with mixed results.
Now searches for “measles,” “vaccine safety” and related terms will bring up results from such groups as the World Health Organization, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the WHO-established Vaccine Safety Net.
Pinterest won’t show ads or other users’ posts, as they may contain misinformation.
“We’re taking this approach because we believe that showing vaccine misinformation alongside resources from public health experts isn’t responsible,” Pinterest said Wednesday in a blog post.
Though anti-vaccine sentiments have been around for as long as vaccines have existed, health experts worry that anti-vaccine propaganda can spread more quickly on social media. The misinformation includes soundly debunked notions that vaccines cause autism or that mercury preservatives and other substances in them can harm people.
Experts say the spread of such information can push parents who are worried about vaccines toward refusing to inoculate their children, leading to a comeback of various diseases.
Spike in measles cases
Measles outbreaks have spiked in the U.S. this year to their highest number in more than 25 years.
In the U.K., Prime Minister Boris Johnson blamed people “listening to that superstitious mumbo jumbo on the internet” for a rising incidence of measles in that country. The government plans to call a summit of social media companies to discuss what more they can do to fight online misinformation, though details are still being worked out.
Facebook said in March that it would no longer recommend groups and pages that spread hoaxes about vaccines and that it would reject ads that do this. But anti-vax information still slips through.
The WHO praised Pinterest’s move and encouraged other social media companies to follow.
“Misinformation about vaccination has spread far and fast on social media platforms in many different countries,” the statement said. “We see this as a critical issue and one that needs our collective effort to protect people’s health and lives.”
White House national security adviser John Bolton said Wednesday that he had discussed Washington’s concerns about the threat of “unfair Chinese trade practices” with Ukrainian officials during his trip to Kyiv.
Asked about a possible acquisition by China of Ukrainian defense company Motor Sich, Bolton said he did not want to discuss specific companies and that such deals were a sovereign matter for Ukraine, according to Reuters.
But he made clear that the U.S. administration disapproved of the transaction, telling reporters: “We laid out our concerns about … unfair Chinese trade practices, threats to national security we’ve seen in the United States.”
Speaking to RFE/RL in Kyiv on Tuesday, Bolton said the possible sale of Motor Sich — a maker of engines for missiles, helicopters and jets — to the Chinese “is an issue that I think is significant for Ukraine, but [also] significant for the U.S., for Europe, for Japan, for Australia, Canada, other countries.”
He accused Beijing of using its “trade surpluses to gain economic leverage in countries around the world, to profit from defense technologies that others have developed.”
Earlier this month, Ukrainian media reported that two Chinese companies had reached an agreement with state-owned military concern Ukroboronprom to jointly purchase Motor Sich.
The Chinese firms, which are believed to be close to the government in Beijing, would receive a controlling stake, while Ukroboronprom would receive a blocking stake.
Motor Sich employs more than 20,000 people in the southwestern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhya.
A possible sale to the Chinese provoked a raid of its headquarters by Ukraine’s Security Service in April 2018 and the seizure of its shares. At the time, the company was valued at nearly $500 million.
The United States said Wednesday it has opened a diplomatic mission for Venezuela in Colombia, months after suspending its embassy in Caracas as Washington seeks to oust President Nicolas Maduro.
The Venezuela Affairs Unit, located inside the US embassy in Bogota, will focus on supporting Juan Guaido, the opposition leader whom the United States and most other Western and Latin American countries consider the interim president.
The unit “will continue to work for the restoration of democracy and the constitutional order in that country, and the security and well-being of the Venezuelan people,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement.
The US diplomatic presence in Venezuela will still be sharply curtailed. A US official said the unit in Bogota would not provide consular services such as issuing visas.
The United States suspended operations at its embassy in Caracas in March and pulled out all remaining staff as the political crisis intensified following years of severe deterioration of the economy.
President Donald Trump has vowed to oust Maduro as part of what he calls a campaign to rid the Americas of socialism.
But a half year of US pressure including sweeping sanctions on Venezuela’s key export of oil has failed to remove Maduro, who enjoys the support of the military leadership as well as Russia, China and Cuba.
Wildlife advocates have scored a big win in their efforts to protect the African giraffe by having the animal placed on the international endangered species list. Non-profit groups and some African nations successfully teamed-up in Geneva to lobby on behalf of the African giraffe as VOA’s Arash Arabasadi reports
Self-driving cars may be years from becoming reality on the road, but some of the technology going into autonomous vehicles is being used to make driving safer today. Michelle Quinn visited one company that is using computer vision and artificial intelligence to help solve one of the biggest problems for motorists — distracted driving
Just across the East River from Manhattan, Brooklyn has a thriving local art scene. One of the borough’s most interesting artists is Misha Tyutyunik, known as MDot, who has found some interesting places to display his work. Nina Vishneva met with the artist. Anna Rice narrates her story.
In a remote part of Jordan, a first-of-its-kind solar energy plant is powering a Syrian refugee camp and is making a difference in the lives of 40,000 residents, while benefiting the host country and the environment. The project is the innovation of the U.N. Refugee Agency and Sweden’s IKEA Foundation. VOA’s Margaret Besheer visited the plant at Azraq camp.
