Italian police Saturday arrested the captain of the Dutch-flagged Sea Watch 3 vessel, owned by a German charity, after it docked in the port of Lampedusa with out authorization. The vessel, still carrying 40 African migrants, had been at sea for more than two weeks.
Carola Rakete, the 31-year-old German captain of the Sea Watch 3, was arrested Saturday morning amid heavy police presence in the port of Lampedusa. She had entered the port without authorization and docked the vessel.
Rakete said she had no choice but to enter the port because the situation of the migrants on board was very tense and she feared they would inflict self-harm.
Italian authorities had refused to allow the vessel entry into Lampedusa since it rescued 53 migrants on an inflatable raft off the coast of Libya on June 12. Malta had also refused port entry to the Sea Watch 3.
Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini had been clear about his requests.
He said he wanted the arrest of any unlawful person who even put at risk Italian law and order officials, a fine for this foreign NGO, the seizure of the ship to stop it going around the Mediterranean breaking the laws and the distribution of all the migrants on board in other European states.
Migrants stand on the quay after disembarking from the Dutch-flagged Sea-Watch 3 ship, at the Lampedusa harbor, Italy, Saturday, June 29, 2019.
Forty African migrants, who had fled horrors and tortures in Libya, were still on board when the vessel entered the port Saturday morning.
It remained unclear whether the migrants would be allowed to disembark and what their fate would be, although Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, speaking at the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan, said a number of other European Union countries said they were prepared to accept the migrants.
Biru Devi is relaxed about getting paid for her labor as she toils on the picturesque hill slopes in Tanda village with a group of other women. She is working on a construction project under India’s flagship $10 billion rural jobs program that guarantees poor rural households 100 days of work every year.
“Earlier my money was never paid in time, maybe the bills did not get passed. But now my wages go into my bank account and are not delayed,” said Devi.
Women in Tanda village on the Himalayan slopes in Himachal Pradesh are among the millions of poor women who get 100 days of work a year as part of India’s rural employment welfare scheme for poor rural households. (A. Pasricha/VOA)
The payments got streamlined after the 60-year-old Devi opened a bank account using her biometric identity card. The unique 12-digit identification number made it possible to operate the account even though she did not know how to read and write. All the 3000 village residents did so as part of a project led by a public sector bank and village authorities to transform Tanda into a digital village.
The switchover from cash to online payments is helping address one of the biggest problems that had plagued the rural welfare scheme – middlemen who used to siphon off money from the anti-poverty program that provides work to 70 million people.
Using the world’s biggest biometric identity project under which citizens have been given an identity number, India is starting to transform the way it gets welfare to the poor. Although glitches remain and some controversy dogs the biometric program called “Aadhaar” which means foundation, it is helping root out graft from welfare schemes on which India spends billions of dollars.
It took time to persuade women like Biru Devi that their money in the bank would be safe – the majority of workers of the rural jobs program are women and many like Devi are illiterate.
“They are happy that they have to just show their Aadhaar card, and they have to just put their finger or thumb, and they get their money or deposit their money or get the money transferred, so it is changing,” said Ekta Mahajan, branch manager at State Bank of India in Palampur, which led the digitization drive in the village. But now they know the benefits. “There will be no corruption, there will be no commission, they will benefit directly and faster.”
FILE – An impoverished woman places her finger on a biometric card reader before buying her quota of subsidized rice from a fair price shop under the Public Distribution System in Rayagada, India.
Besides wages for the rural welfare program, subsidized food rations that India gives nearly 800 million people have also been linked to the biometric cards. The more than $20 billion food welfare program that guarantees cheap rice and wheat to the poor is the world’s largest public food distribution system, but it was beset with graft for decades. A large part of the food was siphoned off by corrupt officials and sold to traders at market rates and thousands of fake names were often put on the rolls of beneficiaries.
That is changing. At the local ration shop in Tanda, eligible residents now show their electronic cards or use their thumb and finger impressions to get the rations. It ensures the food goes to the intended beneficiaries.
The shop’s owner says it has reduced his work of making entries in registers. But an erratic wifi network can still pose a hurdle in bringing technology to rural areas.“Sometimes people have to wait for half an hour because we cannot connect to the system,” Rajiv Kumar admitted ruefully.
Although some activists have long opposed linking the biometric identity cards to welfare schemes, India’s Supreme Court cleared the way for it last year, saying it empowers the poor. “Aadhaar gives dignity to the marginalized,” the court ruling stated.
Customers use their phones to make digital payments at the local shop. (A. Pasricha/VOA)
These activists say that the biometric cards have failed to cut fraud and denied welfare benefits to many poor people who have found it difficult to link their Aadhaar cards to the programs. The problem is the most acute in underdeveloped states where governance is poor.
“In many cases it leads to other ways of corruption,” said Reetika Khera, an economist at the Indian Institute of Technology in New Delhi. She said the major problem lies in what she calls “quantity fraud” or short changing people on the rations they are entitled to. “They may still give you half the rations you are entitled to, or tell people that the authentication failed even if it has not and use their quota.”
India’s top court has said that such challenges meant the plan had to be improved, not axed.
Besides cutting graft from welfare schemes, digitization has brought other benefits in Tanda village as it gets plugged into the banking economy for the first time. Women who attend a workshop learn how they can avail themselves of education loans or cheap farm loans meant for rural areas.
“They have savings, they are taking loans to teach their children,” according to the village head, Jasbir Singh. “Access to loans has boosted our agriculture and traditional dairy farming and improved incomes. So even those who cannot get jobs earn a decent livelihood.”
Leapfrogging into the digital era has transformed this Himalayan village in more ways than one.
With their smart phones, villagers now shop for vegetables and groceries at the local store the modern way. “Our children also tell us, mom the old times are over. Become a model for the new world. We also feel happy that we too are part of a new age,” said a laughing 60-year-old Rekha Devi.
And women, whose only way to save money was to put it under mattresses or tuck it at the back of cupboards, have a new sense of security. “If there for an emergency, I can take out money,” said Biru Devi proudly. (( end it))
A fresh round of talks between the U.S. and the Taliban began in Qatar on Saturday, just days after U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Washington is hoping for an Afghan peace agreement before Sept. 1.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid confirmed to The Associated Press that negotiations had begun. Originally scheduled to begin in the morning, the two sides sat down mid-afternoon for the seventh time in a series of direct talks that began last year following the appointment of U.S. peace envoy Zalmay Khalilzad.
FILE – Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid.
As in previous talks between Khalilzad and the Taliban, the focus will be on the withdrawal of U.S. troops and Taliban guarantees to prevent Afghanistan from again hosting militants who can stage global attacks.
Both sides say they have come to an understanding on the withdrawal and the guarantees but the details have yet to be worked out.
Both Khalilzad and Pompeo have said that agreements with the Taliban will come hand in hand with agreements on an intra-Afghan dialogue and a permanent cease fire.
Until now, the Taliban have refused to meet directly with President Ashraf Ghani’s government but have held several rounds of talks with a collection of Afghan personalities from Kabul, including former President Hamid Karzai, several prominent opposition leaders and government peace council members. Both those meetings were held in Moscow earlier this year. The Taliban say they will meet with government officials but as ordinary Afghans and not representatives of the government – at least not until an agreement with the U.S. is finalized, saying the U.S. is the final arbiter on the Taliban’s biggest issue of troop withdrawal.
The Taliban have also refused a cease-fire. Taliban officials who have spoken to the AP on condition they not be identified because they are not authorized to speak to the media, say they won’t agree to a cease-fire until troop withdrawal is in place because returning Taliban to the battlefield with the same momentum of today if the U.S. reneges on its promises could be difficult.
Khalilzad has been in the region for several weeks meeting a legion of regional and Afghan officials, including Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.
Khalilzad has been relentless in his pursuit of an intra-Afghan dialogue after an earlier planned meeting between the government and the Taliban in Doha was scuttled when both sides disagreed on participants.
Still the latest round of talks comes amid heightened expectations that followed Pompeo’s optimistic time frame for a pact to end Afghanistan’s nearly 18-year war and America’s longest-running military engagement.
The Taliban has killed dozens of government forces in its latest battlefield attacks in Afghanistan as the insurgent group opens a new round of peace negotiations with the United States in Qatar to discuss a political settlement to the deadly Afghan war.
Officials in northern Baghlan province said Saturday a large group of insurgents assaulted several security outposts in Nahreen district, triggering hours-long fierce clashes.
The district chief, Fazluddin Mardi, told VOA the attack killed 26 in the pro-government anti-Taliban forces and wounded eight others. He asserted that insurgents also suffered heavy casualties but gave no further details.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid gave a much higher casualty toll for Afghan forces, saying several senior commanders were also among those killed.
Attack in Kandahar province
The Taliban also carried out an early morning attack against police posts in southern Kandahar province. A security official told VOA the insurgent raid in the Takhta Pol district near the airport of the provincial capital, also named Kandahar, killed 16 policemen and wounded four others.
The insurgent group in a statement claimed it killed 20 Afghan police personnel, though Taliban spokesman people often issue inflated claims for such attacks.
Taliban captured
Separately, provincial governor Hayatullah Hayat told a news conference Afghan forces have captured 40 Taliban members during recent raids in the Kandahar city. He claimed a large number of the detainees are specially trained insurgents tasked to carry out guerrilla attacks in urban centers.
The deadly violence came ahead of Saturday’s seventh round of peace negotiations between the Taliban and U.S. negotiators led by Afghan-born American diplomat, Zalmay Khalilzad.
The two sides are expected to finalize a draft text outlining insurgent commitments that Taliban-controlled areas will not be allowed to become a hub of international terrorism. In return, the Taliban says, Washington has promised to announce a troop withdrawal timeline.
Khalilzad, however, has emphasized the final agreement must include a Taliban cease-fire and its engagement in intra-Afghan peace dialogue. The insurgent group, for its part, has publicly rejected those assertions, saying it would discuss a cease-fire and participation in Afghan-to-Afghan talks only after the U.S. side agrees to and announces a troop withdrawal timetable.
Mexico and the United States are scrambling to address rising numbers of immigrants arriving at their shared border. Mexican border guards are stepping up raids against immigrants traveling north. In the United States, an uproar over the treatment of children in U.S. detention facilities led American lawmakers to approve a $4.6 billion emergency bill. VOA’s Jesusemen Oni has more.
A group of New York bikers has set out to save the environment by starting a bike-powered composting service. They collect food waste from restaurants and households for composting, and then use that compost as fertilizer to grow vegetables. In a city with a population of 8.5 million people, this might seem like a drop in the bucket, but while the scope might be small now, the organizers have big and green plans for the project. Nina Vishneva has the story narrated by Anna Rice.
Political unease over the White House’s tough talk against Iran is reviving questions about President Donald Trump’s ability to order military strikes without approval from Congress.
The Senate fell short Friday, in a 50-40 vote, on an amendment to a sweeping Defense bill that would require congressional support before Trump acts. It didn’t reach the 60-vote threshold needed for passage. But lawmakers said the majority showing sent a strong message that Trump cannot continue relying on the nearly 2-decade-old war authorizations Congress approved in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The House is expected to take up the issue next month.
Senate Armed Services Committee member Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., speaks during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Capitol Hill in Washington, Feb. 29, 2019.
“A congressional vote is a pretty good signal of what our constituents are telling us — that another war in the Middle East would be a disaster right now, we don’t want the president to just do it on a whim,” said Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., a co-author of the measure with Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M. “My gut tells me that the White House is realizing this is deeply unpopular with the American public.”
The effort in the Senate signals discomfort with Trump’s approach to foreign policy. Four Republicans joined most Democrats in supporting the amendment, but it faces steep resistance from the White House and the Pentagon wrote a letter opposing it.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., holds a news conference ahead of the Fourth of July break, at the Capitol in Washington, June 27, 2019.
McConnell: ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome’
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell called it nothing more than another example of “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” which he explained as whatever the president’s for “they seem to be against.”
McConnell said putting restrictions on the White House would “hamstring” the president’s ability to respond militarily at a time of escalating tension between the U.S. and Iran.
“They have gratuitously chosen to make him the enemy,” McConnell said. “Rather than work with the president to deter our actual enemy, they have chosen to make him the enemy.”
Trump: No congressional approval needed
Trump’s approach to the standoff with Iran and his assertion earlier this week that he doesn’t need congressional approval to engage militarily has only sparked fresh questions and hardened views in Congress.
Trump tweeted last week that the U.S. came within minutes of striking Iran in response to its shooting down of an unmanned U.S. drone until he told the military to stand down. He said he was concerned over an Iranian casualty count estimated at 150.
“We’ve been keeping Congress abreast of what we’re doing … and I think it’s something they appreciate,” Trump told The Hill website. “I do like keeping them abreast, but I don’t have to do it legally.”
As the popular Defense bill was making its way through the Senate, Democrats vowed to hold back their support unless McConnell agreed to debate the war powers. The defense bill was roundly approved Thursday on a vote of 86-8.
FILE – Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., joined at right by Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., speaks to reporters at the Capitol in Washington, April 9, 2019.
Schumer urges Congress to act
Top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer of New York assembled his caucus earlier this week. In a series of closed-door meetings he argued that Congress had ceded too much authority to presidents of both parties, according to a person granted anonymity to discuss the private sessions. Schumer said the amendment would prohibit funds to be used for hostilities with Iran without the OK of Congress.
Schumer also said that the American people are worried that U.S. and Iran are on a dangerous collision course and that even though Trump campaigned on not wanting to get the U.S. embroiled in wars he “may bumble us into one.”
“It is high time that Congress re-establishes itself as this nation’s decider of war and peace,” Schumer said on the Senate floor.
FILE – Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, speaks to reporters after a classified members-only briefing on Iran, May 21, 2019, on Capitol Hill in Washington.
Romney counters
To counter the Democrats’ effort, Republican Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah pushed forward an alternative to Udall’s amendment that reaffirmed the U.S. can defend itself and respond to any attacks. But Romney said his version is not an authorization to use force against Iran.
“I fully concur with my Senate colleagues who desire to reassert our constitutional role,” Romney said on the Senate floor. But he warned that the Udall amendment goes too far. “The president should not have his hands tied.”
The debate over whether the legislative or executive branch has sole power over war-making depends on how one interprets the Constitution, experts said.
In recent years, the U.S. military has been deployed under old war authorizations passed in 2001 and 2002 for conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some lawmakers have pushed to pass new war powers acts, but none have materialized, though the House last week voted to sunset those authorizations.
Pompeo lists Iran’s aggressions
In ticking off a list of Iranian acts of “unprovoked aggression,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo recently asserted that a late May car bombing of a U.S. convoy in Kabul, Afghanistan, was among a series of threats or attacks by Iran and its proxies against American and allies interests. At the time, the Taliban claimed credit for the attack, with no public word of Iranian involvement.
Pompeo’s inclusion of the Afghanistan attack in his list of six Iranian incidents raised eyebrows in Congress. Pompeo and other administration officials have suggested that they would be legally justified in taking military action against Iran under the 2001 authorization.
That law gave President George W. Bush authority to retaliate against al-Qaida and the Taliban for the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. It has subsequently been used to allow military force against extremists elsewhere, from the Philippines to Syria.
The Senate amendment addressed the question about how much Congress can restrict the president, said Scott R. Anderson, a legal expert at Brookings Institution.
“If they actually pass it, it would be very substantive because it would be putting limits on the president that have never been there before,” Anderson said.
Even though the measure failed to reach the 60 votes needed, the House will likely try to attach its own limits on military action in Iran with its Defense bill next month.
After a first day dominated by public shows of bonhomie, all eyes at the G-20 turned Saturday to a pivotal trade showdown between economic rivals China and the United States.
Even before Donald Trump sat down with his Chinese counterpart, the U.S. president grabbed the headlines with a surprise tweet saying he was open to meeting Kim Jong Un at the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea.
Trump and China’s Xi Jinping will meet in a bid to thrash out a truce in a long-running trade war that has seen hundreds of billions of dollars in tit-for-tat tariffs.
‘Discussing a lot of things’
Trump has said he expects a “productive” meeting but warned before the summit he was prepared to slap tariffs on all Chinese imports if no deal could be struck on the sidelines of the G-20.
“We’ll be discussing a lot of things,” Trump said Saturday morning, hours before the talks with Xi.
“I was with him last night. A lot was accomplished actually last night. The relationship is very good with China. As to whether or not we can make a deal, time will tell,” he said.
Trump confirmed that the leaders would discuss Chinese telecoms firm Huawei, which Washington has banned over security concerns. Beijing reportedly wants the restrictions lifted as part of any trade truce.
A truce and a pledge
Experts believe the most that will be agreed to is a truce and a pledge to keep talking, although markets are not ruling out a complete collapse or a surprise breakthrough given the U.S. president’s mercurial nature.
The first tete-a-tete between the leaders of the world’s top two economies since the last G-20 in December has cast a long shadow over this year’s gathering in Osaka, where differences over climate change have also been laid bare.
China’s state-run Xinhua news agency said the Xi-Trump head-to-head was a “unique opportunity for the two sides to find new common ground in easing trade tensions and bring the troubled ties back onto the right track.”
However, the commentary also warned the U.S. “needs to place itself on an equal footing with China” and “accommodate China’s legitimate concerns.”
Trade war, trade deal
Economists say that a lengthy trade war could be crippling for the global economy at a time when headwinds including increased geopolitical tensions and Brexit are blowing hard.
On Friday, the European Union and the South American trade bloc Mercosur sealed a blockbuster trade deal after 20 years of talks that repeatedly stalled over EU farmer concerns about the beef market.
“In the midst of international trade tensions, we are sending today a strong signal with our Mercosur partners that we stand for rules-based trade,” European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said, hailing the deal.
VOA associate producer Jesusemen Oni contributed to this report from Washington.
As U.S. lawmakers agreed this week to provide billions of dollars in funding to federal law enforcement agencies at the Southwestern border, Mexico ramped up its own border efforts, deploying thousands of newly commissioned National Guard troops to its southern and northern frontiers.
The country’s immigration agency also announced it would hire new agents for the third time this year, though on a decidedly smaller scale than the troop deployment. The original posting was for 66 officers, but authorities said they might approve funds for more.
Meanwhile, Kevin McAleenan, acting head of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, said Friday that he would be meeting again with Northern Triangle officials in the coming week, as Washington attempts to lock down an asylum deal with Guatemala to divert asylum seekers away from Mexico and the U.S.
FILE – Acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan testifies before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee in Washington, May 23, 2019.
Expectations on migration
Despite a dizzying number of moving parts to the multicountry brokering, McAleenan told reporters he expected to see results of the attempts to mitigate unauthorized migration across the southwestern U.S. border by next month. An increasing number of families and unaccompanied children entered in the first half of the year.
“In terms of when we’re going to know if these efforts in Mexico are making an impact … basically by the end of July if these efforts are sustained and having significant impact,” McAleenan told reporters at a news conference that had been set for Thursday but was postponed after the U.S. House agreed to allocate additional funds to DHS operations at the border.
In Mexico, Defense Secretary Luis Sandoval ordered 15,000 members of the country’s newly formed National Guard and other military units to the northern border.
Thousands were previously dispatched to Mexico’s southern border with Guatemala and Belize.
But their role with respect to limiting border access into and out of Mexico remains unclear, said researcher Daniella Burgi-Palomino, a senior associate at the Latin America Working Group, an activist organization that promotes just U.S. policies toward Latin America and the Caribbean.
“All of that lack of clarity around their role is extremely concerning. It seems to be that Mexico already agreed to certain things with the U.S. and … is going out of its way, really wanting to show that they really want to show results within these 45 days,” she said, referring to Mexico’s response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s threat of tariffs. Under the deal, Mexico must reduce the number of unauthorized border-crossers into the U.S. from its territory to avoid the punitive financial measures Trump ordered.
Migrants wait for donated food at the Puerta Mexico international bridge, Matamoros, Mexico, June 27, 2019. Hundreds of migrants have been waiting for their numbers to be called to have a chance to request asylum in the U.S.
Immigration agent initiative
In announcing its hiring initiative, the Mexican immigration agency said the new agents were necessary to ensure that foreigners “are treated with dignity, and with unrestricted respect for their human rights.” The agency is under new leadership this month after its previous commissioner resigned in the middle of Mexico’s response to Trump’s tariff threat.
Burgi-Palomino said that in theory, only Mexico’s National Institute of Migration could handle immigration-related cases and detentions. Mexico also is documenting an increased number of migrants to and through its territory.
But just how that squares with the mandate given Mexico’s National Guard at the borders in blocking migrants — largely from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras — from entering Mexico from the south and entering the U.S. at the north has not been resolved.
“They’re a new force, which I think leads into the question of how much training have they received,” said Rachel Schmidtke, program associate for migration at the Mexico Institute of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. “I think if there’s not proper training, and sensitization to how to deal with populations that have less access to power, bad things can happen. And I think that’s … what could happen at the Mexico border.”
VOA’s Steve Herman and Dorian Jones contributed to this report.
U.S. President Donald Trump is set to meet Saturday with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Group of 20 summit in Osaka, Japan, to try to restart trade negotiations between the countries that broke off last month.
Trump, asked by VOA News during his meeting Friday at the summit with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro whether he expected Xi to put a trade deal offer on the table on Saturday, replied: “We’ll see what happens tomorrow. It’ll be a very exciting day, I’m sure, for a lot of people, including the world. … It’s going to come out hopefully well for both countries and ultimately it will work out.”
FILE – This combination of file photos shows U.S. President Donald Trump on March 28, 2017, in Washington, and Chinese President Xi Jinping on Feb. 22, 2017, in Beijing. Xi and Trump will meet June 29, 2019, in Osaka, Japan.
White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said this week that Trump did not agree to any preconditions for the high-stakes meeting with Xi and was maintaining his threat to impose new tariffs on Chinese goods.
Trump has threatened another $325 billion in tariffs on Chinese goods, which would cover just about everything China exports to the U.S. that is not already covered by the current 25% tariff on $250 billion in Chinese imports.
China has slapped its own tariffs on U.S. products, including those produced by already financially strapped American farmers.
The chief of staff to U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, Marc Short, said Friday that the “best-case scenario” for Saturday’s talks would be a resumption of trade negotiations between the United States and China.
Eleven rounds of previous talks have failed to ease U.S. concerns about China’s massive trade surplus and China’s acquisition of U.S. technology.
The latest round of talks broke down in May, when Washington accused Beijing of going back on its pledge to change Chinese laws to enact economic reforms.
Neither the United Sates nor China has indicated it will back down from previous positions that led to the current stalemate.
FILE – Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan addresses his MPs and supporters at parliament, in Ankara, May 7, 2019.
Trump is also scheduled to hold separate meetings Saturday with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman and Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The meeting with Erdogan is seen as the last chance to avoid a rupture in ties between the NATO allies over Turkey’s procurement of Russia’s S-400 missile system.
Before leaving for Japan, Erdogan played down the threat of sanctions. “I don’t know if NATO countries began to impose sanctions on each other. I did not receive this impression during my contact with Trump,” he said Wednesday to reporters.
The Turkish president told the Nikkei Asian Review, in an interview published Wednesday, that he was expecting a breakthrough with Trump.
“I believe my meeting with U.S. President Trump during the G-20 summit will be important for eliminating the deadlock in our bilateral relations and strengthening our cooperation,” he said.
A former State Department official and senior employee of the U.S. Agency for Global Media pleaded guilty on Thursday to stealing nearly $40,000 in government funds last year while in the employ of the federal agency.
Haroon K. Ullah, who served as chief strategy officer for USAGM from late 2017 to early this year, admitted in U.S. court in Alexandria, Virginia, that he received thousands of dollars in reimbursements from the federal agency by submitting falsified hotel, taxi and Uber invoices, and by billing the government for personal trips to promote his book and weekend trips, during which he performed no USAGM-related work.
Ullah, 41, also admitted in court documents that he falsified a letter from a real doctor claiming that Ullah needed to fly in business class because of a sore knee that required him to “lie flat” on long flights. The false letter enabled Ullah to get expensive business class upgrades on several international flights at government expense. One such upgrade for a flight to Cologne, Germany, cost the agency more than $1,600.
According to a court filing signed by one of Ullah’s attorneys, Ullah used a laptop issued by the agency and an invoice generator to create many of the fake documents.
USAGM, formerly known as BBG, is an independent U.S. government agency that oversees Voice of America and four other broadcasting entities.
The author of several books on political Islam and extremism, the Ph.D.-holding Ullah joined the agency in October 2017 after serving on former Secretary of State John Kerry’s policy planning staff. As chief strategy officer for USAGM, Ullah led the “agency’s policy engagement within the broader U.S. government as well as with key stakeholders outside the federal government,” according to an online biography cited in court filings.
According to court documents, he committed the theft from February to October 2018, when he was placed on administrative leave. The agency fired him in early April. A source familiar with the case said the inquiry into Ullah’s alleged misdeeds was instigated by an anonymous complaint filed last year with the agency.
Upcoming sentencing
In a statement, USAGM said that once “information about irregularities” came to light, “agency leadership referred this matter to the Office of the Inspector General.”
“The agency’s own internal oversight and audit processes for travel-related expenditures alerted Agency officials to potential fraud,” the statement continued. “Mr. Ullah’s employment was terminated a number of months ago, as a result of the Agency’s own investigation.”
Mark Schamel, a lawyer for Ullah, called him a “dedicated patriot” who will “continue to find ways to contribute to national security.”
“Dr. Ullah has done so much for the United States through his myriad contributions in the fight against terrorism,” Schamel said in a statement to VOA. “This case will not define him and all that he has done in saving American lives.”
Ullah’s sentencing is scheduled for October. He faces a maximum of 10 years in prison for theft of government money. Actual sentences for federal crimes tend to be less than the maximum.
A Missouri commissioner on Friday ruled that the state’s only abortion clinic can continue providing the service at least until August as a fight over its license plays out, adding that there’s a “likelihood” that the clinic will succeed in the dispute.
Administrative Hearing Commissioner Sreenivasa Rao Dandamudi granted a stay that will allow the St. Louis Planned Parenthood clinic to continue providing abortions past Friday.
The state health department last week refused to renew the clinic’s license, but a St. Louis judge issued a court order allowing the procedure to continue through Friday.
St. Louis Circuit Judge Michael Stelzer wrote in his ruling that the order would give Planned Parenthood time to take its case to the Administrative Hearing Commission, where Stelzer said the licensing fight must begin.
The Administrative Hearing Commission scheduled a hearing on whether the state was right to not renew the license Aug. 1 in St. Louis.
Investigators’ concerns
The state has said concerns about the clinic arose from inspections in March. Among the problems health department investigators have cited were three “failed abortions” requiring additional surgeries and another that led to life-threatening complications for the mother, The Associated Press previously reported, citing a now-sealed court filing.
The Department of Health and Senior Services wants to interview physicians involved in those abortions, including medical residents who no longer work there. Planned Parenthood has said it can’t force them to talk.
The interviews are a major sticking point in the fight over the clinic’s license, and attorneys for the health department wrote in legal filings to the commission that physicians’ refusal to talk “presents the final, critical obstacle.”
But Dandamudi wrote that the physicians’ refusal to talk “in itself does not constitute a failure to comply with licensure requirements.”
“Because DHSS relies substantially on the lack of these interviews as grounds for denial, we find there is a likelihood that petitioner will succeed in its claim,” Dandamudi wrote in his order granting a stay, referring to the clinic and its effort to stay open.
A spokesman for the Missouri attorney general’s office, which is representing the state in the dispute, in a Friday email said attorneys were reviewing the order to determine next steps.
FILE – Missouri Gov. Mike Parson arrives for a news conference in his Capitol office in Jefferson City, May 14, 2019.
Celebration
Planned Parenthood has said Missouri is using the licensing process as a weapon aimed at halting abortions.
The organization and its supporters planned to celebrate Friday in St. Louis and unveil a banner that “sends a strong message” to Republican Gov. Mike Parson and the state’s health director.
“We are relieved to have this last-minute reprieve, which means patients can continue accessing safe, legal abortion at Planned Parenthood in St. Louis for the time being,” Dr. Colleen McNicholas, an OB-GYN at Reproductive Health Services at Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region, said in a statement. “This has been a week-to-week fight for our patients and every Missourian who needs access to abortion care.”
The fate of the clinic has drawn national attention because Missouri would become the first state since 1974, the year after the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision, without a functioning abortion clinic if the Planned Parenthood facility loses its license. The battle also comes as abortion rights supporters raise concerns that conservative-led states, including Missouri, are attempting to end abortion through tough new laws and tighter regulation.
Parson signed legislation on May 24 to ban abortions at or beyond eight weeks of pregnancy, with exceptions for medical emergencies but not for rape or incest.
The number of abortions performed in Missouri has declined every year over the past decade, but uncertainty in Missouri is sending women to neighboring states, particularly Illinois and Kansas.
Missouri health department statistics show that abortions in Missouri reached a low of 2,910 last year. Of those, an estimated 1,210 occurred at eight weeks or less of pregnancy.
Illinois clinic
The Hope Clinic in Granite City, Ill., 10 miles (16 kilometers) from St. Louis, has seen a big increase in Missouri clients since 2017, said Alison Dreith, the clinic’s deputy director. That year, Missouri adopted a more restrictive abortion law, including giving the attorney general power to prosecute violations.
Dreith said about 55 percent of patients at Hope Clinic are from Missouri, 40 percent from Illinois and 5 percent from elsewhere around the country. The clinic attracts clients from across the U.S. in part because Illinois allows the procedure for up to 24 weeks of pregnancy, longer than most states, she said.
The Granite City clinic saw about 3,000 total patients in 2017. Missouri’s more restrictive law played a big role in the number spiking to 3,800 in 2018, Dreith said.
This year, she expects well over 4,000 patients. So far in 2019, the number of Missourians at the Hope Clinic has spiked 30 percent because of concerns about the St. Louis clinic’s license and other anti-abortion efforts, Dreith said.
“Our patients are calling us with a lot of anxiety because they’re seeing the headlines that abortion is banned,” Dreith said.
Information from the state of Kansas shows that about 3,300 of the 7,000 abortions performed there last year involved Missouri residents, meaning that more Missourians get abortions in Kansas than in their home state. Kansas has an abortion clinic in Overland Park, a Kansas City suburb just two miles (three kilometers) from the state line.
The Supreme Court agreed Friday to hear a case about billions of dollars awarded by a court to victims of the 1998 bombing of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
More than 200 people died in the attacks and more than 1,000 were injured. The justices are starting their summer break, but said they would hear the case after they resume hearing arguments in the fall.
The case the justices agreed to hear involves a group of individuals who were victims of the attacks and their family members. They sued Sudan, arguing that it caused the bombings by providing material support to al-Qaeda.
A trial court awarded approximately $10.2 billion in damages including approximately $4.3 billion in punitive damages. But an appeals court overturned the punitive damages award. The Supreme Court will determine if that decision was correct.
A law called the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act generally says that foreign countries are immune from civil lawsuits in federal and state courts in the United States. But there’s an exception when a country is designated a “state sponsor of terrorism” as Sudan was. The Supreme Court is being asked to decide whether the law allows punitive damages for events that happened before the most recent revision to the act in 2008.
Four Ukrainian nationals have been released from separatist captivity and handed over to the Ukrainian government.
The rare prisoner release, originally announced on Thursday, was completed on Friday when the four men were handed over to Ukrainian officials at the airport in the Belarusian capital, Minsk. The men looked tired but had no visible signs of mistreatment or torture. They spent from one to four years in captivity each.
Hostilities between Russia-backed separatists and Ukrainian government troops in eastern Ukraine have killed more than 13,000 people since 2014. Prisoner exchanges between the warring parties became increasingly rare. The last one was arranged in 2017.
Friday’s prisoner release was arranged by Viktor Medvedvchuk, a Ukrainian oligarch with strong ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Senior officials from Iran and the remaining signatories to its 2015 nuclear deal met Friday with the future of the accord under threat as Tehran was poised to surpass a uranium stockpile threshold.
At the heart of the meeting is Iran’s desire for Europe to deliver on promises of financial relief from U.S. sanctions that are crippling the country’s economy. Iran insists it wants to save the agreement and has urged the Europeans to start buying Iranian oil or give Iran a credit line to keep the accord alive.
There was no comment from participants who arrived at a Vienna hotel to take part in the regular quarterly meeting of the accord’s so-called joint commission, which brings together senior officials from Iran, France, Germany, Britain, Russia, China and the European Union. The main session of the meeting lasted about three hours.
The agreement was aimed at curbing Iran’s nuclear ambitions in exchange for relief from economic sanctions. The U.S. withdrew from the accord last year and has imposed new sanctions on Iran in hopes of forcing Tehran into negotiating a wider-ranging deal.
President Donald Trump said on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in Japan that “there’s no rush” to ease current tensions with Iran.
“There’s absolutely no time pressure,” he added. “I think that in the end, hopefully, it’s going to work out. If it does, great. And if doesn’t, you’ll be hearing about it.”
Iran recently quadrupled its production of low-enriched uranium. It previously said it would surpass a 300-kilogram stockpile limit set by the accord by Thursday, but an Iranian official said it was below the limit Wednesday and there would be no new assessment until “after the weekend.” It is currently a holiday weekend in Iran.
European countries are pressing for Iran to comply in full with the accord, though they have not specified what the consequences would be of failing to do so. But Iranian officials maintain that even if it surpasses the enrichment limit, it would not be breaching the deal, and say such a move could be reversed quickly.
The Europeans also face a July 7 deadline set by Tehran to offer long-promised relief from U.S. sanctions, or Iran says it will also begin enriching its uranium closer to weapons-grade levels.
Iranian state TV reported Thursday that Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif sent a letter urging European signatories to the accord to implement their commitments, saying Iran’s next steps depend on that.
Britain, France and Germany are finalizing a complicated barter-type system known as INSTEX to maintain trade with Iran and avoid U.S. sanctions, as part of efforts to keep the nuclear deal afloat. It would help ensure trade between Iran and Europe by allowing buyers and sellers to exchange money without relying on the usual cross-border financial transactions.
Tensions have been rising in the Middle East. Citing unspecified Iranian threats, the U.S. has sent an aircraft carrier to the region and deployed additional troops alongside the tens of thousands already there.
The U.S. has been worried about international shipping through the Strait of Hormuz since tankers were damaged in May and June in what Washington has blamed on limpet mines from Iran, although Tehran denies any involvement. Last week, Iran shot down a U.S. Navy surveillance drone, saying it violated its territory; Washington said it was in international airspace.
Cornelius Adebahr, an associate fellow at the German Council on Foreign Relations think tank in Berlin, said there was a risk of “a big conflict.”
“There is so much space for miscalculations, for misperceptions and there is no direct communication between Iran and the U.S.,” he said. During the Cold War, he noted, Washington and Moscow had a direct hotline for crises, but now “there is nothing comparable and that makes this all so dangerous.”
On Thursday, U.S. Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook met top European diplomats in Paris and said he wants them to get tougher on Iran, instead of clinging to the nuclear deal.
The U.S. is trying to drum up support for an international naval force in the Persian Gulf, notably to protect shipping. On Friday, Hook met in London with the head of the International Maritime Organization, the U.N. shipping safety agency, to share intelligence on “Iran’s recent aggression in and around the Strait of Hormuz.”
Hook said that “we have put ourselves in a strictly defensive position but we are, we think, making strides to restore deterrence.”
He also stressed that “you can’t do business with the United States and Iran, and everyone has chosen the United States over Iran for a number of reasons.”
In Osaka, Japan, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she and Trump discussed Iran “and the question of how we can get into a negotiating process, which I advocated very strongly.”
Chinese President Xi Jinping, also at the summit, said the Gulf region stands “at a crossroads of war and peace,” news agency Xinhua and state broadcaster CCTV reported.
“China always stands on the side of peace and opposes war,” Xi said, calling on all sides to stay calm, exercise restraint and promote dialogue.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the world can’t afford a conflict, adding it was “essential to de-escalate the situation” and avoid confrontation.
Vietnam is squelching YouTube’s business activity after the service posted thousands of videos that the government considers inaccurate, offensive to the Communist leadership or a mechanism to lure children to gangs, official media and tech industry sources say.
Parent company Google has tried to shut down about 8,000 YouTube videos as ordered, but YouTube software doesn’t go far enough to remove others, state-controlled news outlet VnExpress International reported Wednesday. About 55,000 videos with “toxic, illegal” content remain on the site, the report says, citing the Authority of Broadcasting and Electronic Information.
Bystanders peer into barricades and umbrellas attached to an entry to the police headquarters in Hong Kong, June 27, 2019. Hong Kong protesters marched Thursday as they called on G-20 nations to confront China over sliding freedoms in Hong Kong.
Case by case
Google does not comply with all of Vietnam’s requests, considering each case individually, a source close to the company said for this report. The source said Vietnamese authorities want more content removed, faster or before being posted.
“It must be there’s probably some content on YouTube, probably to do with either Vietnamese leaders or China, and it would completely increase the country risk for Google,” said Adam McCarty, chief economist with Mekong Economics in Hanoi.
Leaders are sensitive about their public image. Many Vietnamese citizens also dislike China, a territorial rival going back centuries, and the government in Hanoi hopes to head off violent anti-China protests like a series in 2014 that targeted Chinese-owned businesses.
Steps to throttle YouTube
The Vietnamese government will block payments that Google makes for YouTube content that it considers illegal and will push Google to develop algorithms that can stop controversial videos from going live, VnExpress International said.
The Ministry of Information and Communications further ordered 60 companies, including foreign ones, to quit advertising on YouTube videos with “antigovernment content,” the news website adds. Among the would-be advertisers are Samsung, Yamaha and Huawei.
Authorities will face “challenges” in following up the advertisement ban, since YouTube places that ad automatically via its software, said Lam Nguyen, country manager with the market research firm IDC.
Google spokespeople in Asia declined comment this week.
Cybersecurity Law
Vietnam, different from its communist neighbor China, blocks neither YouTube nor other Google services. YouTube was the second-most accessed website in Vietnam last year, behind only Facebook, the news outlet says.
“There won’t be any restrictions, and that’s something they’re proud of,” said Tai Wan-ping, Southeast Asia-specialized international business professor at Cheng Shiu University in Taiwan.
But in January the country implemented a Cybersecurity Law that lets the government target specific offensive content using evidence provided by email services and social media networks including Facebook. Efforts to stop YouTube fall under that law, Nguyen said.
“It is a next step of enforcement initiatives that follow the Cybersecurity Law that went into effect early this year,” he said. “Google and YouTube among other cross-border digital platforms will begin to start feeling pressure to do compliance.”
Demonstrators rally ahead of the G-20 summit, urging the international community to back their demands for the government to withdraw the extradition bill in Hong Kong, June 26, 2019.
What’s in the videos
Officials in Hanoi have not said publicly which videos it dislikes. Naming specific content would motivate more people to watch it, McCarty said.
Some videos may have shown the million-person, antigovernment street demonstrations in Hong Kong since June 9, Tai said. Vietnamese authorities do not want disgruntled people in their own country to launch protests, he added.
“They care a lot about the Hong Kong situation, because they wonder whether the matter in Hong Kong could happen in the future in Vietnam,” Tai said.
Vietnamese officials probably objected to content they felt had “libeled” the government, to so-called “fake news” and to videos posted by a charismatic male Vietnamese “gangster” who was influencing children to like him, said Trung Nguyen, international relations dean at Ho Chi Minh University of Social Sciences and Humanities.
“He became so notorious in Vietnam, and many young people follow him, and the government asked YouTube to block the channel,” Trung Nguyen said.
The government believes it has a right to demand cooperation from YouTube, since the video service gets “financial benefits” from Vietnam, he added.
Former Vice President Joe Biden was among 10 Democratic presidential contenders on stage Thursday for part two of the Democratic Party’s first presidential debates. The Democratic candidates were often critical of President Donald Trump but did not hesitate to turn on each other, as we hear from VOA National correspondent Jim Malone in Washington.
A small-town charity wanted to feed hungry homeless people and support the arts that feed people’s hungry souls. So to meet these needs and others, the Community Foundation in Harrisonburg, Virginia, set an ambitious fundraising goal of more than $300,000 and cranked up an online campaign to encourage donations. VOA’s Yahya Barzinji tells us what happened next in this report narrated by Bezhan Hamdard.
Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden was at center stage Thursday on the second night of Democratic presidential debates, but one of his main challengers, Sen. Kamala Harris, sharply questioned his relations with segregationist lawmakers four decades ago and opposition to forced school busing to integrate schools.
Harris, a California lawmaker and former prosecutor, turned to Biden, saying, “I do not believe you are a racist.” But the African American senator drew cheers from the crowd in an auditorium in Miami, Florida, when she said it was “hurtful to hear” Biden recently as he described how as a young senator he worked with segregationist Southern senators to pass legislation.
“That’s a mischaracterization of my position across the board,” a stern-faced Biden responded. “I did not praise racists.”
Democratic presidential hopeful U.S. Senator for California Kamala Harris speaks during the second Democratic primary debate of the 2020 presidential campaign at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts in Miami, June 27, 2019.
But Harris persisted in a sharp exchange, demanding of Biden, “Do you acknowledge it was wrong to oppose busing?” Harris said she had benefited from busing to attend desegregated schools.
Biden defended his longtime support for civil rights legislation, but he did not explain his opposition to school busing in the state of Delaware, which he represented in the U.S. Senate.
Democratic presidential hopeful former U.S. Vice President Joseph R. Biden speaks during the second Democratic primary debate of the 2020 presidential campaign at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts in Miami, June 27, 2019.
Divisive issue
Court-ordered school busing was a divisive issue in numerous American cities in the 1970s, especially opposed by white parents whose children were sent to black-majority schools elsewhere in their communities to desegregate them.
The Harris-Biden exchange was one of the most pointed of the debate, perhaps catching Biden off guard. He had not previously debated his rivals during the early going of the campaign. The issue of race was triggered midway through the debate when Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, was questioned about his handling of the recent fatal shooting of a black man by a white police officer.
Democratic presidential hopeful Mayor of South Bend, Indiana Pete Buttigieg speaks during the second Democratic primary debate of the 2020 presidential campaign at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts in Miami, June 27, 2019.
Buttigieg, who temporarily suspended his campaign to return to his city, said the shooting is under investigation, but added, “It’s a mess and we’re hurting.”
Many in the black community have protested Buttigieg’s handling of the police incident and the relatively small number of black police officers on the force.
Biden leading early survey
Biden currently leads Democratic voter preference surveys for the party’s presidential nomination, but he was facing some of his biggest rivals, with millions watching on national television. He often defended his long role in the U.S. government, most recently as former President Barack Obama’s two-term vice president.
He was joined in the debate by seven other presidential candidates, including Senators Bernie Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist from Vermont, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Michael Bennet of Colorado.
In the early moments of the debate, Biden, Sanders and Harris all attacked Trump for his staunch support for a $1.5 trillion tax cut Congress enacted that chiefly benefited corporations and the wealthy.
“Donald Trump has put us in a horrible situation,” Biden said. “I would be going about eliminating Donald Trump’s tax cuts for the wealthy.” Sanders called for the elimination of $1.6 trillion of student debt across the country, while Harris said she would change the tax code to benefit the American middle class, not the wealthy.
Democratic presidential hopeful U.S. Senator for Vermont Bernie Sanders arrives for the second Democratic primary debate of the 2020 presidential campaign at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts in Miami, June 27, 2019.
‘The fraud he is’
Sanders attacked Trump in the most direct way of any of the Democratic contenders, declaring, “Trump is a phony, pathological liar and a racist.” He said Democrats need to “expose him as the fraud he is.”
Biden, President Barack Obama’s two-term running mate as vice president, twice has failed to win the party’s presidential nomination, in 1988 and 2008. But he has consistently led national polling this year, both over his Democratic rivals for the party nomination and over Trump in a hypothetical 2020 general election matchup.
Biden’s closest Democratic challengers are Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, the key contender among 10 on the debate stage Wednesday, when more than 15 million people tuned in to see the first major political event of the 2020 campaign.
Candidates taking part in Thursday’s Democratic debate in Miami, June 27, 2019.
Biden has attempted to portray himself as a steady alternative to the unpredictable Trump, one who would restore frayed U.S. relations with foreign allies and undo conservative domestic policies Trump has adopted.
But more progressive Democrats have questioned Biden’s bona fides and political history over four decades in Washington as the party’s key current figures have aggressively moved toward more liberal stances on a host of key policy issues, including health care and abortion, taxes and immigration.
Some critics also have suggested that Biden might be too old to become the U.S. leader. Now 76, Biden would be 78 and the oldest first-term president if he were to defeat the 73-year-old Trump and take office in January 2021. Trump often mocks him as “Sleepy Joe.”
Democratic presidential hopeful U.S. Representative from California Eric Swalwell speaks during the second Democratic primary debate of the 2020 presidential campaign at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts in Miami, June 27, 2019.
‘Pass the torch’
Congressman Eric Swalwell of California jabbed at Biden, recalling that 32 years ago, when Biden first ran for president, Biden contended the U.S. needed to “pass the torch” to a new generation of leaders. Swalwell said Biden was right when he said that then and joked that “he’s right today.”
Biden laughed at the reference, responding, “I’m still holding on to that torch.”
In the Midwestern farm state of Iowa recently, Trump assessed his possible Democratic opponents, saying of Biden, “I think he’s the weakest mentally, and I think Joe is weak mentally. The others have much more energy.”
Biden, for his part, labeled Trump “an existential threat” to the U.S.
Democratic presidential hopeful Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren participates in the first Democratic primary debate of the 2020 presidential campaign at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts in Miami, June 26, 2019.
On Wednesday, Warren, a progressive lawmaker and one-time Harvard law professor, declared, “I want to return government to the people.”
Referring to major corporations, she added, “What’s been missing is courage, courage in Washington to take on the giants. I have the courage to go after them.”
Later, Warren said she supports a government-run health care system, as does Sanders, that could end the private insurance-based health care now used in the U.S. Some Democratic candidates and most Republicans, including Trump, oppose such a change as costly and a mistake for the country.
But Warren said, “Health care is a basic human right and I will fight for basic human rights.”
Mexico has spent $17 million to remove over a half-million tons of sargassum seaweed from its Caribbean beaches, and the problem doesn’t seem likely to end any time soon, experts told an international conference Thursday.
The floating mats of algae seldom reached the famed beaches around Cancun until 2011, but they’re now severely affecting tourism, with visitors often facing stinking mounds of rotting seaweed at the waterline.
Initial reports suggested the seaweed came from an area of the Atlantic off the northern coast of Brazil, near the mouth of the Amazon River. Increased nutrient flows from deforestation or fertilizer runoff could be feeding the algae bloom.
But experts like oceanographer Donald R. Johnson said, “Do not blame the Brazilians.” Johnson said it appears that other causes contribute, like nutrient flows from the Congo River.
Increased upwelling of nutrient-laden deeper ocean water in the tropical Atlantic and dust blowing in from Africa may also be playing a role, according to Johnson, a senior researcher at the University of Southern Mississippi Gulf Coast Research Laboratory.
While it sometimes appears sargassum mats float west into the Caribbean, experts say the seaweed actually appears to be sloshing back and forth between the Caribbean and Africa.
It all has the local population — which depends of tourism — fed up.
“Fighting sargassum is a chore every day,” said Cancun Mayor Mara Lezama. “You clean the beaches in the morning, and sometimes you clean them again in the afternoon or at night, and then you have to go back and clean it again.”
Ricardo del Valle, a business owner in the seaside resort of Playa del Carmen, said, “We offer sun and sand, nothing else. That is what we’re selling. And right now we’re fooling our tourists.”
Their anger increased this week when President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador visited the coast and downplayed the seriousness of the problem. He recently said he would not contract out the work of cleaning up sargassum — or gathering it before it reaches shore — but will put the Mexican Navy in charge of building collector boats and cleaning the sea.
“I haven’t talked much about this, because I don’t see it as a very serious issue, as some claim it is,” Lopez Obrador said. “No, no, we’re going to solve it.”
Sargassum is not just a problem for Mexico; it affects, to a greater or lesser degree, all the islands in the Caribbean.
“We are seeing a major impact on our countries, economically, socially,” said June Soomer, the general secretary of the Association of Caribbean States, noting massive arrivals of seaweed “are now considered national emergencies” in some Caribbean counties like Barbados.
