A Myanmar court on Wednesday sentenced a veteran Australian media publisher to 13 years in jail after a police raid uncovered a stash of drugs at his home last year.

Ross Dunkley, 60, has long had links with the media industry across Southeast Asia, co-founding English language newspaper The Myanmar Times when the country was in the tight grip of a military dictatorship.

He also used to be a co-owner of Cambodia’s Phnom Penh Post.

Police arrested him, his business partner John McKenzie and seven Myanmar nationals during a June 2018 raid on his home in the commercial capital Yangon.

Officers uncovered a stash of crystal methamphetamine, low-grade “yaba” pills, three opium cakes, marijuana and a small amount of heroin, police said.

One man and one woman, who were working as house helpers for Dunkley, were later released.

“Ross Dunkley and John McKenzie are sentenced to 13 years,” judge Myint Myint Maw told Yangon’s Western District court Wednesday.

Five Myanmar women also on trial broke down in tears as they were each sentenced to 11 years, while watching relatives shouted out in anger.

Dunkley appeared shaken and declined to speak to reporters as he was led away from the court room.

All defendants had denied the charges and it is not yet clear if any will appeal.

Myanmar is now believed to be the largest producer of methamphetamine in the world in a shadowy, multi-billion dollar industry.

Crystal meth pumped out from labs in eastern Shan state is trafficked as far away as Tokyo, Seoul and Sydney.

“Yaba” pills, made of cheap methamphetamine, are meanwhile scooped up by users across Thailand, Bangladesh and Myanmar at rock-bottom prices.

Last year’s raid was Dunkley’s second run-in with Myanmar authorities.

In 2011 he was sentenced to a month in prison for the assault of a woman at a Yangon nightclub, though the court allowed him to walk free after taking into account time already served.

Papua New Guinea’s new leader has asked China to refinance its entire 27 billion kina ($7.8 billion) government debt and enter into free trading arrangements with Pacific island nations, even as competition for influence in the region intensifies between Beijing and Washington.

PNG Prime Minister James Marape said in a statement issued out of Port Moresby on Monday that the requests were raised during a recent meeting with the Chinese Ambassador to Papua New Guinea, Xue Bing.

PNG, a country rich in natural gas, crude oil, gold and copper, among other commodities, has fallen into large budget deficits in recent years. The government said in a fiscal update earlier this year “cash became tight” due in part to delays over a proposed $300 million budget loan from China.

The island nation’s total public debt accounts for just over 30% of its annual gross domestic product, according to a mid-year budget document, though it does not provide regular updates on how much of that is owed to China.

The request to Beijing coincides with aggressive warnings from U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper who said on Sunday that China was using “predatory economics” to destabilize the Indo-Pacific.

Reuters’ analysis of Pacific nation budgets has found that China ramped up its system of concessional loans over the past decade from almost zero to become the largest financier in the Pacific, bankrolling everything from ports and airports to sports stadiums and boulevards.

The sudden geopolitical interest in the Pacific has brought with it access to cheap financing, grants and gifts that were unimaginable to many of the small island economies only a few years ago.

Alison Stuart, division director of small states for the International Monetary Fund’s Asia Pacific department, said in a statement to Reuters that borrowing could support growth in Pacific island countries and address large infrastructure gaps.

She said the island economies were also vulnerable to a rapid build-up in debt burdens.

Pacific leaders are scheduled to attend the annual Pacific Islands Forum on the island of Tuvalu next week.

Tuvalu is one of six Pacific islands to recognize Taiwan, which Beijing views as a wayward Chinese province with no right to diplomatic relations.

In recent months China has intensified its lobbying of those countries to switch their diplomatic ties to Beijing.

Marape, who came to power in May, said in the statement he wanted Pacific island nations to enter into free trading arrangements with China “to boost economic corridor zones in the region.”

A quarter of the world’s people are just a few dry spells away from facing dangerous water shortages, a U.S. think tank warned on Tuesday, with India home to the bulk at risk of running dry.

Seventeen countries face “extremely high water stress” because they consume 80 percent of their available water annually, a situation worsened by more frequent dry shocks tied to climate change, the World Resources Institute (WRI) said.

“We’re currently facing a global water crisis,” said Betsy Otto, director of WRI’s global water program.

New data in WRI’s Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas showed the lion’s share of the most thirsty countries are located in the largely arid Middle East and North Africa region.

Qatar is the most water-stressed country, followed by Israel and Lebanon.

India ranked 13th among “extremely high” water-stressed nations. But with a population of more than 1.3 billion, it has over three times more people than the other 16 countries combined whose agriculture, industry and municipalities depend on avoiding water “bankruptcy.”

In recent weeks, India’s sixth-largest city, Chennai, was the latest metropolis worldwide to warn its taps could run dry, as reservoir levels plunged.

That followed similar countdowns to water “Day Zero” in South Africa’s Cape Town last year and Brazil’s Sao Paulo in 2015, WRI said.

“We’re likely to see more of these kinds of ‘Day Zeros’ in the future,” said Otto.

The world’s water supplies are threatened by many factors, from climate change to mismanagement in the form of water waste and pollution, Washington-based WRI said.

A high reliance on depleting groundwater supplies – difficult to measure and manage because they are buried deep – is an additional concern, Paul Reig, who leads work on the Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas, told journalists.

Nearly a third of the world’s fresh water is groundwater, according to the United States Geological Survey.

“Because we don’t understand (groundwater), and don’t see it, we manage it very poorly,” Reig said.

WRI’s atlas ranked 189 countries on water stress, drought and river flood risk in collaboration with universities and research institutes in the Netherlands and Switzerland, using data from the 1960s to 2014.

One day after the U.S. imposed a full economic embargo on Venezuela, National Security Advisor John Bolton says the U.S. can now sanction anyone who supports the government of President Nicolas Maduro. Maduro’s government denounced the sanctions as a “grave aggression” that will lead to “the failure of political dialogue.” VOA’s Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine has more from the State Department.

Walt Disney Co. on Tuesday said it would offer a $13-per-month bundle of its three streaming services starting in November, a move to attract audiences who have embraced digital services such as Netflix.

Disney’s bundle includes family-friendly digital offering Disney+, sports service ESPN+, and Hulu, which will cater to adults, for a $5-per-month discount. The Hulu offering in the bundle will include commercials.

That price is the same as Netflix’s most popular plan, which allows streaming on two devices simultaneously.

Disney “hamstrung Netflix by announcing a bundle of Disney+ and ESPN+ and ad-supported Hulu at the same price point,” said Kamal Khan, analyst at Investing.com.

Executives at Disney and Netflix have said they believe there is room for both services in the growing market of digital options that are luring customers away from cable TV.

Video streaming competition will intensify soon, with Apple, AT&T’s WarnerMedia’s HBO Max and Comcast’s NBCUniversal planning to roll out new services.

Customers are dropping cable TV but now must decide how much they want to pay for digital offerings.

Hulu is currently available for $5.99 a month with ads, or $11.99 without ads. ESPN+, which offers sports that are not shown on ESPN’s cable channels, including Ultimate Fighting Championship bouts, rugby and some professional baseball and soccer games, costs $4.99 a month. Disney+ on its own will cost $6.99 when it starts streaming on Nov. 12 with a slate of new and classic TV shows and movies.

Disney shares were trading 5% lower after it reported a steeper earnings decline than Wall Street expected on Tuesday.

President Donald Trump this week declared China a currency manipulator after Beijing stopped purchasing U.S. agricultural products and allowed its yuan to weaken. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi talked to William Adams, senior economist at PNC Financial Services Group, about the new twist in the trade war and the impact of further tariffs in the ongoing dispute. This interview was edited for clarity and length. 

VOA:  What is the practical impact of a country weakening its currency?

Warren Adams: When a country weakens its currency, that means that it’s more expensive for people in that country to buy foreign goods. They spend more on products available locally. And it also means that businesses in that country can have more of an advantage in exporting to foreign markets.

It sounds like devaluing your currency would be bad for the people in the country.

Devaluing the currency — this is a classic there’s-no-free-lunch-in-economics sort of an issue. Devaluing the currency helps businesses in the country to increase foreign sales and be more profitable. But it also means that prices rise for consumers, and it tends to crimp consumer spending. 

So, why is the United States labeling China a currency manipulator? Is this mostly symbolic?

The U.S. label of China as a currency manipulator is in reaction to the Chinese government’s decision to let China’s currency depreciate against the dollar in recent days. In the past, designating a country as a currency manipulator would be a first step toward imposing broad tariffs on all of that country’s exports to the United States. But since the United States has already imposed tariffs on much of China’s exports to the U.S. and is threatening to impose them on all Chinese goods exports to the U.S., the effect is more symbolic and more of a demonstration of how relations between the U.S. and China have deteriorated in recent months.

What effect will asking the International Monetary Fund to intervene have?

I think involving the IMF in the U.S.-China trade dispute means that this is going to be a slow-burning issue. That’s not something that gets resolved overnight. So, there’s not going to be an immediate IMF decision about whether China is a currency manipulator and what China should do about it.

Let’s say the IMF says, “Yes, China’s definitely a currency manipulator.” Then what? 

Then that could open the door to the U.S. taking additional moves to sanction Chinese imports. The United States is imposing non-tariff barriers on China’s foreign trade and commerce. But it’s open-ended about what specifically would be done. Would that be more tariffs? Would that be restrictions on Chinese companies’ ability to access U.S. technology? Or would there be something different from what the U.S. government has already used to date to try to change the trade balance and change Chinese companies’ behavior?

What’s China saying about being labeled a currency manipulator?

China is saying that its currency is moving in reaction to market forces, and the U.S. dollar has appreciated this year against many foreign currencies — the euro against the pound sterling, the British currency. And so, China’s saying that their currency’s move is really just paralleling what most currencies have done against the dollar.

White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said this week that the U.S. economy is very strong, but China’s is not. 

The U.S. economy is in a good spot right now. Unemployment is close to the lowest in almost 50 years. The U.S. economy is growing solidly in the first half of this year. But the U.S. economy is also slowing. A part of that is the effect of a fading fiscal stimulus. The tax cuts of 2017 were a temporary boost to the economy, and part of that is a drag on the globally oriented parts of the U.S. economy, from tariffs and other trade policy uncertainty. So, the U.S. economy is slowing right now, and China — and for that matter the global economy — is also slowing. It’s the second half of 2019 (that) is going to be a slow patch for the global economy.

What’s happening right now in terms of the effect on our economy and on China’s economy?

The immediate effect of China’s decision to allow their currency to depreciate is spillover to financial markets in the United States. And that’s because, you know, two channels. One is that China using this tool means that the trade conflict is escalating and the downside risks from a trade conflict to the U.S. economy are increasing. The other is that a weaker Chinese currency means that Chinese businesses and Chinese consumers have less buying power to buy foreign gasoline, foreign inputs to China’s investment engine, their housing investment industry. And so, that puts downward pressure on the growth potential of the suppliers to those industries all around the world.

What other countries are going to feel this? 

The depreciation of the Chinese currency also spills over to affect countries with close trading relationships with China. So, the same day that you saw the Chinese currency depreciate against the U.S. dollar, we also saw large depreciation of Korea’s currency. Korea is a close trading partner with China. And we saw a large depreciation of Brazil’s currency. Brazil is a major exporter to China of agricultural products and also of inputs to their industrial economy. So, there are spillovers. I know Korea and Brazil are not huge U.S. trading partners or huge parts of the global economy, but those spillovers to many other smaller economies add up to a meaningful effect on the global outlook.

China said it’s going to stop buying U.S. agricultural products. What does that do to farmers and taxpayers here? 

It’s a tough year for agriculture in the United States. I think the effect of prolonged Chinese tariffs on U.S. agricultural exports, and I think beyond the tariffs, the signal that the Chinese government is giving the domestic buyers is that they should look elsewhere. It’s taking a situation that was already difficult because of really bad weather in the U.S .Midwest and making it worse. For the U.S. economy as a whole, I think we will see some impact of tariffs on prices at the checkout at stores in the United States. Some of that actually might be mitigated because the dollar has appreciated against both the Chinese currency and many other foreign currencies. So, the effect might not be that large in the near term. But I think probably we will see that before the end of this year if this latest round of tariffs is in fact put into place

What will we see by the end of the year?

Probably we’ll see higher checkout prices by the end of this year as retailers in the United States pass on the cost of tariffs to consumers if this latest round of tariffs is put into place. 

What else should we know about the trade war?

The week’s events have been a tangible escalation of the U.S.-China trade conflict, but they haven’t really been a surprise. Both the Chinese and U.S. governments had set themselves up in recent months for further stalemate or even escalation of this conflict. Both governments seem to be waiting for the other to make concessions. So, this is more of a realization of an event that had seemed like it was going to happen, rather than something that totally came as a surprise to outside observers.

Kudlow also mentioned that a Chinese delegation will be coming to the U.S. next month. What can we expect from that?

In the near term, I’m not expecting a big breakthrough on the trade negotiation. China sees the U.S. heading into a presidential election cycle. And they think that the U.S. is coming under increased pressure to resolve the trade conflict because of that. And the U.S. knows that China’s exports to the U.S. are a more important contributor to Chinese GDP and Chinese employment than the other way around. And so, I think that’s why we are in this situation right now of escalation and stalemate, as both countries’ governments wait for the other to make concessions.

Who’s going to blink first.

Yep.

Joe Biden maintained his lead for the Democratic presidential nomination as minorities gravitated toward the former vice president and his top rival, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, in search of the safest bets for beating President Donald Trump in 2020, according to a

U.S. stocks closed sharply higher Tuesday, rebounding from the biggest drop of the year after China stepped in to strengthen its currency.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 312 points, more than one percent. The S&P and Nasdaq were also up more than one percent while European indexes suffered losses.

U.S. indexes rebounded after Monday’s steep three percent losses set off by China’s decision to let the value of yuan drop to a 10 year low after President Donald Trump labeled China a currency manipulator.

Investors also fear the trade war between Washington and Beijing will get worse.

A weaker yuan means Chinese goods are cheaper on the world market compared to U.S. exports.

China’s central bank issued a statement early Tuesday saying Washington’s decision to label China a currency manipulator “seriously undermines international rules and will have a major impact on global economic finance.”

The Central Bank said the yuan exchange rate “is driven and determined by market forces.” It said Beijing has not used the exchange rate as a tool to deal with trade disputes.

The sharp drop on Wall Street Monday was followed by sharp losses in Asian markets Tuesday.

The months-long trade war between the United States and China, the world’s two biggest economies, worsened last week as Trump announced plans to impose a 10% tariff on $300 billion worth of Chinese imports on September 1. China retaliated by ending all new purchases of American agricultural products.

As China curbed its American agricultural purchases over the last year, Trump directed billions of dollars of U.S. government aid to farmers to cover their lost revenue and says he would do it again.

“As they have learned in the last two years,” Trump tweeted Tuesday, “our great American Farmers know that China will not be able to hurt them in that their President has stood with them and done what no other president would do – And I’ll do it again next year if necessary!”

U.S. President Donald Trump sued California on Tuesday over a new law requiring presidential candidates to release their tax returns to run in the state’s primary elections.

The lawsuit, filed by Trump’s personal lawyers in federal court in Sacramento, argues the statute signed into law last week is unconstitutional because it sets up illegal new rules governing who can seek the presidency.

The complaint also alleged that the law retaliates against Trump for his apolitical beliefs and therefore violates his right to free speech under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

The lawsuit follows a similar one filed by Judicial Watch, a Washington-based conservative legal group, on behalf of four voters registered in California – two Republicans, a Democrat and an independent.

The Republican Party also filed a similar case on Tuesday.

The measure requires presidential candidates to release five years of tax returns in order to appear on a nominating ballot in California, the most populous U.S. state. The bill passed both houses of California’s Democrat-controlled legislature and was signed by Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom last week.

Trump refused to release his tax returns during the 2016 campaign, bucking a practice followed by every presidential nominee for decades.

Last month, the Democrat-controlled Ways and Means Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives sued the U.S. Treasury Department to force the release of Trump’s tax records.

Democrats want the tax returns as part of their inquiry into possible conflicts of interest posed by Trump’s continued ownership of his extensive business interests.

In New York, Governor Andrew Cuomo, also a Democrat, signed an amendment last month to a law requiring the state’s Department of Taxation and Finance to release any returns sought by the congressional committees.

Both efforts have been rebuffed by Trump’s team. The president sued to block the New York law, and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin has refused to hand Trump’s returns over to the Ways and Means Committee.

An earlier version of the California law had been vetoed by Newsom’s predecessor Jerry Brown, a Democrat who expressed concerns over its constitutionality.

“These are extraordinary times and states have a legal and moral duty to do everything in their power to ensure leaders seeking the highest offices meet minimal standards, and to restore public confidence,” Newsom said in a statement when he announced the bill signing last week.

Parts of Syria freed from the clutches of Islamic State are starting to hold some members of the terror group accountable for their crimes.

While most of the world’s attention has been focused on the approximately 2,000 foreign IS fighters currently in the custody of the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), another 8,000 suspected IS fighters from Syria and Iraq are also behind bars.

U.S. officials estimate about half of those 8,000 prisoners are from Syria. And now, it seems, at least some of them are being brought to justice.

“The SDF continues to work with local community leaders and local judicial processes to help address issues of ISIS accountability,” a State Department official told VOA, using another acronym for the terror organization.

That accountability includes “sentencing fighters who have proven to [have] committed crimes,” the official added.

There are few details about how justice is being carried out and what safeguards, if any, have been put in place to ensure accused fighters get a fair hearing.

Nor have any officials been willing to say how many cases have been settled by Syrian communities in areas liberated by the SDF, a non-state actor made up of mostly Kurdish fighters.

Officials with the SDF and the group’s political wing have declined to respond to requests for comment.

Until now, they have alternatively begged for help with the prisoners and threatened to release them if help does not come, pointing out that all 10,000 of the alleged IS fighters are being kept in a series of makeshift prisons that cannot hold them for the long term.

U.S. officials have also shared little about the fate of Syria’s IS fighters.

“We have efforts in place,” Ambassador James Jeffrey, U.S. special representative for Syria, told reporters at the State Department last week.

“They’re going slowly — to move — but they’re going to move the Iraqis back to Iraq, and the Syrians to be placed on trial,” he added.

Human rights and aid groups contacted by VOA said while they have heard talk about the possibility of trials for alleged Syrian IS fighters, they had yet to see any firm indication any sort of judicial proceedings are getting under way. 

Trying IS fighters in Iraq

Unlike neighboring Iraq, which has put hundreds of Iraqis and foreigners on trial for crimes allegedly committed in the name of IS, in SDF-controlled Syria, there is no national, sovereign government.

And even in Iraq, there have been abundant concerns about the conditions in which alleged IS fighters are being held and tried.

A new report by the Defense Department’s inspector general, released Tuesday, cited “significant due process concerns” for alleged IS fighters, supporters and sympathizers in Iraqi custody.

The IG report also said such concerns were echoed by the U.S. State Department, and that the problems resulted in trials “characterized by some U.N. agencies and NGOs as arbitrary and unfair.”

Groups such as Human Rights Watch have been equally alarmed.

“Trials of ISIS suspects in Baghdad, which have lasted as short as 5 minutes, have consisted of a judge interviewing the suspect, usually relying on a confession, often coerced, with no effective legal representation,” HRW Senior Iraq Researcher Belkis Wille wrote this past March.

“Authorities have also made no efforts to solicit victim participation in the trials, even as witnesses,” Wille added.

HRW has also raised concerns about the conditions for the families of suspected IS fighters in SDF custody.

In a report released last month, HRW wrote the more than 11,000 women and children in camps like al Hol in the Kurdish Autonomous area in northeast Syria were being held “in appalling and sometimes deadly conditions.”

Foreign fighters’ fate

As for IS foreign fighters and their families, the U.S. has been urging their countries of origin to take them back and prosecute them.

“These fighters are dangerous, battle-hardened terrorists,” Ambassador Nathan Sales, State Department counterterrorism coordinator, said last Thursday. “No one should expect the United States to solve this problem for them, or the SDF, or anyone else.”

As we near the 400th anniversary of the first slaves from Africa arriving in Virginia, VOA’s Deepak Dobal traveled to Hampton, Virginia to talk to students about their perceptions of slavery

The Philippines stood firm Tuesday on its ban on the world’s first dengue vaccine while declaring a nationwide epidemic from the mosquito-borne disease that it said has killed hundreds this year.

Dengue incidence shot up 98% from a year earlier to 146,062 cases from January 1 to July 20, causing 662 deaths, Health Secretary Francisco Duque told a news conference in which he announced a “national dengue epidemic.”

Manila banned the sale, import and distribution of the Dengvaxia vaccine in February following the deaths of several dozen children who were among more than 700,000 people given shots in 2016 and 2017 in a government immunization campaign.

Duque said Thursday the government is studying an appeal to allow French pharmaceutical firm Sanofi to put the vaccine back in the Philippine market, but ruled out using the drug to combat the ongoing epidemic, which has hit small children hard.

“This vaccine does not squarely address the most vulnerable group which is the 5-9 years of age,” Duque said.

The vaccine, now licensed in 20 countries according to the World Health Organization, is approved for use for those aged nine and older.

Duque said the United Nations agency also advised Manila that the vaccine was “not recommended” as a response to an outbreak, and it was anyway “not cost-effective” with one dose costing a thousand pesos (about $20).

Dengue, or hemorrhagic fever, is the world’s most common mosquito-borne virus and infects an estimated 390 million people in more than 120 countries each year — killing more than 25,000 of them, according to the WHO.

The Philippines in 2016 became the first nation to use Dengvaxia in a mass immunization program.

But controversy arose after Sanofi disclosed a year later that it could worsen symptoms for people not previously infected by the dengue virus.  

The disclosure sparked a nationwide panic, with some parents alleging the vaccine killed their children.

The controversy also triggered a vaccine scare that the government said was a factor behind measles outbreaks that the UN Children’s Fund said have killed more than 200 people this year.

Duque on Tuesday called on other government agencies, schools, offices and communities get out of offices, homes and schools every afternoon to take part in efforts to “search and destroy mosquito breeding sites”.

 

The arrival in the British colony of Virginia in August 1619 of a ship carrying Africans from Angola marked the start of more than 200 years of slavery in America