Elijah Cummings’ daughters are supporting one of his longtime aides in the race for his seat, which is being sought by the late congressman’s widow.
                   
News outlets report 37-year-old Jennifer Cummings issued a statement last week saying Harry Spikes embodies the same spirit as her father, whom he worked beside for 15 years.
                   
Jennifer Cummings and her younger sister, Adia, appeared alongside Spikes as he formally announced his candidacy last month. He’s running for the 7th District congressional seat against at least eight Republicans and 24 Democrats, including Elijah Cummings’ second wife, 48-year-old Maya Rockeymoore Cummings.
                   
Rockeymoore Cummings has said her husband wished for her to succeed him if he died. She resigned as Maryland’s Democratic Party chair to enter the race.
                   
A special primary is set for February.

A trade deal between the U.S. and China has stalled because of newly signed U.S. bipartisan legislation supporting pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong, according to the news website Axios.

The news site quotes a source close to U.S. President Donald Trump’s negotiating team as saying the trade talks were “now stalled” because of the legislation, and time was needed to allow Chinese President Xi Jinping’s “domestic politics to calm.”

China is also taking other steps to retaliate against what it sees as U.S. support for Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement.  

The Chinese foreign ministry said Monday it is slapping sanctions on U.S.-based non-governmental organizations that have acted “badly” during the recent protests in Hong Kong. NGOs affected by the sanctions include Human Rights Watch, the National Endowment for Democracy, and Freedom House.

China also announced Monday that it “has decided to suspend reviewing the applications for U.S. warships to go to Hong Kong for (rest and) recuperation as of today.”

A foreign spokeswoman said, “China urges the United States to correct its mistakes, stop any deeds and acts of interference in Hong Kong affairs and China’s internal affairs.”

In another development, Reuters reports that hundreds of Hong Kong office workers came together during their lunch break Monday, the first in a week of lunchtime protests to show their support for pro-democracy politicians who were handed a resounding victory in district polls last week.

Protests erupted in Hong Kong in June over the local government’s plans to allow some criminal suspects to be extradited to the Chinese mainland.

Hong Kong officials withdrew the bill in September, but the street protests have continued, with the demonstrators fearing Beijing is preparing to water down Hong Kong’s democracy and autonomy nearly 30 years before the former British colony’s “special status” expires.

Hong Kong is set to record its first budget deficit in 15 years, the city’s finance chief warned Monday, as the business hub reels from the twin shocks of the trade war and seething democracy protests.

In the latest grim assessment for the city, financial secretary Paul Chan told lawmakers that the economy was set to contract 1.3 percent in 2019 hitting the city’s usually bulging coffers.

Chan blamed the 2019-2020 deficit on decreased tax revenues, a slowdown in land sales and recent economic sweeteners he unveiled in a bid to win over the public during a tumultuous year of unrest.

“At the end of the financial year, the SAR government will be in the red,” Chan said, using an abbreviation for the Hong Kong government.

“Hong Kong’s economy is now in extremely difficult times,” he added, as he called for political violence to cease.

The city has been battered by nearly six months of protests triggered by rising public anger over China’s rule and the police’s response to protests.  

Crowds are pushing for greater democratic freedoms and police accountability but the city’s pro-Beijing leadership has refused any major political concessions.

The increasingly violent rallies have hammered the retail and tourism sectors, with mainland Chinese visitors abandoning the city in droves.

Figures released last week showed mainland arrivals fell a record 46 percent in October, a usually crucial holiday period in China known as “Golden Week.”

But the economy has also taken a pummeling from the US-China trade war in a city that serves as a crucial link between the authoritarian mainland and the global markets.

The last time Hong Kong recorded a budget deficit was in the aftermath of a deadly 2003 outbreak of the Sars virus that killed some 300 people.

The city’s budget usually ends the year in an enviable position and successive fat years have built up an impressive cushion.

In March the government said its reserves stood at $150 billion with some critics saying successive leaders have not done enough to alleviate endemic inequality.

Confirmation of a deficit will do little to restore business faith in the hub given Beijing is offering no political solution to the crisis.

On Monday, the city’s aviation regulator gave Hong Kong Airlines five days to find fresh revenue streams or risk seeing its license suspended.

The carrier, which is owned by the struggling mainland conglomerate HNA Group, has been one of the most high profile casualties of plunging visitor numbers and announced last week it was delaying salaries to some staff.

A U.S. State Department official accused China of attempting to erase the Muslim identity of Uighurs by seeking to demolish or close places of worship in Xinjiang in northwest China.

The official, who spoke to VOA on the condition of anonymity, said the Chinese Communist Party in its campaign against the Uighur minority has removed religious symbols from places of worship, imposing strict surveillance on them.

“As part of its ongoing attempts to eradicate the Islamic faith and “re-educate” Muslims, Beijing has closed or destroyed mosques, shrines, burial grounds, and other Islamic structures, perhaps more,” the official told VOA.

“Mosques permitted to remain open have been stripped of certain features like minarets and domes and are heavily monitored by surveillance cameras and security personnel,” the official said, adding that Beijing’s acts have denied Muslims the ability to practice their faith in public.

An estimated 13 million ethnic Uighurs and other Turkic Muslim minorities are believed to live in the Xinjiang region.

The Chinese government since early 2017 has been accused of a harsh crackdown in the region through detention and forceful “re-education” of the people who are accused of being disloyal to the government’s ideology.

Chinese officials, however, have called the alleged detention program a “vocational” training and said their efforts in Xinjiang are aimed at curbing the threat of Islamic extremism.

The U.S. government and rights organizations say at least one million Uighurs are being held in the camps where they are exposed to torture and forced labor. Outside the camps, the minority population is put under stringent control where simple religious practices are prohibited.

According to an investigation by Uyghur (Uighur) Human Rights Project (UHRP), a D.C.-based organization funded by the National Endowment for Democracy, between 10,000-15,000 of mosques and other sites, amounting to about 40%, were demolished in each city, county and township all over Xinjiang since late 2016.

Bahram Sintash, who led the investigation, told VOA that in addition to local testimonies, satellite imagery of the sites confirm a “systematic destruction” of at least 140 Uighur religious places.

“I have been able to compile a list of over 140 mosques, shrines and cemeteries which have been confirmed or are suspected to have been fully demolished or desecrated since 2016,” Sintash told VOA in an interview.

The UHRP report found that among the demolished sites was Keriya Mosque in Hotan prefecture, a major historic building dating back to the 13th century and enlisted as a protected cultural site.

“Although China demolished many mosques in Xinjiang, it left some mosques untouched in big cities including the Korla Jama Mosque. In my findings, the mosque is one of the “selected” tourist destinations for Korla city. Therefore, the government kept the Korla Jama Mosque not for the sake of local Uighur communities and their prayer needs, but as pre-selected tour location to pretend its “protection” of Islam in that city and to lie to the international community and reporters,” said Sintash.

VOA could not independently verify UHRP’s report.

United Nations and human rights watchdogs in the past have continuously blamed Chinese officials for preventing independent bodies to have access to the region to investigate the alleged abuses. They say local population in the region are prevented from contacting the outside world, including their relatives who live in the diaspora.

The United Kingdom earlier this week urged China to give U.N. observers “immediate and unfettered access” to the region following a recent leak of classified Chinese government documents that rights groups say offer clear evidence of Beijing using detention camps as brainwashing centers.

Abduwaris Ablimit, a New York-based Uighur from Artush city in southern Xinjiang, said Uighurs living in the diaspora struggle to know the whereabouts of their loved ones stranded in Xinjiang due to communication restrictions.  He said many of them turn to aerial imagery from airplanes to track changes made to their neighborhoods.

“When I was searching for my neighborhood mosque and other mosques around my hometown this year through google imagery, I was startled to find out that they were gone except for a few mosques.” Ablimit told VOA.

He said he had lost contact with his parents and brother in 2017, and one year later he found out that they were taken to “the concentration camps”.

 

A statue of U.S. civil rights leader Rosa Parks has been unveiled in Montgomery, capital of the southern state of Alabama.

The unveiling Sunday marks the 64th anniversary of the day Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a public bus to a white man.

“Today, on the second official Rosa Parks Day, we honor a seamstress and a servant, one whose courage ran counter to her physical stature,” said Mayor Steven Reed, the city’s first African American mayor. “She was a consummate contributor to equality and did so with a quiet humility that is an example for all of us.”

On December 1, 1955, Parks was on her way home when she was asked to vacate her seat for a white man. She refused.

Her subsequent arrest led to the 381-day boycott of the Montgomery bus system, organized by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., then pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.

The statue is located at Montgomery Plaza, about 9 meters from the spot where Parks is believed to have boarded the bus.

Parks’ small act of defiance made her a major symbol of the civil rights movement.

She died in 2005 at age 92.

 

Former congressman and retired Navy admiral Joe Sestak is giving up his efforts to be the next president of the United States.

The Democratic candidate told supporters on Twitter Sunday he is dropping out of the race.

He thanked all those who backed his candidacy, calling it an honor to be able to run.

Sestak blamed his failure to make an impact on the race in part because he said he lacked the “privilege of national press.”

Sestak barely registered in the polls and failed to qualify for any of the Democratic debates.

 

India said Saturday that ties with Japan are key to stability in the Indo-Pacific region as the two countries held their inaugural foreign and defense ministerial dialogue in New Delhi with an aim to further bolster their strategic partnership.

The security talks focused on cooperation in building a free and open Indo-Pacific in view of China’s growing footprint in the region. They took place following a decision by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Japanese counterpart, Shinzo Abe, during a summit between the leaders last year.

Defense Minister Rajnath Singh and External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar headed the Indian delegation, while the Japanese side was led by Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi and Defense Minister Taro Kono.

Singh held talks with Kono on a range of issues. The Press Trust of India news agency reported that the two ministers discussed deepening ties in the development of weapons and military hardware.

India and Japan said in a joint statement that the “further strengthening of bilateral cooperation was in mutual interest of both countries and would also help in furthering the cause of the peace, security and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific region.”

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi also held a meeting with Japan’s foreign and defense ministers.

Modi said that India’s relationship with Japan is “a key component of our vision for Indo-Pacific for peace, stability and prosperity of the region, as well as a cornerstone of India’s Act East Policy,” according to a statement from India’s Ministry of External Affairs.

Japan is only the second country after the U.S. with which India has used the so-called “two-plus-two” dialogue format, which brings the foreign and defense ministers together for talks.

 

Greece’s prime minister says he will ask other NATO members at the alliance’s London summit to support Greece in the face of fellow member Turkey’s attempts to encroach on Greek sovereignty, notably last week’s agreement with Libya delimiting maritime borders in the Mediterranean.

Kyriakos Mitsotakis told the ruling conservative New Democracy party’s congress Sunday that the alliance cannot remain indifferent when one of its members blatantly violates international law and that a neutral approach is to the detriment of Greece, which has never sought to ratchet up tensions in the area.

Cyprus, Egypt and Greece have all condemned the Libyan-Turkish accord as contrary to international law. The foreign ministers of Egypt and Greece, Sameh Shoukry and Nikos Dendias, were discussing the issue Sunday in Cairo.

 

Thousands of people took to Hong Kong’s streets Sunday in a new wave of pro-democracy protests, but police fired tear gas after some demonstrators hurled bricks and smoke bombs, breaking a rare pause in violence that has persisted during the six-month-long movement.

In the largest of three rallies, a key thoroughfare along the waterfront on the Kowloon side of Victoria Harbour was packed with demonstrators, from hardened masked protesters in all-black outfits to families and the elderly. They chanted “Five demands, not one less” and “Disband the police force” as they marched.

That rally followed two other marches earlier Sunday as protesters sought to keep the pressure on city leader Carrie Lam after the recent win by the pro-democracy camp in district council elections and the gaining of U.S. support for their cause.

“If we don’t walk out, the government will say it’s just a youth issue, but this is a Hong Kong problem that affects all of us,” Lily Chau, 30, said as she pushed her toddler in a stroller at the march in Kowloon. “If we are scared, the government will continue to trample on our rights.”

Police estimated that 16,000 people attended the Kowloon rally.

Slogans spray-painted along walls and on sidewalks reminded the crowd that “Freedom is not free” and pledged “Victory at all costs.”

The Kowloon march was cut short after riot police fired tear gas and arrested a few people. A police statement said minimum force was deployed after “hundreds of rioters hurled smoke bombs” and bricks.

Marchers berated police as they scrambled to flee the tear gas, shouting “Dirty cops” and “Are you trying to kill us?” Some protesters dug up paving stones and threw them on the street to try to slow the police down.

More tear gas was fired at night after dozens of hardcore protesters set up roadblocks and vandalized some shops and restaurants linked to China.

Hong Kong’s protests have been relatively peaceful during the two weeks around the Nov. 24 elections, but Sunday’s disruption indicated there may be more violence if Lam fails to yield to protesters’ demands.

Tensions started Saturday night after police used pepper balls against protesters and a man was hit in the head by an unidentified assailant while clearing the street.

Lam has said she’ll accelerate dialogue but has refused to offer any new concessions since the elections. Her government has accepted only one demand – withdrawing extradition legislation that would have sent suspects to mainland China for trial.

Elaine Wong, an office worker who was at the Kowloon march, called the recent election win “an empty victory.”
“We have in actual fact not won any concessions for our demands,” she said. “We must continue to stand out to remind the government of our unhappiness.”

The two earlier marches Sunday appealed to President Donald Trump for help and demanded that police stop using tear gas.

Waving American flags, black-clad protesters marched to the U.S. Consulate to thank Trump for signing into law last week legislation supporting their cause and urged him to swiftly sanction Lam and other officials for suppressing human rights.

Some held banners reading “Let’s make Hong Kong great again” – a riff on Trump’s 2016 campaign pledge to make America great again. One showed him standing atop a tank with “Trump” emblazoned on the front and side.

At the other small rally, a peaceful crowd of about 200 adults and young children marched to government headquarters in the morning and chanted “No more tear gas.”

“A lot of parents are worried that their children are affected, because their children are coughing, breaking out in rashes and so forth,” said social worker and march organizer Leo Kong.

In Geneva, China accused the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, Michelle Bachelet, of emboldening “radical violence” in Hong Kong.

In an opinion piece published Saturday in Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post newspaper, Bachelet called for an “independent and impartial judge-led investigation into reports of excessive use of force by the police.”
She also said that Lam’s government must prioritize “meaningful, inclusive” dialogue to resolve the crisis.

China’s U.N. mission in Geneva said the article interferes in China’s internal affairs and exerts pressure on Hong Kong’s government and police, which “will only embolden the rioters to conduct more severe radical violence.”

It said Bachelet made “inappropriate comments” on Hong Kong’s crisis and that the Chinese side had lodged a strong protest in response.

 

A tiny wooden relic that some Christians believe to be part of Jesus’ manger arrived Saturday in its permanent home in the biblical city of Bethlehem 1,400 years after it was sent to Rome as a gift to the pope.

Sheathed in an ornate case, cheerful crowds greeted the relic with much fanfare before it entered the Franciscan Church of St. Catherine next to the Church of the Nativity, the West Bank holy site where tradition says Jesus was born.

‘A great joy’

The return of the relic by the Vatican was a spirit-lifting moment for the Palestinians. It coincides with Advent, a four-week period leading up to Christmas. Troubled Bethlehem in the Israeli-occupied West Bank is bracing for the occasion, where pilgrims from around the world flock to the city.

Young Palestinian scouts played bagpipes and the crowd snapped pictures as a clergyman held the silver reliquary and marched toward the church.

Christians make up a small minority of Palestinians and Bethlehem is one of the only cities in the West Bank and Gaza where Christmas is celebrated.

Brother Francesco Patton, the custodian of the Franciscan order in the Holy Land, said Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas had asked Pope Francis to borrow the entire manger, but the pope decided to send a tiny portion of it to stay permanently in Bethlehem.

“It’s a great joy” that the piece returns to its original place, Patton said, according to Wafa, the official Palestinian news agency.

Manger moved to Rome

A wooden structure that Christians believe was part of the manger where Jesus was born was sent by St. Sophronius, the patriarch of Jerusalem, to Pope Theodore I in the 640s, around the time of the Muslim conquest of the Holy Land.

On Friday, the thumb-sized wooden piece was unveiled to worshippers at the Notre Dame church in Jerusalem for a day of celebrations and prayer.

On Saturday evening, Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh and other officials attended a Christmas tree lighting in Manger Square outside the Church of the Nativity.

Hundreds of faithful and residents also gathered for the festive annual event, which included fireworks and songs. Crowds cheered as the giant tree was illuminated.

Revelers and worshippers alike will pack the same square for Christmas Eve festivities later in December.

The Palestinian Health Ministry said Saturday that Israeli troops had shot and killed a teenager near the West Bank city of Hebron.

The ministry identified the youth as Badawi Masalmeh, 18, adding that Israeli soldiers had taken his body.

The Israeli military said its forces had spotted three people hurling firebombs at Israeli vehicles on a nearby route and had fired at them. The two others were arrested.

Tension has simmered in the West Bank in recent years, where 700,000 Israelis live in settlements across the territory that Israel captured during the 1967 Mideast war.

Earlier this month, the Trump administration said the settlements don’t violate international law, reversing decades of policy and angering the Palestinians who claim the territory as part of a future state. 

Wintry weather bedeviled Thanksgiving weekend travelers across the United States Saturday as a powerful and dangerous storm moved eastward, dumping heavy snow from parts of California to the northern Midwest and inundating other areas with rain.

Authorities found the bodies of two young children, including a 5-year-old boy, and a third child was missing in central Arizona after a vehicle was swept away while attempting to cross a runoff-swollen creek. A storm-related death also was reported in South Dakota.

The National Weather Service said the storm was expected to drop 6 to 12 inches (15-30 centimeters) of snow from the northern Plains states into Minnesota, Wisconsin and Upper Michigan.

Blizzard on the High Plains

Blizzard conditions early Saturday were buffeting the High Plains. The city of Duluth, Minnesota, issued a “no travel advisory” beginning at noon Saturday because of a snowstorm it termed “historic.”

Duluth officials asked the public to be patient as plows clear roadways and recommended that drivers stay off the roads to prevent accidents and let officers respond more quickly to emergencies.

Farther south, rain and thunderstorms were forecast along and ahead of the cold front, with heavy rainfall possible Saturday in parts of the Tennessee and Ohio valleys.

Forecasters said a new storm is expected to bring California several feet of mountain snow, rain and gusty winds through the weekend. Another system is forecast to develop in the mid-Atlantic Sunday, moving as a nor’easter into Monday.

Air travel snarled

Airlines at O’Hare International and Midway International in Chicago reported average delays of 15 minutes as a winter storm headed toward the Midwest with heavy snow, ice and gusty winds.

The companies said they had canceled 27 flights at O’Hare and two at Midway as people scramble to get home on the year’s busiest travel weekend.

At Denver International Airport, there were 100 flights canceled Saturday because of high winds.

“Tomorrow, the airlines anticipate to be the busiest travel day of the Thanksgiving period at both O’Hare and Midway,” said Karen Pride, a spokeswoman for the Chicago Department of Aviation. “Everybody thinks the day before Thanksgiving is the busiest; it is not.”

Authorities in the Western states were still grappling Saturday with the aftermath of heavy rains and snow over the busiest travel weekend of the year.

Two dead in Arizona

In Arizona, officials initially the found body of the 5-year-old about 3 miles (4.8 kilometers) downstream from where the vehicle they were riding in was swept away Friday, said Gila County sheriff’s Lt. Virgil Dodd. The second of the three children turned up later Saturday. The sheriff’s office didn’t provide the age and gender of the second child or the third child who was still missing late Saturday afternoon.

The agency said Saturday two other children and two adults who were in the vehicle were rescued from a small island and the bank of the creek in Tonto National Forest northeast of Phoenix. Sheriff’s officials initially had said six people, including four children, were rescued Friday at locations along the creek.

Wind, snow close roads

Families in California took advantage of the early season snow in the Grapevine area, sledding down slopes in Frazier Park, California. Traffic was heavy, but Interstate 5 was open in both directions as holiday travelers headed home.

High winds and ice were making travel almost impossible in some other places, however.

A 100-mile (160.93-kilometer) section of Interstate 80 in Nebraska and Wyoming closed Saturday morning because of high winds and blowing snow. Several other roads and highways also were closed.

Back-to-back snowstorms and strong winds combined to seriously complicate travel by land across much of the rest of Wyoming, where roads were closed in the eastern and southern parts of the state because of whiteout conditions.

The National Weather Service in Wyoming reported 4 inches (10 centimeters) of snow fell in Cheyenne from 7 p.m. Friday through 10 a.m. Saturday “that has been blown all over kingdom come by our winds,” said meteorologist Andrew Lyons.

That was added to a foot (30 centimeters) of snow that fell before Thanksgiving.

Wind gusts up to 50 mph (80 kph) created ground blizzards and below-zero wind chill temperatures in some areas. A wind gust of 77 mph (124 kph) was reported in the mountains between Cheyenne and Laramie, Lyons said.

All roads in and out of Casper were closed Saturday morning, including the entire 300-mile stretch (483-kilometer) of Interstate 25 in Wyoming.

Travel was also difficult in Colorado Saturday as winds blew around snow that fell in previous days.

Northeastern Colorado roads were closed because of strong winds, blowing and drifting snow and poor visibility.

In northern Montana, more than a foot of fresh snow and strong wind gusts are expected to combine to create ground blizzard conditions along the Rocky Mountain front.

Meteorologist Christian Cassel told the Great Falls Tribune people could be stuck in their homes for at least a day by the near zero visibility.

Maltese prosecutors on Saturday charged a prominent local businessman as being an accomplice to the murder of anti-corruption journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia in a 2017 car bombing on Malta. 
 
Yorgen Fenech, a Maltese hotelier and director of the Maltese power company, was also charged in the evening courtroom hearing with being an accomplice to causing the explosion that killed the 53-year-old reporter as she drove near her home. 
 
Magistrate Audrey Demicoli asked Fenech to enter pleas. He replied that he was pleading innocent, and he was remanded in custody. 

The reporter’s family has alleged that Fenech has ties to close associates of Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, including his recently resigned chief of staff. 
 
It wasn’t immediately clear if Muscat might resign amid increasing calls by citizens on the island, including Caruana Galizia’s family, for him to step down. Muscat, in power since 2013, has said he will speak after the investigative case is complete. 
 
“What we now expect is the prime minister to leave office and to leave Parliament,” Corinne Vella, one of the slain reporter’s sisters, told The Malta Independent after the arraignment of Fenech. 

Investigations urged

Vella also called for Muscat as well as his former chief of staff, Keith Schembri. to be “properly investigated” for their “possible involvement in Daphne’s assassination.” 
 
Schembri quit his government post a few days earlier. He had been taken into custody for questioning but was later released. 
 
Two of Muscat’s ministers also were questioned and have resigned. They, along with Schembri, have said they are innocent of wrongdoing. 
 
Caruana Galizia wrote shortly before her death that corruption was everywhere in political and business circles in the tiny EU nation. 
An alleged go-between in the bombing has received immunity from prosecution for alerting authorities to Fenech’s purported involvement. 
 
Three men have been in jail as the alleged bombers, but no trial date for them has been set. 

Climate activists protested at open-pit coal mines in eastern Germany, pouring onto the premises to urge the government to immediately halt the use of coal to produce electricity.

The news agency dpa reported that police estimated more than 2,000 people took part Saturday at sites near Cottbus and Leipzig and that some of the demonstrators scuffled with police. Three officers were reported slightly injured at the Janschwaelde mine near Cottbus. The mine operators, Leag und Mibrag, filed police reports asking for an investigation and possible charges.

Burning coal releases carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas blamed by scientists for global warming. The German government plans to end the use of coal by 2038 and spend 40 billion euros ($44 billion) on assistance for the affected mining regions.

Three international organizations have ended an official visit to Cameroon with a call for efforts to restore security, justice and the conditions for the resumption of normal life in English-speaking northwest and southwest regions of the country hit by the separatist crisis that has killed over 3,000 people. The Commonwealth, African Union, and International Organization of La Francophonie delegation says it is convinced dialogue remains the preferred path for peace to return, but that the government should start implementing the recommendations of the last major national dialogue it organized. Some, however, have been critical of government efforts.

Moussa Faki Mahamat, chairperson of the African Union Commission, says after exchanging views with Cameroonian President Paul Biya, Prime Minister Joseph Dion Ngute, representatives of the main political parties, religious leaders, youth representatives and a cross-section of Cameroonians,  the organizations are convinced that there is a yearning for peace to return to the restive English-speaking regions.

He says they noted that a majority of Cameroonians welcomed the convening of the Grand National Dialogue from September 30 to October 4,  in which Cameroon’s government  consulted with political party leaders, activists, opinion leaders, traditional rulers, lawmakers and clergy, and are anxiously waiting for the government to implement its recommendations.  Those recommendations include establishing some sort of special status for the minority English-speaking regions, to be considered by the country’s parliament.  It also backed enforcement of the constitutional language giving English and French equal status and saying they must be used in all public offices and documents.  It also backed continuing the process of decentralization by giving more powers and resources to local councils.  

Mahamat participated in the tripartite mission with  International Organization of La Francophonie Secretary General Louise Mushikiwabo and Commonwealth Secretary General Patricia Scotland to encourage national peace efforts.

Mahamat said after their meetings in Yaounde, they observed that a large majority of Cameroonians supported the convening of the major national dialogue and believe it aided their quest for peace.  He said they were convinced that dialogue remains the only path to peace, and asked the government to implement the recommendations of the national dialogue.

After the national dialogue, hundreds of prisoners were freed when Biya ordered a halt to court proceedings against them, saying he was implementing the recommendations of the dialogue.

However, Albert Mvomo, an official of the opposition Cameroon United Party, says Biya’s government has not been doing enough to solve the crisis. He says the AU, OIF and Commonwealth delegation should have proposed sanctions to force Biya to solve the crisis.

He says the three organizations, like any international organization, should force the government in Yaounde to solve the crisis in the English-speaking regions through economic and diplomatic sanctions. He says Cameroon’s government shows no serious sign of wanting to stop the crisis.

Mvomo said the growing number of displaced people in towns and villages in the French-speaking regions showed the government has not been doing much to stop the separatist conflicts.

Simon Munzo,  an Anglophone leader who took part at the national dialogue, says while some recommendations would require legislation, Cameroon should have started showing serious signs that it wants peace to return by restoring public infrastructure and villages and towns destroyed by the fighting for the population to return.  

“We expect the government to maintain the momentum through the implementation of the recommendations of the dialogue,” said Munzo. “Some of them require legislation. Others do not, for example rebuilding schools and bridges and all of that. You do not need legislation for that except in terms of budgeting. Now, there are other aspects that will require modifying the constitution.”

Separatists have insisted on social media that they do not recognize the outcome of the national dialogue and will be ready to negotiate with the Yaounde government only on the terms of the separation of the English-speaking and French-speaking parts of Cameroon.

A long-detained opposition leader in Iran on Saturday compared a bloody crackdown on those protesting government-set gasoline prices rising under its supreme leader to soldiers of the shah gunning down demonstrators in an event that led to the Islamic Revolution.

The comments published by a foreign website represent some of the harshest yet attributed to Mir Hossein Mousavi, a 77-year-old politician whose own disputed election loss in 2009 led to the widespread Green Movement protests that security forces also put down.

Mousavi’s remarks not only compare Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the toppled monarch whom Khamenei to this day refers to as a tyrant. It also suggests the opposition leader views the demonstrations that began Nov. 15 and the crackdown that followed as a potentially similar last-straw moment for Iran’s Shiite theocracy as the 1978 killings represented for the shah.

“It shows people’s frustration with the country’s situation. It has a complete resemblance to the brutal killing of people on the bloody date Sept. 8, 1978,” Mousavi said, according to the statement published by the Kaleme website long associated with him. “The assassins of the year of 1978 were representatives of a non-religious regime, but the agents and shooters in November 2019 were representatives of a religious government.”

There was no immediate response from Iranian officials nor state media, which has been barred from showing Mousavi’s image for years.

The protests that struck some 100 cities and towns across Iran beginning Nov. 15 came after Iran raised minimum gasoline prices by 50%. The subsidy cuts, which the government said would help fund cash handouts to the poor, come as Iran’s economy suffers under crushing U.S. sanctions following President Donald Trump’s unilateral withdrawal from Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers.

Iranians immediately began demonstrating and protests quickly turned violent, seeing gas stations and banks attacked. Online videos purport to show Iranian security forces shooting at demonstrators.

The scale of the gasoline price demonstrations remains unclear even today as Iran so far has not offered nationwide statistics for the number of people arrested, injured or killed in the protests. Amnesty International believes the protests and the security crackdown killed at least 161 people.

One Iranian lawmaker said he thought that over 7,000 people had been arrested, though Iran’s top prosecutor disputed the figure without offering his own. The country’s interior minister said as many as 200,000 people took part in the demonstrations. Iran blocked access to the wider internet for a week, further shielding its response from the world’s view.

Mousavi and his wife, Zahra Rahnavard, remain under house arrest in their home down an alleyway near Khamenei’s official residence in Tehran. However, the Kaleme website occasionally publishes statements from Mousavi, who earlier served as Iran’s prime minister before the position was eliminated in 1989.

The statement Saturday saw Mousavi compare November’s crackdown to “Black Friday,” a seminal moment in Iran’s revolution. That September day in 1978, soldiers opened fire on demonstrators in Jaleh Square.

How many the shooting killed remains in dispute today, with figures running anywhere from 86 to 4,000. However, historians mark the day as the point of no return for the fatally ill shah. Mass protests and strikes followed. The shah fled Iran in January 1979 and by the next month, the revolution took hold.

In his statement, Mousavi offered his condolences to those slain in the November crackdown and warned “this wound on the nation’s body and soul” would not heal until there are public trials of their killers.

“The bullying and talking about how we are in the middle of a world war are not a convincing answer for the people and it would not heal the people’s wounds,” Mousavi said, referring to tensions with the U.S. “It would be enough that the system just think about the consequences of the Jaleh Square assassinations.”

Mousavi is not the only one to compare the November crackdown to the time of the shah, however. Days earlier, lawmaker Mohammad Golmoradi at the Iranian parliament got pulled away after some news websites reported he criticized President Hassan Rouhani over the crackdown. Golmoradi’s area, Mahshar in Iran’s southwestern Khuzestan province, saw security forces violently put down protests, activists say.

“What did you do that the shah didn’t?” Golmoradi reportedly asked.

Twitter Chief Executive Jack Dorsey has wrapped up of a trip to Africa by pledging to reside on the continent next year for up to six months. 

Dorsey tweeted this week: “Africa will define the future (especially the bitcoin one!). Not sure where yet, but I’ll be living here for 3-6 months mid 2020.”

The CEO of the social media giant did not say what he planned to do on the African continent.

Twitter, which is based in San Francisco, did not offer more details on Dorsey’s plans. 

On Dorsey’s recent trip, he visited entrepreneurs in Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria and South Africa. 

Dorsey, 43, co-founded Twitter with several other entrepreneurs in 2006. He ran the company until he was ousted in 2008 but was brought back seven years later to again lead the platform.

Dorsey also co-founded the payment processing app Square and is also CEO of that operation. The tech exec holds millions of stock shares in both companies, and Forbes estimates his net worth at $4.3 billion.

Twitter, along with other social media companies, has faced criticism of its handling of misinformation and has come under scrutiny ahead of next year’s U.S. presidential election. Dorsey announced in October that Twitter would ban political advertisements on the platform. 

Six European nations say they will join a fledgling financial system to bypass U.S. sanctions against Iran, challenging U.S. President Donald Trump days before he meets leaders of some of those nations in London.

In a joint statement Friday, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden said they are in the process of become shareholders of the Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges (INSTEX). Britain, France and Germany launched INSTEX in January to enable companies to trade with Iran without using U.S. dollars or going through U.S. banks, thereby shielding such companies from U.S. sanctions.

Trump has been toughening U.S. sanctions against Iran since November 2018 as part of a campaign of “maximum pressure” on Tehran to reach a new deal to stop its perceived malign behaviors. Earlier last year, he pulled the U.S. out of a 2015 deal in which world powers eased sanctions on Iran in return for curbs on the Iranian nuclear program. Trump said that deal was not tough enough on Tehran.

EU commitments

The Trump administration has warned other nations not to engage in various transactions with Iran or face secondary U.S. sanctions. But the 28-member European Union has pledged to do what is necessary to uphold its nuclear deal commitments, seeing the deal as a major contributor to global nonproliferation and Mideast stability.

In their joint statement, the six European nations said: “In light of the continuous European support for the agreement and the ongoing efforts to implement the economic part of it and to facilitate legitimate trade between Europe and Iran, we are now in the process of becoming shareholders of INSTEX, subject to completion of national procedures.”

The statement did not clarify what those procedures are, or how long the six nations will take to complete them.

Britain, France and Germany have said INSTEX initially will facilitate trade with Iran in humanitarian goods, such as food, medicine and medical devices that the U.S. has declared to be exempt from its sanctions.

The three nations also have said they eventually will expand INSTEX to cover other types of trade, raising the possibility that such transactions will defy U.S. sanctions. But there have been no announcements of any companies using INSTEX to engage in humanitarian or other trade with Iran since its January launch.

In an interview with the Al Arabiya network earlier this month, U.S. Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook reiterated that Washington opposes the use of INSTEX for any “sanctionable activity” and has expressed that view to Britain, France and Germany. He also reiterated his skepticism that Iran will create its own INSTEX counterpart that meets international standards against money laundering and terrorism financing.

Counterpart mechanism

Iran has said it created the counterpart mechanism in April, calling it the Special Trade and Finance Instrument (STFI). But European officials have not acknowledged the establishment of any Iranian counterpart mechanism that satisfies their financial transparency requirements.

Four of the nations that agreed to join INSTEX, Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands and Norway, are NATO allies of Washington, as are Britain, France and Germany. Trump is to meet the leaders of those seven nations at a NATO summit in London, Dec. 2-4.

The White House has said the summit will focus on the alliance’s “unprecedented progress on burden-sharing” in defense spending and the “need … to ensure its readiness for the threats of tomorrow … and those posed by terrorism.”

The State Department did not immediately respond to a VOA Persian request for comment on the decision by six more European nations, four of them NATO members, to join a financial channel that has drawn U.S. warnings against using it for sanctionable transactions.

Iran nuclear deal critic Mark Dubowitz, chief executive of the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies, dismissed the latest European announcement about INSTEX as a symbolic act with little consequence.

“As long as the Trump administration is willing to enforce U.S. sanctions, very few companies will risk punishment to process transactions through INSTEX. President Trump should make this clear when he meets his NATO counterparts in the coming days,” Dubowitz said in an email to VOA Persian. “To reinforce this message, the Treasury Department should sanction the Iranian INSTEX counterpart STFI, which is linked to several sanctioned entities.”

An FDD policy brief published in May said all of STFI’s shareholders are Iranian banks or controlled by Iranian banks that have been sanctioned by Washington for illicit activities.

Dismissive of INSTEX

Iranian officials also have been dismissive of INSTEX, complaining that its European creators have been too slow to get companies to start using it. They also have threatened to continue violating more provisions of the 2015 nuclear deal unless European powers provide Tehran with adequate economic compensation for the U.S. sanctions.

Iran has seen its currency slump and its unemployment and inflation soar under the strain of sanctions and rampant government corruption and mismanagement.

Iran so far has committed four violations of its 2015 commitments regarding the amount and quality of nuclear materials it can stockpile and produce at certain sites. The steps have slightly reduced the time it would take for Iran to accumulate enough material to make a nuclear bomb, a breakout period that was meant to be at least one year under the deal. Western powers accuse Iran of seeking nuclear weapons, a charge it denies.

Importante décision aujourd’hui de six pays européens de rejoindre INSTEX. Engagement fort des Européens pour soutenir le #JCPOA et l’autonomie d’action européenne. Nous attendons de l’#Iran qu’il revienne dans le cadre de cet accord. https://t.co/AQJpg6JCE8

— Jean-Yves Le Drian (@JY_LeDrian) November 29, 2019

French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, in welcoming the decision by the six other European nations to join INSTEX, echoed their call for Iran to reverse its violations of the nuclear deal in a Friday tweet. But neither he nor the other nations set a deadline for Iran to return to full compliance or warned what would happen if Tehran ignored that call.

A Nov. 24 article by Iran’s state-approved Mehr news agency cited Deputy Foreign Minister Gholamreza Ansari as saying that “despite heavy pressure and sanctions,” Iran’s trade volume with Europe in the first nine months of 2019 reached $3.8 billion, of which $3.3 billion was European exports to Iran.

Taken together, the European Union and Switzerland export over three times more medicine to Iran than China, India, Turkey, Japan, South Korea, UAE, and United States combined. Europe is an irreplaceable trade partner for Iran and that’s why efforts like INSTEX are so important. pic.twitter.com/fjm8Q1QMM1

— Esfandyar Batmanghelidj (@yarbatman) November 29, 2019

Esfandyar Batmanghelidj, founder of the “Bourse & Bazaar” media company that supports business diplomacy between Europe and Iran, tweeted that European medicine exports are a significant part of that ongoing trade.

“Europe is an irreplaceable trade partner for Iran and that’s why efforts like INSTEX are so important,” he said.

This article originated in VOA’s Persian Service.

Supporters cheered late Friday as once-powerful opposition leader and two-time Peruvian presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori left the prison where she had been held while being investigated for alleged corruption. Peru’s Constitutional Tribunal approved her release.

Smiling broadly, the daughter of jailed ex-President Alberto Fujimori walked out of the women’s prison in the Lima district of Chorrillos and was handed a bouquet of roses by her husband, Mark Villanella, who had been on a hunger strike demanding her release.

Keiko Fujimori called her 13-month prison stay the “most painful time of my life, so the first thing I want to do now that I am on the street is thank God for giving me the strength to resist.”

Odebrecht accusations

She was freed by the Constitutional Tribunal in 4-3 vote earlier this week. The magistrates noted the decision on a habeas corpus request does not constitute a judgment on her guilt or innocence with regards to accusations she accepted money from Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht. Fujimori could still be returned to a cell.

Dozens of riot police were present in case of protests by opponents who have called her release another blow for entrenched impunity for the corrupt in the South American country. But most of the people outside the prison were her supporters.

“The Constitutional Tribunal has corrected a great damage done to us in a process filled with abuses and arbitrariness,” Fujimori said.

Changed political landscape

The 44-year-old, who was jailed in October 2018, faces a radically different political landscape outside of prison.

Her Popular Force party held a majority in congress until September, when President Martin Vizcarra dissolved the legislature in a popular move he described as necessary to uproot corruption. The conservative Popular Force will participate in January legislative elections, but Fujimori is not expected to be a candidate and analysts predict that her party could fare poorly in the voting.

As party leader, Fujimori helped fuel the impeachment of former President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski for lying about his ties with Odebrecht. But now Fujimori herself has been ensnared by a corruption scandal that has toppled political and businesses leaders around Latin America.

Corruption allegations have hit all of Peru’s presidents between 2001 and 2016.

Prosecutors accuse Fujimori of laundering $1.2 million provided by Odebrecht for her 2011 and 2016 presidential campaigns. They opened an investigation into the campaigns after seeing a note written by Marcelo Odebrecht, head of the Brazilian mega-company, on his cellphone that said: “increase Keiko to 500 and pay a visit.”

Fujimori denies the accusations and says prosecutors and Peru’s election body have received Popular Force’s accounting books for inspection.

Striking downfall

Her jailing capped a striking downfall for a politician who went from presidential daughter, to powerful opposition leader, to within a hair’s breadth of the presidency.

Fujimori’s father, a strongman who governed Peru from 1990 to 2000, remains a polarizing figure. Some Peruvians praise him for defeating Maoist Shining Path guerrillas and resurrecting a devastated economy, while others detest him for human rights violations. He is serving a 25-year sentence for human rights abuses and corruption.

She tried to follow in her father’s presidential footsteps and forge a gentler, kinder version of the movement known as “Fujimorismo.”

She finished second in the 2011 election and five years later lost in a razor-thin vote, coming within less than half a percentage point of defeating Kuczynski.

Anisa Ibrahim was six years old when she came to the United States as a Somali refugee in 1993. The family settled in Seattle, in the northwestern state of Washington, where the girl and her four siblings got health care at the Harborview Medical Center Pediatric Clinic.

Now a pediatrician herself, Ibrahim is medical director of the clinic, overseeing a dozen other doctors whose patients, like hers, include many immigrants.

When she got the promotion in September, “it felt like everything that I had been working for had come to fruition and my story had really, really come full circle,” Ibrahim, 32, told VOA’s Somali Service in a phone interview. “I really thought back [on] everyone and everything that made this moment possible for me.”

Among those Ibrahim credits is the doctor who treated her in childhood, after her family had moved from a Kenyan refugee camp where they’d sought relief from Somalia’s civil war in 1992.

She had told her pediatrician, Elinor Graham, that she wanted to follow in that profession. Graham’s response “really stuck with me,” said Ibrahim, repeating the words she’d heard long ago: ” ‘You know, Anisa, I want you to become a pediatrician as well. And when you do, I want you to work here so I can retire.’ “

Ibrahim studied at the University of Washington’s School of Medicine, graduating in 2013. She did a residency at Seattle Children’s Hospital and joined Harborview as a general pediatrician in 2016.

Along the way, she married and had two daughters. She also encountered doubters.

“Going to medical school, going to residencies, there are always people who discourage you … simply because of how you look, simply because of your race, your religion, your nationality,” Ibrahim said. “But, you know, most recently I’ve just been overwhelmed with the amount of support I’ve gotten from everyone.”

Communication and trust

One of her backers is Brian Johnston, Harborview’s chief of pediatrics.

Along with providing medical skills, Ibrahim — part of a diverse staff — is able to telegraph acceptance to immigrant families that might identify with her, Johnston said.  And that can lead to better care.

“When there is concordance between a health care provider and a patient in terms of their race, ethnicity or culture, the communication can be improved, the trust is improved and the patient’s adherence to the plan that is formulated is improved,” Johnston said. “So having a diverse workforce among our positions improves our ability to deliver good health care to a diverse population.”

At Harborview, Ibrahim, who also serves as president of the Somali Health Board, works closely with immigrants and refugees. In her official bio, she describes herself as “committed to caring for low-income, socially vulnerable populations” with limited English skills.

“I can say I know life is tough in a refugee camp,” the doctor told K5 News (KING-TV Seattle) last month. “I know life is tough settling into a new country and not speaking English and not knowing where the grocery store is and being isolated from the rest of your family.”

‘Powerful’ role model

Not only does Ibrahim work to improve the health and conditions of children who are in the same position she was, but she also hopes to combat any negative perceptions about newcomers.

“We are in a very polarizing time where there is negative rhetoric about immigrants. That’s really being used to dehumanize human beings, to demonize people for wanting what other people would want: safety, an education, a good life for their children,” she said.  

“It’s really, really important for people to go back to … a humanistic approach and not a political approach because this is not a political issue. It is about giving people opportunities,” said Ibrahim, a U.S. citizen. “So I think [through] my story, I want people to know that every single individual, every single human being, is capable of achieving great things.”

Johnston said Ibrahim is, indeed, a source of inspiration.

“We are a pediatric clinic that serves a large immigrant population, and for those kids, it’s really powerful to have a role model in a leadership position who looks like them: a woman, a woman of color, a woman who shares their experience in terms of forced migration, being a refugee in a new country,” Johnston said. “I think it sends a message to those kids that this career, even leadership in this career, is open to people of their experience and their background.”

Last week in a Twitter post, Ibrahim suggested she’s making a positive impact, as her own pediatrician once did.

“Today my 11-year-old patient told me that she wanted to be a doctor and a scientist [to] do research. She then said, ‘You can’t do both, I need to pick.’ Her eyes lit up when I said, ‘No you don’t, you can do both!’ Made my day.”