The number of journalists murdered for their work doubled in 2020, as criminal gangs and militant groups sought to silence reporting with violence, a new report says.  At least 30 journalists were killed between January 1 and December 15, including 21 who were murdered, and others who were killed in crossfire or while on assignments, the report by press freedom organization the FILE – Afghan journalist Rahmatullah Nikzad poses for a photograph in Kabul, July 29, 2019. He was killed Dec. 21, 2020.Rahmatullah Nikzad, who was head of a local press union, is the fifth journalist to be killed in Afghanistan in the past two months. The attacks also claimed the life of Elyas Dayee, a reporter for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Afghan service.  Cartels, criminal groups and militants in democratic but violent countries account for the doubling of murders in 2020, CPJ found.   Two of the deadliest countries — Mexico and the Philippines — have protection mechanisms in place that are supposed to improve journalist safety.  A failure to secure prosecutions in journalist killings adds to the problem, said Courtney Radsch, advocacy director at CPJ.  “Nobody is typically held accountable, and there are not meaningful investigations into a lot of these murders,” Radsch said. “It just sends a signal that reporters are expendable, and you don’t really need to worry because no one’s going to hold you accountable.” FILE – People hold posters of slain Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, near the Saudi Arabia consulate in Istanbul, marking the two-year anniversary of his death, Oct. 2, 2020.“We need people to be brave enough to continue exposing corruption, exposing crime,” he said.  The United States has introduced legislation that will hold countries that commit rights abuses against journalists accountable via sanctions and restrictions on foreign aid.  The Jamal Khashoggi Press Freedom Accountability Act was named in honor of Saudi journalist and Washington Post columnist Khashoggi who was killed in Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul. “We must ensure that journalists in the United States and around the world are able to do their jobs without fear of harm,” said Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, who proposed the bill with her Democratic colleague Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont.  “It is unacceptable to suppress, imprison and violently target the press, and the Jamal Khashoggi Act would ensure that the United States holds foreign governments who attempt to do so accountable.”  
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Thousands of people have poured into the Armenian capital’s main square as the opposition continues its campaign to pressure Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan to quit over last month’s cease-fire deal with Azerbaijan.
 
The protesters gathered in Republic Square on Tuesday and chanted slogans such as, “Nikol, traitor” as riot police guarded the prime minister’s offices nearby.
 
Another group of demonstrators walked into another building that houses several government ministries and briefly scuffled with security forces there, while a major highway was reportedly blocked by opposition supporters in the afternoon.
 
Leaders of a coalition of more than a dozen opposition parties have vowed to hold daily demonstrations until Pashinyan agrees to hand over power to a “transitional” government tasked with organizing snap parliamentary elections within a year.Vazgen Manukian, who has been nominated by the opposition National Salvation Movement to head such a government, urged Armenian armed forces and police to stop carrying out Pashinyan’s orders and “join the people.”
 
“Switch to our side so that we solve the issue today,” Manukian told the crowd on Republic Square.
 
Pashinyan earlier on Tuesday made clear that he has no intention to leave office and portrayed the anti-government protests as a revolt by the country’s “elites” who had lost their “privileges” when he swept to power amid nationwide protests in 2018.
 
The prime minister has come under fire since agreeing to a Moscow-brokered deal with Azerbaijan that took effect on November 10, ending six weeks of fierce fighting in and around the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh.
 
His opponents want him to quit over what they say was his disastrous handling of the conflict that handed Azerbaijan swaths of territory that ethnic Armenians had controlled since the 1990s.
 
They also say Pashinyan is not capable of dealing with the new security challenges Armenia is facing.
 
Calls for his resignation have been backed by President Armen Sarkisian, the head of Armenia’s Apostolic Church Catholicos Karekin II, as well as other prominent public figures in the country and the Armenian diaspora. 
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The head of Germany’s Robert Koch Institute, the country’s national public health organization, says it is likely the variant of the coronavirus recently identified in Britain has already made its way to Germany.Speaking to reporters Tuesday in Berlin, Lothar Wieler said that while he has not heard of any actual case in Germany, he said they know the strain was first found in Britain in September and has since been discovered in the Netherlands and Denmark. He said that means the likelihood of it being in Germany already but undiscovered, is probably “very, very high.”The discovery of the new variant has prompted many nations to ban air travel from Britain. On Monday, officials with the World Health Organization (WHO) said that while there may be evidence the variant spreads more quickly, there is no evidence it is severer or deadlier.  WHO officials said virus variations are common, and the best way to prevent them is to prevent transmissions.Meanwhile, the chief executive officer of BioNTech, co-creator of the first coronavirus vaccine approved for use in Europe, said, “Scientifically, it is highly likely” that the immune response created by their vaccine also can deal with the new variant. But he cautioned the new variant has nine mutations and they do not know for sure if the vaccine will also provide protection against it.The European Medicines Agency (EMA), the continent’s drug regulator, gave initial approval to the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine Monday, and Europe Union officials say they expect vaccinations to begin December 27.  Wieler said the EMA approval of the vaccine is good news, but the shots will not change the overall situation for a very long time. He urged people to continue limiting contacts with others as the virus continues to spread in the country.
 
 
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FIFA has filed a criminal complaint against former president Sepp Blatter over the finances of its loss-making soccer museum in Zurich. Soccer’s governing body said on Tuesday it suspected “criminal mismanagement by FIFA’s former management and companies appointed by them” to work on the museum — long seen as a pet project of Blatter’s — in a renovated and rented city center building. The FIFA World Football Museum opened in 2016 after $140 million of soccer money was spent refurbishing the 1970s office building to also include 34 rental apartments. It was meant to open around May 2015, when Blatter won a fifth presidential election, but was delayed until after he left office amid pressure from American and Swiss investigations of international soccer officials. FILE – Former FIFA president Sepp Blatter talks to the media as he arrives before a commemoration service for the former coach of the Swiss national soccer team Koebi Kuhn at the Grossmuenster church in Zurich, Dec. 13, 2019.Blatter committed FIFA to a rental contract with the building’s owner, insurance firm Swiss Life, that requires paying $360 million through 2045 at above market rates, soccer’s world body said. FIFA said its criminal complaint following an external audit of the project was delivered by hand to canton (state) prosecutors in Zurich.  “That audit revealed a wide range of suspicious circumstances and management failures, some of which may be criminal in nature and which therefore need to be properly investigated by the relevant authorities,” FIFA deputy secretary general for administration Alasdair Bell said in a statement. The Zurich prosecution office acknowledged receiving the complaint without giving more details. Blatter’s lawyer, Lorenz Erni, said in a statement: “The allegations are baseless and are vehemently denied.”  Blatter risks investigation at local level while already a suspect in two criminal proceedings opened by federal prosecutors into how he spent FIFA’s money as president. Those investigations involve FIFA paying $2 million to former UEFA president Michel Platini in 2011 and $1 million to the Trinidad and Tobago soccer body — effectively to disgraced former FIFA vice president Jack Warner — weeks before the Caribbean islands’ general election in 2010.  “Given the massive costs associated with this museum, as well as the general way of working of the previous FIFA management, a forensic audit was conducted in order to find out what really happened here,” Bell said. The museum has made a loss each year including $50 million in 2016 that included one-off costs, FIFA said then in its financial report. The  most recent FIFA accounts for 2019 show almost $3.5 million revenue from the FIFA World Football Museum and $6.3 million costs for “investment and expenses.” There was a record 161,700 visitors at the Zurich building last year. In the 2018 accounts, museum revenue was almost $4 million against $12 million in spending. The FIFA museum was identified closely with Blatter from the time it was announced in April 2012.  His executive committee had already approved 180 million Swiss francs ($203 million) for what was being called “Project Libero,” and forecast to attract 300,000 visitors each year. “It is high time that world football had a meeting place for its millions of fans,” Blatter said then of a museum originally to be built underground next to FIFA’s headquarters on a wooded hillside above the city. One year later, the museum plan changed to a FIFA-funded renovation of a modernist building owned by Swiss Life. FIFA said in a 2013 news release it signed a 40-year rental of “Haus zur Enge.” The museum would “occupy the second basement level through to the first floor” with office space and apartments on the upper levels to the ninth story.  “The FIFA museum project is a stroke of luck for Zurich and is a perfect fit for Swiss Life’s investment policy,” the insurance firm’s chairman, Rolf Dörig, said in the FIFA statement. In a statement on Tuesday, Swiss Life said “we consider this a matter for FIFA. Therefore, we have no further comment.” When the museum formally opened on Feb. 28, 2016 it was a first public duty for the new FIFA president, Gianni Infantino, who had been elected two days earlier.  Blatter did not attend the ceremony and had begun serving a ban from soccer by FIFA’s ethics committee after Swiss authorities revealed the Platini payment in September 2015. The ban expires next October when Blatter will be 85.  FIFA said on Tuesday its files on the museum project will be sent to ethics investigators. The complaint filed against Blatter is the latest act in a busy year in criminal investigations linked to FIFA’s past and present presidents. At least four criminal complaints were filed anonymously against Infantino and Switzerland’s attorney general, Michael Lauber, about three meetings they had in 2016 and 2017. Lauber was forced from office in the fallout including misleading a committee overseeing his work. A special prosecutor appointed by Switzerland’s parliament to examine the meetings opened a case against Infantino in July. Potential charges include inciting Lauber to abuse his public office.  Blatter spoke this month with the special prosecutor, Stefan Keller. Keller also recommended this month that federal prosecutors investigate Infantino for using a private jet on FIFA business in 2017. He could not open his own case because his remit is limited to matters involving Lauber.  FIFA said two weeks ago that Keller’s “malicious and defamatory” statement “borders on character assassination.”  
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U.S. officials are considering a requirement for all travelers from Britain to offer proof they have tested negative for COVID-19.News outlets say the White House coronavirus task force met Monday and discussed crafting a rule that passengers prove they have taken a negative test within 48 or 72 hours before leaving Britain.The proposed rule comes as more than 40 countries have suspended travelers from Britain in response to a dramatic rise of infections because of a new strain of COVID-19 sweeping across southern Britain.WHO Says No Evidence Coronavirus Variant is Deadlier, More Severe Social distancing remains best way to avoid catching virus, experts sayDiscovery of the new variant has overshadowed the introduction of the new COVID-19 vaccines developed separately by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna. Hospitals across the United States received nearly 6 million doses of the vaccine developed by Moderna and the National Institutes of Health, adding to the 2.9 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine shipped last week for a vaccination effort that has started with front-line health care workers and nursing home residents.The European Union Monday authorized use of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine across the 27-nation bloc after its regulatory agency, the European Medicines Agency said the inoculation meets quality and safety standards.European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said deliveries of the vaccine are scheduled to start Saturday, with inoculations beginning across the EU Dec. 27-29.“This is a very good way to end this difficult year and to finally start turning the page on COVID-19,” she said of the disease caused by the coronavirus.EU Approves Pfizer-BioNTech COVID Vaccine US begins distributing second coronavirus vaccine across the countryThe Wall Street Journal reported Monday that Chinese vaccine maker Sinovac Biotech’s COVID-19 vaccine was shown to be effective in late-stage trials in Brazil, citing people involved in the vaccine’s development.The Journal said Brazil is the first country to complete late-stage trials of Sinovac’s vaccine, CoronaVac, which is also being tested in Indonesia and Turkey. It said Brazilian officials will announce the vaccine’s efficacy rate Wednesday.  With the number of new COVID-19 vaccines increasing, the Vatican says it is “morally acceptable” for Roman Catholics to receive vaccines developed using tissue from aborted fetuses.   The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Church’s doctrinal oversight office, issued a statement Monday granting permission for Catholics to take such vaccines because it does not “constitute formal cooperation” with the means in which the tissue was obtained.  The office also said it is not always possible to obtain vaccines that do not pose an ethical dilemma.  The Vatican’s statement echoes one made last week by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to American Catholics, who said receiving the vaccines is justified “in view of the gravity of the current pandemic and the lack of availability of alternative vaccines.” The Roman Catholic Church has long opposed development of vaccines or other therapeutic treatments using stem cells obtained from abortions, which the Church considers a moral sin.   The Vatican’s doctrinal office said that vaccination must be voluntary, and that those who refuse to be vaccinated “must do their utmost” to avoid becoming infected and spreading the disease.  The office also said there is a “moral imperative” for the pharmaceutical industry, governments and international organizations to ensure that vaccines “are also accessible to the poorest countries”. 
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EU and British trade talks inched onward under renewed pressure Monday as transport chaos triggered by the emergence of a more contagious variant of the coronavirus in Britain overshadowed efforts to reach a Brexit deal. Only 10 days are left until January 1, when Britain will leave the EU single market and customs union. Hopes of securing a new arrangement suffered a blow as another deadline passed. EU and British negotiators remained in Brussels, with talks still blocked over the right of European crews to continue fishing in Britain’s waters, as well as concerns over fair trade rules. Without a deal, Britain’s links to the European Union end at midnight December 31 (11 p.m. in London) with a new tariff barrier that will sharpen the big shock of unraveling a half-century of EU membership. A man walks past EU flags flapping in the wind in front of the European Union headquarters in Brussels, Dec. 21, 2020.A Sunday deadline set by the European Parliament expired without an agreement being found, leaving no time for lawmakers to ratify an eventual deal before January 1. “Political games from Westminster have wasted too much time,” said Manfred Weber, German member of the European Parliament who leads the conservative group in parliament, warning that members would take their time and not rubber stamp a text. But Weber also said parliament “will remain constructive partners” and that “alternative procedures are possible,” though what they were was not yet agreed. As long as a deal is found in the next hours or days, European sources said this could involve a provisional implementation of a pact with lawmakers having their say in January. “Broadly speaking, the EU side is of the view that the only deadline that now matters is December 31,” said Mujtaba Rahman of the Eurasia Group, a consultancy.  Whatever the case, the EU has finalized interim plans to manage road and air transport for six months and fishing for a year in the event of a no deal, but these would also require an agreement from Britain to reciprocate. “We remain very far from an accord,” warned a European diplomat, who said that some on the EU-side were weighing whether it was time to walk away. “Negotiating through exhaustion is not very healthy,” the diplomat added. Brexit ‘tragedy’ The talks in Brussels continued as Britain was effectively cut off from the world, after Prime Minister Boris Johnson said a highly contagious mutation of the coronavirus was spreading in Britain. The emergency left holiday travelers stranded and blocked goods crossing the Channel, presaging the potential effects of a failure to secure a last-minute trade deal. A closed road and the logo of the Port of Dover is seen at the port as EU countries impose a travel ban from the UK following the coronavirus disease outbreak, in Dover, Britain, Dec. 21, 2020.France’s snap decision to halt trade across the Channel forced Britain to bring forward “Operation Stack,” the contingency plan drawn up to deal with anticipated freight delays in the port city of Dover in the event of a no-deal Brexit. “It’s a tragedy what’s happening in Britain, and this Brexit is a tragedy, we see it more and more every day,” France’s EU commissioner Thierry Breton told BFM Business. If Britain “had chosen to remain in the European Union … today we could have helped them,” Breton said. Brexit supporters accused France of exploiting the crisis to try to force trade concessions. Restriction of freight movements “appears political,” tweeted the anti-EU Bruges Group think tank.  ‘Very greedy’ With just days before negotiators should head home for Christmas, assuming the borders reopen, Johnson insisted that Britain’s position has not budged. “It’s vital that everybody understands that the U.K. has got to be able to control its own laws, completely, and also that we have got to be able to control our own fisheries,” Johnson told a news conference. Britain intends to assume control over its waters January 1 but is ready to allow continued access to EU fishing fleets for a transitional period under new terms. Britain’s chief negotiator David Frost leaves the UK ambassadors residence in Brussels, Dec. 21, 2020.British negotiator David Frost wants Britain to take back more than half the fish currently assigned under the EU quota system, under a three-year agreement. The European side insists Britain accept getting back only a quarter of the fish quota, and that the transition period should last six years. Hubert Carre, head of France’s top commercial fishing lobby, said this was already too much. “We’re wondering whether a no deal is better than a bad deal,” he told BFM, accusing the British of being “very greedy.” 
 
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Over 40 countries have imposed travel bans on people arriving from Britain, after the government announced last week it had detected a new, more contagious strain of the coronavirus. As Henry Ridgwell reports from London, the restrictions have caused major disruption as Britain struggles to contain its latest outbreak.Camera: Henry Ridgwell    
 
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Britain became more isolated Monday as additional countries imposed bans on British commercial airline flights, automobile journeys and cross-Channel trains and freight because of rising international alarm over a more infectious coronavirus strain that has flared in London and southern England.Countries imposing travel bans include France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Poland, Belgium, Austria, Bulgaria, the Netherlands, India and Canada.  In all, more than 40 countries have instituted bans on arrivals at their airports from Britain.U.S. politicians were also pushing to halt all flights from Britain to America. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo urged federal officials to ban or at least set stringent travel restrictions on Britons. He warned that the new, more easily transmitted strain could spread to New York from the half-a-dozen flights a day that land at JFK airport from Britain.On Sunday, France took the unprecedented step of completely shutting its borders to Britain, initially for 48 hours. That has prevented British freight drivers from accessing mainland Europe and deterred European cargo-handlers from dispatching goods to Britain, disrupting supply chains and raising the prospects of food and drug shortages in Britain over the Christmas holiday season.Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson speaks during a virtual news conference about increased travel restrictions amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, at 10 Downing Street, in London, December 21, 2020.In a press conference on Monday, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson urged Britons to remain calm, saying most supplies are coming in and out of the country as normal.  “I have just spoken to (French) President (Emmanuel) Macron, and we both understand each other’s problems and want to resolve the problems,” Johnson said, adding that he understood the anxieties of Britain’s neighbors but said there was little risk of a spread via truck drivers.  But one of Britain’s major supermarket chains warned the blockade could trigger shortages of fresh fruit and vegetables later this week. In a statement, Sainsbury’s said it expected shortfalls in fresh produce such as lettuce, cauliflower, broccoli and citrus fruit, “all of which are imported from the continent at this time of year.” The French haulage ban caused chaos in the southern English County of Kent, where Britain’s busiest port, Dover, is located and where trucks were backed up on roads miles from the coast. About 6,000 trucks were scheduled to cross the English Channel to northern France on Monday.  All haulers were ordered by the government to stay away from Kent. Thousands of trucks already bound for the southrn coast were being redirected to an unused airport. Security guard the entrance to the ferry terminal in Dover, England, Dec. 21, 2020, after the Port of Dover was closed and access to the Eurotunnel terminal suspended following the French government’s announcement banning travel from Britain.Ministers downplayed the risk of food shortages. Transport Minister Grant Shapps said Britons would not notice supermarket shortages “for the most part.” But British ministers held urgent talks with their French counterparts to see if the ban could be lifted.  There were some signs that the French might rethink the blockade. French Transport Minister Jean-Baptiste Djebbari held out the prospect of the ban being reversed once Paris and the European Union agreed to a new “health protocol” to allow traffic to resume between Britain and France.  “In the coming hours, at European level, we will be putting in place a solid health protocol so that flows from the United Kingdom can resume. Our priority: protect our nationals and fellow citizens,” Djebbari tweeted. But French government spokesman Gabriel Attal said the major aim of the discussions around a protocol is to ensure that 2,000 French truckers stranded in Britain “could come over the border as soon as possible.” Officials from EU member states were briefed Monday by the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control on the new coronavirus variant. They agreed the priority was to keep EU borders open and to ensure the repatriation of citizens and legal EU residents wishing to return from Britain, according to European diplomats. Freight-carrying trucks were still being allowed to travel Monday from Britain to Dutch and Belgian ports, and the French have been allowing unaccompanied freight in containers to be maneuvered back and forth. A member of the British Transport Police speaks with travelers at Waterloo Station in London, Dec. 20, 2020.An additional 33,364 Britons tested positive for the coronavirus Monday, following a record-breaking 35,928 new infections on Sunday. The new figures bring Britain’s total confirmed cases to 2,073,511, and its death tally to 67,616 — just 2,384 short of the country’s total civilian death toll in World War II. Johnson chaired a meeting of the British government’s Cobra emergencies committee Monday.  On Saturday, he announced strict pandemic restrictions on London and much of southern and eastern England. Downing Street played down the need to expand restrictions to the north of the country. Ministers hope the actions they have taken, which virtually cancel Christmas “as planned,” according to Johnson, for nearly 20 million Britons and prevents households from mixing in the newly locked-down areas, will be enough to curb the spread of the new strain. Britain’s chief scientific officer, Patrick Vallance, said it has become clear that the new variant is more easily transmitted but said there is no evidence it is any more lethal than other coronavirus strains. He also emphasized there is nothing to suggest that newly developed vaccines would not be effective against this new mutation.  But government advisers and independent experts have cautioned that more work is necessary to ensure that is the case.  The new variant of the coronavirus is concerning, said Danny Altmann, a professor at Imperial College London, but he believes widespread inoculation will control it in the end.  Writing in The Times newspaper, Altmann said, “As a professor of immunology who has spent the past 10 months working on detailed mapping of immunity to Sars-CoV-2, I feel we need to do careful experiments, but I am calm and retain total faith in these stupendous vaccines.” The new strain was confirmed December 13 in the county of Kent in southern England. Initial analysis by government scientists suggested it is “growing faster than the existing variants.”   The variant was initially found in a patient in September. Genome sequencing, which took nearly a month, indicated it was a new strain, but government scientists were not too worried, as mutations come and go.  But as infections continued to surge in November and December, scientists realized they were dealing with a more infectious version of the virus. The new variant includes up to 23 changes, including with the spike protein, which the virus uses to enter human cells that allow it to replicate. There have been many mutations in the virus since it emerged last year in Wuhan, China, with 4,000 mutations in the protein alone. Virologists say most mutations are insignificant and part of the expected evolution of the virus. 
 
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Relations between Israel and Turkey could be on the verge of a breakthrough, with a Turkish presidential adviser confirming bilateral talks and that full diplomatic relations could be restored by March. Relations between the once close allies all but collapsed with Turkey withdrawing its ambassador in 2017, amid escalating tensions.FILE – Mesut Casin, a foreign relations adviser to the Turkish presidency. (Dorian Jones/VOA)”If Israel comes one step, Turkey maybe can come two steps,” the Turkish presidential adviser on foreign affairs, Mesut Casin, said in reference to ongoing talks with Israel.”If we see a green light, Turkey will open the embassy again and return our ambassador. Maybe in March, we can restore full diplomatic relations again. Why not.””Establishing peace and security is very important to Israel and Turkey. After Mavi Marmara, we don’t want another accident with Israel,” added Casin.FILE – Demonstrators march with a giant Palestinian flag May 31, 2018 at Istiklal avenue in Istanbul, to mark the 8th anniversary of a deadly raid on Turkish-registered Mavi Marmara.The Mavi Marmara was the largest of six vessels in a Gaza-bound flotilla carrying humanitarian aid for Palestinians back in 2010. Pro-Palestinian activists seeking to break Israel’s economic blockade of the Gaza Strip were on board when Israeli forces stormed the vessel, killing nine Turkish nationals.Since then, Turkish-Israeli relations have never fully recovered despite intense mediating efforts by the United States to rebuild ties between its two key regional allies.U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the Israeli capital and Israeli security forces’ crackdown on Palestinian protests saw Turkey and Israel withdrawing their ambassadors.Casin acknowledged the election of Joe Biden to the U.S. presidency as a boost to efforts to repair ties. “There are new perspectives with Biden; a lot of things will change,” he said.Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan enjoyed a close relationship with Trump, but a Biden presidency is predicted to be more challenging for Ankara.FILE – Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan speaks after a cabinet meeting, in Ankara, Turkey, Dec. 14, 2020.”Turkish-American relations are expected to enter a tough period, at least in the short run, considering the Biden administration’s sensitivity toward issues of democracy and human rights,” said Selin Nasi, an analyst on Turkish-Israeli affairs.”Given the anti-Turkish opinion prevalent in the U.S. Congress, Turkey might be hoping that Israel can neutralize the opposition and help Turkey win Washington’s ear again,” she added.Turkey and Israel did find recent common ground in the recent conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh, the disputed mainly ethnic Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan. Israeli and Turkish drones and reported intelligence support from the two countries proved pivotal in Azerbaijan’s victory over Armenian forces backed by Iran.”It is harder to read Israel’s motivation [in improving ties with Turkey], Nasi told VOA. “Though, it is true that Turkey and Israel have convergent interests in the Middle East, particularly in terms of rolling back Iran’s power and influence.””At a time when Israel is normalizing her relations with several Muslim countries, adding Turkey to the list will improve her conciliatory image in the international arena,” she added.Much to gain for TurkeyTurkish presidential adviser Casin argues Israel has a lot to gain from normalization. “Turkey bought a lot of weapons from Israel. We can arrange this again,” he said, “Turkey’s and Israel’s defense industries can go ahead together.””Secondly, energy resources, They [Israel] discover oil and gas. OK, Israel is 8 million people. Where can they sell this oil and gas? The biggest market is Turkey, and Turkey will be via a pipeline, the corridor to the European Union market.”A significant repercussion from Israeli and Turkish tensions is Israel allying itself with Turkey’s regional rivals, Egypt and Greece. The three countries are developing cooperation based on energy and defense, a move that observers say is a reaction to Turkey’s increasingly robust stance in the region.Egypt, Greece are important ties for IsraelAnalysts suggest Israel will likely be careful not to jeopardize its recent deepening ties with Egypt and Greece.A potentially more significant stumbling block to Israeli-Turkish rapprochement is Ankara’s backing of the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas.”From Israel’s point of view, Turkey should stop agitating about the status of Jerusalem, and drop support for whom they consider as terrorists,” said analyst Atilla Yesilada of Global Source Partners.” Turkey has to cut its ties with Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood.”Erdogan, who likes to present himself as a defender of global Muslim rights, remains in the forefront of opposing Israel’s diplomatic efforts to secure Jerusalem’s international recognition as its capital. At the same time, Ankara’s support of the Muslim Brotherhood is a central plank of Turkish diplomacy in the region.Turkey ready to make concessionsInternational relations professor Huseyin Bagci of Ankara’s Middle East Technical University suggests Ankara is ready to make concessions. “Ankara will lessen their support,” Bagci said. “Turkey has promised not to support so openly the Muslim Brotherhood. When Ibrahim Kalin [Erdogan’s spokesman] visited Brussels, he probably made promises on similar lines. This is why there is a higher expectation Turkey is making reforms, not to support the Muslim Brotherhood.”But ultimately, any improvement in ties will need to overcome the animosity between Erdogan and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, “There is the bad blood between the two leaders, Erdogan and Netanyahu,” said Bagci.Both leaders routinely exchange insults, which observers say plays well with their electoral bases. With Israel likely set for new elections, analysts say it is unlikely there will be an announcement of any breakthrough before the expected poll outcome.
 
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The remaining signatories of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal Monday expressed “their readiness to positively address” the potential return of the United States to the agreement.
 
President Donald Trump withdrew the US from the deal in 2018, arguing it unfairly favored Iran.   
 
But President-elect Joe Biden, who was part of the U.S. administration that signed the deal, has said he would seek to rejoin it if Iran returns to compliance with its commitments.
 
Ministers from Britain, China, France, Germany, Iran and the European Union said in their statement after a virtual meeting that they deeply regret the U.S. withdrawal and stressed that in their view the agreement “remains fully in force.”
 
Iran has breached several of its promises since the U.S. withdrawal and reimposition of sanctions, saying it was not getting the economic relief it was due in exchange for limiting its nuclear activity. Iran has said the moves, including enriching uranium to higher levels and holding larger stockpiles, are reversible.
 
The ministerial statement Monday said the parties discussed the need to address challenges to implementation of the agreement, “including on nuclear non-proliferation and sanctions lifting commitments.” 
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A German court has handed a life sentence to a convicted right-wing extremist for an attack on a synagogue last year in the city of Halle.
 
On October 9, 2019, Stephan Balliet, 28, killed two people after he failed to enter the synagogue where worshippers were celebrating Yom Kippur, Judaism’s holiest day.
 
A five-judge panel at Magdeburg, the capital of Saxony Anhalt state, found Balliet “seriously culpable,” for the crime, which means he will not be eligible for early release after 15 years, which is considered for those in Germany serving life sentences.
 
Prosecutor Kai Lohse told the court that “the attack on the synagogue in Halle was one of the most repulsive anti-Semitic acts since World War II,” while the presiding Judge Ursula Mertens, who read the verdict, described Balliet’s act as a “cowardly attack.”  
 
During the trial that began in July, Balliet repeatedly said, “Attacking the synagogue was not a mistake; they are my enemies,” and that he wanted to kill all the 51 people inside but was unable to open the building’s heavy doors.
 
Balliet shot and killed a 40-year-old woman on the street and apologized to the court, saying he did not want “to kill whites.” He also killed a 20-year-old man at a nearby kebab shop and wounded several others.
 
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A free trade agreement reached this month would help Vietnam revamp its massive manufacturing sector after the coronavirus pandemic and solidify the global outreach of its deal partner, the United Kingdom, after its looming departure from the European Union, experts believe.The two countries finished negotiations December 11 on a two-way free trade deal that would eliminate nearly all customs duties.The agreement, which still requires formal signatures to take effect, would keep Vietnam on track to sign multiple free trade deals around the world, to help domestic manufacturers avoid import tariffs, analysts say. Vietnam could ultimately save $151 million in tariffs on goods shipped to the U.K., the British Embassy in Hanoi forecasts.Vietnam joined the 11-nation Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership two years ago. And as part of a Southeast Asian negotiating bloc last month, it entered the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership deal, which has China as the heavyweight. Vietnam and the European Union also finalized a free trade pact earlier this year.“They’re totally embracing globalization and free trade,” said Jack Nguyen, a partner at the business advisory firm Mazars in Ho Chi Minh City.“They want to get more high-end, high-tech investments into Vietnam. They want to get their products out to the market. They want to attract manufacturers to set up in Vietnam to export to other countries. So any agreement that will lower tariffs, lower trade barriers, they’ll want to sign,” Nguyen said.Vietnam-U.K. trade tripled from 2010 to 2019, when it reached about $7.6 billion.Tariff savings would help to ease the Southeast Asian country out of a slump in global demand that is hobbling manufactured exports. Vietnam reports relatively few cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, but anti-pandemic shutdowns in much of the West have curtailed orders for classic made-in-Vietnam exports, such as garments, shoes, electronics and automotive gear.About half of all businesses in Vietnam have downsized because of COVID-19, according to a survey by the Private Economic Development Research Board, as cited by domestic news website VnExpress International in September. Manufacturing accounts for about a quarter of the country’s GDP.Both free trade agreement signatories are “keen to close this deal as soon as possible” to boost post-COVID-19 economic recoveries, Vu Minh Khuong, an associate professor at National University of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, wrote in an online publication recently.Vietnam will get more access to the U.K.’s “distinctive strengths” of R&D and management consulting services, Vu wrote in a November commentary for the East Asia Forum.But the two countries lack a trade relationship that’s wide enough to lift Vietnam out of the post-pandemic slump next year, said Ralf Matthaes, founder of the Infocus Mekong Research consultancy in Ho Chi Minh City.“The U.K. and Vietnam do not have strong ties,” Matthaes said. Zooming in on Vietnam’s exports, he said, “How many people are buying new mobile phones right now or new TVs? It’s very limited.”The free trade deal, considered easy to complete because it borrows from contents of the Vietnam-EU pact, comes just as the U.K. expects to finish its Brexit implementation period next week.Tariff savings to the United Kingdom would come to just $36 million, less than Vietnam’s gains, the British Embassy predicts. But the agreement shows that the U.K. government can form its own trade relations after leaving the European Union following the Brexit referendum that British voters approved in 2016.“It’s the U.K. scrambling to stay in place, is the phrase I use,” said Frederick Burke, Ho Chi Minh City-based partner with the law firm Baker McKenzie.“For the U.K., if they can get enough of these trade agreements, they can almost keep up with when they were part of the EU, but it won’t have the same advantages, because it’s just a bilateral trade agreement, it’s not a full EU trade agreement,” Burke said. 
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A German court is to hand down its verdict Monday on a deadly far-right attack in Halle last year that nearly became the country’s worst anti-Semitic atrocity since World War II.A bolted door at the eastern city’s synagogue with 52 worshippers inside marking Yad Vashem, the holiest day of the Jewish year, was the only thing that prevented a heavily armed assailant from carrying out a planned bloodbath, prosecutors say.After failing to storm the temple on October 9, 2019, the attacker shot dead a female passer-by and a man at a kebab shop instead.During his five-month trial, far-right defendant Stephan Balliet, 28, has denied the Holocaust in open court — a crime in Germany — and expressed no remorse to those targeted, many of whom are co-plaintiffs in the case.”The attack on the synagogue in Halle was one of the most repulsive anti-Semitic acts since World War II,” prosecutor Kai Lohse told the court in the nearby eastern city of Magdeburg as the trial wrapped up.The prosecution has demanded life in prison for Balliet. His defense team has asked presiding judge Ursula Mertens only for a “fair sentence.”Lohse said Balliet had acted on the basis of a “racist, xenophobic and anti-Semitic ideology” to carry out an attack against not only those he killed but “Jewish life in Germany as a whole.”The events that unfolded were like a “nightmare,” he added.”At the end of this nightmare, the perpetrator murdered two people and injured and traumatized numerous others.”During the trial, Balliet insisted that “attacking the synagogue was not a mistake, they are my enemies.”Dressed in military garb, he filmed the attack and broadcast it on the internet, prefacing it with a manifesto espousing his misogynist, neo-fascist ideology.The attack bore some of the hallmarks of two carried out and similarly live-streamed some months earlier in Christchurch, New Zealand, by Brenton Tarrant, who killed 51 people. Balliet cited Tarrant as an inspiration.He has been charged with two counts of murder and multiple counts of attempted murder in a case that has deeply rattled the country and fueled fears about rising right-wing extremism and anti-Jewish violence, 75 years after the end of the Nazi era.Israel’s ambassador to Germany, Jeremy Issacharoff, called the attack “a very, very alarming moment in German history.””If that guy would have been able to get into a synagogue… it would have had a tremendous impact on German identity after the war and the fight against anti-Semitism,” he told AFP in an interview. “I hope and trust that the German court will do the right thing and make the right decision. Anti-Semitism is indeed a phenomenon that attacks the very democratic essence of Germany and I think that is the thing that is so important to protect.”The government’s point man against anti-Semitism, Felix Klein, called the trial “a good opportunity to bring about debate in society about anti-Semitism.”Crimes targeting Jews and their belief have risen steadily in Germany in recent years, with 2,032 offenses recorded in 2019, up 13% on the previous year.Meanwhile a string of far-right terrorist attacks have shocked Germany, including the assassination of pro-refugee politician Walter Luebcke at his home in June 2019 and the murder in the western city of Hanau of nine people of migrant origin in February.Baillet “described the fatal shots fired at his two victims in Halle without emotion” and appeared disappointed that he had failed in his attempt to enter the synagogue, psychiatrist Norbert Leygraf said of the defendant in an evaluation.He said Balliet suffered from symptoms of schizophrenia, paranoia and autism preventing him from having “empathy with others” while feeling “superior to others.” 
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MOSTAR, BOSNIA — Preliminary results from the first local election in 12 years in the Bosnian town of Mostar on Sunday showed most votes going to the Croat and Bosniak parties whose rivalry had left the ethnically divided town without a city council.
 
The coalition of multiethnic moderate parties BH Bloc won enough votes to act as a kingmaker in the future 35-member city council, according to unofficial preliminary results from the parties and election authorities.
 
It is not clear if the two main parties will form a coalition again or enter coalitions with other smaller parties.
 
“I expect the city to start functioning because so far nothing has been functioning,” Hedija Hadzic, a woman in her 50s, told Reuters TV. “At least we’ll get the city council.”
 
The southern town, renowned for its Ottoman-era Old Bridge, is the most multiethnic town in Bosnia, but the Croat and Bosniak communities have been largely separated by the Neretva river since the end of the country’s civil war in the mid-1990s.
 
Fifty-five percent of about 100,000 registered voters had cast their ballots by 1800 GMT, when polling stations closed, election authorities said. Most followed social distancing measures against the coronavirus pandemic, they added.
 
Observers said the election proceeded without any major incidents and irregularities.
 
Mostar has not held an election since 2008 because the Croat and Bosniak nationalist HDZ and SDA parties were unable to agree on electoral rules.
 
The dispute was settled thanks to a 2019 court ruling won by Irma Baralija, a philosophy teacher who filed a suit against Bosnia at the European human rights court for failing to hold elections in Mostar.
 
The voters chose 35 city councilors from six ethnically based electoral units and a central city zone.
 
The election commission presented results only for the central zone, but the trend is unlikely to change as results come in from other electoral units.
 
HDZ and SDA have held a firm grip over Mostar for more than a decade, each governing its own part of the town and its separate utilities, postal companies, universities and hospitals.
 
“The most important is that election took place and finally introduced Mostar into a democratic world,” Faruk Kajtaz, a journalist and analyst from Mostar told N1 television. 
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The German government has brought home three women and 12 children from refugee camps that hold families of Islamic State (IS) fighters in northeastern Syria.Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said in a press release Sunday that he was “relieved” that the German nationals were repatriated in an operation carried out Saturday in cooperation with Finland.“The repatriation was based on humanitarian grounds and involved (amongst others) orphans and sick children – cases in which a repatriation was deemed particularly necessary and urgent,” Maas said.“Shortly before Christmas, this is good news and an encouraging sign that we will be able to make repatriations happen in other cases, too,” he added.Maas did not identify the women, but prosecutors said one of them was arrested upon arrival at the airport in Frankfurt.German news media reported that all three women face terror charges for their connection with IS.Contacted by VOA, a Kurdish official confirmed the repatriation of the women and children but declined to give further details.Local media outlets in northeast Syria reported that a German delegation over the weekend met with officials from the local administration to discuss among other things the situation of German nationals held in Kurdish-run refugee camps in the region.About 70 adult Germans and 150 children of German parents remain in the custody of Kurdish forces in Syria, according to the German newspaper Bild.The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) says it currently holds about 70,000 people, mostly families of IS fighters or sympathizers of the terror group, in several detention camps. Most of them were captured following the 2019 U.S.-led campaign that destroyed IS’s so-called caliphate in Syria.In addition to women and children, the SDF also has more than 10,000 IS fighters in their custody, including about 2,000 foreign nationals.SDF officials have called on countries to take back their detained citizens, cautioning that they do not have enough resources to keep IS prisoners and their families indefinitely, especially during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.Several Western countries such as the United States, France, Germany, Britain and Finland have repatriated some of their citizens.
 
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A Belarusian human rights group says security forces have detained dozens of people during protests calling on strongman Alexander Lukashenko to step down. 
 
The Vyasna rights group said on December 20 that at least 42 people had been detained in the capital, Minsk, and the cities of Barysau, Homel, Hrodna, and Salihorsk. 
 
Marches and rallies were reported in several districts of Minsk, accordng to RFE/RL’s Belarus Service, with many carrying the opposition’s red-and-white flag or banners. 
 
Smaller protests were also held in other towns and cities across Belarus. Belarus has been roiled by nearly daily protests since early August when Lukashenko was declared victor of a presidential election that opposition leaders said was flawed. FILE – Law enforcement officers detain two men as opposition supporters rally to protest against police violence and the Belarus presidential election results in Minsk, Nov. 29, 2020.Police have violently cracked down on the postelection protests, with more than 27,000 detentions, according to the United Nations. There have also been credible reports of torture and ill-treatment, and several people have died. Many of Belarus’s opposition leaders have been arrested or forced to leave the country, while Lukashenko, who has ruled the country with an iron fist for almost three decades, has refused to negotiate with the opposition. 
 
The United States, the European Union, and several other countries have refused to acknowledge Lukashenko as the winner of the vote, and imposed sanctions on Lukashenko and his allies, citing election rigging and the police crackdown. 
 
Crowd numbers at protests in Minsk and elsewhere have dropped amid fatigue, repression, and the cold weather. Protests organizers have also switched tactics, calling for smaller gatherings to evade arrest and stretch the riot police. 
 
Small marches and rallies were also reported on December 19 in Minsk and elsewhere, including the western city of Hrodna.  
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Deep into a crucial weekend of negotiations, a breakthrough on fishing rights remained elusive for the European Union and Britain, leaving both without a trade agreement that would dull the edge of a chaotic, costly economic break on New Year’s Day. With hundreds of thousands of jobs at stake throughout the economy, the tiny sector of fisheries continued to drive a wedge between the 27-nation bloc and the U.K., highlighting the animosity that drove them to a Brexit divorce over the past four years. Britain left the bloc in January but a 11-month economic transition period ends on Dec. 31. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s office said Sunday that the EU is “continuing to make demands that are incompatible with our independence. We cannot accept a deal that doesn’t leave us in control of our own laws or waters.”The almost mythical sense of Britain’s rights to rule its waves was an essential part of what drove Brexiteers to victory in the 2016 referendum. Johnson is seeking to make sure that as much as possible of the shared British waters are now returned to U.K. vessels only. The EU has always maintained that those waters have been shared for decades, if not centuries, and insists if too many fishing rights are taken away, it will punish Britain by imposing hefty import fees to the mainland market, which is essential to the U.K. seafood industry. The stalemate has left the overall talks inconclusive with businesses on both sides clamoring for a deal that would save tens of billions in costs. Johnson, though, could not be budged. “We need to get any deal right and based on terms which respect what the British people voted for,” his office said. The EU parliament needs to approve any deal before the end of the year and had set a Sunday night deadline so it could have a cursory vetting of the deal and approve it before New Year’s Day. Negotiators, however, seemed little impressed by yet another deadline when so many had already been missed during the four-year departure process. One official from an EU coastal nation said the EU was refusing to yield more than a quarter of the fishing quotas the bloc stands to lose now that Britain is regaining full control of its waters due to Brexit. Britain is also steadfast that a 3-year transition period would be long enough for EU fishermen to adapt to the new rules, while the EU wants at least six years. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the talks were still ongoing.A failure to reach a post-Brexit deal would lead to more chaos on Britain’s borders with the EU at the start of 2021, when new tariffs would add to other impediments to trade enacted by both sides. The talks have bogged down on two main issues over the past days — the EU’s access to U.K. fishing waters and assurances of fair competition between businesses. A trade deal would ensure there are no tariffs and quotas on trade in goods between the two sides, but there would still be technical costs, partly associated with customs checks and non-tariff barriers on services. While both sides would suffer economically from a failure to secure a trade deal, most economists think the British economy would take a greater hit, at least in the near-term, as it is relatively more reliant on trade with the EU than vice versa. 
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Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center said early Sunday there are 76.3 million global COVID-19 cases.The U.S. continues to lead the world in case numbers at 17.6 million, followed by India with 10 million and Brazil with 7.2 million.U.S. lawmakers are expected to vote Sunday on a nearly $1 trillion COVID-19 economic relief package. The package includes, among other things, $300 supplemental unemployment benefits and $600 direct stimulus payments to many Americans.“We can’t continue with Christmas as planned,” British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Saturday as he announced new restrictions for London and southern England, where a mutant strain of the coronavirus is spreading and where there is now a virtual lockdown, with people urged to stay home.All nonessential stores in the region are set to close, and people should not enter or leave the British capital or large parts of southeastern England.South Korea recorded 1,097 new infections Sunday, the fifth consecutive day it recorded more than 1,000 new cases.A South Korean Justice Ministry official said an outbreak at a prison in Seoul has infected 184 prisoners and one worker.Starting Monday, the Australian states of Victoria and Queensland are banning people arriving from Sydney, where a 70-person coronavirus cluster has emerged in its northern beach suburbs which have now been placed under a strict lockdown until Christmas Eve.Thailand said Sunday it will test more than 10,000 people in the southwestern province of Samu Sakhon after a daily surge of more than 500.
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British and EU negotiators have dug in their heels and each is demanding more concessions from the other as post-Brexit trade talks dragged on into Sunday, deadlocked on fishing rights.Sources from each side said that unless the other backed down on access to U.K. waters, Britain would leave the single market at midnight December 31 without a deal on cross-channel commerce.”We’re continuing to try every possible path to an agreement, but without a substantial shift from the [European] Commission we will be leaving on WTO terms on 31 December,” a British government source said.But an EU diplomat told Agence France-Presse that Brussels had made Britain its last offer on fishing and it was down now to U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson to decide whether he wanted a deal.”If Britain doesn’t accept the latest EU offer, it will be a ‘no deal’ over fish,” he warned. A European official said: “It’s very blocked.”The tough talk came as both sides engaged in intense negotiations to secure a pact before the end of the month. No deal would risk chaos at EU and U.K. borders, where a pre-deadline rush has caused long lines of lorries.Observers, however, noted that the fishing issue was about finding middle ground between offer and counteroffer in an economically small sector, while the much bigger other main issue, on guaranteeing fair trade competition rules, was closer to settlement.”It’s all down to numbers now,” the European diplomat said.British chief negotiator David Frost arrives at the U.K. delegation office for Brexit talks in Brussels, Dec. 19, 2020. EU fishing rights in British waters were proving to be a hurdle to securing a post-Brexit trade deal.The EU’s lead negotiator, Michel Barnier, has proposed that EU fishermen give up nearly a quarter of the value of the fish they currently catch in U.K. waters. Britain is understood to be holding out for getting back much more than half.The U.K. has suggested this compromise last for three years before it is renegotiated, whereas Europe is holding out for double that.Fishermen ‘sold down the river’EU fishermen fear losing any access to the rich U.K. fishing waters will threaten their livelihoods.”We are in the throes of being sold down the river,” the European Fisheries Alliance said in a statement, urging Barnier to stick to protecting them. “The shape of a deal as currently stands would give a huge blow to the European seafood sector, which is made up of more than 18,000 fishermen and 3,500 vessels with an annual turnover of 20.7 billion euros.”Time is very short to reach an accord. The European Parliament has highlighted a deadline of midnight (2300 GMT) on Sunday to receive a deal for review if its members are to ratify it before the end of the year.Their U.K. parliamentary counterparts are in recess but can be recalled within 48 hours to do likewise.But EU capitals are not binding themselves to the European Parliament’s deadline.France’s European affairs minister, Clement Beaune, said talks would not be called to a halt if they dragged out past Sunday night.’Concerns’ Britain not readyThe urgency of reaching a deal is seen in long lines of trucks at the freight rail link through the Channel tunnel as British companies frantically stockpile.A group of U.K. MPs warned Saturday that Britain had not installed the complex IT systems and port infrastructure needed to ensure trade with the EU runs smoothly.Some disruption is inevitable, deal or no deal, with British and European firms needing to fill out import-export, health and tax forms to send and receive goods to each other.A deal would avoid tariffs but there would still be traffic snarls as checks on truck loads and drivers’ papers are carried out.
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U.S. President Donald Trump is downplaying the severity of a massive cybersecurity breach by suspected Russian operatives that has exposed the networks of government agencies and private sector companies, contradicting the assertions of his secretary of state and lawmakers briefed on the matter.After days of silence, Trump took to Twitter on Saturday for his first comments on the hack, which is thought to have impacted at least 18,000 customers of SolarWinds, a Texas-based software management company. Those affected include the Energy, Treasury and Commerce departments, as well as state and local governments.But unlike intelligence officials and lawmakers, who warned that damage from the breach was ongoing, the president said that “everything is well under control.”“I have been fully briefed,” he wrote. “The Cyber Hack is far greater in the Fake News Media than in actuality.”Trump also cast doubt on comments late Friday by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who said it appeared that Russia was responsible.The Cyber Hack is far greater in the Fake News Media than in actuality. I have been fully briefed and everything is well under control. Russia, Russia, Russia is the priority chant when anything happens because Lamestream is, for mostly financial reasons, petrified of….
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) FILE – This Federal Bureau of Investigation headquarters in Washington.U.S. intelligence and cybersecurity agencies have yet to make a formal attribution for the hack, which they said was under way at least as early as March.The Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the FBI on Saturday declined to comment on Trump’s tweets, standing by a joint statement issued Wednesday, which described the hack only as part of a “significant and ongoing cybersecurity campaign.”Since then, however, in a series of updated alerts, the cybersecurity unit of the U.S. Homeland Security Department — the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) — has warned that the problem was not contained to software from SolarWinds.Other platforms“CISA has evidence of initial access vectors other than the SolarWinds Orion platform,” one alert said, adding that the agency was investigating instances in which other platforms were used to access critical networks.“This threat poses a grave risk to the federal government and state, local, tribal and territorial governments as well as critical infrastructure entities and other private sector organizations,” CISA said. “This is a patient, well-resourced and focused adversary that has sustained long duration activity on victim networks.”In the meantime, CISA’s former director answered some of the president’s Twitter allegations, rejecting the notion that the hack could have in any way changed the results of November’s presidential election.“Do not conflate voting system security and SolarWinds,” said Christopher Krebs, who had played a leading role in the country’s election security efforts until Trump fired him last month, two weeks after American voters cast their ballots.Trump Fires Security Chief Who Said 2020 Vote Was ‘Most Secure’ in US History President late Tuesday fired the director of the Cyber Security and Infrastructure Security Agency, alleging Christopher Krebs made ‘highly inaccurate’ comments about security of the November 3 vote “The proof is in the paper,” Krebs said, referring to the widespread use of paper ballot backups. “You can audit or recount again to confirm the outcome. Like they did in Georgia. And Michigan. And Wisconsin. And Arizona. Can’t hack paper.”Do not conflate voting system security and SolarWinds. The proof is in the paper. You can audit or recount again to confirm the outcome. Like they did in Georgia. And Michigan. And Wisconsin. And Arizona. Can’t hack paper.
— Chris Krebs (@C_C_Krebs) December 19, 2020Top lawmakers briefed on the hack also went on social media Saturday, pushing back against Trump’s insistence without evidence that Russia might not be responsible for the breach.“Increasingly clear that Russian intelligence conducted the gravest cyber intrusion in our history,” the acting chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Republican Marco Rubio, tweeted.“The process of determining its extent & assessing the damage is underway,” Rubio said, adding, “Our response must be proportional but significant.”Increasingly clear that Russian intelligence conducted the gravest cyber intrusion in our history
The process of determining its extent & assessing the damage is underway
Remediation will take time & significant resources
Our response must be proportional but significant
— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) December 19, 2020The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Democrat Adam Schiff, meanwhile, castigated Trump for his response to the cyber breach.“Another day, another scandalous betrayal of our national security by this president,” Schiff tweeted. “Another dishonest tweet that sounds like it could have been written in the Kremlin.”Another day, another scandalous betrayal of our national security by this president.
Another dishonest tweet that sounds like it could have been written in the Kremlin.
Another obsequious display towards Putin.
And yet another reason that Trump can’t leave office fast enough. https://t.co/ILNh3KnfbT
— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) December 19, 2020Indications of a cyber intrusion went public earlier this month when the private cybersecurity firm FireEye announced its systems had been penetrated and that sensitive information had been stolen.The hack was later traced to updates for network management software from SolarWinds, though officials said the hackers were also using other software and systems to reach inside government and private sector networks.Research by tech giant Microsoft, made public Thursday, indicated the hackers precisely targeted at least 40 organizations. The vast majority were in the United States, but companies in Canada, Mexico, Britain, Belgium, Israel and the United Arab Emirates were also attacked.Not ‘espionage as usual’“This is not ‘espionage as usual,’ even in the digital age,” Microsoft President Brad Smith wrote on the company’s blog. “This is not just an attack on specific targets, but on the trust and reliability of the world’s critical infrastructure.”Former U.S. government officials also expressed concern about the impact of the hack.“The scope of it is large but exactly how large remains to be seen, and exactly how severe remains to be seen,” Michael Daniel, who served as a special assistant to former U.S. President Barack Obama on cyber issues, told VOA’s Russian Service.“The damage could be very, very significant to U.S. national security and to our economic security,” he said.Tom Bossert, a former homeland security adviser to Trump, said Saturday in a thread on Twitter, “It is clear that a foreign government is holding American networks at risk.”“If it’s Russia, as all indications suggest, the free world — led by the United States — must impose costs on the Kremlin,” Bossert added. “Our long-term goals must be to regain network integrity and control and to establish geopolitical deterrence.”It is clear that a foreign government is holding American networks at risk. @SecPompeo took a necessary step attributing the attack to Russia. That step requires formalization. 1/
— Thomas P. Bossert (@TomBossert) December 19, 2020U.S. President-elect Joe Biden on Thursday called the cybersecurity breach, “a matter of great concern.”“I want to be clear: My administration will make cybersecurity a top priority at every level of government — and we will make dealing with this breach a top priority from the moment we take office,” he said in a statement shortly after the latest CISA alert was issued.“Our adversaries should know that, as president, I will not stand idly by in the face of cyber assaults on our nation,” he added.Biden is set to be inaugurated as the 46th U.S. president on January 20.Wayne Lee and the VOA Russian Service’s Danila Galperovich contributed to this report.
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British Prime Minister Boris Johnson imposed new coronavirus lockdown measures in England Saturday, reversing initial plans to ease restrictions during the holiday season after a new strain of the coronavirus was detected in the country. “I know how much emotion people invest in this time of year …I know how disappointing this will be,” Johnson said at a news conference. “There is no alternative open to me.”Britain’s PM Boris Johnson attends a news conference, together with Chris Whitty, the Chief Medical Officer and Patrick Vallance, UK Gov. Chief Scientific Adviser, in response to the ongoing situation with the coronavirus, London , Dec. 19, 2020.Whitty said Britain has alerted the World Health Organization about the strain, which British Health Secretary Matt Hancock said on Monday was detected in the south of England.As a result of the new measures that become effective at midnight Saturday night, people in London and southeast England are now under a new higher tier of restrictions, affecting about one-third of the country’s population. They will be required to remain at home except for essential reasons, such as work. Non-essential retail stores will close, along with leisure and entertainment venues.In the U.S., American drug maker Moderna, Inc. and partners have started distributing its COVID-19 vaccine, the second approved for emergency use in the country. Trucks will begin shipping the vaccine to more than 3,700 U.S. locations on Sunday, U.S. Army General Gustave Perna said Saturday during a virtual news conference.FDA Approves Emergency Use of Second Coronavirus VaccineVice President Mike Pence and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi receive shots Friday Perna said the Moderna vaccine will reach health care workers as early as Monday, but that the delivery of some of the first 20 million doses of vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer, Inc. could be delayed until the first week of January.Nearly 76 million people around the world contracted the coronavirus as of midday Saturday, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. More Than 75 Million Global Coronavirus CasesUS has more COVID cases than any other countryThe U.S. tops the list as the country with the most cases, with 17.5 million; India is second, with more than 10 million, followed by Brazil, with 7.1 million.  Medical residents staged a protest Friday at Stanford Medical Center in Palo Alto, California, because they and other frontline medical professionals, including nurses and respiratory therapists, were not included among the staff members scheduled to receive the coronavirus vaccine.  Stanford apologized and has promised to remedy the situation “immediately.”Turkish state-run media said eight people were killed in a fire that broke out in an intensive care unit where COVID-19 patients were being treated.   The Anadolu news agency said the fire erupted Saturday when an oxygen cylinder exploded at Sanko University Hospital in Gaziantep in southern Turkey. A hospital statement said 14 other patients have been transferred to other hospitals.  Zeng Yixin, vice minister of China’s National Health Commission, said Saturday the country would focus on vaccinating high-risk groups over the next several months before beginning to vaccinate the general public. “During the winter and spring seasons, carrying out novel coronavirus vaccination work among some key population groups is of great significance to epidemic prevention,” Zeng, who also is director of State Council’s vaccine R&D working group, said.  The World Health Organization said it has gained access to 2 billion doses of several coronavirus vaccines.  WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said access to the vaccines ensures that some 190 countries will be able to inoculate their populations “during the first half of next year.”  South Korea has recorded four straight days of more than 1,000 coronavirus cases.  The government is offering free testing because of the surge, but has not yet decided what, if any, new measures will be imposed to curb the uptick.Slovak Prime Minister Igor Matovic is the latest European leader to test positive for the coronavirus.  French President Emmanuel Macron has also announced that he has contracted COVID-19.  Both men attended an EU summit last week in Brussels. In Australia, portions of Sydney are set to adhere to new lockdown measures, following an outbreak of 38 cases on the city’s beaches. The lockdown begins late Saturday and goes until midnight Wednesday.   “We’re hoping that will give us sufficient time to get on top of the virus so that we can then ease up for Christmas and the New Year,” said Gladys Berejiklian, the state premier of New South Wales.
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British scientists were scrambling Saturday to work out whether a mutant strain of the coronavirus, which has been spreading rapidly in England this month, may be resistant to the crop of newly developed vaccines.The strain was first identified on December 13 in the county of Kent in southern England, and initial analysis by government scientists suggested it is “growing faster than the existing variants.”Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson speaks during a news conference in response to the ongoing situation with the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, inside 10 Downing Street, London ,Britain, Dec. 19, 2020.British Prime Minister Boris Johnson held an unscheduled meeting of ministers Friday amid mounting alarm about the threat posed by the mutant strain, which has been named VUI-202012/01. Johnson said at a press conference Saturday that there was no evidence so far to suggest vaccines would be any less effective against the new strain, but he added that “there is still much we don’t know.”He noted the new strain was up to 70% more transmissible than prior strains.The British leader announced a virtual lockdown for London and the southeast of England, with people urged to stay at home. All nonessential stores are now to close, and people should not enter or leave the British capital or large parts of southeast of England.“We can’t continue with Christmas as planned,” said Johnson, noting that a previously announced relaxation of rules for the holidays would be reversed. In London and southern England, households now can’t mix to celebrate Christmas. Elsewhere in the country, up to three households can mix but only for Christmas Day itself.“I must stress how complicated it is to work out, in a situation where things might be growing for other reasons, to really put your finger on that it’s actually the virus that is doing it, but the evidence is pointing in that direction,” Ewan Birney, deputy director of the European Molecular Biological Laboratory, told the BBC.More Than 75 Million Global Coronavirus CasesUS has more COVID cases than any other countryMidweek, Health Minister Matt Hancock said the new strain might be associated with the faster transmission of the virus in the southeast of England and London, but there was “nothing to suggest” it caused a worse disease, or that it might be resistant to vaccines that have only just received approval in Britain and the U.S.England’s chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, said Britain had alerted the World Health Organization about the fast transmissibility of the variant strain.“There is no current evidence to suggest the new strain causes a higher mortality rate or that it affects vaccines and treatments, although urgent work is under way to confirm this,” he said in a statement.Jeremy Farrar, a government adviser and director of the Wellcome Trust, Britain’s largest medical research endowment, warned Saturday of his concern. He tweeted: “The new strain of COVID-19 is worrying & real cause for concern & extra caution. Research is ongoing to understand more but acting urgently now is critical. There is no part of the UK & globally that should not be concerned. As in many countries, the situation is fragile.”The new strain of Covid-19 is worrying & real cause for concern & extra caution. Research is ongoing to understand more, but acting urgently now is critical. There is no part of the UK & globally that should not be concerned. As in many countries, the situation is fragile.
— Jeremy Farrar (@JeremyFarrar) Britain’s PM Boris Johnson attends a news conference, together with Chris Whitty, the Chief Medical Officer and Patrick Vallance, UK Gov. Chief Scientific Adviser, in response to the ongoing situation with the coronavirus, London , Dec. 19, 2020.Hospitals in England are seeing a record number of patients suffering from COVID-19, the disease triggered by the coronavirus. About 38 million people in England already were under tough coronavirus restrictions before Saturday’s announcement. The new measures amount to a virtual lockdown, something Johnson had said just a few days ago he would do everything to avoid.Johnson’s decision to cancel Christmas for much of England prompted the fury of some lawmakers from his ruling Conservative Party. Many have fulminated for weeks against what they see as heavy-handed government and a lack of parliamentary oversight.“The changes must be put to a vote on the Commons at the earliest opportunity,” said Mark Harper, chairman of the COVID Recovery Group of Tory MPs who have criticized government handling of the pandemic.Keir Starmer, leader of the main opposition party, Labour, accused Johnson of indecisiveness. He had been calling for tougher restrictions for weeks and had warned against relaxing Christmas rules.“Millions of families across the country are going to be heartbroken by this news — having their Christmas plans ripped up. And I’m really frustrated because I raised this with the prime minister on Wednesday and he dismissed that and went on to tell people to have a merry little Christmas, only three days later to rip up their plans,” Starmer told British broadcasters.British health authorities announced a further 27,052 confirmed cases of infection across Britain on Saturday and 534 more fatalities.In all, 66,541 Britons have died from COVID-19, just 4,500 short of the total British civilian death toll in the Second World War.
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Bulgaria accuses a Russian diplomat of spying and is expelling him from the country.  “The foreign ministry of the Republic of Bulgaria declared persona non grata a diplomat from the Russian embassy in Sofia and gave him 72 hours to leave the country due to activities incompatible with his diplomatic status,” Bulgaria’s foreign ministry said in a statement Friday.Russia said the charges against its diplomat are “groundless.” Prosecutors say the diplomat had been gathering information for years on the deployment of U.S. troops in Bulgaria. The U.S. Embassy in Bulgaria said in a statement: “We have in recent weeks and months seen too many examples of Russian officials carrying out aggressive actions, from espionage in Bulgaria to poisoning opponents both at home and abroad. Bulgaria is a strong NATO ally and partner and has an unalienable right to defend its sovereignty.”Neither Bulgaria nor Russia revealed the identity of the diplomat, but the Associated Press reports that local media identified the diplomat as Colonel Vasiliy Sazanovich.Bulgaria has expelled at least five Russia diplomats over the past year that it has accused of spying. The eastern European country is a NATO and European Union member, but it was once one of Russia’s closest allies during the Cold War. 
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Irma Baralija is looking forward to Sunday, when she intends to vote and hopes win her race in the first local election in 12 years held in her hometown — the southern Bosnian city of Mostar.To make that possible, the 36-year-old Baralija had to sue her country in the European Court of Human Rights for letting a stalemate between two major nationalist political parties in Bosnia prevent her, along about 100,000 other Mostar residents, from voting or running in a municipal election for over a decade.By winning in court in October 2019, Baralija believes she has “busted the myth (that nationalist parties) have been feeding to us, that an individual cannot move things forward, that we matter only as members of our ethnic groups.”Parties representing only one ethnic group have dominated Bosnian politics since the end of the country’s devastating 1992-95 war, which pitted its three main ethnic factions — Serbs, Croats and Muslims — against each other after the break-up of Yugoslavia.”I hope that my example will inspire citizens of Mostar, when they vote on Sunday, to be brave, to realize that as individuals we can bring positive change,” said Baralija, who is running for a seat in the city council on the ticket of the small, multi-ethnic Our Party.Divided between Muslim Bosniaks and Catholic Croats, who fought fiercely for control over the city during the 1990s conflict, Mostar has not held local polls since 2008, when Bosnia’s constitutional court declared its election rules to be discriminatory and ordered that they be changed.The dominant nationalist Bosniak and Croat political parties, the SDA and the HDZ respectively, have spent over a decade failing to agree about how to do that. Meanwhile, Mostar was run by a de facto acting mayor, HDZ’s Ljubo Beslic, and his office, which included the SDA’s representatives, with no local council to oversee their work or the allocation of nearly 230 million euros from the city’s coffers they have spent over the years.Left without fully functioning institutions, Mostar — one of the Balkan nation’s main tourist destinations — had seen its infrastructure crumble, trash repeatedly pile up on its streets and hazardous waste and wastewater treatment sludge dumped in its only landfill, which was supposed to be for non-hazardous waste.An agreement between the two parties, endorsed by the top European Union and the U.S. diplomats in Bosnia, was finally reached last June — eight months after the court in Strasbourg had ruled in favor of Baralija and gave Bosnia six months to amend its election laws so a vote can be held in Mostar.A city dividedMostar is divided in half by a river. During the war, Croats moved to the western side and Muslims to the east. Since the fighting stopped, the city has had two post offices, two electricity and water suppliers, two phone networks, two public hospitals and more — one crumbling set for each ethnic group.On Sunday, several small, multiethnic parties will be vying for seats in the city council after campaigning on bread-and-butter issues. But the nationalist HDZ and SDA parties hope that, among them, they will secure a two-thirds majority in the council and keep their grip on power.While acknowledging that the nationalists have armies of faithful voters whom they mobilize by stoking ethnic mistrust, non-nationalist election candidates in Mostar hope the past 12 years has shown that those two parties are too corrupt and incompetent.”I think that many people finally realized that the abstract, ethnic interests are meaningless while their children are leaving (Mostar) in droves in search of decent jobs and a decent life” elsewhere in Europe, said Amna Popovac, a candidate from the multi-ethnic Platform for Progress party.The nationalists are now promising to fix the city’s many problems as if “Martians and not they were running Mostar, unchecked, for the past 12 years,” she added.Miljan Rupar’s name will also be on the ballot. The 35-year-old, who is running as a candidate from the multi-ethnic Social Democrat Party, decided to get involved in politics after realizing that over 38 friends and relatives, including his sister, had left Mostar “for good” in search of a better life abroad.Rupar wants his city focused on the future, just like the international school where he teaches physics, the United World College branch in Mostar. The school is one of 17 around the globe and run by a movement founded in 1962 with the aim of overcoming Cold War divisions by bringing high-achieving youngsters from all over to live and learn together.”When I walk into the classroom or attend our bi-weekly assembly and see students and teachers from all over the world, including from various parts of Bosnia-Herzegovina, who share the same values and goals, it gives me hope,” he said.Political journalist Faruk Kajtaz, however, thinks that hope could prove to be treacherous in the divided city, despite local voters’ well-justified grievances. He notes that not just Mostar but all of Bosnia has long been politically and administratively fragmented along ethnic lines.”Maybe too much is expected from the people of Mostar,” he said. “(But) just the fact that citizens of Mostar will finally get a chance to vote for their local legislators is in itself a big win for democracy.”   
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