RIYADMEDIA

Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido on Thursday issued an emotional plea to political and business leaders at Davos, saying he needed their international help as he could not achieve change alone.Guaido is recognized as Venezuela’s interim president by the United States and 50 other countries but has so far failed to shift President Nicolas Maduro from power despite months of struggle and ongoing economic crisis.”We are facing an international criminal conglomerate and we need your help,” he told the World Economic Forum (WEF), adding that Venezuela was experiencing an “unprecedented tragedy.””Alone, we are not going to get there,” he added.Guaido has defied a travel ban issued by Maduro’s administration to go on an international charm offensive aimed at ensuring continued diplomatic support for his bid to oust Maduro.The parliament speaker first headed to his chief ally and arch Maduro foe Colombia, then Britain and EU headquarters in Brussels, before traveling to Davos.It was in Davos last year that several heads of state recognized Guaido as interim Venezuela president. But despite presiding over the economic collapse of his oil rich nation, Maduro is still in charge, defying a growing list of U.S. and EU sanctions. 
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Nine parents who were deported as the Trump administration separated thousands of migrant families landed back into the U.S. late Wednesday to reunite with children they had not seen in a year and a half.The group arrived at Los Angeles International Airport from Guatemala City in a trip arranged under the order of a federal judge who found the U.S. government had unlawfully prevented them from seeking asylum. An asylum advocate confirmed the nine parents were all aboard the flight.Some of the children were at the airport to greet them, including David Xol’s 9-year-old son Byron.David fell to one knee and tearfully embraced Byron for about three minutes, patting the back of his son’s head.“He was small,” David said after rising to his feet. He looked at his attorney — who accompanied him on the flight — raised his hand about chest-high and said, “He grew a lot.”David, Byron and his attorney, Ricardo de Anda, then embraced in a three-way hug and exchanged words in their huddle. Byron was all smiles. Father, son, attorney and family sponsor eagerly left the airport for their hotel.The reunion was a powerful reminder of the lasting effects of Trump’s separation policy, even as attention and outrage has faded amid impeachment proceedings and tensions with Iran. But it also underscored that hundreds, potentially thousands, of other parents and children are still apart nearly two years after the zero-tolerance policy on unauthorized border crossings took effect.“They all kind of hit the lottery,” said Linda Grimm, an attorney who represents one of the parents returning to the U.S. “There are so many people out there who have been traumatized by the family separation policy whose pain is not going to be redressed.”More than 4,000 children are known to have been separated from their parents before and during the official start of zero tolerance in spring 2018. Under the policy, border agents charged parents en masse with illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, then placed their children in government facilities, including some “tender-age shelters” set up for infants.The U.S. has acknowledged that agents separated families long before they enforced zero tolerance across the entire southern border, its agencies did not properly record separations, and some detention centers were overcrowded and undersupplied, with families denied food, water or medical care.In June 2018, U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw ordered the government to stop separating families and reunite parents and children.At least 470 parents were deported without their children. Some of the kids were held in U.S. government facilities and ultimately placed with sponsors. Others were deported to their home countries.Accounts emerged of many parents being told to sign paperwork they couldn’t read or understand or being denied a chance to request asylum in ways that violated federal law.The U.S. Department of Homeland Security referred a request for comment to the Justice Department, which did not respond.The American Civil Liberties Union, which brought the original family separation lawsuit before Sabraw, asked the judge to order the return of a small group of parents whose children remained in the U.S. In September, Sabraw required the U.S. to allow 11 parents to come back and denied relief to seven others.ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt said Sabraw made clear he would only order the return of people “who were misled or coerced into giving up their asylum rights.” That will leave other parents who fled violence, poverty and persecution to decide whether to have their children return to their home countries or remain in the U.S. without them.“Many are going to make the decision that generations of immigrant parents have made — to leave their child in the U.S. and endure the hardship of separation, but to do it for their child’s own safety,” Gelernt said.Xol said that after he and his then-7-year-old son, Byron, crossed the border, they were taken to a U.S. Border Patrol processing center in South Texas. Xol was charged with illegal entry on May 19, 2018.Two days later, Xol said an officer told him to sign a document that would allow him and Byron to be deported together. If he didn’t sign, Byron would be given up for adoption and Xol would be detained for at least two years.Xol signed the document, only to have Byron taken away and then get deported to Guatemala. Byron was placed in government facilities for 11 months.The family’s attorney, Ricardo de Anda, persuaded a federal court to force the U.S. to let a Texas family take in Byron. Since May 2019, Byron has lived with Holly and Matthew Sewell and their two children, with regular video calls to his family.Holly Sewell brought Byron, now 9, to meet his father at the airport. They planned to go back to Texas to pack and prepare for Byron to move in with his father once Xol is settled in California. Before the reunion, Byron kept asking Sewell, his caretaker, when his father would clear immigration authorities.“They’re almost here, you’re doing great,” she said. “Count to 1,000.”“999,” Byron responded.She said she was thrilled Byron could see his dad again but sharply criticized the U.S. government’s treatment of asylum-seekers.Esvin Fernando Arredondo was expected to be on the plane. The father from Guatemala was separated from one of his daughters, Andrea Arredondo — then 12 years old and now 13, after they turned themselves in on May 16, 2018, at a Texas crossing and sought asylum legally, according to Grimm, his lawyer. He failed an initial screening and agreed to go back to Guatemala.According to Sabraw’s ruling, the government deported Arredondo even after the judge had ordered families reunited and subsequently prohibited U.S. officials from removing any parent separated from their child. He’s now being given a second chance at asylum under the court order.Andrea was separated from all family for about a month, living in a shelter as the government struggled to connect children with their parents because they lacked adequate tracking systems. She was finally reunited with her mother, who had turned herself in at the Texas crossing with the other two daughters four days earlier than her husband, on May 12, 2018.She and her two daughters passed the initial screening interview for asylum, unlike her husband, even though they were fleeing for the same reason. Their son Marco, 17, was shot and killed by suspected gang members in Guatemala City.Arredondo’s wife, Cleivi Jerez, 41, arrived at LAX less than an hour before the flight landed with their three daughters in tow, ages 17, 13 and 7.“Lots of nerves, last night I couldn’t sleep,” she said in Spanish in an interview after the flight landed.Jerez said she planned to stay up late catching up with her husband. She planned to rest at their Los Angeles home tomorrow as well, catching up on their 17 months apart before he has to report to an ICE office Friday in San Diego. Alison Arredondo, 7, said she missed going to the park with her father and she wanted to go to one with him in LA.While the U.S. has stopped the large-scale separations, it has implemented policies to prevent many asylum-seekers from entering the country. Under its “Remain in Mexico” policy, more than 50,000 people have been told to wait there for weeks or months for U.S. court dates. The Trump administration also is ramping up deportations of Central Americans to other countries in the region to seek asylum there.“People want to make this a heartwarming story, but it’s not. It’s devastating,” Sewell said. “There is just no good reason why we had to do this to this child and this family. And he symbolizes thousands of others who have been put in this exact same position.”
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The primary impacts of climate change are obvious, from the unprecedented fires in Australia to the melting ice caps in the Arctic. However more observers are starting to consider secondary impacts, and none is less obvious perhaps than the credit worthiness of governments, which is analyzed in a new report from Moody’s, a ratings company.A diverse mix of nations including Vietnam, Suriname, Egypt, and the Bahamas are most vulnerable to a rise in sea levels, according to the report released last week. It said rising seas may cause “lost income, damage to assets, loss of life, health issues, and forced migration,” which could hurt governments’ sovereign ratings.The report was released ahead of this week’s Davos forum, an annual meeting of world business and government officials to discuss the world’s problems. Past themes at Davos include populism and globalization. The theme is climate change at this year’s Alpine forum, where climate activist Greta Thunberg and U.S. President Donald Trump have clashed on the issue’s impact on business. The irony is not lost on observers that officials are getting to the forum by air travel, a key source of climate-changing emissions, in order to discuss climate change. Not often represented at the forum are the vulnerable nations named in the Moody’s report.“Vulnerability to extreme events related to sea level rise can also undermine investment and heighten susceptibility to event risk, by hindering the ability of governments to borrow to rebuild, increasing losses for banks, raising external pressures, and/or amplifying political risk as populations come under stress,” said Anushka Shah, Moody’s vice president and senior analyst, in the report. “While one isolated shock related to sea level rise is unlikely to materially weaken a sovereign’s credit profile, repeated shocks could do.”Her report, with contributions from Caleb Coppersmith and Natasha Brereton-Fukui, explained the link between climate and credit.Major cities that could be submerged amid rising seas include Amsterdam, according to Moody’s.Credit scoreGovernments, like individuals and businesses, have credit scores that affect how much interest they pay to borrow. “Shocks” may come along because of rising seas, such as floods, storm surges, cyclones, and erosion. Governments have to spend money to recover from disasters and build infrastructure, while at the same time losing tax income as companies go out of business or individuals can’t work. With more money going out and less money coming in, governments risk a hit to their credit ratings.The nations highlighted in the report, along with Bahrain, Benin, the Cayman Islands, Fiji, the Maldives, and others, are vulnerable because of a mix of their location by seas and economic and fiscal strength.They are vulnerable in relative terms, but other nations that are vulnerable in terms of absolute population impacts include Bangladesh, China, Indonesia, and India, the report said. It said credit risks based on climate can vary by nation. The Netherlands, for instance, is at risk of having cities submerged under water, while Japan has physical assets at risk, like buildings and cars.Residents walk down a street in Kyoto, Japan, one of the nations with the most physical assets, like buildings, at risk of climate disasters.Climate change views evolveMoody’s noted three government climate strategies are protection, accommodation, and managed retreat. That is, protection like sea walls, accommodating rising waters with higher bridges and other tools, and pushing people to retreat by living inland away from coasts.The report comes as business views on the climate are changing.Whereas emissions used to be considered a part of doing business, companies now say they can’t survive if emissions keep rising.Microsoft said last week it will spend $1 billion to remove carbon from the air, a dramatic break from past corporate efforts to simply buy carbon offsets. Around the same time BlackRock, the world’s biggest money manager, said it would divest from coal and make climate an investment priority.“A big part of the challenge is that as a society we have not committed sufficiently to reduce emissions,” Microsoft president Brad Smith said in announcing the new company policy, adding: “If we don’t curb emissions, and temperatures continue to climb, science tells us that the results will be catastrophic.”He said the company would also support government policies to reduce emissions. The Moody’s report said there’s not much governments can do about past emissions, whether to protect their credit ratings or their populations. It said past emissions have already locked in a sea level rise of 1.6 meters. However emissions reductions could keep that number from getting even higher, it said.
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Residents of three Greek islands protested Wednesday against the overcrowding of refugee camps and demanded government action to ease migrant pressure. Most stores were closed and public services were halted on the islands of Lesbos, Chios, and Samos, where some refugee camps have more than 10 times the number of people they were built for. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports Greek protesters want a closure of the ports of entry as well as more equal distribution of migrants throughout the country.
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EU countries can restrict or exclude high-risk 5G providers from core parts of their telecoms network infrastructure under new guidelines to be issued by the European Commission next week, people familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.
The non-binding recommendations are part of a set of measures aimed at addressing cybersecurity risks at national and bloc-wide level, in particular concerns related to world No. 1 player Huawei Technologies.
The guidelines do not identify any particular country or company, the people said.
“Stricter security measures will apply for high-risk vendors for sensitive parts of the network or the core infrastructure,” one of the people said.
EU digital economy chief Margrethe Vestager is expected to announce the recommendations on Jan. 29.Other measures include urging EU countries to audit or even issue certificates for high-risk suppliers.EU governments will also be advised to diversify their suppliers and not depend on one company and to use technical and non-technical factors to assess them.
Europe is under pressure from the United States to ban Huawei equipment on concerns that its gear could be used by China for spying. Huawei, which competes with Finland’s Nokia and Sweden’s Ericsson has denied the allegations.
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In parts of Britain, thousands of children have fallen victim to so-called “county lines,” drug networks run by gangs, with many forced to sell drugs in small towns and rural areas. Helping affected children in the $600 million illegal narcotics industry is a long and difficult process.Officials estimate that some 46,000 children are involved with gangs across Britain, and many of them are exploited through drug networks and routes termed “county lines.”The children are groomed and forced to travel across the country to sell heroin and crack cocaine, using dedicated mobile phone lines.The children exploited through the “county lines” witness a lot of violence and intimidation.Tamsin Gregory works with the St. Giles Trust, an organization that offers support to youngsters who have been affected by “county lines.”Gregory says it is common to see post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD among the young people they work with.”It takes a lot of care and kindness, and non-judgmental support to help young people overcome those kinds of experiences,” Gregory said. “And it’s not a quick process. What we often find is that young people, they don’t stop their ‘county lines’ activity overnight. So they will reduce it over a period of time. And then eventually over maybe a period of a year or so we can help them fully accept that lifestyle and put them back in touch with things such as helping them get back into education.””County lines” have been around for a long time, but the number of people involved in selling drugs in rural areas has grown in recent years. There are currently about 2,000 operational “county lines.”Anton Noble was a gang member as a teenager. Although not personally involved in “county lines,” he witnessed it. After almost ending up in jail, he says he turned his life around.Noble founded the organization Guiding Young Minds in 2018 to warn young people in Britain about the dangers of gangs and “county lines.””This generation they’re ain’t no level, they’ll go to any level,” Noble said. “They’ll go to four-year-olds, they’ll go to six-year-olds, they’ll do anything just to move their product. It’s not a gang anymore, it’s a business. Money is the motive but obviously I educated the kids to say to them money don’t make you happy.”While its mostly vulnerable youngsters who end up being exploited, children from a variety of backgrounds are targeted. The children are victims but often end up in the criminal system for selling drugs or committing violent acts.Noble says he has seen through his work as a youth mentor that it takes time to connect with young people and change their mindset. He says the root causes of the drug epidemic must first be address.If you take a drug runner off the road, it replaces itself, it’s a business,” Noble said. “But if you take the root out, it’s gone. It won’t grow again.”The British government announced it would spend nearly $33 million to tackle drug networks, mostly through strengthening law enforcement.Critics of that approach note that austerity policies in the last decade have led to thousands of British police and social workers losing their jobs, and the closing of hundreds of youth centers across the country.British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said this month he wanted “county lines” to be stopped because “they are killing our children.” 
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The phone of Amazon billionaire and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos was hacked after receiving a file sent from an account used by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, United Nations experts alleged Wednesday.The experts called for an “immediate investigation” by the United States and others into information they received that suggests that Bezos’ phone was hacked after receiving an MP4 video file sent from the Saudi prince’s WhatsApp account.Bezos went public about the incident after allegedly being shaken down by the National Enquirer tabloid, which he said threatened to expose a “below-the-belt” selfie he’d taken and other private messages he’d exchanged with a woman he was dating while still married at the time.A forensic report that was commissioned by Bezos and shared with the U.N. experts assessed with “medium to high confidence” that his phone was infiltrated on May 1, 2018, via the MP4 video file.Saudi critic and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi was killed by Saudi agents inside the Saudi consulate in Turkey in October that same year. The Post was highly critical of the Saudi government after his killing.“The information we have received suggests the possible involvement of the Crown Prince in surveillance of Mr. Bezos, in an effort to influence, if not silence, The Washington Post’s reporting on Saudi Arabia,” the independent U.N. experts said.“At a time when Saudi Arabia was supposedly investigating the killing of Mr. Khashoggi, and prosecuting those it deemed responsible, it was clandestinely waging a massive online campaign against Mr. Bezos and Amazon targeting him principally as the owner of The Washington Post,” the U.N. experts said.The U.N. experts reviewed the 2019 digital forensic analysis of Bezos’ iPhone, which they said was made available to them as U.N. special rapporteurs, which are independent experts appointed by the world body.The experts said that records showed that within hours of receipt of the video from the crown prince’s account, there was “an anomalous and extreme change in phone behavior” with enormous amounts of data from the phone being transmitted over the following months.The Financial Times has seen the forensic report that was done by FTI Consulting, the private firm hired by Bezos. The newspaper said the forensic report “does not claim to have conclusive evidence,” and “could not ascertain what alleged spyware was used.”
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As world leaders rub shoulders with billionaire executives at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland this week, tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets in cities around the world demanding action to tackle growing inequality. A new report from Oxfam highlights the scale of the problem – with most of the world’s wealth concentrated in the hands of a few thousand of the world’s super-rich. As Henry Ridgwell reports, Davos organizers insist the forum is the ideal place to come up with solutions to global problems – from inequality to climate change
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Hundreds of Central American migrants who entered southern Mexico in recent days have either been pushed back into Guatemala by Mexican troops, shipped to detention centers or returned to Honduras, officials said Tuesday. An unknown number slipped past Mexican authorities and continued north.
The latest migrant caravan provided a public platform for Mexico to show the U.S. government and migrants thinking of making the trip that it has refined its strategy and produced its desired result: This caravan will not advance past its southern border.
What remained unclear was the treatment of the migrants who already find themselves on their way back to the countries they fled last week.
“Mexico doesn’t have the capacity to process so many people in such a simple way in a couple of days,” said Guadalupe Correa Cabrera, a professor at George Mason University studying how the caravans form.
The caravan of thousands had set out from Honduras in hopes Mexico would grant them passage, posing a fresh test of U.S. President Donald Trump’s effort to reduce the flow of migrants arriving at the U.S. border by pressuring other governments to stop them.
Mexican Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard said 2,400 migrants entered Mexico legally over the weekend. About 1,000 of them requested Mexico’s help in returning to their countries. The rest were being held in immigration centers while they start legal processes that would allow them to seek refuge in Mexico or obtain temporary work permits that would confine them to southern Mexico.
On Tuesday afternoon, Jesus, a young father from Honduras who offered only his first name, rested in a shelter in Tecun Uman, Guatemala, with his wife and their baby, unsure of what to do next.
“No country’s policy sustains us,” he said in response to hearing Ebrard’s comments about the situation. “If we don’t work, we don’t eat. (He) doesn’t feed us, doesn’t care for our children.”
Honduran officials said more than 600 of its citizens were expected to arrive in that country Tuesday by plane and bus and more would follow in the coming days.
Of an additional 1,000 who tried to enter Mexico illegally Monday by wading across the Suchiate river, most were either forced back or detained later by immigration agents, according to Mexican officials.
Most of the hundreds stranded in the no-man’s land on the Mexican side of the river Monday night returned to Guatemala in search of water, food and a place to sleep. Late Tuesday, the first buses carrying Hondurans left Tecun Uman with approximately 150 migrants heading back to their home country.
Mexican authorities distributed no water or food to those who entered illegally, in what appeared to be an attempt by the government to wear out the migrants.
Alejandro Rendon, an official from Mexico’s social welfare department, said his colleagues were giving water to those who turned themselves in or were caught by immigration agents, but were not doing the same along the river because it was not safe for workers to do so.
“It isn’t prudent to come here because we can’t put the safety of the colleagues at risk,” he said.
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Tuesday that the government is trying to protect the migrants from harm by preventing them from traveling illegally through the country. He said they need to respect Mexican laws.
“If we don’t take care of them, if we don’t know who they are, if we don’t have a register, they pass and get to the north, and the criminal gangs grab them and assault them, because that’s how it was before,” he said. “They disappeared them.”
Mexican Interior Minister Olga Sanchez Cordero commended the National Guard for its restraint, saying: “In no way has there been an act that we could call repression and not even annoyance.”
But Honduras’ ambassador to Mexico said there had been instances of excessive force on the part of the National Guard. “We made a complaint before the Mexican government,” Alden Rivera said in an interview with HCH Noticias without offering details. He also conceded migrants had thrown rocks at Mexican authorities.
An Associated Press photograph of a Mexican National Guardsman holding a migrant in a headlock was sent via Twitter by acting U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Ken Cuccinelli with the message: “We appreciate Mexico doing more than they did last year to interdict caravans attempting to move illegally north to our southern border.”
“They absolutely must be satisfied with (Mexico’s) actions because in reality it’s their (the United States’) plan,” said Correa Cabrera, the George Mason professor. “They’re congratulating themselves, because in reality it wasn’t Lopez Obrador’s plan.”
She said it is an complicated issue for Mexico, but the National Guard had no business being placed at the border to handle immigration because they weren’t trained for it. The government “is sending a group that doesn’t know how to and can’t protect human rights because they’re trained to do other kinds of things,” she said.
Mexico announced last June that it was deploying the newly formed National Guard to assist in immigration enforcement to avoid tariffs that Trump threatened on Mexican imports.
Darlin Rene Romero and his wife were among the few who spent the night pinned between the river and Mexican authorities.
Rumors had circulated through the night that “anything could happen, that being there was very dangerous,” Romero said. But the couple from Copan, Honduras, spread a blanket on the ground and passed the night 20 yards from a line of National Guard troops forming a wall with their riot shields.
They remained confident that Mexico would allow them to pass through and were trying to make it to the northern Mexican city of Monterrey, where his sister lives.
They said a return home to impoverished and gang-plagued Honduras, where most of the migrants are from, was unthinkable.       
 
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U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi led a bipartisan delegation Tuesday on a visit to the former Nazi camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland. More than 1.1 million people, mostly Jews, died in the death camp before it was liberated by the allied forces 75 years ago. The main event commemorating the event will be held in Jerusalem Thursday. Pelosi will join representatives from about 50 other countries and Holocaust survivors at a conference, which will also address the need to fight the resurgence of anti-semitism in the world. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke has more.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin is quickly moving to consolidate proposed constitutional reforms unveiled last week – the first in Russia in over a quarter century. The moves are part of a political shakeup that analysts say may be aimed at allowing Putin to retain influence when his current and final term at the Kremlin ends in 2024. From Moscow, Charles Maynes reports.
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A Minneapolis carpenter whom the Associated Press exposed as a former Nazi commander — a charge his family fiercely denied — has died.According to a Hennepin County, Minnesota, death certificate, Michael Karkoc died last month in a nursing home at age 100.The Ukrainian-born Karkoc came to the United States after World War II in 1949 and led a modest life, working as a carpenter and worshipping at a Ukrainian Orthodox church.FILE – This undated file photo shows Michael Karkoc, which was part of his application for German citizenship filed with the Nazi SS-run immigration office on Feb. 14, 1940.A 2013 Associated Press investigation concluded that Karkoc commanded a Nazi-led Ukrainian military unit accused of committing atrocities against Polish civilians in 1944. Dozens of women and children were among the victims. The AP said Karkoc concealed his wartime activities from U.S. immigration officials.The AP said it relied on interviews, Nazi documents, and U.S. and Ukrainian intelligence files. It also looked at Karkoc’s own memoirs where he said he was a founder of what he called the Ukrainian Self Defense Legion — a group that collaborated with the Nazi SS to stave off communist forces.German prosecutors declined to extradite Karkoc, citing his age. But Polish prosecutors say a suspected Nazi war criminal’s age is no barrier to punishment. They announced in 2017 they would seek his arrest and extradition from the United States.Karkoc’s son strongly denied his father was a war criminal, calling him a Ukrainian patriot who fought to free Ukraine of both Nazi and communist rule. Andrij Karkoc called the AP report “evil, fabricated, intolerable and malicious.”But the top Nazi hunter at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Efraim Zuroff, said he regrets U.S. and Polish officials did not move fast enough to put Karkoc on trial.”He didn’t deserve the privilege of living in a great democracy like the United States,” Zuroff said.
 
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Spain’s new government on Tuesday declared a “climate emergency” and pledged to unveil a draft bill on transitioning to renewable energy within its first 100 days in office.In a statement announced after the weekly cabinet meeting, the government committed to bringing a draft bill “to reduce greenhouse gas emissions with the objective of reaching climate neutrality by 2050” — effectively net-zero carbon emissions.Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s leftwing coalition government, which took office on Jan. 13, also committed to updating the national plan for tackling climate change.The government has decided to ensure that “climate change and the transition is the cornerstone for all (ministerial) departments and governmental action,” spokeswoman Maria Jesus Montero told reporters.Environment Minister Teresa Ribera said the government had been inspired by French moves to create a public advisory panel “to generate ideas about responding to climate change in an inclusive, consultative way with a special focus on the youth.”Last summer, France announced the creation of a citizens’ panel on climate change made up of 150 people who would offer ideas and views on an array of issues touching on climate change “in keeping with the spirit of social justice”.At the end of November, the European Parliament voted to declare a “climate and environment emergency” in a symbolic gesture just ahead of the UN global crisis summit which took place in Madrid last monthThe motion urged efforts to ensure the “objective of limiting global warming to under 1.5 degrees C (35.7 degrees Fahrenheit).”It was followed by similar moves in a number of parliaments across the EU, notably in France, the United Kingdom and in Austria.
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An extradition proceeding under way in Canada could lead to Chinese tech giant Huawei’s chief financial officer being transferred to the United States to face charges related to sanctions violations.Prosecutors are asking a British Columbia court to determine if charges against Meng Wanzhou are a case of “double criminality,” which means they are crimes in both Canada and the United States. For someone to be extradited from Canada to the U.S., the charges would have to be recognized by both countries.Meng was arrested by Canadian officials at the request of the U.S. and is accused of misleading U.S. banks and attempting to circumvent American sanctions against Iran while serving as the chief financial officer of Huawei, which was founded by her father.Prosecutors allege the charges amount to fraud, which is illegal in both Canada and the United States.Meng’s defense says the accusations allege a violation of U.S. sanctions against Iran. Canada currently has no sanctions against doing business in Iran, and lawyers argue Meng could not be extradited based solely on violating U.S. sanctions.Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou attends her extradition hearing in British Columbia Supreme Court in Vancouver, British Columbia, Jan. 21, 2020, in this courtroom sketch by Jane Wolsak.If the court finds the charges are only about violating sanctions, the 47-year-old executive could be free to return to China.If, instead, the court rules the charges amount to fraud, Meng could remain free on $7.7 million bail in one of her two mansions in Vancouver. Meng’s next scheduled appearance would then take place in June. At that time, her defense attorneys would argue that Canadian authorities participated in an improper “covert criminal investigation” when she was arrested at Vancouver International Airport on Dec. 1, 2018, while transiting to Mexico.Any decision in the case is subject to multiple levels of appeals.Longtime Vancouver immigration lawyer and policy analyst Richard Kurland, who is not involved in the case, attended the hearing. Speaking outside the courthouse, he said those appeals can go on for years.   “Don’t forget these cases are complex in law and in fact,” Kurland said. “The Canadian system traditionally has appeals and, (in) extraditions where the litigants can afford it, that (can) run to 10 years and longer.”A decision on the current stage of the extradition proceedings may be announced at the end of this week or may be “reserved” for a later date.
 
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Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido was in London on Tuesday as part of a surprise international trip to revive support for forcing the resignation of the country’s authoritarian leader, Nicolas Maduro.  One year ago, Guaido was recognized by the U.S. and over 50 countries as Venezuela’s interim president after Maduro blocked opponents in the last presidential election. However, VOA’s Brian Padden reports that tough U.S. sanctions and diplomatic pressure imposed a year ago have not succeeded to break the socialist president’s hold on power.
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A high-level panel on internal displacement established by the U.N. Secretary-General said it will seek concrete long-term solutions to try to alleviate the plight of tens of millions of people internally displaced by conflict and natural disasters. The panel had its first brainstorming session Tuesday in preparation for the complex and challenging work that will get underway on Feb. 26. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has given the eight distinguished members of this high-level panel only one year to come up with a realistic plan to prevent displacement and mitigate its effects.Last year, the number of people internally displaced by conflict around the world reached a record high of more than 41 million.  In the same year, the United Nations said 17 million other people were forced to move because of natural disasters and climate-related events.Former European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini arrives at the European Union leaders summit, in Brussels, Belgium, Oct. 17, 2019.Panel Co-Chair Federica Mogherini is the former European Commission high representative for foreign affairs and a seasoned politician.  She said the panel will address the problem of displacement from many aspects.  She said it will look for realistic, durable solutions and mobilize international support to help both the displaced and the countries hosting them.“The issue of internal displacement tends to be forgotten, while it is one of the major, not only humanitarian, but also, I would say, political crises that our times are seeing,” Mogherini said. “So, our first task will be to keep, or rather put this as high as possible on the agenda and try to provide some good advice on how this can be addressed.”  Former African Development Bank President Donald Kaberuka speaks during the opening ceremony of the annual meeting commemorating the 50th anniversary of the African Development Bank in Abidjan, May 26, 2015.Co-Chair Donald Kaberuka is a former president of the African Development Bank Group and minister of Finance and Economic Planning in Rwanda.  He said he hopes to bring his experience from the development world to find practical solutions to this problem.He told VOA it is not possible to separate development, environment and security — all elements involved in displacement.  “We would be failing the secretary-general if we did not address the issue of climate impacts …  I do not see any solution in the Sahel at the moment … unless it encompassed what we are saying,” Kaberuka said.  “What is happening to climate … and how it has fallen into a social problem and now into a security problem. Those will have to be addressed together.”  The panelists said they want a positive, productive outcome to their year-long deliberations.  As such, they said they do not intend to point fingers of shame or dwell on governmental shortcomings.  They will try to get states to work together to meet the needs of the displaced.  They said they will try to avoid politicizing the issue.  Rather, they will look at ways to help those forced to flee conflict and natural disasters live better under very difficult circumstances.   
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The United States urged China on Tuesday to join trilateral nuclear arms talks with Moscow, calling Beijing’s secrecy around growing stockpiles a “serious threat to strategic stability.”U.S. President Donald Trump said last year he had discussed a new accord on limiting nuclear arms with Russian President Vladimir Putin and hoped to extend that to China in what would be a major deal between the globe’s top three atomic powers. But China has so far refused to take part.”We think, given the fact that China’s nuclear stockpile is estimated to double over the next ten years, now is the time to have that trilateral discussion,” Robert Wood, U.S. disarmament ambassador, told reporters on the opening day of the U.N.-backed Conference on Disarmament in Geneva.He said that Washington had discussed the potential trilateral talks in a security meeting with Russia last week and had reached an “understanding” about pursuing them. “We cannot afford to wait,” he added.Asked how to go about pressuring Beijing to join, Wood said that he hoped Russia, and others, would help. “Hopefully over time and through the influence of others besides the United States, they (China) will come to the table. We think it’s imperative for global security that the Chinese do that.”Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said last week that Russia would take part in potential trilateral talks but that he “won’t force China to change” its current position.China has previously said its weapons were the “lowest level” of its national security needs and not comparable to those of Russia and the United States.The United Nations is seeking the total elimination of nuclear arms but talks have been deadlocked for more than 20 years.Other talks between the five declared nuclear powers that have ratified the 1970 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) – China, United States, Russia, France and the United Kingdom – are ongoing and a meeting is planned in London next month.However, Wood said this was not the right framework for nuclear arms talks with Beijing.In his speech, China’s disarmament Ambassador Li Song did not refer to its own nuclear stockpiles but called for cooperation among nuclear powers and made a thinly-veiled swipe at the Trump administration.Li called for a commitment to multilateralism, “with no exceptions, least of all the big power which shoulders a special responsibility for international peace and security and who is not expected to play the role of a ‘spoiler’ to our collective efforts and to withdraw from treaties.”
 
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Brazilian prosecutors on Tuesday accused U.S. journalist Glenn Greenwald of involvement in hacking the phones of officials involved in a corruption investigation, but said court rulings protecting free speech prevent them from bringing charges.A prosecutor in the Federal District, Wellington Divino Marques de Oliveira, said the journalist helped a group of six people who hacked into phones of hundreds local authorities.Greenwald’s The Intercept Brasil published excerpts from conversations involving Justice Minister Sérgio Moro, saying they showed the then-judge was improperly coordinating with prosecutors at the time he was a judge overseeing a vast corruption investigation. The probe led to the imprisonment of former President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva on corruption charges.While many Brazilians hail Moro as a hero, others believe he unfairly targeted da Silva and other top leftist figures. Moro is now a key member of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro’s cabinet.Greenwald’s attorneys said in a statement that the prosecutors’ allegations are “bizarre” and that they challenge the top court ruling protecting the journalist and freedom of press in Brazil.“Their objective is to disparage journalistic work,” the lawyers said.FILE – U.S. journalist Glenn Greenwald (L) walks with his partner David Miranda in Rio de Janeiro’s International Airport, August 19, 2013.Prosecutors said in a statement that an unreleased audio links Greenwald to the group of hackers as they broke the law, terming it “auxiliary participation in the crime” and saying he was “seeking to subvert the idea of protection of a journalistic source into immunity to guide criminals.”Brazil’s top court last year said that “the constitutional secrecy” around journalistic sources prevented the Brazilian state from using “coercive measures” against Greenwald. Because of that, a judge would have to authorize any attempt by prosecutors to formally investigate Greenwald or bring charges.Greenwald, an attorney-turned-journalist who lives in Brazil, has frequently come under criticism by Bolsonaro.Moro has not acknowledge the veracity of the reports by The Intercept Brasil, saying they come from “criminal invasion” of the phones of several prosecutors. Many others involved in the leaked messages or mentioned in them have confirmed their content.   
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Prince Harry has reunited with his wife Meghan in Canada as he steps back from royal duties.
Video from Sky News shows Harry landing at Victoria’s airport on Vancouver Island late Monday. The prince, Meghan and their 8-month-old son Archie were reportedly staying at a mansion on the island off Canada’s Pacific coast. The video shows Harry stepping off a small passenger plane and getting into a SUV on the tarmac.
Buckingham Palace said Tuesday it would not comment on private matters.
The palace announced Saturday that the prince and his wife will give up public funding and try to become financially independent. The couple, who were named the Duke and Duchess of Sussex on their wedding day, are expected to spend most of their time in Canada while maintaining a home in England near Windsor Castle in an attempt to build a more peaceful life.
A photographer spotted a smiling Meghan on a hike with Archie and her two dogs, trailed by her security detail, on Vancouver Island on Monday.
Sky News and the BBC reported that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have issued a legal warning over paparazzi photographs that appeared in The Sun newspaper. They reported that the photographs were taken by photographers hiding in the bushes and spying on her.
The couple spent the holiday season on the island, but it’s unclear where in Canada they will settle. Meghan worked for seven years in Toronto, where she filmed the TV series “Suits.”
It is also unclear who would pay for their personal security and what the immigration and tax status would be for the couple. Harry’s grandmother, the queen, is technically head of state in Canada, a Commonwealth nation.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has spoken warmly about Harry and Meghan, but has said there are questions to be addressed.
“Discussions are continuing and I have no update at this time,” Trudeau said Tuesday.
The country’s leading newspaper, The Globe and Mail, wrote in an editorial last week that senior royals were welcome to visit Canada but should not stay because a royal living in Canada does not accord with the longstanding nature of the relationship between Canada and Britain, and Canada and the Crown.
The paper said it would break an “unspoken constitutional taboo.” But The Globe and Mail published another editorial on Monday that said while a senior member of the Royal Family setting up shop in Canada “doesn’t accord with what Canada has become,” Harry is no longer a royal so the problem is solved.  
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Spain’s new government declared a national climate emergency on Tuesday, taking a formal first step toward enacting ambitious measures to fight climate change.
    
The declaration approved by the Cabinet says the left-of-center Socialist government will send to parliament within 100 days its proposed climate legislation. The targets coincide with those of the European Union, including a reduction of net carbon emissions to zero by 2050.
    
Spain’s coalition government wants up to 95% of the Mediterranean country’s electricity to come from renewable sources by 2040. The plan also foresees eliminating pollution by buses and trucks and making farming carbon neutral.
    
Details of the plan are to be made public when the proposed legislation is sent to parliament for approval.
   
More than two dozen countries and scores of local and regional authorities have declared a climate emergency in recent years.
    
Scientists say the decade that just ended was by far the hottest ever measured on Earth, capped off by the second-warmest year on record.
    
Also Tuesday, young climate activists including Greta Thunberg told the elites gathered at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland they are not doing enough to deal with the climate emergency and warned them that time was running out.
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An ethnologist and photographer are trying to recover a lost chapter of Poland’s past by marking the sites of now vanished Jewish cemeteries with transparent ‘headstones’ and taking photographs of them.The plexiglass installations bear laser-etched epitaphs in Hebrew to those believed to have been buried at the site.Poland was home to more than three million Jews before World War Two, one of the world’s largest Jewish communities, but the vast majority were killed by Nazi German occupiers who set up death camps such as Auschwitz on Polish soil.Next Monday world leaders including German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Israeli President Reuven Rivlin will join some of the dwindling number of survivors at Auschwitz to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the camp’s liberation.Ethnologist Katarzyna Kopecka and photographer Piotr Pawlak travel around Poland searching for the sites of former Jewish cemeteries in their ‘Currently Absent’ project.“This is a bit like bringing back roots that have been destroyed, but life is stronger than the entire attempt at destruction,” said Pawlak. “We can bring some memory back.”The POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw says on its website there are 1,164 Jewish cemeteries in Poland, but more than half of them have no tombstones left.Kopecka said they got the idea for the project after they discovered they were unwittingly sitting in an area that was actually a cemetery.“Whether it’s a field, or something else, these places are usually neglected,” said Kopecka, who plans to visit some 200 such sites with Pawlak for their project.DESCENDANTS’ INTERESTKopecka said they often work with local authorities to determine the site of a former cemetery, but even they sometimes cannot locate it, forcing her and Pawlak to rely on guesswork.The plexiglass installations are removed after they have been photographed.The pictures have been displayed in Poland’s parliament and in cultural centers around the country.“We have people contacting us whose ancestors were buried in these cemeteries and they ask when we’ll be going to a particular location,” Kopecka said.“They tell us the name of the place, they would like to obtain a photo because they’ve never been to Poland, and here rest their grandfathers, great-grandfathers, aunts and uncles.”The duo plan to publish a book of their photos and to make a documentary on the cemeteries which would also feature descendants of those buried there.
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Hundreds of Central American migrants were stranded in a sort of no-man’s land on the river border between Guatemala and Mexico after running up against lines of Mexican National Guard troops deployed to keep them from moving en masse into the country and on north toward the U.S. Naked children played amid the sand and trash Monday evening as clothing and shoes hung from the trees to dry along the Suchiate River, normally a porous waterway plied all day by rafts ferrying people and goods across. Men grilled a fish over a small fire below the border bridge, and migrants bedded down under blankets on the banks or dry sections of the riverbed without knowing what might come next. The path forward was blocked Monday by Mexican troops with riot shields, and about 100 National Guard agents continued to form a barrier with anti-riot gear into the night. But a return home to impoverished and gang-plagued Honduras, where most of the migrants are from, was unthinkable. “We are in no-man’s land,” said Alan Mejia, whose 2-year-old son was cradled in his arms clad only in a diaper as his wife, Ingrid Vanesa Portillo, and their other son, 12, gazed at the riverbanks. Mejia joined in five previous migrant caravans but never made it farther than the Mexican border city of Tijuana.”They are planning how to clear us out, and here we are without water or food,” said a desperate Portillo. “There is no more hope for going forward.” Unlike was often the case with previous caravans, there was no sign of humanitarian aid arriving for those stuck at the river. Throngs waded across the Suchiate into southern Mexico on Monday hoping to test U.S. President Donald Trump’s strategy to keep Central American migrants away from the U.S. border. The push also challenged Mexico’s ramped-up immigration policing that began last year in response to threats of economic tariffs from Trump, a change that effectively snuffed out the last caravan in April.Some scuffled with National Guard troops on the riverbank while others slipped through the lines and trudged off on a rural highway, with most taken into custody later in the day. Still others were taken into custody on the spot or chased into the brush. Some migrants hurled rocks at the police, who huddled behind their plastic shields and threw some of the rocks back. Most of the migrants, however, stayed at the river’s edge or stood in its waters trying to decide their next move after being blocked earlier in the day from crossing the bridge linking Tecun Uman, Guatemala, with Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico. “We never thought they would receive us like that,” said Melisa Avila, who traveled from the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa with her 12-year-old son and was resigning herself to the prospect of spending the night outdoors. “They treated us like dogs.” In an approach that developed after the first migrant caravan in late 2018, Mexican officials seem to be succeeding in their effort to blunt large-scale incursions by breaking up the mass of people repeatedly and into increasingly smaller groups. Over the weekend, government officials convinced about 1,000 people they should enter legally via the bridge.The National Immigration Institute issued a statement saying it would detain any migrants in the country illegally, hold them in detention centers and deport those who did not legalize their status. Any who made it through and continued north could expect a gauntlet of highway checkpoints.As feared, children suffered in the chaos. On the Mexican bank an unconscious 14-year-old girl was carried away for medical attention Monday.Later along the highway, a mother sobbed after realizing her youngest daughter had been separated when migrants tried to escape authorities. Another migrant who had been helping her by carrying the 5-year-old ran in another direction when the migrants scattered and she hadn’t been able to locate them.Back at the river, Avila, who had befriended the woman at a shelter in Tecun Uman, walked along the bank showing everyone a picture of the daughter. “Have you seen this little girl?” Avila asked other migrants. “Blue pants, beige shirt and little pink shoes.”The Guatemalan government issued new data saying that 4,000 migrants had entered that country through the two primary crossings used by the migrants last week, and over the weekend nearly 1,700 entered Mexico at two crossings. It said 400 had been deported from Guatemala. The Immigration Institute said late Monday in a statement that about 500 migrants had entered irregularly and announced the “rescue” of 402 of them — using the term it frequently employs to describe migration detentions; It said the latter were taken to holding centers and offered medical care. The institute said five National Guard troops were hurt but did not give details. While Mexico says the migrants are free to enter if they do so through official channels — and could compete for jobs if they want to stay and work — in practice, it has restricted such migrants to the impoverished southernmost states while their cases are processed by a sluggish bureaucracy. When the rocks began flying at the river Monday, Elena Vasquez, , fearful for the safety of her two wailing sons, bolted back to the Guatemalan side where she would later spend the night. Exhausted after a week on the road, the 28-year-old from Olancho, Honduras, vowed to endure and hoped Mexican authorities would have a change of heart. “I am going to wait as long as necessary. God will open the gates for us,” Vasquez said. “Necessity forces one day more on us,” she continued. “We will have to wait and see what happens.” 
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A Mexican human rights organization on Monday urged authorities to investigate the disappearance of an environmental activist dedicated to protecting the famed monarch butterfly, suggesting the case may be linked to illegal logging in the area.Homero Gomez, who manages a butterfly sanctuary in the western Mexican state of Michoacan, disappeared Jan. 13, according to the Human Rights State Commission of Michoacan.The organization has asked the attorney general’s office to determine if Gomez’s disappearance is linked to his role in defending Mexico’s forests, commission official Mayte Cardona told Reuters.”He was probably hurting the (business) interests of people illegally logging in the area,” Cardona said.Illegal logging and trafficking is rife in Michoacan, a state plagued by organized crime.”The investigation is ongoing,” a source with the state prosecutor said.Environmentalists say illegal logging hurts the habitat of the monarch butterfly, which migrates thousands of kilometers from Canada across the United States to reproduce in Mexico.
 
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The International Labor Organization warns that rising unemployment and inequality are preventing people from working their way out of poverty and threatening social cohesion.For the ninth consecutive year, the International Labor Organization reports global unemployment has remained stable at about 188 million people. But the agency says unemployment is projected to increase by around 2.5 million this year.The ILO says the employment picture is actually worse than these figures indicate when one factors in the 285 million people who do not have enough paid work or have are no longer looking for work. By doing this, the agency says the current global unemployment rate of 5.4 percent goes up to 13 percent.ILO Director-General Guy Ryder said this means more than 470 million people worldwide are either unemployed or underemployed. He said these people are unable to lift themselves out of poverty because they are working fewer paid hours than they would like or are underpaid for the work they do.“The report shows that for millions of working people, it is becoming increasingly difficult, I think, to build better lives through work. Persisting and substantial work-related inequalities and exclusion are preventing them from finding decent work and better futures,” he said.The report finds that significant inequalities in the workplace defined by gender, age and geographic location are growing. It said the gender gap is widening. In 2019, it notes the female labor force participation was 47 percent, which is 27 percent below the male percentage rate.The situation for young people between the ages of 15 and 24 is even worse. The report says 262 million young people have no jobs and are receiving no skills training. Ryder said inequalities are politically unacceptable and politically unsustainable.“I think that this is an extremely worrying finding and that it has very profound and worrying implications for social cohesion. And these implications need to be better addressed in policy making. Our view is that we will find sustainable inclusive parts of development only if we tackle these kinds of labor market gaps and inequalities,” he said.Ryder said labor market conditions are feeding into social unrest and affecting social cohesion in parts of the world. He notes violent anti-government protests have erupted from South America to the Middle East over political and economic grievances. He said these protests show what can happen when discontent is left to fester. 
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