Olympic officials are warning against what they say are divisive political protests at the Summer Games in Tokyo. But as VOA’s Bill Gallo reports, the event may be the perfect opportunity for athlete activism.
(Jesusemen Oni contributed to this video.)
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An off-duty Drug Enforcement Administration agent posed for photographs in which he flashed his DEA badge and firearm outside the U.S. Capitol during the January 6 riot, according to a court filing Tuesday following the agent’s arrest.
A video posted on the internet also showed Mark Sami Ibrahim carrying a flag bearing the words “Liberty or Death” outside the Capitol, about 12 minutes before a mob of people pulled apart a nearby set of barricades, authorities said.
Ibrahim, of Orange County, California, was a probationary employee of the DEA and was on personal leave from the agency when he traveled to Washington on January 6. Several weeks before the riot, he had given notice of his intention to resign.
Ibrahim wasn’t working as a law enforcement officer at the Capitol on January 6, but he told investigators after the riot that he was there to help a friend who had been asked to document the event for the FBI.
The friend denied that, however, and told investigators that Ibrahim had concocted the false story, according to a case summary signed by a senior special agent with the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General.
“According to Ibrahim’s friend, Ibrahim went to the rally in order to promote himself,” the OIG agent wrote. “Ibrahim had been thinking about his next move after leaving the DEA and wanted the protests to be his stage for launching a ‘Liberty Tavern’ political podcast and cigar brand.”
Ibrahim acknowledged that he was at the Capitol on January 6 but denied that he displayed or exposed his DEA badge and firearm there, despite the photographic evidence to the contrary, authorities say.
Ibrahim was arrested Tuesday in Washington on charges that included entering or remaining in a restricted building or grounds with a firearm and making a false statement when he denied displaying his badge or firearm.
He is scheduled to make his initial court appearance Tuesday afternoon before U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui.
A DEA spokeswoman didn’t immediately respond Tuesday to an email seeking comment. Court records didn’t immediately list a defense attorney for Ibrahim.
The DEA had declined for months to say whether any of its agents attended the rally, saying it could not comment on “specific personnel matters.”
“If we receive information indicating an employee engaged in misconduct, DEA’s policy is to promptly refer the case to the appropriate authorities for review,” the agency told The Associated Press in January.
Ibrahim has denied breaking any laws, telling Fox News in March that he “never even set foot on the stairs of the Capitol building.” He said he went to the rally with his brother, an FBI agent, who faced “no adverse action” for attending.
“When the crowd began to be hostile toward law enforcement, me being law enforcement myself, I started to document everything,” Ibrahim told host Tucker Carlson, adding he later gave the materials to the FBI “so those criminals could face justice.”
“I wanted to aid law enforcement that day as best I could. I really didn’t think anything of it,” he said.
After flying back to Los Angeles, Ibrahim said, he was stripped of his badge and gun and “fired after being suspended for two months for performance issues.”
“They got it wrong,” he said of his termination. “Me and my brother both served in the Army. I followed him into federal law enforcement. My sister is a Navy veteran. My mom was in the Pentagon on 9/11.”
“The saddest part about this,” Ibrahim added, “is I can’t serve my country anymore.”
In a WhatsApp group chat with at least five other law enforcement officers, Ibrahim posted a photo of himself standing near barricades that had been pulled apart by the mob several minutes earlier, the OIG agent wrote. He also posted video in the chat that showed Ashli Babbitt, a woman fatally shot inside the Capitol, being taken from the building to an ambulance by emergency workers, the agent said.
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Nearly nine months after last year’s U.S. presidential election, there’s one more loser – political polls – with a new analysis showing the 2020 surveys in advance of the November 3 vote were among the least accurate in decades.
The polling industry’s professional organization, the American Association for Public Opinion Research, says that it reviewed 2,858 polls, including hundreds of national and state-level polls, and found that they consistently understated the support for then-President Donald Trump, although he lost the election to Democrat Joe Biden, now the country’s 46th president.
The group found that the surveys overstated the margin between Biden and Trump by 3.9 percentage points in the national popular vote and 4.3 percentage points in state polls.
The polling organization said the percentage error rate was of an “unusual magnitude,” the highest in 40 years for national popular vote surveys and at least 20 years for state-level polls.
But the election outcome in the polling was entirely accurate at the end of the lengthy campaign, with all 66 surveys conducted in the two weeks prior to the vote showing that Biden would defeat Trump. Polls for Senate contests were less accurate, with pre-election surveys correctly hitting only two-thirds of the winners.
In the actual vote, Biden defeated Trump by a 51.3% to 46.8% margin, a vote count of 81.3 million to 74.2 million.
The polling group said, “Whether the candidates were running for president, senator, or governor, poll margins overall suggested that Democratic candidates would do better and Republican candidates would do worse relative to the final certified vote.”
The pollsters say they do not know why the pre-election findings were off by the actual margins, even as Biden won, as surveys in months of polling overwhelmingly suggested a Biden victory.
In 2016, pollsters underestimated Trump’s support in key states he unexpectedly won en route to a four-year term in the White House. The pollsters concluded in the aftermath of that election they had failed to take into account an education divide in American voting habits, that college educated voters tended to support Democrats more than Republicans.
The authors of the 2020 polling analysis say they are not certain what caused the errors last year but suggested that the declining response rate among some people, especially Republicans, to polling inquiries, might be a key factor.
Trump often assailed polls showing him losing, falsely declaring them as “fake,” or aimed at suppressing enthusiasm for his reelection.
The pollsters say it is impossible to know the reasons people do not participate in polls when they are not answering pollsters’ questions in the first place.
“Identifying conclusively why polls overstated the Democratic-Republican margin relative to the certified vote appears to be impossible with the available data,” the report says.
The leader of the Taliban said Sunday that his movement is committed to a political settlement to end decades of war in Afghanistan, even as the insurgents battle in dozens of districts across to country to gain territory.
The statement by Mawlawi Hibatullah Akhundzada came as Taliban leaders were meeting with a high-level Afghan government delegation in the Gulf state of Qatar to jump-start stalled peace talks. The Kabul delegation includes the No. 2 in the government, Abdullah Abdullah, head of Afghanistan’s national reconciliation council.
The talks resumed Saturday, ahead of the four-day Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, which in many parts of the world is expected to start Tuesday. A second session took place Sunday afternoon.
Washington’s peace envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, who is in Qatar, previously expressed hope for a reduction in violence and possibly a cease-fire over Eid al-Adha.
Akhundzada said that “in spite of the military gains and advances, the Islamic Emirate strenuously favors a political settlement in the country, and every opportunity for the establishment of an Islamic system.”
The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan is what the Taliban called their government when they ruled the country for five years, until their ouster by a U.S.-led coalition in 2001.
Still, there are few signs of a political agreement on the horizon. Battles between the Taliban and government forces are continuing in dozens of provinces, and thousands of Afghans are seeking visas in hopes of leaving the country. Most are frightened that the final withdrawal of U.S. and NATO troops after nearly 20 years will plunge their war-ravaged nation into deeper chaos. With the U.S. withdrawal more than 95% complete, Afghanistan’s future seems uncertain.
Militias with a brutal history have been resurrected to fight the Taliban but their loyalties are to their commanders, many of them U.S.-allied warlords with ethnic-based support.
This has raised the specter of deepening divisions between Afghanistan’s many ethnic groups. Most Taliban are ethnic Pashtuns and in the past there have been brutal reprisal killings by one ethnic group against another.
In a sign of how little progress has been made in negotiations, both sides are still haggling over terminology, unable to agree on the name for the nation. The Taliban are insisting on the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. Kabul wants the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.
Meanwhile Akhunzada’s statement demanded an Islamic system without explaining what that meant.
He promised to support education, but for girls he said the “Islamic Emirate will … strive to create an appropriate environment for female education within the framework of sublime Islamic law.”
He didn’t say how that differed from the educational institutions that have been created during the last 20 years and whether women would be allowed the freedom to work outside their home and move freely without being accompanied by a male relative.
He said the Taliban have ordered their commanders to treat civilians with care and to protect institutions and infrastructure. Yet, reports have emerged from areas coming under Taliban control that schools have been burned, women have been restricted to their homes and some government buildings have been blown up.
The Taliban have denied reports of such destruction, saying that the footage being shown is old and accused the government of being engaged in disinformation and propaganda.
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Hundreds of Jewish pilgrims visited a contested Jerusalem holy site under heavy police guard on Sunday, shortly after Muslim worshippers briefly clashed with Israeli security forces at the flashpoint shrine.
No injuries were reported, but the incident again raised tensions at the hilltop compound revered by Jews and Muslims. Heavy clashes at the site earlier this year helped spark an 11-day war between Israel and Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip.
Jews revere the site as the Temple Mount, where the biblical Temples once stood. It is the holiest site in Judaism. Today, it is home to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third-holiest site in Islam. Tensions at the compound have frequently spilled over into violence over the years.
The Jews were visiting to mark Tisha B’Av, a day of mourning and repentance when Jews reflect on the destruction of the First and Second Temples, key events in Jewish history.
The Islamic Waqf, which administers the site, said that about 1,500 Jews entered the compound — a number much higher than on typical days. It accused Israeli police of using heavy-handed tactics and said some visitors violated a long-standing status quo agreement barring Jews from praying at the site.
Ahead of the visit, Israeli police said a small group of Muslim youths threw rocks at security forces who quickly secured the area. Amateur video showed police firing what appeared to be rubber bullets, a common crowd-control tactic, and Muslim worshippers were barred from entering the compound for several hours.
In a statement, the Wafq accused Israel of “violating the sanctity” of the mosque by allowing “Jewish extremists to storm the mosque, make provocative tours and perform public prayers and rituals.”
It said the area “is a purely Islamic mosque that will not accept division or partnership.”
The visit came days before Muslims celebrate the festival of Eid al-Àdha, or Feast of the Sacrifice.
Nabil Abu Rdeneh, spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, accused Israel of “dragging the region into a religious war.”
Jordan, which serves as the custodian over Muslim sites in Jerusalem, said it had sent a letter of protest to Israel and urged it to respect the status quo.
“The Israeli actions against the mosque are rejected and condemned,” said Daifallah al-Fayez, spokesman for Jordan’s Foreign Ministry.
Israel’s new prime minister, Naftali Bennett, praised police for their handling of the visit and vowed to protect “freedom of worship” for Jews and Muslims at the site.
His comments raised speculation that Israel might be trying to change the norms of the site to allow Jewish prayer.
But Public Security Minister Omer Bar-Lev told Channel 13 that Israel remains committed to the status quo and that Jewish prayer at the site is “against the law.”
More than 100,000 people protested Saturday across France against the government’s latest measures to push people to get vaccinated and curb rising infections by the delta variant of the coronavirus.
In Paris, separate protest marches by the far right and the far left wound through different parts of the city. Demonstrations were also held in Strasbourg in the east, Lille in the north, Montpellier in the south and elsewhere.
Thousands of people answered calls to take to the streets by Florian Philippot, a fringe far-right politician and former right hand of Marine Le Pen who announced earlier this month that he would run in the 2022 presidential election. Gathered a stone’s throw from the Louvre Museum, protesters chanted “Macron, clear off!” and “Freedom,” and they banged metal spoons on saucepans.
While Philippot has organized small but regular protests against the government’s handling of the coronavirus crisis, Saturday’s demonstration drew a larger and more diverse crowd of people broadly disaffected with politics: yellow vest activists angry over perceived economic injustice, far-right supporters, medical staff and royalists.
A shot? ‘Never’
They denounced the government’s decision on Monday to make vaccines compulsory for all health care workers, and to require a “health pass” proving people are fully vaccinated, have recently tested negative or have recovered from the virus in order to access restaurants and other public venues. President Emmanuel Macron’s government is presenting a draft law Monday to enshrine the measures.
“I will never get vaccinated,” Bruno Auquier, 53, a town councilor who lives on the outskirts of Paris. “People need to wake up,” he said, questioning the safety of the vaccine.
While France requires several vaccinations to enter public school, Auquier pledged to take his two children out of school if the coronavirus vaccine became mandatory.
“These new measures are the last straw,” Auquier said.
The government warned of the continued spread of the delta variant, which authorities fear could again put pressure on hospitals if not enough people are vaccinated against the virus. The pandemic has cost France more than 111,000 lives and deeply damaged its economy.
During a visit to a pop-up vaccination center in the southwest, Prime Minister Jean Castex exhorted the French to stick together in order to overcome the crisis.
“There is only one solution: vaccination,” he said, stressing it “protects us, and will make us freer.”
At the Paris protest, a manual worker in his 60s expressed bitterness about jobs in his sector being sent offshore. A 24-year-old royalist said he was there to demand “the return of God and the king.”
‘Going too far’
Lucien, 28, a retail shop manager, said he wasn’t anti-vaccine, but thought people should be able to do as they please with their own bodies.
“The government is going too far,” he said. His friend Elise, 26, said, “I am vaccinated against diphtheria, tetanus and polio. But the COVID vaccine is just too experimental.”
While a majority of French health care workers have had at least one vaccine dose, some are resisting the government’s decision to make vaccination compulsory for all staff in medical facilities.
At Saturday’s Paris protest, a 39-year-old green party supporter and hospital laboratory worker said she might resort to buying a fake vaccination certificate to avoid losing her job. A health care worker dressed as the Statue of Liberty called it “act of violence” to force people to get vaccinated.
In Montpellier, more than 1,000 people marched to the train station, chanting “Liberty!” and carrying signs reading “Our kids aren’t guinea pigs.” Security officials closed the main entrance to travelers and a dozen police officers took posts in front.
The Interior Ministry said 114,000 people took part in protests nationwide.
Overnight on Friday, vandals ransacked a vaccination center in the southeast. Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin asked prefects and police chiefs to reinforce security for elected officials, after several complained they had received threats in recent days over the latest anti-COVID measures.
Vaccine hesitancy is considered widespread in France, though it appears to have faded somewhat as 36 million French people have gotten coronavirus vaccine doses in recent months. Millions more have gotten injected or signed up for vaccinations since Monday’s announcement.
French health care workers have until September 15 to get vaccinated. The requirement for COVID passes for all restaurants, bars, hospitals, shopping malls, trains, planes and other venues is being introduced in stages starting Wednesday.
Meanwhile, the French government announced tightened border controls starting Sunday, but also said it would allow in travelers from anywhere in the world who have been fully vaccinated.
That now includes people who received AstraZeneca’s Indian-manufactured vaccine. The move came after a global outcry because the European Union’s COVID-19 certificate recognizes only AstraZeneca vaccines manufactured in Europe.
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Martine Moise, the wife of Haiti’s assassinated president who was injured in the July 7 attack at their private home, returned to the Caribbean nation on Saturday following her release from a Miami hospital.
Her arrival was unannounced and surprised many in the country of more than 11 million people still reeling from the assassination of Jovenel Moise in a raid authorities say involved Haitians, Haitian Americans and former Colombian soldiers.
Martine Moise disembarked the flight at the Port-au-Prince airport wearing a black dress, a black bulletproof vest and a black face mask. Her right arm was in a black sling as she slowly walked down the steps of what appeared to be a private plane. She was greeted by interim Prime Minister Claude Joseph and other officials.
Earlier this week, she tweeted from the Miami hospital that she could not believe her husband was gone “without saying a last word. This pain will never pass.”
On Friday, government officials announced that Jovenel Moise’s funeral would be on July 23 in the northern Haitian city of Cap-Haitien and that his wife was expected to attend.
Group: Let chosen PM form government
Earlier Saturday a key group of international diplomats issued a statement urging Ariel Henry, the designated prime minister, to form a government following Moise’s killing.
Joseph has been leading Haiti with the backing of police and the military even though Moise had announced Joseph’s replacement a day before he was killed.
Joseph and his allies argue that Henry was never sworn in, though he pledged to work with him and with Joseph Lambert, the head of Haiti’s inactive Senate.
The statement was issued by the Core Group, which is made up of ambassadors from Germany, Brazil, Canada, Spain, the U.S., France, the European Union and representatives from the United Nations and the Organization of American States.
The group called for the creation of “a consensual and inclusive government.”
“To this end, it strongly encourages the designated Prime Minister Ariel Henry to continue the mission entrusted to him to form such a government,” the group said.
U.S. officials could not be immediately reached for comment. A U.N. spokesman declined comment except to say that the U.N. is part of the group that issued the statement. An OAS spokesman said: “For the moment, there is nothing further to say other than what the statement says.”
Henry and spokespeople for Joseph did not immediately return messages for comment.
Robert Fatton, a Haitian politics expert at the University of Virginia, said the statement was very confusing, especially after the U.N. representative had said that Joseph was in charge.
The question of who should take over has been complicated by the fact Haiti’s parliament has not been functioning because a lack of elections meant most members’ terms had expired. And the head of the Supreme Court recently died of COVID-19.
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Raul Castro was among thousands who attended a government-organized rally in Havana on Saturday to denounce the U.S. trade embargo and reaffirm their support for Cuba’s revolution, a week after unprecedented protests rocked the communist-run country.
Government supporters gathered on the city’s seafront boulevard before dawn to wave Cuban flags and photos of late revolutionary leader Fidel Castro and his brother Raul. The latter retired as Communist Party leader in April but promised to continue fighting for the revolution as a “foot soldier.”
The rally was a reaction to demonstrations that erupted nationwide last Sunday amid widespread shortages of basic goods, demands for political rights and the island nation’s worst coronavirus outbreak since the start of the pandemic.
The government admitted some shortcomings this week but mostly blamed the protests on U.S.-financed “counter-revolutionaries” exploiting economic hardship caused by U.S. sanctions.
President Miguel Diaz-Canel, who also heads the Communist Party, told the crowd that Cuba’s “enemy has once again thrown itself into destroying citizens’ sacred unity and tranquility.”
He said it was no small matter to call a rally as the country saw increasing numbers of COVID cases: “We convened you to denounce once more the blockade, the aggression and terror.”
‘Revolution will continue’
Authorities said similar rallies were held nationwide.
“This revolution will continue for a long time,” said Margaritza Arteaga, a state social worker who attended the rally in Havana.
Workers had been convened by neighborhood block committees, known as the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, she said, and a state bus had picked her up at 4 a.m.
Shortly before the rally in Havana officially began, authorities removed a man shouting anti-government slogans including “freedom” from the crowd.
The number of those detained during or after protests has grown as new reports trickle in amid irregular outages in internet and messaging applications on the island, where the state has a monopoly on telecommunications.
The latest tally from exiled rights group Cubalex put those detained at 450, although some have since been released. Activists have accused authorities of repression as some videos have emerged on social media of police beating protesters.
The government has not yet given official figures for those detained although it has said it arrested those it suspected of instigating unpatriotic unrest or of carrying out vandalism. State television has broadcast images of people looting Cuba’s controversial dollar stores and overturning empty police cars.
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Temple elephants in southern India’s Kerala state began their monthlong wellness camp at Vadakkunnathan temple, Saturday, July 17.
Eating fruits, rice sweet balls, and other items, the elephants were seen happily interacting with people.
The elephants are ritualistically relieved from daily chores for a monthlong restorative treatment called Aanayoottu, beginning from Saturday.
Aanayoottu means feeding the elephants with specially prepared food, which is known for its high medicinal value. This medicinal concoction is regarded as vital for enhancing the well-being of elephants.
The formulation is administered to the animals to protect and improve their health during the monsoon months when they are not taken for any temple processions, of which they are an essential part, and are provided with full rest.
(Reuters)
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Forces in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region have released about 1,000 government soldiers captured during recent fighting, the head of its ruling party said, as both sides prepared for a showdown over contested land in the west of the region.
Debretsion Gebremichael, leader of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), told Reuters by satellite phone late Friday they have released 1,000 low-ranking soldiers. “More than 5,000 [soldiers] are still with us, and we will keep the senior officers who will face trial,” he said.
He said the soldiers had been driven to Tigray’s southern border with the Amhara region on Friday, but he did not say who received them or how the release was negotiated.
Reuters could not independently confirm his account. A military spokesman said he was not immediately available to comment Saturday, and the spokesman for the Amhara regional administration said he had no information on the release.
Officials in Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s office and a government taskforce on Tigray did not answer calls seeking comment.
Fighting broke out in Tigray in November when the government accused the TPLF of attacking military bases across the region, which the party denied. The government declared victory three weeks later when it took control of the regional capital, Mekelle, but the TPLF kept fighting.
In a dramatic turn, the TPLF retook Mekelle and most of Tigray at the end of June, after the government pulled out its soldiers and declared a unilateral cease-fire.
The TPLF vowed to keep fighting, however, until it had regained control of disputed territory in the south and west of Tigray that was seized during the fighting by the government’s allies from Amhara.
Abiy said this week that the military would repel any TPLF threat, effectively abandoning the self-declared truce. Amhara and three other regions said they were mobilizing forces to support the national army in its fight against the TPLF.
Thousands of people have died in the fighting; around 2 million have been displaced and more than 5 million rely on emergency food aid.
On Friday, Ethiopia’s foreign ministry issued a statement accusing aid groups of arming rebels.
“Some aid agencies have been actively engaged in a destructive role. We have also confirmed that they have been using aid as a cover and are arming the rebel groups to prolong the conflicts,” it said.
The statement did not identify the groups and there was no immediate response from the agencies that operate in Tigray. The United Nations humanitarian organization OCHA did not respond to a request for comment.
The U.N. has said desperately needed aid is being blocked at checkpoints as convoys travel through government-held territory. Ethiopian authorities say the aid needs to be checked.
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Issues in the News moderator Kim Lewis talks with VOA Congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson and correspondent for Marketplace Kimberly Adams about the ongoing battle between Democrats and Republicans over voting rights legislation, what’s next after Senate Democrats agree to a $3.5 trillion human infrastructure package, the impact of the crises in Haiti and Cuba on the Biden Administration, and much more.
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Rescue workers searched flood-ravaged parts of western Germany for survivors on Saturday as water levels remained high in many towns and houses continued to collapse in the country’s worst natural disaster in half a century.
At least 133 people have died in the flooding, including some 90 people in the Ahrweiler district south of Cologne, according to police estimates on Saturday. Hundreds of people are still missing.
Around 700 residents were evacuated late on Friday after a dam broke in the town of Wassenberg near Cologne, authorities said.
Over the past several days the floods, which have mostly hit the states of Rhineland Palatinate and North Rhine-Westphalia, have cut off entire communities from power and communications.
The flooding has also hit parts of Belgium and the Netherlands. At least 20 people have died in Belgium.
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Armin Laschet, state premier of North Rhine-Westphalia, were scheduled to visit Erftstadt, one of the hardest hit towns, on Saturday.
Laschet is ruling CDU party’s candidate in September’s general election. The devastation of the floods could intensify the debate over climate change ahead of the vote.
Scientists have long said that climate change will lead to heavier downpours. But determining its role in these relentless downpours will take at least several weeks to research, scientists said on Friday.
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Pope Francis cracked down Friday on the spread of the old Latin Mass, reversing one of Pope Benedict XVI’s signature decisions in a major challenge to traditionalist Catholics who immediately decried it as an attack on them and the ancient liturgy.
Francis reimposed restrictions on celebrating the Latin Mass that Benedict relaxed in 2007 and went further to limit its use. The pontiff said he was acting because Benedict’s reform had become a source of division in the church and been exploited by Catholics opposed to the Second Vatican Council, the 1960s meetings that modernized the church and its liturgy.
Critics said they had never witnessed a pope so thoroughly reversing his predecessor. That the reversal concerned something so fundamental as the liturgy, while Benedict is still alive and living in the Vatican as a retired pope, only amplified the extraordinary nature of Francis’ move, which will surely result in more right-wing hostility directed at him.
Francis, 84, issued a new law requiring individual bishops to approve celebrations of the old Mass, also called the Tridentine Mass, and requiring newly ordained priests to receive explicit permission to celebrate it from their bishops, in consultation with the Vatican.
Under the new law, bishops must also determine if the current groups of faithful attached to the old Mass accept Vatican II, which allowed for Mass to be celebrated in the vernacular rather than Latin. These groups cannot use regular churches; instead, bishops must find alternate locations for them without creating new parishes.
In addition, Francis said bishops are no longer allowed to authorize the formation of any new pro-Latin Mass groups in their dioceses.
Francis said he was taking action to promote unity and heal divisions within the church that had grown since Benedict’s 2007 document, Summorum Pontificum. He said he based his decision on a 2020 Vatican survey of all the world’s bishops, whose “responses reveal a situation that preoccupies and saddens me, and persuades me of the need to intervene.”
The pope’s rollback immediately created an uproar among traditionalists already opposed to Francis’ more progressive bent and nostalgic for Benedict’s doctrinaire papacy.
“This is an extremely disappointing document which entirely undoes the legal provisions,” of Benedict’s 2007 document, said Joseph Shaw, chairman of the Latin Mass Society of England and Wales.
While Latin celebrations can continue, “the presumption is consistently against them: bishops are being invited to close them down,” Shaw said, adding that the requirement for Latin Masses to be held outside a parish was “unworkable.”
“This is an extraordinary rejection of the hard work for the church and the loyalty to the hierarchy which has characterized the movement for the Traditional Mass for many years, which I fear will foster a sense of alienation among those attached to the church’s ancient liturgy,” he said.
Benedict had issued his document in 2007 to reach out to a breakaway, schismatic group that celebrates the Latin Mass, the Society of St. Pius X, and which had split from Rome over the modernizing reforms of Vatican II.
But Francis said Benedict’s effort to foster unity had essentially backfired.
The opportunity offered by Benedict, the pope said in a letter to bishops accompanying the new law, was instead “exploited to widen the gaps, reinforce the divergences, and encourage disagreements that injure the Church, block her path, and expose her to the peril of division.”
Francis said he was “saddened” that the use of the old Mass was accompanied by a rejection of Vatican II itself “with unfounded and unsustainable assertions that it betrayed the Tradition and the ‘true Church.’”
Christopher Bellitto, professor of church history at Kean University, said Francis was right to intervene, noting that Benedict’s original decision had had a slew of unintended consequences that not only created internal divisions but temporarily roiled relations with Jews.
“Francis hits it right on the head with his observation that Benedict’s 2007 loosening of regulations against the Latin rite allowed others to use it for division,” he said. “The blowback proves his point.”
The blowback was indeed fierce, though it’s also likely that many will simply ignore Francis’ decree and continue as before with sympathetic bishops. Some of these traditionalists and Catholics already were among Francis’ fiercest critics, with some accusing him of heresy for having opened the door to letting divorced and civilly remarried Catholics receive Communion.
Rorate Caeli, a popular traditionalist blog run out of the U.S., said Francis’ “attack” was the strongest rebuke of a pope against his predecessors in living memory.
“Francis HATES US. Francis HATES Tradition. Francis HATES all that is good and beautiful,” the group tweeted. But it concluded: “FRANCIS WILL DIE, THE LATIN MASS WILL LIVE FOREVER.”
Messa in Latino, an Italian traditionalist blog, was also blistering in its criticism.
“Mercy always and only for sinners (who are not asked to repent) but no mercy for those few traditional Catholics,” the blog said Friday.
For years, though, Francis has made known his distaste of the old liturgy, privately labeling its adherents self-referential naval gazers who are out of touch with the needs of the church. He has cracked down on religious orders that celebrated the old Mass exclusively and frequently decried the “rigidity” of tradition-minded priests who prioritize rules over pastoral accompaniment.
Traditionalists have insisted that the old liturgy was never abrogated, and that Benedict’s 2007 reform had allowed it to flourish.
They point to the growth of traditionalist parishes, often frequented by young, large families, as well as new religious orders that celebrate the old liturgy. The Latin Mass Society says the number of traditional Masses celebrated each Sunday in England and Wales had more than doubled since 2007, from 20 to 46.
But for many, the writing was on the wall as soon as Francis stepped out onto the loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica after his 2013 election without the ermine-trimmed red velvet cape that was preferred by Benedict and is a symbol of the pre-Vatican II church.
The restrictions went into immediate effect with its publication in Friday’s official Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano.
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Israel-based Yad Vashem is the world’s leading organization dedicated to Holocaust awareness. It seeks to remind humanity about what could result from the modern-day extreme hatreds and genocidal ideologies fueling international tensions and conflicts. One source of concern for Yad Vashem is Iran, whose leaders repeatedly have denied and questioned the facts of the Holocaust in recent years. In this Persians of Israel episode, we learn what Yad Vashem has done to try to educate Iranians about the Holocaust, and how veteran Persian Israeli journalist Menashe Amir played a key role in that effort. Amir, who gives VOA’s Michael Lipin a tour of Yad Vashem’s Jerusalem museum, explains how they worked together to improve the Iranian people’s understanding of the Holocaust after then-Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad first called it a “myth” in 2005. Amir also shares what he thinks still must be done to show Iranians and others why such genocides should never happen again.
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Australian cybersecurity experts are calling for more aggressive government action to protect businesses from ransomware attacks. Experts have warned a “tsunami of cybercrime” has cost the global economy about $743 billion.
Big companies can be attractive targets for cybercriminals who can extort millions of dollars after stealing sensitive commercial information.
The Cybersecurity Cooperative Research Centre is a collaboration between industry representatives, the Australian government and academics.
Its chief executive, Rachael Falk, believes Australia is an easy target for hackers because cyber defenses can be weak.
“More often than not, it is by sending an email where an employee clicks on a link,” she said. “They get into that organization, they have a good look around and they work out what is valuable data here that we can encrypt, which means we lock it up and we will take a copy of it. And then we will encrypt all the valuable data in that organization and then we will hold them to ransom for money. So, it is a business model for criminals that earns them money.”
The consequences for businesses can be extreme. They can lose valuable data, or have it leaked or sold by cyberthieves. In some cases, hackers can disable an organization’s entire operation. In March, a cyberattack disrupted broadcasts by Channel Nine, one of Australia’s most popular commercial television news networks. It sought help from the Australian Signals Directorate, a government intelligence agency.
Researchers want the government to require Australian companies to tell authorities when they are being targeted.
They also want clarity on whether paying ransoms is legal. Experts have said Australian law does not make it clear whether giving money to hackers is a criminal offense.
There is also a call for the government to use tax incentives to encourage Australian businesses to invest in cybersecurity.
Last year, federal government agencies said China had been responsible for a series of cyberattacks on Australian institutions, including hospitals and state-owned companies.
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Iran appears to be intensifying its effort to exploit U.S. and Western targets in cyberspace, running a campaign aimed at manipulating American military personnel and defense companies on social media.
Tehran’s latest campaign, orchestrated on Facebook by a group known as Tortoiseshell, used a series of sophisticated, fake online personas to make contact with U.S. servicemembers and employees of major defense companies in order to infect their computers with malware and extract information.
“This activity had the hallmarks of a well-resourced and persistent operation, while relying on relatively strong operational security measures to hide who’s behind it,” Facebook said Thursday in a blog post, calling it part of a “much broader cross-platform cyber espionage operation.”
Personas used
Employees of defense companies in the U.K. and other European countries were also targeted.
“These accounts often posed as recruiters and employees of defense and aerospace companies from the countries their targets were in,” Facebook said. “Other personas claimed to work in hospitality, medicine, journalism, NGOs and airlines.”
And the hackers were in no hurry.
“Our investigation found that this group invested significant time into their social engineering efforts across the internet, in some cases engaging with their targets for months,” Facebook said. “They leveraged various collaboration and messaging platforms to move conversations off-platform and send malware to their targets.”
Facebook said it has notified users who appeared to have been targeted, took down the fake accounts and blocked the malicious domains from being shared.
The social media company said it was able to trace the activity to Iran, in part because of the distinctive malware, known to have been developed by Mahak Rayan Afraz, a Tehran-based company with links to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Mandiant Threat Intelligence, a private cybersecurity company, said Thursday that it agreed with Facebook’s assessment that Iran, and the IRGC in particular, was behind the campaign.
Tortoiseshell “has historically targeted people and organizations affiliated with the U.S. military and information technology providers in the Middle East since at least 2018,” Mandiant Senior Principal Analyst Sarah Jones said in an email.
Jones also said it was noteworthy that some of the fake domains associated with the Iranian campaign used the name of former U.S. President Donald Trump, including, “trumphotel[.]net”, “trumporganization[.]world”, and “trumporganizations[.]com”.
“Domains such as these could suggest social engineering associated with U.S. political topics,” Jones said. “We have no evidence that these domains were operationalized or used to target anyone affiliated with the Trump family or properties.”
Facebook, which discovered the hacking campaign, did not comment on whether Iran managed to steal any critical or sensitive data.
U.S. military officials also declined to speak about what, if anything, the Iranian hackers were able to steal.
“For operational security purposes, U.S. Cyber Command does not discuss operations, intelligence and cyber planning,” a spokesperson told VOA.
“The threats posed by social media interactions are not unique to any particular social media platform and Department of Defense personnel must be cautious when engaging online,” the spokesperson added.
‘Significant threat’
U.S. intelligence officials have been increasingly concerned about Iran’s growing capabilities and aggressiveness in cyberspace.
In its annual Worldwide Threat Assessment, published in April, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence called Tehran “a significant threat to the security of U.S. and allied networks and data.”
“We expect Tehran to focus on online covert influence, such as spreading disinformation about fake threats or compromised election infrastructure and recirculating anti-U.S. content,” the report said.
The U.S. intelligence community, earlier this year, also accused Iran of meddling in the 2020 U.S. presidential election, carrying out a “multi-pronged covert influence campaign intended to undercut former President Trump’s reelection prospects.”
U.S. officials said part of that effort involved hacking voter registration systems in at least one U.S. state and using the information to send prospective voters threatening emails.
More recently, the cybersecurity firm Proofpoint said a separate Iranian hacker collective with ties to the IRGC, known as TA453 and Charming Kitten, posed as British university professors to steal information and research from think tanks and academics.
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A Chinese gene company is collecting genetic data through prenatal tests from women in more than 50 countries for research on the traits of populations, raising concern that such a large DNA database could give China a technological advantage and the strategic edge to dominate global pharmaceuticals, according to a recent news report.
Analysts expressed unease with the developments exclusively reported by Reuters at BGI Group, the Chinese gene company, which is collecting genetic data via its NiPT prenatal test with the brand name NIFTY (Non-Invasive Fetal TrisomY).
The tests, sold in more than 50 countries, can detect abnormalities such as Down syndrome in the fetus by capturing DNA from the placenta in the bloodstream about 10 weeks into a pregnancy.
The tests are sold in 52 countries, including Germany, Spain and Denmark, as well as in Britain, Canada, Australia, Thailand, India and Pakistan, according to Reuters. They are not sold in the United States, where “government advisers warned in March that the genomic data BGI is amassing and analyzing with artificial intelligence could give China a path to economic and military advantage,” Reuters reported.
Collecting the biggest and most diverse set of human genomes could propel China to dominate global pharmaceuticals, and also potentially lead to genetically enhanced soldiers, or engineered pathogens to target the U.S. population or food supply, the U.S. advisers said, according to Reuters.
Reggie Littlejohn, founder and president of the rights group Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, said that due to China’s strategy of fusing military and civilian interests, “any Chinese company can be forced by the government to supply its information to the military.”
China sells the prenatal tests “a good product at a lower cost because they’re able to do that,” Littlejohn said. “But what people don’t realize is that when they get these lower cost genetic tests,” the collected information goes to the Chinese military,” she told VOA via a video interview using Microsoft Teams.
The Reuters report said the company has “worked with the Chinese military to improve ‘population quality’ and on genetic research to combat hearing loss and altitude sickness in soldiers.”
China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs dismissed the report, telling Reuters it was “a groundless accusation and smear campaign.”
Dan Harris, an international lawyer and author at the China Law Blog, told VOA Mandarin that he believes democratic entities, such as the United States, Japan, Korea, Australia and the European Union, are going to realize they “need to enact special laws to deal with China and China’s hoovering of data.”
Crystal Grant, a data scientist and molecular biologist with a Ph.D. in genetics who is a technology fellow in the Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, told VOA Mandarin via Teams video interview that this accumulation of DNA will challenge genomic policy worldwide.
By using what she described as “this massive amount of information” and supercomputers “to crack those codes is going to be a threat to genomic policy everywhere,” she told VOA in a video interview.
Huang Yanzhong, a senior fellow for global health at the Council of Foreign Relations, told VOA Mandarin in a TV interview in February that rapid advances in genetics and biotechnology have highlighted the need for the international community to step up regulations to prevent data abuse.
“It is not just China. The progress in the legal framework in this area is lagging behind,” Huang said. “It’s vital for the international community to sit down and work out a framework.”
Genetic engineering
Yet researchers worldwide in the academic, private and government sectors, are refining genetic engineering techniques and knowledge.
China’s interest in the field is not new. In 2018, researcher He Jiankui announced that he had produced twins genetically altered to resist HIV using a relatively new, accurate and very fast American-developed genetic editing technique known by its acronym, CRISPR.
In 2019, a Chinese court found He guilty of using “illegal medical practices” and sentenced He to three years in prison.
Prenatal privacy
Reuters found no evidence BGI violated patient privacy agreements or regulations. “However, the privacy policy on the NIFTY test’s website says data collected can be shared when it is ‘directly relevant to national security or national defense security’ in China,” the report stated.
BGI dismissed the Reuters report, saying that the company’s research has met national and international requirements.
“All NIPT data collected overseas are stored in BGI’s laboratory in Hong Kong and are destroyed after five years, as stipulated by General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR),” the company said in a statement released on July 9.
BGI emphasized that it developed the NIPT test alone, not in a partnership with China’s military.
Reuters interviewed four women who have used the BGI’s prenatal tests in Poland, Spain and Thailand. They all signed consent forms stating that their genetic data would be stored and used for research, yet they are not aware that their genetic information could end up in China.
Harris, the lawyer, told VOA that most of the time, people didn’t know what they were signing.
“Maybe the sign off says that it will be limited to BGI and BGI access, though XYZ, a Chinese military company, might be one of BGI’s subsidiaries,” which would mean that the consent form allowed BGI to transfer a woman’s genetic information to the Chinese military, he told VOA via Microsoft Teams.
One of the women, a 32-year-old office administrator from Poland, told Reuters that she would have chosen a different test had she known that her data might end up in China being used for research involving military applications.
U.S. federal authorities have been watching BGI’s record on data collection. Bill Evanina, former director of the United States National Counterintelligence and Security Center, told the CBS-TV newsmagazine 60 Minutes in January that he was extremely concerned when BGI offered to provide COVID-19 testing kits to several U.S. states last year.
“Knowing that BGI is a Chinese company, do we understand where that data’s going?” Evanina asked. They are the ultimate company that shows connectivity to both the communist state as well as the military apparatus.”
Edward You, supervisory special agent with the FBI and a former biochemist, told 60 Minutes in the same January episode that Beijing authorities are betting that accumulating large amounts of human DNA will prove to be a successful strategy.
“They are building out a huge domestic database,” You said. “And if they are now able to supplement that with data from all around the world, it’s all about who gets the largest, most diverse data set. And so, the ticking time bomb is that once they’re able to achieve true artificial intelligence, then they’re off to the races in what they can do with that data.”
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