U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin is heading to Southeast Asia to unify allies concerned by China’s growing military abilities as the global coronavirus pandemic continues to cripple the region.

“It’ll be a really good visit,” Austin told reporters traveling with him to Alaska Friday ahead of his visit to Asia.

“We add value to the stability to the region, so my goal is to strengthen relationships,” he said.

Next week Austin will visit Singapore, Vietnam and the Philippines. It is the first trip to Southeast Asia by a top member of the Biden administration and Austin’s second trip to the Asia-Pacific region, which he referred to earlier in the week as the Pentagon’s “priority theater of operations.”

Murray Hiebert, a Southeast Asia analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told VOA the subregion is primed for U.S. engagement after “a general feeling” that “under the [former President Donald] Trump administration they didn’t pay that much attention to Southeast Asia.”

“And there has been some grumbling — media reports, think tankers have been writing, ‘Where the heck is the U.S.?’

“It’s seven months in [to the Biden administration] and they haven’t done anything yet,” Hiebert said.

Austin had planned to lead a large delegation in June to the International Institute for Strategic Studies’ annual Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, but the meeting was canceled due to COVID-19 concerns. He is scheduled to deliver a keynote address for IISS on July 27 during his coming visit to Singapore, which likely will touch on Austin’s stated pursuit of a “new vision of integrated deterrence” of Chinese aggression across the region.

China’s coast guard and maritime militia vessels have frequently harassed fishermen inside the Philippine exclusive economic zone. Chinese vessels also have pestered oil and gas developers off the coasts of Malaysia and Vietnam, hindering their energy development.

Austin told reporters at the Pentagon Wednesday he plans to reaffirm America’s commitment to freedom of the seas, which runs counter to what he called “unhelpful and unfounded claims” made by China in the hotly contested South China Sea. 

“We don’t believe that any one country should be able to dictate the rules,” Austin said.

Last week, the USS Benfold destroyer sailed near the disputed Paracel Islands, located south of China and east of Vietnam, to challenge “unlawful restrictions on innocent passage” in a move known as a freedom of navigation operation, according to the Navy.

China claimed it “drove away” the U.S. warship, a claim the Navy immediately dismissed as “false.”

China, Taiwan and Vietnam each assert the islands are their territory and require either permission or advance notification before a military vessel passes near, which the U.S. did not give.

Other islands and atolls in the South China Sea are contested by Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. China considers much of the resource-rich sea its territory — despite the territorial claims of other nations — and has created hundreds of hectares of artificial islands to bolster its territorial claims.

“It’s a dangerous place. Accidents could happen, that’s for sure,” Hiebert told VOA, adding that the expanded islands have enabled increased Chinese harassment and pressure.

The U.S. frequently conducts freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea to dispute China’s claims and to promote free passage through international waters that carry half the world’s merchant fleet tonnage, worth trillions of dollars each year.

The latest freedom of navigation operation earlier this month occurred on the fifth anniversary of an international court ruling in The Hague that held China had no historic title over the South China Sea.

Beijing has ignored the ruling.
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Issues in the News moderator Kim Lewis talks with VOA senior diplomatic correspondent, Cindy Saine, and senior reporter for Marketplace, Nancy Marshall-Genzer, about growing congressional challenges on infrastructure, police reform, COVID-19 and the economy facing the Biden administration, the ramifications of a widespread cyber-attack on Microsoft allegedly conducted by China, controversial Israeli phone surveillance software allegedly misused amid a global hacking scandal, the Tokyo Olympics and global concern over the spreading of the Delta variant of the coronavirus.
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Africa became the region hardest hit by terrorism in the first half of 2021 as the Islamic State and al-Qaida extremist groups and their affiliates spread their influence, boasting gains in supporters and territory and inflicting the greatest casualties, U.N. experts said in a new report.

The panel of experts said in a report to the U.N. Security Council circulated Friday that this is “especially true” in parts of West and East Africa where affiliates of both groups can also boast growing capabilities in fundraising and weapons, including the use of drones.

Several of the most successful affiliates of the Islamic State are in its central and west Africa province, and several of al-Qaida’s are in Somalia and the Sahel region, they said.

The experts said it’s “concerning” that these terrorist affiliates are spreading their influence and activities including across borders from Mali into Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Niger and Senegal as well as incursions from Nigeria into Cameroon, Chad and Niger in West Africa. In the east, the affiliates’ activities have spread from Somalia into Kenya and from Mozambique into Tanzania, they said.

One of “the most troubling events” of early 2021 was the local Islamic State affiliate’s storming and brief holding of Mozambique’s strategic port of Mocimboa da Praia in Cabo Delgado province near the border with Tanzania “before withdrawing with spoils, positioning it for future raids in the area,” the panel said.

Overall, the experts said, COVID-19 continued to affect terrorist activity and both the Islamic State, also known as ISIL, and al-Qaida “continued to gloat over the harm done by the coronavirus disease pandemic to their enemies, but were unable to develop a more persuasive narrative.”

“While ISIL contemplated weaponizing the virus, member states detected no concrete plans to implement the idea,” the panel said.

In Europe and other non-conflict zones, lockdowns and border closures brought on by COVID-19 slowed the movement and gathering of people “while increasing the risk of online radicalization,” it said.

The experts warned that attacks “may have been planned in various locations” during the pandemic “that will be executed when restrictions ease.”

The panel said that in Iraq and Syria, “the core conflict zone for ISIL,” the extremist group’s activities have evolved into “an entrenched insurgency, exploiting weaknesses in local security to find safe havens, and targeting forces engaged in counter-ISIL operations.”

Despite heavy counter-terrorism pressures from Iraqi forces, the experts said Islamic State attacks in Baghdad in January and April “underscored the group’s resilience.”

In Syria’s rebel-held northwest Idlib province, the experts said groups aligned with al-Qaida continue to dominate the area, with “terrorist fighters” numbering more than 10,000.

“Although there has been only limited relocation of foreign fighters from the region to other conflict zones, member states are concerned about the possibility of such movement, in particular to Afghanistan, should the environment there become more hospitable to ISIL or groups aligned with al-Qaida,” the panel said.

In central, south and southeast Asia, the experts said Islamic State and al-Qaida affiliates continue to operate “notwithstanding key leadership losses in some cases and sustained pressure from security forces.”

The experts said the status of al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri “is unknown,” and if he is alive several unnamed member states “assess that he is ailing, leading to an acute leadership challenge for al-Qaida.” 
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Ethiopia’s Afar region called on civilians Friday to take up arms against rebels from neighboring Tigray, signaling a potential escalation in fighting that has already displaced tens of thousands this week.

“Every Afar should protect their land with any means available, whether by guns, sticks or stones,” the regional president, Awol Arba, said in an interview aired by regional state media. “No weapons can make us kneel down. We will win this war with our strong determination.”

Tigrayan rebels launched operations in Afar last weekend, saying they were targeting pro-government troops massing along the two regions’ shared border.

A government official told AFP on Thursday that more than 20 civilians had been killed and 70,000 people displaced in “heavy fighting” in Afar that was continuing.

Rebel spokesman Getachew Reda has described operations in Afar as a “very limited” action against special forces and militia fighters deployed to Afar by the Oromia region, Ethiopia’s largest.

Time to ‘stand as one’

But Awol said Friday that the claim was misleading.

“Some people think they invaded us because we hosted the Oromo forces, but that’s far from the truth, as they had the intention to separate and isolate us from Ethiopia by force,” he said.

“It’s time that every Afar should stand as one against the junta,” he added, using government officials’ preferred term for the rebels.

The fighting in Afar highlights the potential for Ethiopia’s eight-month-old conflict to expand well beyond Tigray, where thousands of people have already been killed and hundreds of thousands pushed into famine, according to the United Nations.

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed sent troops into Tigray last November to oust the region’s ruling party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, a move he said was made in response to TPLF attacks on federal army camps.

Though the 2019 Nobel Peace laureate declared victory later that month, TPLF leaders remained on the run and fighting dragged on.

Last month the war took a stunning turn when pro-TPLF fighters reclaimed the Tigray capital, Mekelle, and Abiy declared a unilateral cease-fire.

Yet clashes have continued, and officials from six regions and the city of Dire Dawa have since said they would send troops to back up government forces.

The road into Ethiopia via Djibouti’s port, east of Afar, is vital for the landlocked country, raising speculation that Tigrayan rebels might try to choke it off.

Getachew has said this is not an explicit goal of the operation but has declined to rule it out.

Route key to aid deliveries

Separately, the road into Tigray via Afar’s capital, Semera, has become critical for aid delivery in recent weeks, with two key bridges along other routes having been destroyed in late June.

But the recent fighting has put a halt to convoys, and the U.N. humanitarian coordination office said Friday that the route remained impassable, “preventing food stock, fuel and other humanitarian goods from entering Tigray.”

A convoy of 200 aid trucks is on standby in Semera, awaiting security clearance.

On Thursday, the U.N. Humanitarian Air Service operated its first flight from Addis Ababa to the Mekelle since June 24, when commercial services stopped.

The flight transported “more than 30 employees from multiple humanitarian organizations working to deliver urgently needed assistance,” the World Food Program said in a statement.

Government officials have accused aid groups of “arming” the TPLF, and one humanitarian official told AFP that security officials thoroughly searched everyone who boarded Thursday’s flight and prevented at least some passengers from traveling with more than 30,000 birr (roughly $700).

Multiple aid groups have said lack of cash, fuel and other supplies is limiting their ability to reach people facing famine.

“At this point, it’s severely restricting just how far we can go and whether or not we’re able to reach those communities that are most in need and may have not had any humanitarian supplies delivered,” one aid worker said Friday.

The government on Thursday blamed aid “obstruction” on the TPLF and said it was providing “unfettered access.”
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Chinese leader Xi Jinping has made a rare visit to Tibet as authorities tighten controls over the Himalayan region’s traditional Buddhist culture, accompanied by an accelerated drive for economic development and modernized infrastructure.

State media reported Friday that Xi visited sites in the capital Lhasa, including the Drepung Monastery, Barkhor Street and the public square at the base of the Potala Palace that was home to the Dalai Lamas, Tibet’s traditional spiritual and temporal leaders.

Xi’s visit was previously unannounced publicly and it wasn’t clear whether he had already returned to Beijing.

China has in recent years stepped up controls over Buddhist monasteries and expanded education in the Chinese rather than Tibetan language. Critics of such policies are routinely detained and can receive long prison terms, especially if they have been convicted of association with the 86-year-old Dalai Lama, who has lived in exile in India since fleeing Tibet during an abortive uprising against Chinese rule in 1959.

China doesn’t recognize the self-declared Tibetan government-in-exile based in the hillside town of Dharmsala, and accuses the Dalai Lama of seeking to separate Tibet from China.

Meanwhile, domestic tourism has expanded massively in the region during Xi’s nine years in office and new airports, rail lines and highways constructed.

China’s official Xinhua News Agency said that while in Lhasa on Thursday, Xi sought to “learn about the work on ethnic and religious affairs, the conservation of the ancient city, as well as the inheritance and protection of Tibetan culture.”

A day earlier, he visited the city of city of Nyingchi to inspect ecological preservation work on the basin of the Yarlung Zangbo River, the upper course of the Brahmaputra, on which China is building a controversial dam.

He also visited a bridge and inspected a project to build a railway from southwestern China’s Sichuan province to Tibet before riding Tibet’s first electrified rail line from Nyingchi to Lhasa, which went into service last month.

Xi’s visit may be timed to coincide with the 70th anniversary of the 17 Point Agreement, which firmly established Chinese control over Tibet, which many Tibetans say had been effectively independent for most of its history. The Dalai Lama says he was forced into signing the document and has since repudiated it.

It also comes amid deteriorating relations between China and India, which share a lengthy but disputed border with Tibet.

Deadly encounters last year between Indian and Chinese troops along their disputed high-altitude border dramatically altered the already fraught relationship between the nuclear-armed neighbors.

That appears to have prompted Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to wish the Dalai Lama well on his birthday this month on Twitter and said he also spoke to him by phone. That was the first time Modi has publicly confirmed speaking with the Dalai Lama since becoming prime minister in 2014.

In a statement, the advocacy group International Campaign for Tibet called Xi’s visit “an indication of how high Tibet continues to figure in Chinese policy considerations.”

The way in which the visit was organized and the “complete absence of any immediate state media coverage of the visit indicate that Tibet continues to be a sensitive issue and that the Chinese authorities do not have confidence in their legitimacy among the Tibetan people,” the group based in Washington, D.C., said.
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The United States will not reconsider the type of training it provides to foreign military members despite finding that seven of the 25 individuals arrested in the assassination of Haiti’s president were at one time trained by the U.S.

As VOA first reported, U.S. defense officials last week said that the seven received U.S. military training, both in the U.S. and in Colombia, between 2001 and 2015, when they were part of the Colombian military.

But Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said Thursday there was nothing to tie that training to the alleged participation in the plot that killed Haitian President Jovenel Moise earlier this month.

“We know that these seven individuals got nothing certainly related, at all, or that one could extrapolate, as leading to or encouraging of what happened in Haiti,” Kirby told reporters during a press gaggle.

“I know of no plans right now as a result of what happened in Haiti for us to reconsider or to change this very valuable, ethical leadership training that we continue to provide to partners in the Western Hemisphere and to partners around the world,” he added.

While some of the training took place in Colombia, Pentagon officials say some of the Colombian nationals were trained at seminars in Washington. Some also took courses at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), based at Fort Benning in the southern U.S. state of Georgia.

WHINSEC, established in January 2001, replaced the School of the Americas, which came under heavy criticism in the early to mid-1990s after its graduates were implicated in human rights violations, including murders and disappearances, in El Salvador, Colombia, Peru, Honduras and Panama.

In an interview with VOA in April, WHINSEC Commandant Colonel John Dee Suggs said the new school was designed with a focus on human rights and ethics.

“There is a pretty rigorous review of people and their human rights history,” Suggs told VOA. “We will only train people who have the same human rights values that we have, who have the same democratic values that we have.”

“We’re not shooting anybody. We’re not teaching anybody to … go into a house and take these folks down,” he added.

Pentagon officials told VOA this week that the Colombians who trained at WHINSEC took courses in cadet leadership, professional development, counter-drug operations and small unit leader training.

“All WHINSEC courses include human rights and ethics training,” one official added.

Pentagon and State Department officials have previously said they are continuing to review their records to determine whether any other suspects received training from the U.S.

Haitian President Moise was shot and killed in the predawn hours of July 7 at his private residence in a wealthy suburb of Port-au-Prince.

Earlier this week, Haiti sworn in a new prime minister, Ariel Henry, as part of an attempt to stabilize the country following Moise’s death.

Haitian authorities say they are continuing to investigate Moise’s assassination.

Officials have accused Christian Emmanuel Sanon, a Haitian doctor with ties to Florida, as being the plot’s mastermind.

Some information from AFP was used in this report.

 
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The Kennedy Center Honors will return in December with a class that includes Motown Records creator Berry Gordy, “Saturday Night Live” mastermind Lorne Michaels and actress-singer Bette Midler.

Organizers expect to operate at full capacity, after last year’s ceremony was delayed for months and later conducted under COVID-19 restrictions.

This 44th class of honorees for lifetime achievement in the creative arts is heavy on musical performers. The honorees also include opera singer Justino Diaz and folk music legend Joni Mitchell.

All will be honored on December 5 with a trademark program that includes personalized tributes and performances that are kept secret from the honorees.

Deborah Rutter, president of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, said the current plan is to pack the center’s opera house to full capacity and require all attendees to wear masks. But the plans remain fluid and Rutter said they’re ready to adapt to changing circumstances depending on the country’s COVID-19 situation.

Time to party

“We don’t know for sure what it’s going to be like,” Rutter said in an interview. “But don’t you think we all deserve to have a party?”

The 43rd Kennedy Center Honors class was delayed from December 2020 as the center largely shut down its indoor programming. A slimmed-down ceremony was finally held in May of this year, with a series of small socially distanced gatherings and pre-taped video performances replacing the normal gala event.

“We know how to do it now. We will make whatever adjustments we need,” Rutter said. “We’re going to be wearing masks right up until we don’t have to.”

Midler, 75, has won four Grammy Awards, three Emmys and two Tony Awards, along with two Oscar nominations. Her albums have sold over 30 million copies. In a statement, Midler said she was “stunned and grateful beyond words. For many years I have watched this broadcast celebrating the best talent in the performing arts that America has to offer, and I truly never imagined that I would find myself among these swans.”

Mitchell, 77, emerged from the Canadian coffee shop circuit to become one of the standard-bearers for multiple generations of singer-songwriters. In 2020, Rolling Stone magazine declared her 1971 album “Blue” to be the third-best album of all time. In a brief statement, Mitchell, said, “I wish my mother and father were alive to see this. It’s a long way from Saskatoon.”

The December 5 ceremony will be the centerpiece of the Kennedy Center’s 50th anniversary of cultural programing. The center opened in 1971 and a young Diaz, now 81, actually performed at the grand opening of the opera house.

“It’s a very special thing,” said Diaz, a bass-baritone from San Juan, Puerto Rico. “It’s such a great privilege to be able to say I shared this space with all these geniuses.”

Gordy, 91, founded Motown Records — the Detroit-based hit factory that spawned what became known as the Motown Sound and launched the careers of a huge list of artists, including Smokey Robinson, Diana Ross, Stevie Wonder, Lionel Ritchie, Marvin Gaye and Martha and the Vandellas.

Gordy said in an interview that he always held President John Kennedy as one of the greatest leaders in American history.

“So to be honored in his name just means the world to me,” he said.

Michaels, 76, is a comedy institution unto himself — creating and producing “Saturday Night Live” since 1975 and producing dozens of movies and television shows, including “Wayne’s World,” “Kids in the Hall” and “Mean Girls.” He received the Kennedy Center’s Mark Twain Award for lifetime achievement in comedy in 2004.

Not normally an on-stage performer, Michaels recalls the Mark Twain evening as “mostly nerve-racking” because he spent the evening dreading the traditional end-of-night speech he had to deliver.

But the Kennedy Center Honors bring no such pressures, and Michaels said he intends to sit back in the special honorees box at the opera house and see what surprises the organizers have in store.

“You don’t have to give a speech at the end, which is huge,” he said. “You’re just there with your friends.”
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A former senior editor of Hong Kong’s shuttered pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily was arrested by national security police on Wednesday morning. 

A police source told AFP that former executive editor-in-chief Lam Man-chung had been detained.  

In a statement, police said they had arrested a 51-year-old former newspaper editor for “collusion with foreign forces,” a national security crime.  

Lam is the ninth employee of Apple Daily arrested under a sweeping national security law that Beijing imposed on Hong Kong last year after huge and often violent democracy protests. 

Apple Daily, an unapologetic backer of the democracy movement, put out its last edition last month after its top leadership was arrested and its assets frozen under the security law. 

Lam was the editor who oversaw that final edition, ending the paper’s 26-year run. 

Authorities said Apple Daily’s reporting and editorials backed calls for international sanctions against China, a political stance that has been criminalized by the new security law. 

The tabloid’s owner Jimmy Lai, 73, is currently in prison and has been charged with collusion alongside two other executives who have been denied bail. 

They face up to life in prison if convicted.  

Among the others arrested, but currently not charged, are two of the paper’s leading editorial writers, including one who was detained at Hong Kong’s airport as he tried to leave the city. 

The paper’s sudden demise was a stark warning to all media outlets on the reach of a new national security law in a city that once billed itself as a beacon of press freedom in the region. 

Last week the Hong Kong Journalists Association said media freedoms were “in tatters” as China remolds the once outspoken business hub in its own authoritarian image. 
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Space company Blue Origin and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos rocketed to space Tuesday, with the world’s oldest and youngest people to ever fly in space in tow.  Bezos’ flight follows last week’s suborbital jaunt by Virgin Galactic’s Richard Branson. The two billionaires are further ushering in an era of space tourism and exploration. VOA’s Laurel Bowman has our story.
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Female refugees are among the most vulnerable to losing out on education, a problem made worse by the coronavirus pandemic.  To combat the challenge, U.S.-funded aid group  RefuSHE  offers learning programs for refugee women and girls in Kenya.  Brenda Mulinya reports from Nairobi.

Camera:  Amos Wangwa 
 

 
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Belarus’ main opposition leader, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, is calling on the United States to put more pressure on President Alexander Lukashenko’s government. 

Tsikhanouskaya took her appeal directly to Biden administration officials on Monday as she met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland and others. 

“I thanked him for supporting Belarusian democratic aspirations. I called on the United States to strengthen help for our civil society, economically & politically pressure the regime, & appeal to Russia to play a constructive role in the crisis resolution,” Tsikhanouskaya tweeted after the talks. 

She said the discussion also included ways to support media freedom in Belarus after government crackdowns against journalists. 

Tsikhanouskaya was the main challenger to Lukashenko in an August 2020 election that the opposition and many Western governments consider rigged. She fled the country after the election as Lukashenko’s government cracked down on protests. 

State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters, “They discussed the ongoing repression, the crackdown by the Lukashenko regime, and the steps that we have said and much of the international community has said that the Lukashenko regime must take.” 

Blinken tweeted that the group discussed a path to ending the crisis in Belarus, which includes “release of all political prisoners, inclusive dialogue, and new elections.” 

Some information for this report came from the Associated Press and Reuters. 
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The United States is examining potential ways to aid the people of Cuba following anti-government protests this month that were the biggest on the island nation in decades. 

Senior administration officials who spoke to news agencies on the condition of anonymity said the steps under consideration include changes to remittances that would allow people in the United States to send money to their family in Cuba without the Cuban government taking a portion. 

Other potential actions include ways to make it easier to access the internet, working with international organizations to provide more humanitarian aid, and increasing U.S. Embassy staff in Havana.

The State Department reduced the number of staff at the embassy by more than half in 2017 after more than 40 American diplomats serving in Cuba said they suffered persistent ear pain, headaches, and problems with memory, concentration, balance and sleeping in 2016. The Trump administration said the injuries resulted from what it termed a “sonic attack.” 

The Biden administration has not publicly announced any intended actions, but it has been conducting an ongoing review of U.S.-Cuba policies. The White House said Monday several officials met with a group of Cuban American leaders “to listen to their policy recommendations and concern.” 

A White House statement stressed that addressing the current situation in Cuba “is a top priority.” 

State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters Monday that the administration is concerned about human rights, democracy and civil rights. 

“That’s precisely what you’re seeing and what we have said in the mechanisms of support over the years that the United States has provided to the Cuban people, and it is precisely what we mean when we say that we will consider additional forms of support, including any humanitarian support for the Cuban people,” Price said. 

Some information for this report came from the Associated Press and Reuters. 
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Ethiopian police have confirmed the arrest of hundreds of ethnic Tigrayans in the capital Addis Ababa in recent weeks. The police said they were supporting the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which authorities banned after the Tigray conflict broke out in November. But rights group Amnesty International says dozens were detained because of their ethnicity.

Addis Ababa Police Commissioner Getu Argaw confirmed on Saturday that authorities had arrested over 300 Tigrayans.

But speaking on the state-run Ethiopian Broadcast Corporation, Getu denied the Tigrayans were arrested because of their ethnicity.

Getu said the arrests were made after thorough investigations found the suspects were supporting the TPLF, which authorities banned as a terrorist group in May over the conflict in Tigray region.

Getu said their arrests targeted only individuals who were supporting the ousted terrorist group. The arrests were not due to their ethnicity, said Getu, adding that suspects from other ethnic groups who were involved in supporting that terrorist group were also arrested. 

Getu said illegal weapons and ammunition were seized from some of the suspects.

He was responding to a call Friday by rights group Amnesty International for Ethiopian authorities to end arbitrary detentions of Tigrayans without due process.

Amnesty said the sweeping arrests appeared to be ethnically motivated.

The rights group said while some of those arrested were released on bail, while hundreds of others were still being detained and their relatives kept in the dark.

Fisseha Tekle is Amnesty International’s human rights researcher for Ethiopia.

Tekle told VOA the families of those arrested do not know where they are being kept, they have not appeared in court, and this should stop. If they are involved in criminal activities they should appear before court, said Tekle, and their family should have the right to visit them, and they should also get an attorney.

The arrests come as the war in Ethiopia’s Tigray region appears to be expanding.

A spokesman for neighboring Afar region on Monday said Tigrayan fighters attacked Afar forces on Saturday and that clashes continued over the weekend.

The TPLF has also vowed to regain territory seized by Amhara forces loyal to the federal government.

The conflict dates back to last November, when Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed deployed government forces to oust the TPLF from power in Tigray.

Ethiopian authorities announced a unilateral ceasefire in Tigray on June 28 as Tigrayan forces re-took the regional capital, Mekelle, from federal troops.

But with each passing day, it looks less likely the cease-fire is going to hold.

Some  information for this report came from Reuters.
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From a survivor or Khmer atrocities to a woman rekindling her faith after a devastating accident, we meet people who are on soul searching journeys (previously aired material)
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Monday is Freedom Day in England. The day has received the moniker because all social restrictions, like mask wearing and maintaining social distancing, that have been imposed to fight against COVID-19 have been lifted.  

The reversal of the restrictions happens amid a rise in COVID cases and hospitalizations in England, largely driven by the delta variant of the virus.

Freedom Day is also happening as Sajid Javid, Britan’s health minister, is self-isolating because he tested positive for COVID. The National Health Service notified British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak, the finance minister that they had been exposed to someone who had tested positive for COVID. 

People who have been notified by the NHS of an exposure are expected to self-isolate. Johnson and Sunak, however, were expecting to participate in a pilot program that would have allowed them to work at Downing Street but decided against it after a public uproar.  

“Whilst the test and trace pilot is fairly restrictive, allowing only essential government business,” Sunak posted on Twitter, “I recognize that even the sense that the rules aren’t the same for everyone is wrong. To that end I’ll be self-isolating as normal and not taking part in the pilot.” 

In Thailand, protesters demonstrating against the government’s handling of the COVID outbreak clashed with police Sunday in Bangkok, the capital. The protests in the capital and in other locations around the country were in defiance of a ban on public gatherings of more than five people that was recently announced by the government.  

U.S. teenaged tennis sensation Coco Gauff has tested positive for COVID and will not be part of the Tokyo Olympics. The 17-year-old athlete posted on Twitter that “It has always been a dream of mine to represent the USA at the Olympics, and I hope there will be many more chances for me to make this come true in the future.” It was not immediately clear if Gauff had been vaccinated. The Olympic games were canceled last year, but the Olympic committee’s decision to continue with the games this year has received much criticism as the world continues to grapple with the handling of the COVID pandemic.  

190.4 million global COVID cases and more than 4 million deaths from the virus were recorded worldwide early Monday, according to the coronavirus resource center of Johns Hopkins University. The center’s data shows that over 3.6 billion vaccines have been administered so far.  
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A potential summit between Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga and South Korean President Moon Jae-in later this week in Tokyo has been thrown into doubt after a Japanese diplomat made inappropriate comments about the South Korean leader. 

Japan’s Yomiuri newspaper reported Monday the two leaders would meet Friday in the Japanese capital to coincide with President Moon’s attendance at the opening ceremonies of the Tokyo Olympics.   

But a statement released by South Korea’s Presidential Blue House, Moon’s official residence and office, suggested the meeting was in doubt due to an “obstacle” in the final discussions, an apparent reference to a comment by a high-level envoy attached to the Japanese embassy in Seoul.   

The envoy, identified by South Korea’s Yonhap news agency as Hirohisa Soma, the embassy’s deputy chief of mission, reportedly compared Moon’s efforts to improve ties with Seoul to sexual self-gratification during an interview with a local reporter.   

Relations between the East Asian neighbors have grown acrimonious in recent years due to South Korea’s lingering bitterness over Japan’s brutal colonial occupation of the Korean peninsula from 1910-45. Scores of Korean women were forced to work in Japanese military brothels during the war as “comfort women,”  while thousands of other Koreans were forced to work in Japanese factories during that time. 

Several surviving “comfort women” have filed lawsuits in South Korea seeking compensation from Japan for their ordeal, with mixed results. Tokyo maintains it had settled the issue under a 1965 treaty that normalized bilateral relations with Seoul that included $800 million in reparations, as well as a separate deal reached in 2015. 

This report includes information from Reuters. 
…

In January, a woman calling herself Caroline — her name is changed for her safety — told WOI-DT in Iowa that she was married to a QAnon believer and lived in fear. “QAnon has destroyed my life,” she said. “I live with someone who hates me.”

In May, a Reddit user known as pencilwithouteraser posted in the forum ReQovery, that he was seeking help coping with his parents’ immersion in QAnon conspiracy theories and their objection to the coronavirus vaccines.

“I still don’t know what’s true or not,” the user said. “I’ve realized that once you start to go down those rabbit holes, it’s very hard to come back to the surface. If you believe the media, CDC, and WHO are lying about the vaccine in the name of conspiracy and power and control, how can your mind be changed?”

A British woman named Tasha wrote her testimony on the web page for the documentary film The Brainwashing of My Dad. Her QAnon father, she wrote, “has cut off his brothers and sister. … He shares the most vile things on Facebook. He’s turning into a vile, hate-filled man.” She concludes: “I have such a hatred for the architects of QAnon, because their lies have broken my family.”

Surveys show that these grieving family members are far from alone. The number of people invested in QAnon conspiracy theories is striking, and their devotion to the cause can make life difficult for the people who love them.

The Public Religion Research Institute released a survey in May that showed just how many people believed in some tenets of QAnon.

Fifteen percent of the more than 5,000 people surveyed nationwide said they believed the following sentence: “The government, media, and financial worlds in the United States are controlled by a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who run a global sex-trafficking operation.”

That’s the core QAnon belief. But QAnon has expanded to encompass various other beliefs. For example, some believers maintain that John F. Kennedy Jr. is still alive, that German Chancellor Angela Merkel is related to Adolf Hitler, and that President Donald Trump will be proven the rightful winner of the 2020 election and be reinstated to invoke a “coming storm” of retribution.

Belief in the coming storm is greater than the core QAnon belief in pedophiles and Satan worship. PRRI says 20% of Americans agreed with the statement “There is a storm coming soon that will sweep away the elites in power and restore the rightful leaders.”

Observers are most concerned with the fact that 15% of respondents agreed that “true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.”

The danger of QAnon became clear on Jan. 6, when hundreds of Trump supporters  — many wearing or displaying QAnon paraphernalia — broke into the U.S. Capitol Building in an attempt to disrupt certification of Joe Biden’s win in the November presidential election.

The FBI has since made public a declassified report warning that some QAnon adherents are “domestic violent extremists” who may be motivated to stage terrorist attacks on perceived enemies.

Mike Rothschild, journalist and author of a new book about the QAnon movement, The Storm Is Upon Us, wrote that the us-against-them mindset of QAnon followers is what makes the movement so damaging.

“For many Q believers,” he said, “that nebulous feeling that ‘they’re all out to get me’ becomes … ‘I’m gonna get them first.’”

Cult expert and mental health professional Steven Hassan, author of the book The Cult of Trump, said the QAnon community shares some traits with cults. Members feel a rush of information and indoctrination at the start, followed by messages that nothing outside the group is trustworthy and that others need to be brought into the fold.

Experts say people are attracted to conspiracy theories when they aren’t comfortable with uncertainty. A 2017 study in the European Journal of Social Psychology found that what attracts people to conspiracy theories is a need for “cognitive closure” — a reason, or something to blame.

But life as a conspiracy theorist is exhausting, Rothschild said, because it infects every part of your thinking.

“At its worst, QAnon absolutely rewires the way you look at the world,” he said. “It gives you a sort of cast of characters who are the good guys and who are the bad guys. And you look at everything through the lens of that war that’s being fought.”

Rothschild has talked to people who have cut off relationships with QAnon believers. They say the person wouldn’t talk about anything else or was constantly sending messages and videos meant to draw them into QAnon.

“It takes too much work to be around a person like that,” he said.

Experts say it can be challenging to help a loved one who has gone down the QAnon rabbit hole. Both Hassan and Rothschild say people tend to lose their faith in the group when they start to see holes in the information they’ve been accepting. Meanwhile, they say, building trust is the key to helping a QAnon believer see the light.

“The easiest way is to simply present yourself as a safe person to talk to,” Rothschild said. “You’re not belittling them. You don’t mock their beliefs.”

Hassan, who left the Unification Church cult in the 1970s after an intervention from his father, recommends starting a dialogue with the QAnon member, not trying to debunk QAnon beliefs.

“I propose that we reciprocate,” Hassan said, demonstrating the way such a conversation might go. “You share something that was very influential to you, and let’s go back in time. What were some of the most important things that convinced you to take it seriously? If it’s a video … let’s watch it together and we’ll discuss it.”

After that, Hassan said, the interventionist might share a video with a different perspective and suggest they discuss that.

“The idea is always to ask a respectful question aimed at empowering them to think for themselves,” Hassan said.

Hassan recommends some protective habits to help anyone guard against misinformation.

“I advocate creating ‘trust pods’ in your life,” he said, that include people with differing perspectives. “If there’s something that any one of you gets really interested in, before you spend money or spend a lot of time, say, ‘Hey I just found this. … Anybody know anything about it?’”

“That’s the solution to blind faith,” he said. “It’s perspective, isn’t it?”

But the pull of QAnon is strong, and not everyone leaves. In a world where little seems to make sense, QAnon’s mythology seems to offer hope.

Former QAnon believer Lenka Perron explained to WDIV-TV in Detroit, Michigan, in January: “When people don’t feel secure, when they don’t feel safe, when they don’t feel like they can put a roof over their heads … they turn to something where you feel powerful, like you can make it happen. You feel like you’re making a difference.” 
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Professor William LeoGrande, Associate Vice Provost for Academic Affairs in the Department of Government at the American University, and Professor of Politics and International Relations at Florida International University, Eduardo Gamarra, analyze with host Carol Castiel the roots and ramifications of twin crises in the Caribbean: the assassination of Haiti’s President, Jovenal Moïse, and ensuing power struggle and the largest and most widespread protests in Cuba in decades. How does the turmoil affect US policy toward the region? Given the large Cuban and Haitian Diaspora communities in the United States, how does the Biden Administration deal with both domestic and international dimension of policy? 
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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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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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Amid long-standing and deepening tensions between Israel and Iran, some prominent Israelis with Persian roots have engaged in little-publicized contacts with Iran’s people and advocated for reviving the historic friendship between the two Mideast powers.

These Israelis are part of the world’s only Persian diaspora community located in a country that Iran’s Islamist rulers have banned their citizens from contacting. They spoke about their barrier-breaking conversations with Iran’s people and hopes for reconciliation as part of VOA’s Persians of Israel documentary series that was filmed in 2017 and published online Friday.

The Israelis featured in the series include veteran journalist Menashe Amir, who has been broadcasting to Iran in Farsi via radio and online for six decades; Rita, one of Israel’s most successful pop stars; Dorit Rabinyan, a novelist who has won international acclaim for writing about romances of young Persian women and a taboo-breaking Jewish-Muslim couple; and Dan Halutz, who led Israel’s military during two of its most challenging operations of the 2000s.

The Persian Israeli community to which they belong numbers about 300,000, according to community members, out of a total Israeli population of 8.7 million. It began to form in the 1920s and ’30s, when small numbers of Iran’s minority Jews migrated to the British mandate of Palestine to fulfill a desire to live in the biblical homeland of the Jewish people.

Israel’s creation in 1948 as a modern-day Jewish homeland drew many more Iranian Jews: 21,000 in the first three years, according to the Israeli government.

Iran was among Israel’s early friends. It was the second Muslim-majority nation to recognize Israeli independence, doing so in 1950, after Turkey did the same in 1949.

Iran and Israel were drawn together by a common goal — resisting the rise of Arab nationalists backed by the Soviet Union. The two nations also shared an alliance with the United States.

As Israeli-Iranian ties deepened, another 35,000 Jews migrated from Iran to Israel from 1952 to 1971. In those years, Israel helped Iran to develop its agriculture and armed forces, while Iran helped Israel to meet its energy needs by exporting oil to the Jewish state. But Iran kept the relationship low-key, declining to open an embassy or station an ambassador in Israel.

The Iranian-Israeli partnership unraveled quickly after Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, which brought to power Islamist clerics hostile toward Israel.

In the 1980s, Iran began arming Islamist militants such as the Lebanese group Hezbollah and encouraged them to attack Israel. While Iran’s Islamist constitution recognized Judaism as a minority religion, Iranian authorities also imposed restrictions on Jewish life. Such policies prompted tens of thousands more Iranian Jews to escape what they saw as an oppressive Islamist regime. Most of them migrated to the U.S., while 8,000 moved to Israel in the 1980s and several thousand more did the same in the 1990s and 2000s.

The waves of Jewish migration from Iran have reduced its Jewish population to about 9,000 to 15,000, based on estimates in the U.S. State Department’s 2020 report on International Religious Freedom. There had been about 85,000 Jews in Iran when the Islamic Revolution began, according to Encyclopedia Iranica.

Iranian leaders escalated their verbal threats toward Israel in recent decades, calling for its destruction or demise. They also alarmed Israel by pursuing what the International Atomic Energy Agency said was a nuclear weapons program until 2003. Israel, an undeclared nuclear-armed power, has accused Iran of covertly continuing that program and called it an existential threat that could prompt the Jewish state to take military action in self-defense.

Tehran has denied ever trying to make nuclear bombs under cover of a civilian nuclear program.

Iran and Israel also have engaged in what some observers call a shadow war in the past few years. Israel has carried out hundreds of air strikes on Iranian military sites in Syria; Israel has shot down what it said were two Iranian drones that entered its airspace; Israeli and Iranian-owned vessels in Mideast waters have been hit with explosions that each side blamed on the other; Iran blamed a major power outage at its Natanz nuclear site in April on alleged Israeli sabotage; and Iran saw its top nuclear scientist and a high-ranking al-Qaida operative assassinated in its territory in 2020 attacks attributed to Israel by Iranian officials and Western media respectively.

That shadow war escalated last month when the Iran-funded and armed Palestinian militant group Hamas that controls the Gaza Strip indiscriminately fired thousands of rockets into Israel, which carried out hundreds of retaliatory air strikes targeting Hamas militants, weapons, tunnels and other infrastructure. The fighting lasted 11 days until Egypt brokered a cease-fire.

Iran’s government, which long has maligned Israel as a perceived enemy of the Persian nation, also adopted a law last year authorizing tougher penalties and prison sentences for Iranians found to have engaged in “non-accidental” contact with Israelis.

Amir, the Israeli broadcaster, said he and his Iran-based listeners who called in to his programs in recent decades have defied Tehran’s efforts to block dialogue between Israelis and Iranians.

Amir also has brought visiting Iranian Muslims based in the West to Israel’s Holocaust remembrance center Yad Vashem to educate them about the 20th century genocide perpetrated by Nazi Germany and combat Iranian leaders’ efforts to deny or minimize it.

Israeli pop star Rita said her first Farsi-language album released in 2012, All My Joys, inspired her to become a cultural ambassador to Iranians who had reached out to her online and in person to share their love for her music.

Rabinyan, the Israeli author, said she unexpectedly developed an Iranian readership after discovering that her debut novel, Persian Brides, was translated into Farsi and published in Iran without her knowledge. She expressed hope that those readers will hear her desire for peace.

Former Israeli military chief Halutz, who visited pre-revolution Iran on a pilot training course in 1972, said he did not anticipate an Israel-Iran peace agreement anytime soon. But he said a dialogue between moderate people on both sides would be a good way to start the process.

This article originated in VOA’s Persian Service. 
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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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