Новости за 19.01.2023

From Lafayette Park in front of the White House to the streets of London, Toronto and many other cities around the world, activists have been staging small protests to condemn the Taliban’s repressive policies against women in Afghanistan and call for a stronger international response. While they attract a relatively small number of participants, the protests have increased in frequency over the last year, largely in response to growing Taliban restrictions on women inside Afghanistan. On January 14... Читать дальше...

The U.S. has begun taking “extraordinary measures” to avoid spending that would breach the country’s $31.4 trillion debt ceiling, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told lawmakers Thursday, touching off a Washington debate on how to avoid a default on the government’s financial obligations and calamity for the global economy.   The Treasury chief said she has started to suspend investments in the Civil Service retirement fund for government workers and a retiree health plan for postal workers that... Читать дальше...

Greta Thunberg called on the global energy industry and its financiers to end all fossil fuel investments on Thursday at a high-profile meeting in Davos with the head of the International Energy Agency (IEA). During a round-table discussion with Fatih Birol on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting, activists said they had presented a "cease and desist" letter to CEOs calling for a stop to new oil, gas and coal extraction. "As long as they can get away with it, they will continue to invest in fossil fuels... Читать дальше...

A look at the best news photos from around the world.

In mid-morning on December 25, Abu Azad, a journalist for the daily Business Standard newspaper, was documenting activity at what he believed to be an illegal brick kiln operating in Bangladesh.  He had traveled to Rangunia, an administrative region outside the city of Chattogram, to photograph workers removing soil. Azad told VOA his investigation was interrupted when a member of the local council, Mohiuddin Talukder Mohan, asked to see his press credentials. Azad complied. "Mohan didn't listen to me and started beating me. Читать дальше...

Prosecutors announced that actor Alec Baldwin will be charged with involuntary manslaughter in the fatal shooting of a cinematographer who was killed on a New Mexico movie set. Halyna Hutchins died shortly after being shot during rehearsals at a ranch on the outskirts of Santa Fe on Oct. 21, 2021. Baldwin was pointing a pistol at Hutchins when the gun went off, killing her and wounding the director, Joel Souza. Santa Fe County Sheriff Adan Mendoza, who led the initial investigation into Hutchins' death... Читать дальше...

A major Indian journalist group urged the government to reject a proposal to police fake news on social media, saying such a change to the country's information-technology rules would be akin to censorship. The proposal would bar social media platforms from hosting any information that the authorities identify as false, the latest in a slew of measures by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government that are being seen as efforts to rein in big tech firms. Information deemed "fake or false" by the... Читать дальше...

Kenya's President William Ruto said this week that there was a plot to murder the country’s top electoral official last August to prevent him from announcing Ruto as the winner of the presidential election. This was the first time the president has mentioned the plot after months of rumors on social media, and Ruto’s supporters are urging an investigation. President Ruto made the allegation at the State House Tuesday as he met with outgoing commissioners of Kenya’s Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission... Читать дальше...

Following incidents of journalists being obstructed in their work and a lawyer being attacked in Zimbabwe, media and lawyers’ associations are demanding that police respect their rights. When police escorted 25 members of the Citizens Coalition for Change opposition party to a magistrate’s court Tuesday in Harare, some journalists were blocked from the courtroom. The party members are facing charges of holding an illegal meeting that police on Saturday broke up with tear gas. Journalists... Читать дальше...

Families of Americans wrongfully detained in China are calling on U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to bring up American detainee cases during his meetings with top Chinese leaders in Beijing next month. Blinken is expected to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping, China's top diplomat and Chinese Communist Party Politburo member Wang Yi, as well as newly appointed Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang, according to diplomatic sources. Meanwhile, the United States is urging Americans who plan... Читать дальше...

Rights activists and relatives of victims of alleged human rights violations by members of Bangladesh’s notorious Rapid Action Battalion, an elite security force, are urging the United States to continue sanctions against the nation’s law enforcement agencies. The calls come after a visit by U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Donald Lu, who said January 15 the U.S. had not implemented new sanctions on the RAB because the force had made good progress in the area of human rights... Читать дальше...

Preliminary reports from an on-going investigation into a deadly landslide in Malaysia that killed 31 people at a farm and campsite seem to indicate the area was not zoned for agricultural, commercial or recreational use, a senior government official told VOA on Thursday. Dozens of people were buried as they slept in their tents at Father’s Organic Farm in Batang Kali, a popular recreation area about 50 kilometers north of the country’s largest city, Kuala Lumpur, when a landslide swept over the... Читать дальше...

The United Nations said Wednesday peacekeepers discovered mass graves in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo, following a series of attacks blamed on a local militia. U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Haq told reporters one grave in the village of Nyamamba contained 42 bodies, including six children. Seven bodies were found in a grave in the village of Mbogi. The graves are located in Ituri province, where Haq said there has been a “significant deterioration of the security situation... Читать дальше...

Workers striking in protest of France’s proposed pension overhauls disrupted transportation, schools and electricity supplies Thursday. President Emmanuel Macron’s government has proposed raising the retirement age for a full pension from 62 to 64, saying the move is necessary to keep the system solvent. Unions oppose the change and have suggested a tax on the super wealthy as an alternative course. Train service and some flights were canceled Thursday. Seventy percent of preschool and primary... Читать дальше...

One person was killed and dozens injured Thursday when a stampede broke out outside a football stadium in Iraq hours before the Gulf Cup final, medical and security sources said. Long banned from hosting international football matches, war-torn Iraq had been counting on its hosting of the Gulf Cup to burnish its image, but it had already been forced to apologize for organizational lapses. Thousands of fans without tickets had gathered outside the stadium in Iraq's main southern city of Basra... Читать дальше...

Hong Kong said Thursday it will soon no longer require people infected with COVID-19 to quarantine.  Chief Executive John Lee told lawmakers the move is “one of the most important steps towards normalcy.”  The new policy will begin January 30, and follows a similar move by mainland China earlier this month.  People in Hong Kong will still be required to wear masks unless exercising.  Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.

A U.S.-based Chinese labor rights group tells VOA Mandarin that workplace safety and a December accident that killed two workers played key roles in triggering protests that turned violent over the weekend in Indonesia at a Chinese-owned nickel smelting facility. During the protests, dozens of dormitories were torched and equipment was damaged. In the chaos, two workers died, one Indonesian and the other Chinese. Reuters and the Chinese Embassy in the capital city of Jakarta said many were injured in the melee. Читать дальше...

Palestinian officials said Israeli troops killed two Palestinians during a raid Thursday in the occupied West Bank.  The Palestinian Health Ministry said Jawad Bawaqna and Adham Jabarin were shot in the northern West Bank city of Jenin.  The official Wafa Palestinian news agency said Bawaqna was a schoolteacher, while the militia group Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade said Jabarin was one of its fighters.  There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.  Israel has been conducting frequent... Читать дальше...

By expressing an interest in acquiring nuclear weapons, South Korea is demonstrating an urgent determination to secure enhanced security assurances from the United States as the nuclear threat from North Korea grows, experts say. South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol said at a policy briefing on January 11 that Seoul could either build nuclear weapons or have them redeployed to the country to counter Pyongyang. While South Korea has discussed over the years the redeployment of U.S. nuclear weapons... Читать дальше...

About 2 billion tons of carbon dioxide are being removed from the atmosphere every year, according to a report published on Thursday, but nearly all of it is accomplished through forests, despite growing investments in new technologies.   The independent report, led by the University of Oxford, is the first to assess how much CO2 removal the world is achieving and how much more is needed.  It estimates that roughly 1,300 times more carbon dioxide removal from new technologies — and twice as much from trees and soils ... Читать дальше...

President Joe Biden is facing a Department of Justice investigation following last week’s revelation that documents with classified markings were found in his home and office. VOA White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara has the latest.

A former University of Kansas professor avoided prison Wednesday for making a false statement related to work he was doing in China in the latest setback for a Trump-era U.S. Department of Justice crackdown on Chinese influence within American academia.  Prosecutors had asked U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson in Kansas City, Kansas, to sentence Feng "Franklin" Tao to 2½ years in prison, even after she had thrown out most of his trial conviction for concealing work he did in China.  Robinson instead sentenced Tao to time served... Читать дальше...

As the coronavirus pandemic enters its fourth year, the United States is grappling with a new subvariant of COVID-19 called XBB.1.5, and China is reporting a spike in cases following the dismantling of its zero-COVID policy. VOA’s Laurel Bowman reports.

Hundreds of refugees are fleeing to safety in India as the Myanmar military intensifies airstrikes in Chin state in Myanmar's northwest, a refugee aid group told VOA on Wednesday. At least 200 Chin refugees crossed the border last week following airstrikes by the Myanmar military on a key rebel camp on the India-Myanmar border, according to the Chin Human Rights Organization (CHRO). "Within the first half of this month, the Myanmar junta carried out four airstrikes in Chin state," Salai Mang Hre Lian... Читать дальше...

Software giant Microsoft on Wednesday became the latest major company in the tech sector to announce significant job cuts when it reported it would lay off 10,000 employees, or about 5% of its workforce. Microsoft’s job cuts come just as e-commerce leader Amazon begins a fresh round of 18,000 layoffs, extending a wave of other major cuts at Twitter, Salesforce and dozens of smaller technology firms in recent weeks. The phenomenon of job losses in the tech sector has global reach but has been... Читать дальше...