A group of prominent opposition Haitian senators sat outside the Senate doors early Sunday morning, a day when parliament is normally not in session.  “Over the weekend there were rumors that the Senate leader was organizing a special session Sunday. Such a vote would be considered out of the ordinary,” Senator Antonio Cheramy told VOA Creole. “We called around and tried to find out what was going on, but we’ve had absolute silence (from the Senate leader).”  Senator Cheramy said he and fellow opposition colleagues decided to stake out the Senate because they can’t allow such a vote to be held behind their backs.  Antonio Cheramy in front of the Senatè, on Sept 23, 2019 in Port au Prince, Haiti. Around midday, Senate leader Carl Murat Cantave took to Twitter to deny the rumors and set the record straight. “Contrary to the rumors that a ratification vote is planned for this Sunday, the vote to ratify PM designate @fritzwmichel and his government is planned for this Monday 23 September 2019 at 8:00 am,” Cantave said. Contrairement aux rumeurs faisant croire que la séance de ratification était prévue pour ce dimanche, la séance de ratification du PM nommé Haiti’s Prime Minister-designate …

The British oil tanker seized by Iran in July will soon be released, the semi-official Fars news agency reported Sunday. The Stena Impero and its crew were seized by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard in the Strait of Hormuz for alleged maritime violations just weeks after British forces seized an Iranian oil tanker off the coast of Gibraltar. Britain accused Iran of trying to sell oil in violation of international sanctions against Tehran. Gibraltar released that tanker last month. The head of the Swedish company that owns the Stena Impero told Swedish public broadcaster SVT that the tanker may be released within hours. “We have received information now this morning that it seems like they will release the ship Stena Impero within a few hours. So we understand that the political decision to release the ship has been taken.” Erik Hanell said. The head of the Ports and Maritime Organization of Iran in Hormozgan Province, Allahmorad Afifipour, told Fars that the the process of allowing the tanker to move into international waters has begun but that a legal case against the ship is still pending. He did not release any other information about the tanker.   …

Umar Cheema experienced the latest brand of Pakistani media suppression firsthand. Cheema, a prominent investigative reporter, works for national newspaper The News and has 1.1 million Twitter followers. This year in July, after he posted some tweets critical of the Pakistan government and military, his managers received calls pressuring them to respond. In Pakistan, such calls typically originate with the military. Cheema was forced to take down his Twitter account for a week. Journalists in Pakistan have long been at the mercy of the country’s powerful military and rulers. But Cheema and others say what’s happening under Prime Minister Imran Khan might not be as brutal as the suppression of previous governments, but it’s far more insidious and pervasive. Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan speaks during a rally in Muzaffarabad, Sept. 13, 2019. “In the past, the military had picked up journalists, beaten them up or would make threatening calls,” Cheema told VOA. “They have become more sophisticated.” The censors are wielding a broad arsenal of punishing tools – from shutting down cable channels, cutting off government advertising, intimidating media owners and unleashing an army of social media attack trolls. Moreover, critics say Khan’s government and the military are in …

Pro-Iranian Shiite militias in Iraq known as Popular Mobilization Forces are becoming bolder, despite calls by Iraq’s Shiite spiritual leader and prime minister to put their weapons under government control. The PMF is an umbrella organization of Iraqi Shiite militias formed in 2014 to fight the Sunni militant Islamic State (IS), whose capture of the northern Iraqi city of Mosul triggered a collapse of the nation’s military. PMF militias boast tens of thousands of fighters. Earlier this month, Iraqi media circulated a letter purportedly from the PMF’s most dominant commander, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, ordering the creation of a PMF air force separate from the Iraqi military. His apparent order came after several aerial strikes on PMF bases in Iraq in recent months. The PMF blamed the strikes on Iran’s regional enemy Israel, which neither confirmed nor denied responsibility. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the top Shiite cleric in Shiite-majority Iraq, inspired the PMF’s creation through a June 2014 fatwa or religious decree encouraging Iraqis to “volunteer to join the security forces” to save the country from the IS threat. Iraqi Shiites responded by joining pre-existing and new Shiite militias with the approval of then-Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who granted them …

Hundreds of mourners gathered Sunday to commemorate the loss of yet another European glacier. Dressed in mourning clothes, they hiked for hours in the Glarus Alps in eastern Switzerland to reach the remnants of the Pizol glacier at 2,600 meters above sea level. The glacier has lost more than 80% of its volume since 2006. “I have climbed up here countless times,” Matthias Huss, a glaciologist at ETH Zurich university, told the mourners. “It is like the dying of a good friend.” Last month, About 100 people, including Iceland’s Prime Minister Katrin Jakobsdottir, held a similar ceremony for 700-year-old Okjokull, the first Icelandic glacier lost to climate change. “We can’t save the Pizol glacier anymore. … Let’s do everything we can, so that we can show our children and grandchildren a glacier here in Switzerland a hundred years from now,” Huss told the gathering. His call came just two days after millions around the world went on a strike for climate change, inspired by 16-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg. The funeral was organized by the activist group Swiss Association for Climate Protection which has collected more than 100,000 signatures to launch an initiative demanding the country reduce its greenhouse gas …

U.S. President Donald Trump admitted talking about corruption with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, but stopped short of saying they talked about investigating 2020 leading Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden. A Wall Street Journal report says Trump urged Zelenskiy eight times to investigate Biden and his son Hunter, and whether a Ukrainian gas company tried to win favors by hiring Hunter while Joe Biden was U.S. vice president. The reports say Trump was looking to get Zelenskiy to collaborate with Trump’s lawyer, Rudolph Giuliani, to investigate the Bidens. Trump telephoned Zelenskiy in July, two months after he took power in Ukraine. Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden puts on a Beau Biden Foundation hat while speaking at the Polk County Democrats Steak Fry, in Des Moines, Iowa, Sept. 21, 2019. “The conversation I had was largely congratulatory, was largely corruption…and largely the fact that we don’t want our people, like Vice President Biden and his son creating to the corruption already in the Ukraine,” Trump said Sunday. He said the White House will “make a determination” whether to release a transcript or details of the telephone call. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Vadym Prystaiko denies Trump pressured Zelenskiy, saying Ukraine …

The planet is getting hotter, and tackling that climate peril will grab the spotlight as world leaders gather for their annual meeting at the United Nations this week facing an undeniable backdrop: rising tensions from the Persian Gulf to Afghanistan and increasing nationalism, inequality and intolerance. Growing fear of military action, especially in response to recent attacks on Saudi oil installations that are key to world energy supplies, hangs over this year’s General Assembly gathering. That unease is exacerbated by global conflicts and crises from Syria and Yemen to Venezuela, from disputes between Israel and the Palestinians to the Pakistan-India standoff over Kashmir. All eyes will be watching presidents Donald Trump of the United States and Hassan Rouhani of Iran, whose countries are at the forefront of escalating tensions, to see if they can reduce fears of a confrontation that could impact the Mideast and far beyond. Whether the two will even meet remains in serious doubt. “Our fraying world needs international cooperation more than ever, but simply saying it will not make it happen,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said. “Let’s face it: We have no time to lose.” This year’s General Assembly session, which starts Tuesday and ends Sept. …

Sigmund Jaehn, who became the first German in space at the height of the Cold War during the 1970s and was promoted as a hero by communist authorities in East Germany, has died. He was 82. The German Aerospace Center said Sunday on its website that Jaehn died Saturday. The center did not give the cause of death. German news agency dpa said he died at his home in Strausberg, outside of Berlin. Astrophysicist Pascale Ehrenfreund, who chairs the German Aerospace Center’s executive board, said the center was deeply saddened by Jaehn’s death and that German aerospace had lost a “globally respected cosmonaut, scientist and engineer.” “The first German in space always saw himself as a bridge builder between East and West and for a peaceful use of space” Ehrenfreund said. Jaehn flew to the Soviet space station Salyut 6 on Aug. 26, 1978 and spent almost eight days in space. Upon his return, he was awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union. The East German government showcased his achievement as evidence of the communist state’s superiority over capitalist West Germany. While Jaehn was a household name for a generation of East Germans, he remained largely unknown in West …

Authorities on Saturday identified the four Chinese tourists killed in a bus crash in southern Utah, and the tour group is dispatching employees from China to help those injured. Three women and one man perished in the crash on a highway running through the red-rock landscape of southern Utah on Friday. The victims have been identified as Ling Geng, 68, Xiuyun Chen, 67, Zhang Caiyu, 62, and Zhongliang Qiu, 65. They were all from Shanghai, China. They were part of a tour group made up of 29 tourists and one leader. They come from Shanghai and the nearby provinces of Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Heilongjiang, according to a news report on the media website huanqiu.com. The tour leader came from Hebei Province, near Beijing, according to the Zhejiang Online news site. Five passengers remained in critical condition Friday night, and the death toll could rise, Utah Highway Patrol Sgt. Nick Street said. All 31 people on board were hurt. Twelve to 15 on board were considered to be in critical condition shortly after the crash, but several of them have since improved, Street said. Not everyone was wearing a seatbelt, as is common in tour buses, he said. The Shanghai Municipal …

Egypt’s media authority warned journalists Sunday that it was monitoring coverage to ensure they abide by “professional codes” amid a rare burst of protests against President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi. The warning came hours after the latest small protest was dispersed by police in clouds of tear gas. Dozens of people including children marched Saturday evening in the port city of Suez, calling for el-Sissi to step down, three witnesses told The Associated Press. Police “pursued the people in the streets … there was lots of gas,” one resident said. The witnesses spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisals. The protest came after rare anti-government demonstrations in several Egyptian cities late Friday. Those too were quickly broken up by police. But they marked a startling eruption of street unrest, which has been almost completely silenced the past years by draconian measures imposed under el-Sissi. The government effectively banned all public protests in 2013 shortly after el-Sissi led the military’s overthrow of the country’s first freely elected civilian president in modern history. Since then, anyone who dared take to the streets was quickly arrested and received years-long prison sentences. In its statement issued Sunday, the State Information Service, which accredits …

More than 600,000 vacationers who booked through tour operator Thomas Cook were on edge Sunday, wondering if they will be able to get home, as one of the world’s oldest and biggest travel companies teetered on the edge of collapse.   The debt-laden company, which confirmed Friday it was seeking 200 million pounds ($250 million) in funding to avoid going bust, was in talks with shareholders and creditors to stave off failure.   A collapse could leave around 150,000 travelers from Britain stranded, along with hundreds of thousands from other countries. The company has sought to reassure customers that flights were continuing to operate as normal.   Most of Thomas Cook’s British customers are protected by the government-run travel insurance program, which makes sure vacationers can get home if a British-based tour operator goes under while they are abroad.   Thomas Cook’s financial difficulties also raised questions about the jobs of the 22,000 people employed by the company around the world, including 9,000 in Britain.   Unions and Britain’s opposition Labour Party urged the government to intervene financially to save jobs if the company fails to raise the necessary financing from the private sector.   If the company collapsed, Britain’s …

U.S. President Donald Trump said Sunday he did nothing wrong in a telephone conversation with the new president of Ukraine amid news report that Trump allegedly urged him to investigate the son of former vice president and 2020 Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden. Speaking to reporters, Trump described his phone call with President Volodymyr Zelensky as “absolutely perfect.” “The conversation I had was largely congratulatory, was largely corruption, all of the corruption taking place. It was largely the fact that we don’t want our people, like Vice President Biden and his son creating to the corruption already in the Ukraine,” Trump said. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy speaks to newly elected Ukrainian parliament deputies during parliament session in Kyiv, Aug. 29, 2019. According to news reports, Trump urged Zelensky about eight times during their conversation to investigate Biden’s son. Sources were quoted saying Trump’s intent was to get Zelensky to collaborate with Trump lawyer Rudolph Giuliani on an investigation that could undermine Biden. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Vadym Prystaiko on Saturday denied Trump had pressured Zelensky during the call, telling the media outlet Hromadski that Ukraine would not take sides in U.S. politics even if the country was in a position to …

At least 20 Somali government soldiers were killed and 18 others were wounded when al-Shabab raided a military base south of Mogadishu, security sources told VOA Somali. The sources said militants detonated a suicide car bomb at the El-Salin military base followed by an infantry attack in the early hours of Sunday. The militants briefly took over the base, a regional official told VOA Somali. A spokesman for Somali special forces said the militants attacked the base “in large numbers.”  Mowlid Ahmed Hassan said the fighting lasted about 40 minutes, insisting the troops ‘defended” the base. He said reinforcements have been sent to the base. Hassan said the troops killed 13 militants, but declined to comment on the number of government soldiers killed in the attack. Somali troops seized the El-Salin base from al-Shabab on August 6. It was one of four bases in Lower Shabelle region recaptured following an offensive by the Somali military. …

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says the U.S. is working to find a diplomatic outcome to tensions with Iran, which has been blamed for an attack on Saudi oil facilities, but he warned if diplomacy fails President Donald Trump “will make necessary decisions to achieve our objectives.” Pompeo told the ABC News that the recent Trump administration decision to send additional U.S. air defense troops to Saudi Arabia  will “improve the capabilities” and “will make it more difficult” for Iran.   President Hassan Rouhani speaks at a military parade marking 39th anniversary of outset of Iran-Iraq war, in front of the shrine of the late revolutionary founder Ayatollah Khomeini, just outside Tehran, Sept. 22, 2019. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Sunday the presence of foreign forces in the Persian Gulf area would create “insecurity in the region.” “Foreign forces can cause problems and insecurity for our people and for our region,” Rouhani said in a live broadcast on state television. The Iranian leader said he plans to present at the United Nations a regional cooperation plan for peace. U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper said the American forces in the region would be “defensive in nature.” He added that the U.S. …

Records could be broken at the 2019 Emmy Awards by “Game of Thrones” and “Veep” star Julia Louis-Dreyfus. The HBO fantasy saga already has the most awards for a show in one season, 12, and it’s competing Sunday in seven categories. If Louis-Dreyfus wins top comedy actress honors for “Veep,” she’ll have a total of nine Emmys, the most ever for a performer. Other contenders to keep an eye on include Sandra Oh of “Killing Eve” and Billy Porter of “Pose,” both vying for top drama series acting awards. Oh could become the actress of Asian descent to win in the category, and Porter could be the first openly gay actor to nab a trophy. The 71st annual Emmy Awards airs at 8 p.m. EDT Sunday on Fox.   …

FIFA President Gianni Infantino says soccer’s world governing body “cannot wait any more” and has been “assured” by Tehran that the authorities will allow women spectators into the arena when Iran hosts its next international match. Infantino’s comments follow a FIFA delegation visit to Iran over the conservative Shi’ite leadership’s longtime ban on women at major men’s sporting events — a policy that turned more tragic with the recent death of a young woman who was being punished for trying to sneak into a stadium disguised as a man. Iran is scheduled to play Cambodia in a 2022 World Cup qualifier on October 10 at Azadi Stadium in Tehran. “In these productive discussions, FIFA reiterated its firm and clear position that women need to be allowed to enter football matches freely and that the number of women who attend the stadiums be determined by the demand, resulting in ticket sales,” FIFA said in a September 21 statement summarizing the delegation’s visit to Tehran and Azadi Stadium. FIFA further said it would work with Iran’s national soccer federation, the FFIRI, to ensure that women spectators could get into the Iranian soccer league’s matches in future. The delegation “discussed the need to open …

Barron Hilton, a hotel magnate who expanded his father’s chain and became a founding owner in the American Football League, died Thursday at his Los Angeles home. He was 91. Hilton’s family said he died of natural causes. He transformed Hilton into the industry’s top brand during his 30 years as its chief executive. The Blackstone Group bought the international chain’s 2,800 hotels, including its famed Waldorf-Astoria, for $26 billion in 2007. “The Hilton family mourns the loss of a remarkable man,” said Steven M. Hilton, his son and chairman of the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, in a statement. “He lived a life of great adventure and exceptional accomplishment.” Self-made man An avid pilot who served as a Navy photographer during World War II, Hilton didn’t begin working for his father’s company until 1951, after he’d made his own fortune in orange juice products, an oil company and an aircraft-leasing business. Hilton also founded the Los Angeles Chargers in the AFL and oversaw the AFL-NFL merger. William Barron Hilton was born in Dallas in 1927 to Conrad N. Hilton, the founder of Hilton Hotels, and Mary Adelaide Barron. Hilton challenged his father’s will, arguing the foundation’s shares of Conrad Hilton’s …

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Sunday the presence of foreign forces in the Persian Gulf area would create “insecurity in the region.” “Foreign forces can cause problems and insecurity for our people and for our region,” Rouhani said in a live broadcast on state television. The Iranian leader said he plans to present at the United Nations a regional cooperation plan for peace. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi speaks with members of the media following a news conference on Hong Kong Human Rights on Capitol Hill in Washington, Sept. 18, 2019. On Saturday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi criticized President Donald Trump’s plan to send additional U.S. military forces and air defense equipment to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, saying it is the administration’s latest attempt to “circumvent” Congress. “President Trump’s plan to accelerate the delivery of military equipment to Saudi Arabia and UAE, and to deploy additional U.S. forces to the region is the latest outrageous attempt by the Trump administration to circumvent the bipartisan, bicameral will of Congress,” she said in a statement. “These unacceptable actions are cause for alarm.” Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who had a state visit at the White House Friday, said his country …

Amir Khasru of the VOA Bangla Service contributed to this report. KRAYEA COMMUNE, KAMPONG THOM PROVINCE, CAMBODIA — The babies are crying, coughing as they vomit. Each parent holds one of the 8-month-old twins. Their daughters tested positive for the potentially lethal and almost always painful dengue fever. Lang Chanthoeun says she doesn’t have money yet to get treatment for Pheak Sonisa and Pheak Somatha. “I tried to borrow money from relatives but they didn’t have any,” she said. “Last night, I couldn’t sleep,” said the 35-year-old mother of six who lives in a poor rural area of Cambodia’s Kampong Thom province on the central lowlands of the Mekong River. The local rubber plantations in the province’s Santuk district shelter mosquitos, making it a center of this year’s dengue outbreak. The government should consider providing a treatment center in the province so villagers don’t need to travel, said Meas Nee who holds a doctorate in sociology and international social work from Australia’s La Trobe University. According to a 2008 article in the International Journal for Equity in Health, “High rates of hospitalization and mortality from dengue fever among infants and children reflect the difficulties that women continue to face in finding …

Iran’s president says his country should lead regional security in the strategic Persian Gulf. Hassan Rouhani said Sunday Iran extends its “hand of friendship and brotherhood” toward cooperating with regional nations. Rouhani also said the presence of foreign forces in the Gulf could cause problems for the world’s “energy security.” The U.S. is sending more troops to the Gulf and leading a maritime coalition, which includes the U.K., Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab nations, to secure the area’s waterways and vital oil trade routes. The U.S. has alleged Iran is behind a series of attacks on the region’s energy infrastructure, as Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers collapses. Iran denies the allegations. Rouhani said he will offer a regional peace plan during his visit to the U.N. this week. …

Tanzania has declined to provide detailed information on suspected Ebola cases, the World Health Organization (WHO) said, posing a challenge in efforts to fight the outbreak. Despite several requests “to date, clinical data, results of the investigations, possible contacts and potential laboratory tests performed … have not been communicated to WHO,” the U.N. health agency said in a statement seen by Reuters Sunday. “The limited available official information from Tanzanian authorities represents a challenge.” Authorities in east and central Africa have been on high alert for possible spill-overs of Ebola from the Democratic Republic of Congo where a year-long outbreak has killed more than 2,000 people. Fears about the possible spread of the outbreak in Tanzania started this month after a woman died from an unknown illness following Ebola-like symptoms. On Wednesday, Tanzania formally notified the WHO it had no cases of Ebola, but it declined to share detailed data on suspected cases. Last week, the U.S. health secretary, Alex Azar, also criticized Tanzania for its failure to share information on the possible outbreak, saying authorities there had not made samples available or allowed testing of the index case.   …

Five brothers came to the US from Ukraine almost two decades ago in search of the American Dream — that everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed in the United States. During those 20 years, they’ve had all kinds of jobs, from washing floors, to delivering mail to working at construction sites. But they had even bigger dreams, Khrystyna Shevchenko met with this unique family. Anna Rice narrates her story.   …

In 20 months, an anti-smoking group in Lebanon collected 240,000 cigarette butts from around a university campus. It did not take long to put those butts to good use, creating something unique to help clean up Beirut’s beaches. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi gets to the bottom of this story. …