Several thousand people shouting words of thanks to the police turned out in Hong Kong on Sunday in an unusual display of support for a force broadly criticized as abusive by the territory’s protest movement. People made heart signs with their hands at officers, with some calling them heroes for their policing of six months of demonstrations. The rally attracted a bigger crowd than a protest against the government a few hundred meters (yards) away. It brought together a few hundred people in a square. There were also scattered small protests against the government in shopping malls. Tensions flared in one mall after police arrested about eight protesters. Police used pepper spray when people threw bottles of water at them. …

A strong earthquake jolted the southern Philippines on Sunday, causing a three-story building to collapse and prompting people to rush out of shopping malls, houses and other buildings in panic, officials said. The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said the magnitude 6.9 quake struck an area about 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) northwest of Padada town in Davao del Sur province. It had a depth of 30 kilometers (18 miles). Ricardo Jalad, who heads the Office of Civil Defense, said his office received an initial report that a small three-story building collapsed in Padada as the ground shook and that authorities were checking if people got trapped inside. The building housed a grocery store, Jalad said without elaborating. Officials in the southern cities of Davao and Cotabato, where the quake was felt strongly, suspended classes for Monday to allow checks on the stability of school buildings. Some cities and town lost their power due to the quake, officials said. The Davao region has been hit by several earthquakes in recent months, causing deaths and injuries and damaging houses, hotels, malls and hospitals. The Philippine archipelago lies on the so-called Pacific “Ring of fire,” an arc of faults around the Pacific …

Gholam Mahaiuddin sighs softly as he thinks of his 14-year-old son, who was killed in the spring by a bomb dropped last century in the hills of Bamiyan province in central Afghanistan. “We knew the mountain was dangerous,” said Mahaiuddin, who found his son’s remains after he didn’t come home one day. “We were aware of mines but we could not find them. They were buried in the soft sand after the rain.” Forty years after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan – and three decades since the conflict ended – the war’s legacy continues to claim lives across the country. Mahaiuddin’s son, Moujtaba, was killed along with two friends, aged 12 and 14, on May 17 when they went looking for berries in this idyllic landscape where chocolate-colored mountains are topped with snow. When none of them had returned the next day, Mahaiuddin and other residents from his tiny village, called Ahangaran, started searching. “I found my son with just his chest and head left,” Mahaiuddin recalled. Moujtaba and his friends had been killed by what is known as an AO-2.5 RTM submunition. The cluster bombs were used extensively by Soviet forces, who dropped them like deadly rain across Afghanistan …

A cleft lip or palate is one of the most common birth defects among infants. In developed countries like the U.S., corrective surgeries are often performed during the first couple of years of a child’s life. But in some places like Pakistan there are thousands of children with the birth defect, but not enough doctors who can perform the corrective surgery. Now there is hope thanks to a group of volunteers. VOA’s Asim Ali Rana has more from Gujrat, Pakistan in this report narrated by Bezhan Hamdard …

Arabica coffee, the higher-quality variety that Kenya grows, ends up in specialty coffees in Europe and the United States. It thrives in moderate temperatures and high altitudes. But rising temperatures are scorching plants, making them vulnerable to diseases like coffee leaf rust. VOA Correspondent Mariama Diallo reports …

Southeast Asian environmental activists  – including young counterparts to teenage activist and Time magazine person of the year Greta Thunberg – are concerned they are not getting the attention that the climate emergency deserves, complaining that the region’s authorities are leaving this month’s climate negotiations in Madrid, also known as COP25, without committing to new climate action plans for 2020, as other nations have done. The negotiations are meant to find a way to carry out the plans, agreed to in Paris in 2015, to cut global greenhouse gas emissions. However they have broken down as negotiators cannot agree on how much rich nations should spend to support poor nations to enact the plans. Many Southeast Asian governments want such supporting funds but their constituents also say the governments need to promise more dramatic emissions decreases. “The situation is critical: our youth are mobilizing and striking because they know that there are only 10 years left for governments to act for them to have a decent future,” Sarah Elago, a member of the Philippine House of Representatives, said. “Why is it that children are doing more than the governing adults?”   Like the Philippines, almost every nation in Southeast Asia has …

A bus carrying Hindu pilgrims drove off a highway and crashed in Nepal on Sunday, killing 14 people and injuring 18, police said. The pilgrims were returning home after visiting the famed Hindu Kalinchowk Bhagwati temple when the bus veered off the highway about 80 kilometers (50 miles) east of the capital, Kathmandu, police official Prajwal Maharjan said. Rescuers were able to pull out the injured passengers and take them to nearby hospitals for treatment. Maharjan said police were investigating the cause of the crash but the roads were slippery because of winter rain. The visibility was also poor due to morning fog.. There was also a possibility of mechanical failure and it appeared the bus was not from the area and the driver might not be familiar with the road conditions. Bus accidents in Nepal, which is mostly covered by mountains, are generally blamed on poorly maintained vehicles and roads.   …

China has suspended additional tariffs on some U.S. goods that were meant to be implemented on Dec. 15, the State Council’s customs tariff commission said on Sunday, after the world’s two largest economies agreed a “phase one” trade deal on Friday. The deal, rumours and leaks over which have gyrated world markets for months, reduces some U.S. tariffs in exchange for what U.S. officials said would be a big jump in Chinese purchases of American farm products and other goods. China’s retaliatory tariffs, which were due to take effect on Dec. 15, were meant to target goods ranging from corn and wheat to U.S. made vehicles and auto parts. Other Chinese tariffs that had already been implemented on U.S. goods would be left in place, the commission said in a statement issued on the websites of government departments including China’s finance ministry. “China hopes, on the basis of equality and mutual respect, to work with the United States, to properly resolve each other’s core concerns and promote the stable development of U.S.-China economic and trade relations,” it added. Beijing has agreed to import at least $200 billion in additional U.S. goods and services over the next two years on top …

Little piggies go to market, but in Germany they also go to court. In a legal first, animal rights activists have asked Germany’s top court to ban the practice of castrating young male pigs without anesthetic – with the piglets themselves listed as the plaintiffs. The painful procedure has become increasingly controversial in Europe and has been banned in Sweden, Norway and Switzerland. Farmers argue that the castration of piglets a few days after birth is necessary to prevent “boar taint”, the occasional occurrence of a foul smell when cooking pork from male pigs past puberty. The German parliament outlawed castration without pain relief in 2013 but it offered farmers a five-year transition period to help them adapt to the change – a timeline that was extended last year until 2021. Outraged by the inaction, the PETA campaign group filed a lawsuit with Germany’s Constitutional Court in November on behalf of the baby pigs. The group wants judges to recognize that pigs have rights similar to human rights and that these are being violated by the “cruel act” of castration without pain relief. “Non-human entities like companies and associations have legal personhood. So why not animals too?” said lawyer Cornelia …

Four years of a brutal civil war in Yemen has forced more than 4.3 million people to leave their homes. Many of the Yemenis desperately seeking safety are turning to neighboring Somalia.   Ranked as one of the 10 poorest countries in the world by the United Nations (UN), Somalia is considered one of the least politically stable countries, and faces a continued threat from al-Shabab jihadists.   Many Somalis who were living in the country during the 1980s conflict and the 1991 civil war outbreak fled to then-relatively stable Yemen. But the refugee movement has been reversed since late 2014, when a devastating military confrontation in Yemen, between the government and the Houthi rebels, spiraled into the world’s most severe humanitarian crisis. Refugees gather in front of a makeshift tent to collect aid at the Yemeni Refugees Camp near Somali capital Mogadishu. (Courtesy of Muslim Aid) One of the Yemeni refugees, Saleh al-Amodi, said he made it to Somalia in 2014 after a risky journey, in which he sailed on a small boat from the Gulf of Aden in southwest Yemen to Bosaso port in northeastern Somalia.   “I was lucky I made it safely to Somalia. A number …

Albanian prosecutors have issued a series of arrest warrants on charges including murder and abuse of office over the deaths of 51 people killed when a 6.4-magnitude earthquake toppled dozens of buildings last month, police said on Saturday. Police and prosecutors said initial investigations showed “the loss of life in the collapsed buildings came also because their builders, engineers and owners had failed to observe the rules, norms and standards of safe constructions.” Prosecutors issued 17 warrants in total, police said. Two of the nine people detained on Saturday on murder charges were the owners of two hotels that collapsed, killing four people in Durres, Albania’s second-biggest city and main port. A third was the manager of a police vacation hotel where a high-ranking police officer was killed under the rubble. During the three decades since toppling communism in 1990, many Albanians have moved nearer cities, squatting on land and building with little supervision by authorities. Many of the buildings have been legalized since then by governments eager to get votes but also seeking to urbanize such areas by putting in sewage systems and roads. Both hotels on the 10-mile long beach on the Adriatic Sea south of Durres port …

Queen Elizabeth on Thursday will set out Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s legislative agenda following his election victory, including a pledge to bring the EU Withdrawal Agreement bill back to Parliament before Christmas, his office said Saturday. Johnson led his Conservative Party on Thursday to its biggest national election win since Margaret Thatcher’s landslide victory of 1987, trouncing his socialist Labour Party opponent Jeremy Corbyn by winning 365 parliamentary seats and securing an overall majority of 80. Johnson fought the election on the slogan “Get Brexit done.” The so-called Queen’s Speech is used to detail all the bills the government plans to enact over the coming year. It is written by the government and is delivered by the monarch from a throne in Parliament’s gilded House of Lords debating chamber. Thursday’s speech to Parliament will be the 93-year-old queen’s second in as many months. She made one on October 14, shortly before the election was called following a prolonged deadlock in Parliament over the government’s Brexit plans. The October speech laid out 22 new bills, including several covering tougher treatment for foreign criminals and sex offenders, and new protection for victims of domestic abuse. Some additions Johnson’s office said Thursday’s speech …

Five Hong Kong teenagers have been arrested in connection with the death of a man hit on the head by a brick during clashes between pro- and anti-government protesters last month, police said Saturday. The three males and two females aged 15 to 18 were arrested on Friday on suspicion of murder, rioting and wounding and had been detained pending further investigation, police said in a statement. The incident occurred in mid-November as the pro-democracy movement was in its fifth month, with hardcore demonstrators engaged in a “blossom everywhere” campaign across the city to stretch police resources. Footage of the event showed rival groups of protesters throwing bricks at each other, during which a man was hit by a brick and fell to the ground. The 70-year-old was rushed to hospital unconscious and certified dead the following day. He was the second person in less than a week to die in protest-linked incidents. Alex Chow, a 22-year-old university student, died on November 8 from head injuries sustained during a fall in a multi-storey carpark while police and demonstrators were clashing. Although the events leading to his fall are unclear and disputed, protesters have blamed police. Allegations of police brutality are …

Read more at https://www.voltron.voanews.com/episode/paradise-lost-paradise-regained-and-rebuilding-4122391 …

Libya’s eastern military commander, General Khalifa Hafter, who began a fresh push to try to capture Tripoli during the past several days, was reported Saturday to have advanced in and around the city.  Amateur video on Arab TV channels appeared to show forces loyal to Hafter moving on several strategic locations in the capital.   Saudi-owned Al Arabiya TV, which supports Hafter, said his forces had captured the suburb of Ain Zara, as well as a militia base under the control of forces loyal to the Tripoli government of Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj. VOA could not independently confirm the claims.  Sarraj’s interior minister, Fathi Bashaga, told Turkish media that his forces were capable of defending Tripoli, but he complained that Hafter was receiving military help from the Russian mercenary Wagner Group, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates. However, the spokesman for Hafter’s forces, Colonel Ahmed Almasmari, decried what he called Turkish intervention in the conflict.  He said Libya wanted to tell the world that Turkey had sent weapons and was storing them in civilian areas of the Islamist militia-controlled port city of Misrata, and that his forces would not target them now because of the civilian nature of the area but could do so in the future. Khattar Abou Diab, who teaches political science at the University of Paris, told VOA that Serraj was trying to encourage Turkey to intervene …

In the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in Northern California, there is a town on a ridge called Paradise. The population of approximately 26,800 evacuated Paradise on November 8, 2018, when a wildfire ravaged the town and surrounding communities. The fire burned for nearly three weeks, destroying 90% of Paradise. Eighty-five people lost their lives in the disaster. A year later, only around 2,000 residents live in Paradise. Many survivors now live in other cities and towns. Some people are still displaced and living in travel trailers. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee tells the story of residents for whom Paradise was lost, regained and, for some, is rebuilding. …

Security forces on Saturday fired tear gas and rubber bullets at protesters in Beirut, some of whom tried to break into a barricaded central district of Lebanon’s capital.  Hundreds of people were gathered as part of a wave of protests that have swept Lebanon since October 17, furious at a ruling elite that steered the country toward its worst economic crisis in decades.  Since the protests pushed Saad al-Hariri to resign as prime minister in late October, talks between the main parties have been deadlocked over forming a new cabinet.  Donors leery Lebanon urgently needs a new government to pull it out of the crisis, which has also shaken confidence in its banking system. Foreign donors say they will help the country only after it gets a cabinet that can enact reforms.  Riot police and security forces deployed en masse in Beirut on Saturday night, chasing demonstrators in the street, beating and detaining some of them, a Reuters witness and a protester said.  The forces fired tear gas canisters and rubber bullets as some protesters tried to push through steel barriers blocking paths to the parliament and government headquarters.  State news agency NNA said the tear gas had made several people faint, while the Lebanese Red Cross said 14 people were injured, six of them badly enough to need hospital treatment.  The …

Just days after agreement on a pact to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement, Mexico objected Saturday to legislation introduced in the U.S. Congress as part of an eventual ratification of the deal.  Jesus Seade, the Mexican Foreign Relations Department’s undersecretary and chief trade negotiator for North America, said most of the bill is in line with the typical process of ratification, but it also “adds the designation of up to five U.S. labor attaches in Mexico tasked with monitoring the implementation of the labor reform that is under way in our country.”  Seade said that was not part of the agreement signed December 10 in Mexico City by Mexico, the United States and Canada to replace NAFTA, but was rather the product of “political decisions by the Congress and administration of the United States.”  Mexico should have been consulted but was not, Seade said, “and, of course, we are not in agreement.”  Mexico said that it resisted having foreign inspectors on its soil out of sovereignty principles, and that the agreement provided for panels to resolve disputes pertaining to labor and other areas. The three-person panels would comprise a person chosen by the United States, one by Mexico and a third-country person agreed upon by both countries.  Seade called the designation …

The promise of reparations  to atone for historical ties to slavery has opened new territory in a reckoning at U.S. colleges, which until now have responded with monuments, building name changes and public apologies.  Georgetown University and two theological seminaries have announced funding commitments to benefit descendants of the enslaved people who were sold or toiled to benefit the institutions.  While no other schools have gone so far, the advantages that institutions received from the slavery economy are receiving new attention as Democratic presidential candidates talk about tax credits and other subsidies that nudge the idea of reparations toward the mainstream.  The country has been discussing reparations in one way or another since slavery officially ended in 1865. This year marks the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first slave, launching the violence afflicted on black people to prop up the Southern economy. University of Buffalo senior Jeffrey Clinton said he thinks campuses should acknowledge historical ties to slavery but that the federal government should take the lead on an issue that reaches well beyond higher education.  “It doesn’t have to be trillions of dollars … but at least address the inequities and attack the racial wealth gap between …

Leaving the European Union is not the only split British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has to worry about. Johnson’s commanding election victory this week may let him fulfill his campaign promise to “get Brexit done,” but it could also imperil the future of the United Kingdom of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Scotland and Northern Ireland didn’t vote for Brexit, didn’t embrace this week’s Conservative electoral landslide — and now may be drifting permanently away from London. In a victory speech Friday, Johnson said the election result proved that leaving the EU is “the irrefutable, irresistible, unarguable decision of the British people.” Arguably, though, it isn’t. It’s the will of the English, who make up 56 million of the U.K.’s 66 million people. During Britain’s 2016 referendum on EU membership, England and much smaller Wales voted to leave bloc; Scotland and Ireland didn’t. In Thursday’s election, England elected 345 Conservative lawmakers — all but 20 of the 365 House of Commons seats Johnson’s party won across the U.K. In Scotland, 48 of the 59 seats were won by the Scottish National Party, which opposes Brexit and wants Scotland to become independent of the U.K. SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon said …

North Koreans with disabilities may face disproportionate risk due to efforts to curtail the country’s weapons of mass destruction programs.  Some humanitarian aid groups providing medical, educational and material support to people with physical, sensory and other developmental impairments say United Nations sanctions, as well as the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign imposed on Pyongyang for its nuclear and ballistic missile tests, are limiting their ability to carry-out work in North Korea.   Amid those restrictions, some non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are abandoning their programs altogether.  Multiple sources involved in aid work tell VOA that Humanity & Inclusion (HI) is ceasing its North Korea operations. The French/Belgian organization, also known as Handicap International, has been active in the country since 2001 and works in conjunction with the state-run Korean Federation for the Protection of the Disabled, according to the non-profit’s website.  HI declined to respond to VOA’s request for confirmation.  Visually-impaired singers perform during an event to mark the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, in Pyongyang, Dec. 3, 2019. North Korea’s opacity and the reluctance of many NGOs to publicly discuss their work there make it difficult for outside observers to obtain a full picture of the situation.   But, …

UN investigators accused Chile’s police and army of indiscriminate violence and gross violations, including torture and rape, in crushing recent mass protests over social and economic grievances. An investigative team from the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights produced a 30-page report expressing alarm at the excessive use of force by security agents.     It said Chile’s violent crackdown on protesters resulted in the reported deaths of dozens of people, a high number of injuries, and the arbitrary detentions of thousands of demonstrators. Chile’s Office of the Public Prosecutor says it is investigating 26 deaths.   The report holds state agents responsible for many of these deaths, noting that live ammunition was used in some cases.   The Chilean Ministry of Justice reports that nearly 5,000 people, more than half of whom were police officers, have been injured during the protests.  UN sources say the number of injured is higher than that cited by government officials.  They accuse state agents of unnecessary and disproportionate use of less-lethal weapons, such as anti-riot shotguns, during peaceful demonstrations. Imma Guerras-Delgado headed the mission to Chile, which took place in the first three weeks of November.  She said the demonstrations …

Cameroon’s Parliament is divided over the so-called special status President Paul Biya ordered for the country’s English-speaking regions as a solution to the crisis that has killed more than 3,000 people.   Some lawmakers who convened for the extraordinary session of Parliament on Biya’s instructions suggest that only the creation of federal states, one incorporating the country’s English-speaking regions and the other made up of the French-speaking regions, can stop the crisis.  Others said the English-speaking regions’ special status already cedes enough power and resources to the crisis-prone areas, where separatists are fighting to create an English-speaking state Cavaye Yeguie Djibril, speaker of Cameroon’s National Assembly, told the lower house of the Parliament that Biya asked him to convene the extraordinary session  solely to examine the bill and vote it into law because Biya is determined to restore peace in the restive English-speaking regions.   Lawmaker Njume Peter Ambang from the English-speaking South-West said the section of the bill granting a special status to the English-speaking regions could calm rising tensions for peace to return. “It is a moment for us to leave a legacy and we should look at this particular document with a lot of seriousness and responsibility,” …

The UN refugee agency is calling for intensified support for millions of Afghans who remain displaced after more than four decades of war A record-breaking 70.8 million people globally are forcibly displaced by conflict and persecution.  Among them are some 4.6 million Afghans.  More than half are registered as refugees and another 2 million are displaced inside Afghanistan. The UN refugee agency says Afghans represent the longest-displaced and the longest-dispossessed population in the world.  UNHCR spokesman Babar Baloch told VOA 90 percent of Afghanistan’s 2.7 million refugees are in Pakistan and Iran. “In terms of their hosting countries, 1979 was the first year when Afghans started to flee the conflict, today we are 2019,” Baloch said.  ” After four decades and 40 years, Afghans are still being hosted by Pakistan, by Iran.”   Baloch said Afghans are increasingly fleeing to Europe to escape the sharp deterioration in security inside Afghanistan and the growing financial pressure on their countries of refuge.  “Afghan asylum seekers constitute the majority of people arriving in Europe in terms of their asylum applications.  This year, we have seen in the eastern Mediterranean around 70,000 in total arrivals by the sea, 37.4 percent of them are Afghans.” …