Day: September 7, 2023

U.S. first lady Jill Biden tested negative for COVID-19 on Thursday, the White House said.

The first lady, who tested positive for COVID on Monday, experienced mild symptoms and remained in Delaware when President Joe Biden returned to Washington on Monday evening, the White House has said.

The president, who has tested negative several times since Monday, is due to travel to Group of 20 summit in India on Thursday.

“She’s sitting in here, confused and doesn’t know what to do,” Moaz said, describing on of them. “And there are gunshots around her. … She just left and [is] going nowhere, because she’s not able to live in her house anymore.”

It’s a scene Moaz knows from experience. He fled his home in Khartoum a few months after violence erupted there in April. He says he left everything behind, including his art studio. He first went through Ethiopia before landing in Kenya about a month ago.

“It was just tough days, really, really tough days,” he told VOA. “You needed to sleep outside in the streets for days, waiting for your bus, waiting for visas. Luckily … we had our passports with us.”

His work currently is part of an exhibit in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, by a group of Sudanese artists.

Organizers called the pop-up exhibition, “Resilient Transitions,” an opportunity to create a space where all the Sudanese artists in exile can gather and meet others like themselves, said curator Rahiem Shadad.

“One of the main reasons why we did this event was to sort of bring in the Sudanese visual artists who came here due to the war and connect them one way or another to artists who are already in Nairobi, who have already created such a support system that have made this transition quite easy,” Shadad told VOA.

Once the director of Downtown Gallery in Khartoum, Shadad said that dealing with the trauma and displacement of war has been difficult.

“Most of us have lost a lot,” he said. “For example, for me, I lost a gallery, which hosted over 450 paintings inside of it.”

It’s been nearly five months since civil war erupted in Sudan between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, and there’s no end in sight. The U.N. Refugee Agency estimates that by year’s end, 1.8 million people will flee to neighboring countries.

Event co-organizer Mohamed Elhassan is the director of 249 Arts and Culture in Sudan. He said the Nairobi event was a way to introduce artists to the local market and try to connect them to the world.

“What it means for us is basically to support these artists who had to flee the war and come here and restart from scratch,” Elhassan told VOA. “They lost their galleries. They lost their studios, even their … art that was there.

“For me, the most significant thing is for these artists to be able to produce again, for them to be able to break out of the trauma they face after the war … and be able to come up with all these great pieces you guys are seeing today,” he said.

Elhassan also said that Sudanese people have proven over the years that they are resilient and have always managed to find creativity out of chaos.

Tibian Bahari, a Sudanese artist who works with recycled material and construction waste as well as on canvas, has a painting, “Topography of Home,” in the exhibition.

She told VOA that the recent war has affected her and others in different ways.

“My painting has now significantly changed in terms of strength, in terms of contributing, in terms of I am also here,” she said. “I feel angry, and I am not really rushing into navigating that emotion of anger. I am actually more into dwelling into the question of what now? What can I do? How can I contribute as a diaspora? What is my responsibility as a diaspora, as an artist? … And most importantly, how am I documenting this time at a time when everything is being erased, everything is being disrupted.”

Ibrahim Ahmad, an award-winning Sudanese filmmaker who, like many, was displaced because of the war, said it was important to be at the event to connect with people that he used to know in Sudan, share knowledge with the new ones and together process the new realities.

And like many, he said he hadn’t expected the war to drag on for so long. That is one of the reasons that the only thing he took with him when he fled was his phone, he said.

“But I’ve lost everything,” he said, “because … everyone thought that it would end soon.”

Ahmad said that he has been building his filmmaking and video production business for the past five years, and that while it’s hard to put a value on everything he lost, the equipment he left behind was worth between $40,000 and $50,000.

The United States and European Union on Thursday criticised remarks about the World War Two persecution of Jews and antisemitism by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

In a statement, the EU’s diplomatic service said the 87-year-old Abbas’s remarks, made in late August to a meeting of his Fatah movement’s Revolutionary Council, were “false and grossly misleading”.

Deborah Lipstadt, U.S. Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism, called for an immediate apology for what she said were Abbas’s “hateful, antisemitic remarks”.

There was no immediate comment from Abbas. Members of his Fatah party did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment.

In his remarks Abbas said Jews were targeted by Nazi Germany because of their “social role” rather than their religion.

“This has been explained by many Jewish authors. When they said that Hitler killed the Jews for being Jews, and that Europe hates the Jews because they were Jews, no. It was clearly explained that they fought (the Jews) because of their social role and not their religion,” Abbas said.

Abbas has frequently drawn the anger of the international community with remarks about the Nazi Holocaust, in which around 6 million Jews were murdered, as well as members of groups such as the Roma community, people with disabilities and those from sexual and gender minorities.

In a statement, the foreign affairs spokesman for the EU, one of the major donors to the Palestinian Authority, called the remarks “an insult to the millions of victims of the Holocaust and their families”.

“Such historical distortions are inflammatory, deeply offensive, can only serve to exacerbate tensions in the region and serve no one’s interests,” he said. “They play into the hands of those who do not want a two-state solution, which President Abbas has repeatedly advocated for.”

The Palestinian Authority exercises limited self-rule in territory occupied by Israel since the 1967 Middle East war and where Palestinians seek to establish an independent state.

Abbas’ remarks were also condemned by Germany’s ambassador to Israel, Steffen Seibert, who said in a post on the social messaging platform X: “The Palestinians deserve to hear the historical truth from their leader, not such distortions.”

During a visit to Berlin last year, Abbas was rebuked by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz after he accused Israel of committing “50 Holocausts” in response to a question about the 50th anniversary of the attack on the Israeli team at the 1972 Munich Olympics by Palestinian militants.

Abbas has rebuffed repeated demands from the Palestinian public to step down during his two decades in power.

(NewsNation) — Hundreds of law enforcement officers, along with police dogs and advanced technology are tirelessly working to locate the escape from a suburban Philadelphia prison as the manhunt stretches into its seventh day.

Surveillance footage from earlier this week captured Danelo Cavalcante walking north and then south an hour later, indicating his unfamiliarity with the area and the possibility of him being disoriented.

Pennsylvania State Police are indicating that their ongoing manhunt is taking a toll on Cavalcante. Despite the challenges, the police maintain their confidence that he will eventually make a mistake.

“I’m quite confident that we’re wearing him down,” said Pennsylvania State Police Lt. Col. George Bivens. “Regardless of the location, the background that a person comes from, these are hot, humid temperatures; he’s not living in shelter. Has no regular means of obtaining food other than if he’s able to break in someplace or scavenge something. So it’s a difficult existence out there for someone that’s trying to do this. That will definitely take its toll.”

While some schools reopened Thursday, residents in the suburban Pocopson Township region still live in fear as the manhunt for Cavalacante continues.

Schools were closed on Tuesday and Wednesday due to additional sightings of Cavalcante.

Cavalcante was spotted hiding from law enforcement in a wooded area west of Philadelphia. The weeklong manhunt has significantly eroded the sense of safety in the area, and residents are being advised to lock their cars and homes to avoid encountering this dangerous fugitive.

His last known sighting was near a creek in the area on Tuesday night, and the search area continues to expand.

Meanwhile, there are emerging details about the extraordinary method he used to escape from prison.

Chester County Prison officials announced Wednesday that Calvacante made a brazen escape from the prison’s jail yard by scaling a wall, climbing over razor wire and jumping from a roof.

The acting warden of the Chester County Prison said a guard in an observation tower has been put on administrative leave.

Cavalcante has been spotted five times since he escaped from jail on Aug. 31. He was awaiting transfer to serve a life sentence in state prison. A jury convicted Cavalcante of murdering his girlfriend in 2021. He’s also wanted in his native Brazil over a killing.

Prison officials have acknowledged the need for enhanced security measures following the initial escape attempt, stating their intention to fully enclose the outdoor recreation areas.

A 420,000 reward is being offered for information that leads to the arrest of Cavalcante.

A U.S. Treasury statement said the blacklisted targets included “key actors involved in management and procurement” for Trickbot, which it said has ties to Russian intelligence services.

Treasury undersecretary Brian Nelson said in a statement, “The United States is resolute in our efforts to combat ransomware and respond to disruptions of our critical infrastructure.”

Ransomware refers to the demand for payments to unlock computer services that cybercriminals have frozen.

British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said the sanctions are an attempt to disrupt Trickbot’s business model and strip officials of their anonymity.

“We know who they are and what they are doing,” he said in a statement. 

British officials said the Trickbot group had extorted at least $180 million from people around the world to restore their computer services.

In conjunction with the sanctions, which block any assets the Trickbot officials have in the United States and Britain, the U.S. Justice Department unsealed indictments against nine individuals in the gang.

The U.S. said that in one instance, the Trickbot group used ransomware against three medical facilities in the midwestern state of Minnesota, “disrupting their computer networks and telephones, and causing a diversion of ambulances.”

The U.S. said Trickbot workers “publicly gloated over the ease of targeting the medical facilities and the speed in which ransoms had been paid to the group.” 

His remarks came after a New York Times report that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un plans to travel to Russia later this month to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss an arms trade. Moscow is seeking more weapon supplies from Pyongyang to be used in its war on Ukraine.

In return, Kim is interested in Russia providing advanced technology for satellites and nuclear-powered submarines, according to the report.

South Korean officials and analysts say if North Korea is able to receive such advanced technology from Russia, it would elevate the threat level posed to South Korea and its allies.

“North Korea’s nuclear and missile development is a serious violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions,” Yoon said. “It is an existential threat that can target and strike all nations participating in today’s meeting.”

Yoon is in Indonesia this week attending the East Asia Summit, a premier forum for strategic dialogue in the Indo-Pacific region that includes leaders from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN.

“North Korea wants high tech military technologies with which they can build satellites, nuclear submarines, miniaturized nuclear warheads,” said Jaechun Kim, who is dean of Sogang University’s Graduate School of International Studies. “It also needs intercontinental ballistic missile [ICBM] technologies, such as atmospheric reentry and multiple-warheads technology.

“Russia will not give them all, but it can give some. Transfer of such technologies will pose significant threats not just to South Korea but also to the United States,” Kim told VOA on Thursday.

Others suggest the Southeast Asian bloc has some leverage over North Korea to dissuade it from providing arms to Russia for it to use against Ukraine.

Nine of the 10 member states of ASEAN maintain diplomatic ties with North Korea, except for Malaysia.

What leverage?

“A promise from ASEAN and its members that if North Korea provides Russia with military assistance for its war in Ukraine, North Korea would be sanctioned by ASEAN and its members, with the possibility of being expelled from ASEAN,” said former Ambassador Joseph DeTrani, who was the special envoy for Six Party Talks from 2003 to 2006.

“On the positive side: If North Korea does not provide military assistance to Russia, ASEAN will work with the U.N. to lift certain sanctions affecting the people of North Korea and, thus, provide more economic development assistance to North Korea,” DeTrani told VOA in an email.

Professor Park Won-gon, who teaches North Korean Studies at Ewha Womans University, said the United States, South Korea and Japan should “put more emphasis on ASEAN” to stop North Korea from further provocation.

“We all see in the past couple of years that the United Nations Security Council could not simply do anything meaningful to stop North Korea’s nuclear development because Russia and China have exercised their veto powers,” he told VOA.

North Korea’s founding anniversary

Saturday marks the 75th anniversary of the founding of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, or DPRK, North Korea’s official name. Scheduled celebrations include a military parade.

China said a delegation led by Chinese Vice Premier Liu Guozhong will visit North Korea to participate in related events.

“We, the Korean government, are closely monitoring major issues related to the situation on the Korean Peninsula, including exchanges between China and North Korea,” said South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Lim Soo-suk in a briefing on Thursday. “We hope that China-North Korea relations will move toward contributing to peace and stability of the Korean Peninsula.”

Some observers, including Park, said the relatively “lower level” of the Chinese delegation is a reflection that a closer military alignment between Pyongyang and Moscow is “bothersome” to Beijing.

“Comparing to five years ago when DPRK celebrated the 70th anniversary of its establishment, China sent a permanent member of its Politburo — which is a very high position because all of the permanent members of Chinese Communist Party’s Politburo are equivalent to the prime minister’s level,” he said.

In 2018, China dispatched its third-highest ranking official, Li Zhanshu, to North Korea.

Other Seoul-based experts said North Korea seeks separate strategic goals from China and Russia.

“From Kim Jong Un’s point of view, the idea is to build economic cooperation with China and the military with Russia, as seen from the last Victory Day and the coming September 9 event,” Professor Yang Moo-jin from the University of North Korean Studies told VOA.

In July, Kim personally received Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu as Pyongyang celebrated its self-proclaimed “Victory Day.”

Lee Juhyun contributed to this report.

Emi Tuyetnhi Tran examines the research for NBC. (July 2023)