U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with leaders of the European Union on Friday, pledging with them to keep pressuring Russia with sanctions in response to its invasion of Ukraine, saying Russia’s aggression is a threat relevant to the entire world.
Following a similar meeting with NATO allies in Brussels, Blinken attended a special EU foreign ministers meeting. Speaking to reporters ahead of the meeting, the top U.S. diplomat said what is at risk with Russia’s invasion — along with the lives of Ukrainians — are fundamental principles of peace and security that the world established during two world wars, which Russian President Vladimir Putin “is egregiously violating every single day.”
Following the ministerial meeting, Blinken and European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen met with reporters.
Von der Leyen ran through a series of sanctions on Russia’s financial system, which she said would cut off Russia’s central bank from a significant share of its reserves to bolster the plummeting ruble, the nation’s currency. As a result, the bank has had to raise interest rates by 20%, driving up inflation.
Action against commercial banks
Meanwhile, the country’s commercial banks have been cut off from global markets and from SWIFT, the worldwide interbank communications system, curtailing their ability to finance the economy.
Unfortunately and tragically, Blinken said, the war in Ukraine is not likely to be over soon, but the measures Von der Leyen announced must be sustained “until it stops, until the war is over, [and] the Russian forces leave.” He said both U.S. and EU officials were committed to doing that.
Blinken said Russia’s actions could not go unanswered.
“If we allow those principles to be violated with impunity, then we’re opening a Pandora’s box in every corner of the world for this to happen again and again and again,” he said.
Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who met with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in Brussels, said NATO allies are not seeking conflict with Russia, but they are ready for it if it comes.
Speaking to reporters ahead of Friday’s NATO foreign ministers’ meeting, Blinken added that the alliance “will defend every inch of NATO territory,” if it comes to that.
Stoltenberg condemned Russia’s overnight assault on civilians and Ukraine, particularly the shelling of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, near the Ukrainian city of Enerhodar.
He said the attack “demonstrates the recklessness of this war and the importance of ending it, and the importance of Russia withdrawing all its troops and engaging in good faith in diplomatic efforts.”
Stoltenberg emphasized NATO is a defensive alliance and is not seeking conflict with Russia. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy repeatedly has called for NATO to establish no-fly zone around Ukraine since the invasion began, but NATO allies have resisted a step that would draw them into a direct war with Russia.
The secretary general noted Friday there should be “no misunderstanding about our commitment to defend and protect all allies.” He said they have increased the presence of NATO forces in eastern Europe “as a defensive presence.”
NATO’s chief added that U.S. and Canadian troops have joined their European allies in the region and are “stepping up with more presence in the eastern part of the Alliance, on land, at sea and in the air.”
The secretary general noted NATO foreign ministers are meeting to coordinate and consult the alliance’s response to Russian invasion of Ukraine and consider its long-term implications.
Some information for this report came from the Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
China continues to be the top global source of counterfeit products, but it is far from the only major concern regarding pirated goods, according to the annual notorious-markets list released Thursday by the office of the U.S. trade representative.
The coronavirus pandemic, with its resulting restrictions on tourism and movement, has meant some markets known for openly selling counterfeit goods currently have no or very few problematic stores doing business, according to the report.
Such notorious venues include the MBK Shopping Mall, Patpong Street Market and Soi Nana in Thailand, noted the USTR.
Also on the list are other physical markets around the world with long-standing reputations as hubs for fake goods. These include the Central Market in Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh; Anfu Market in China’s Fujian province, which specializes in counterfeit shoes; Beijing’s Silk Market; Palika Bazaar and Tank Road in New Delhi, India; the 80-square-block Tepito in Mexico City; and Moscow’s Dubrovka Market, with an estimated 700 vendors.
Toronto mall
The problem is not limited to the developing world. Toronto’s Pacific Mall, regarded as the largest indoor Asian shopping mall in North America, is back on the annual list after cleaning up its act several years ago, according to officials.
The USTR said the mall’s management made efforts, along with law enforcement raids on sellers of alleged counterfeit goods, but since 2018, sales of bogus items have surged “with Pacific Mall management not taking the necessary measures against sellers and law enforcement not prioritizing actions against counterfeit trade. Counterfeit luxury goods, apparel and electronics are reportedly on display or hidden under tables or in back rooms but available upon request.”
Some shops trafficking in fake items have been transitioning from physical stores to e-commerce platforms “and using the physical storefronts to facilitate the fulfillment of online sales,” said the USTR report. “Online sellers of counterfeit goods have also increased efforts to evade the anti-counterfeiting processes and systems established by governments and e-commerce platforms by, for example, using social media advertisements and influencers, hidden links and drop shipping schemes.”
FILE – The logo of Chinese online group discounter Pinduoduo is seen next to its mobile phone app in this photo taken July 17, 2018.
Among the most problematic websites: the Baidu Wangpan cloud storage service in China, for sharing pirated movies and television programs; Bukalapak, one of the largest e-commerce markets in Indonesia; e-commerce website and mobile app IndiaMART; Chinese social commerce app Pinduoduo; and the mobile app known as the Netflix of piracy, Popcorn Time.
One of the most vocal in promoting piracy remains the legacy site ThePirateBay.
“Authorities in Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom have issued orders blocking access to this site,” the USTR said. “Right holders report that this site does not respond to any notice-and-takedown requests.”
WeChat
The annual report scrutinizes the WeChat instant messaging platform, which has more than 1 billion active monthly users.
“WeChat, along with Weixin, which is the China-facing version of WeChat, is reportedly viewed as one of the largest platforms for counterfeit goods in China,” according to the USTR review.
Also of significant concern to the USTR: Rapidgator, which is one of the largest file-sharing websites in the world, and e-commerce platform Taobao, of China’s Alibaba Group.
“The global trade in counterfeit and pirated goods undermines critical U.S. innovation and creativity and harms American workers,” said U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai in a statement. “This illicit trade also increases the vulnerability of workers involved in the manufacturing of counterfeit goods to exploitative labor practices, and the counterfeit goods can pose significant risks to the health and safety of consumers and workers around the world.”
From a thrilling late touchdown drive that gave the Rams a 23-20 win over the Bengals, to Eminem taking a knee and Meadow Soprano driving an electric Chevy, here are the highlights from Sunday’s Super Bowl 56.
How the Rams won the Super Bowl
Down 20-16, the Rams went on a 15-play drive capped by Matthew Stafford’s 1-yard touchdown pass to Super Bowl MVP Cooper Kupp for the go-ahead score with 1:25 left.
Kupp’s touchdown catch came after three costly penalties on the Bengals’ defense.
After both teams were flagged only twice in the first 58 minutes, the Bengals were called for penalties on three consecutive plays.
Super Bowl ads mixed celebrities and nostalgia
Advertisers shelled out up to $7 million for 30-second spots during the Super Bowl, and they used their time to try to entertain with humor, star power and nostalgia.
T-Mobile reunited Scrubs stars Zach Braff and Donald Faison, while Verizon recreated the 1996 movie The Cable Guy to tout its high-speed 5G network.
And Chevrolet recreated the opening sequence to The Sopranos to tout its all-electric Chevy Silverado.
This time, however, Jamie-Lynn Sigler, who played Meadow Soprano on the show that ran from 1999 to 2007, is in the driver’s seat instead of the Sopranos patriarch played by the late James Gandolfini.
An epic and edgy Super Bowl halftime show
50 Cent made a surprise upside-down entrance at the Super Bowl halftime show, and Eminem dramatically took a knee.
Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Mary J. Blige, Eminem and Kendrick Lamar spit a fiery medley of their hits.
As his rendition of “Lose Yourself” ended, Eminem took a knee and held his head in his hand in apparent tribute to former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who took a knee during the national anthem to protest police brutality during the 2016 season.
The NFL denied reports that it was attempting to stop Eminem from making the gesture.
The pregame national anthem
Mickey Guyton told The Associated Press this week that she’d earned the nickname “Quickie Mickey” for singing The Star Spangled Banner in a tight 1:30. She sang it in about 1:50 Sunday, 15 seconds over the projected mark of 1:35 set by oddsmakers.
Who else performed at the Super Bowl pregame?
About 40 minutes before kickoff, the Rams and Bengals lined the end zones and looked up at the big screen while outside, next to SoFi Stadium’s lake, gospel duo Mary Mary and the LA Phil’s Youth Orchestra Los Angeles performed Lift Every Voice and Sing, a song that’s known as the unofficial Black national anthem.
Singer Jhené Aiko brought a novel combination of R&B and harp to her rendition of America the Beautiful.
And The Rock grabbed a mic on the field and put on his old wrestling persona to introduce the teams just before kickoff, in the style of an announcer before a big fight.
The Los Angeles Rams staged a late comeback Sunday night, scoring a touchdown in the final two minutes to defeat the Cincinnati Bengals 23-20 in the National Football League’s Super Bowl.
After holding a 13-10 lead at halftime, the Rams fell behind quickly in the second half, yielding a 75-yard touchdown to Bengals receiver Tee Higgins.
Cincinnati went into the final quarter ahead 20-16, but could not add to its lead.
With just over six minutes left in the game, Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford led a 15-play, five-minute drive that covered 79 yards and finished with the game-winning one-yard touchdown pass to receiver Cooper Kupp.
General view of the interior of SoFi Stadium from an elevated position during Super Bowl 56 football game between the Los Angeles Rams and the Cincinnati Bengals on Sunday, Feb. 13, 2022 in Inglewood, California. (AP Photo/Kyusung Gong)
The Bengals were only able to get to midfield in their last-gasp drive before turning the ball over on downs, setting off celebrations on the Rams’ sideline.
Kupp was named the game’s most valuable player, finishing with eight catches for 92 yards and two touchdowns.
“I don’t feel deserving of this,” Kupp said when asked about the award after the game. “The guys standing here challenged me, they pushed me. I am just so grateful.”
Los Angeles coach Sean McVay became the youngest head coach to win a Super Bowl at age 36.
The Rams, who returned to Los Angeles in 2016 after playing more than 20 years in St. Louis, are the second team to ever win a Super Bowl in their home stadium, following Tampa Bay’s win at home last year. Sunday’s victory was the franchise’s first Super Bowl win since the 1999 season.
The Bengals were playing in their first Super Bowl since the 1988 season.
A White House review found credible evidence that top scientist Dr. Eric Lander violated its “Safe and Respectful Workplace Policy,” but the administration plans to keep him on the job after giving him counseling.
An internal review last year, prompted by a workplace complaint, found evidence that Lander, the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy and science adviser to President Joe Biden, bullied staffers and treated them disrespectfully. That put him at odds with Biden’s day-one directive that he expected “honesty and decency” from all who worked for his administration and would fire anyone who shows disrespect to others “on the spot.”
The White House said senior administration officials had met with Lander about his actions and management of the office. It said Lander and OSTP are required to take certain corrective actions as part of the review.
“White House leadership met with Dr. Lander to discuss the seriousness of the matter and the President’s expectation that all staff interactions be conducted with respect,” the White House said. “We take this incredibly seriously and we are taking swift action to ensure that it doesn’t happen again.”
The White House said the review did not find “credible evidence” of gender-based discrimination and that the reassignment of the staffer who filed the original complaint was “deemed appropriate.”
On Friday, Lander issued an apology to staffers in his office, acknowledging, “I have spoken to colleagues within OSTP in a disrespectful or demeaning way.”
“I am deeply sorry for my conduct,” he added. “I especially want to apologize to those of you who I treated poorly, or were present at the time.”
Lander, whose position was elevated to Cabinet-rank by Biden, appeared prominently with the president last week when he relaunched his “Cancer Moonshot” program to marshal federal resources behind research and treatment for cancer diseases.
The founding director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Lander is a mathematician and molecular biologist. He was lead author of the first paper announcing the details of the human genome, the so-called “book of life.”
His confirmation to his role in the Biden administration was delayed for months as senators sought more information about meetings he had with the late Jeffrey Epstein, a disgraced financier who was charged with sex trafficking before his suicide. Lander also was criticized for downplaying the contributions of two Nobel Prize-winning female scientists.
At his confirmation hearing last year, Lander apologized for a 2016 article he wrote that downplayed the work of the female scientists. At the hearing, he also called Epstein “an abhorrent individual. ″
Lander said he “understated the importance of those key advances″ by biochemists Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna. The two were later awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
The findings against Lander were first reported by Politico.
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Associated Press writer Matthew Daly contributed to this report.
A former senior Afghan official says he has answered questions in a U.S. inquiry into allegations that former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani took $150 million in cash with him when he abruptly left Kabul last year as the Taliban took control.
Hamdullah Mohib, who served as Ghani’s national security adviser, says he voluntarily met with John Sopko, Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), in December at his office in Arlington, Virginia, to answer questions about corruption in the U.S.-backed Afghan government.
“I also gave [SIGAR] my bank accounts and details of all my assets,” said Mohib, who left Afghanistan in the same plane with Ghani and stayed with him in Abu Dhabi for a while. He told VOA that he would continue to cooperate with SIGAR investigations.
The U.S. was the largest donor to the Afghan government until it collapsed, and SIGAR has been tasked by Congress to investigate allegations that Ghani took millions in cash as he fled Afghanistan last August.
“The fact that we’re looking at those allegations doesn’t mean that they’re true or not,” Sopko said at an Atlantic Council event last week.
In addition to the cash flight allegations, which were first reported by the Russian Embassy in Kabul, Sopko said his investigators were looking into several related issues. “Why did the government of Afghanistan fall so quickly? Why did the military collapse so quickly? What happened? All the weapons? What happened to all the money that we were sending right up to the end — money, fuel, things like that.”
SIGAR is expected to find answers to these questions and present a classified report to Congress in March or April this year. There will also be a public report which will be released later, Sopko said.
FILE – Hamdullah Mohib, who served national security adviser to former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, speaks at a meeting in an undated photo at an unidentified location. (Source – former Afghan government)
Ghani not interviewed
Fazel Fazly, another close aide to Ghani who fled with him in the same convoy and now lives in Sweden, told VOA the former Afghan president has not yet been interviewed by SIGAR. “I’ve been in touch with the president,” said Fazly, adding that he also had not yet received inquiries from SIGAR.
In a video message released three days after he left Afghanistan, Ghani strongly rejected the reports that he took cash with him, and later called on the United Nations to launch an independent investigation into the matter.
Like Mohib, Fazly said he is willing to cooperate with SIGAR to prove he was not involved in any corruption, while at the same time admitting corruption infested all layers of the former Afghan government.
“It’s insane to say there was no corruption,” Fazly said. “We expect SIGAR to do objective, comprehensive and meaningful investigations to uncover the truth about corruption in Afghanistan.”
Mohib and Fazley, widely reported to be closer to Ghani than any other Afghan officials, both said allegations that Ghani fled with sacks of dollars were aimed at maligning the former Afghan president as a corrupt U.S. ally.
“Moscow’s relations with President Ghani were terrible and even some Central Asian leaders called him a Western imperialist,” Fazley said.
The Cash
Fazly and Mohib both said they were unaware ofthe existence of large volumes of cash in the Afghan Presidential Palace.
While Ghani’s predecessor, Hamid Karzai, confirmed that his office received bags of cash from the CIA and from the Iran government, Ghani said on multiple occasions that his office never received cash from the CIA or any other intelligence agency.
Ghani claims he had transferred his executive authority over state funds to a government committee and had no power over U.S. and NATO contracting processes for Afghan military funding, according to Mohib.
Others say the president did not need to personally receive the assistance funds in order to make use of them.
“There was money in the Afghanistan Bank,” said Sayed Ikram Afzali, director of a local corruption watchdog Integrity Watch Afghanistan.
The Afghanistan Bank building — headquarters of the state-run central bank — is adjacent to the Presidential Palace compound in central Kabul where all funds, liquidities and highly valuable items were stored.
Fazel Fazly, another close aide to former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, speaks in an undated photo at an unidentified location, with a portrait of Ghani behind him. (Source – former Afghan government)
“Moving cash from the central bank to the palace was not a hard thing to do, especially when the governor of the bank was a Ghani henchman,” said Afzali, adding that Ghani had kept Ajmal Ahmady, a U.S. citizen, as governor of the central bank even after his nomination to the post was repeatedly rejected by parliament.
Ahmady, now a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School who leads a study group entitled “Afghanistan—What Happened & How to Engage the Taliban,” did not respond to an email inquiry.
“Corruption in Afghanistan did not take place only for one day, and we must not be solely fixated on what happened on August 15. Large amounts of money were taken out of Afghanistan for so many years and those involved in high-level corruption were not waiting until the last day of the republic to move physical currency out of the country,” Afzali said.
Accountability
From 2001 to the end of 2021, the U.S. spent more than $2 trillion on the Afghan war, including some $140 billion spent on development projects, according to the Costs of War project at Brown University’s Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs.
At least $15.5 billion of the U.S. development funds went to “waste, fraud and abuse,” SIGAR’s investigations have found.
“Systemic corruption perpetuated an implosion of the system in Afghanistan,” conceded Hamdullah Mohib.
Like others, Mohib said he was concerned that “truly corrupt” individuals who enriched themselves through the U.S.-bankrolled funding and contracting systems in Afghanistan now roam free in different parts of the world.
Since the fall of the Afghan government, tens of thousands of Afghans, among them former government officials and contractors, have sought refuge outside Afghanistan.
There are now growing calls, even by officials of the former Afghan government, for some sort of accountability by their own former colleagues.
“[Former government officials] must be held accountable and tried,” Naseer Ahmad Faiq, chargé d’affaires of Afghanistan’s mission at the United Nations, told a Security Council meeting last week. “It is not fair that 38 million people [in Afghanistan] are starving and mothers sell their children to survive but these corrupt former government officials live in luxurious houses and villas in different countries in Europe and the U.S.”
SIGAR’s investigations have led to criminal charges and trials of some individuals and companies, both U.S. and Afghan, in U.S. federal courts. It’s unclear whether SIGAR would press criminal charges against former Afghan officials, who were previously commended as U.S. partners, if found guilty of fraud and corruption.
“We’re looking at more people than President Ghani about taking money out of the country at the end,” John Sopko said in response to a VOA question.
El «Príncipe» escaló nuevamente varios puestos en la lista luego de alcanzar la final del Challenger de Salinas 2.
Nueva actualización del ranking que la ATP elabora semana tras semana y con dispar suerte para los principales tenistas chilenos en el circuito.
Por ejemplo, Cristian Garin retrocedió tres posiciones para situarse 25°, después de quedar eliminado en los cuartos de final del ATP de Estoril y no defender la mitad de los puntos por su título en Múnich en 2019.
La primera raqueta nacional debutará este lunes en el Masters 1000 de Madrid, a eso de las 14:30 horas, frente al experimentado español Fernando Verdasco (71°), ex 7 del mundo.
En tanto, Nicolás Jarry tuvo otro meteórico ascenso, pues ahora subió 43 puestos para ubicarse 327° del orbe tras alcanzar la final del Challenger de Salinas 2. Y el «Príncipe» podría seguir escalando si gana la definición este lunes ante el ecuatoriano Emilio Gómez (204°), cuyo duelo fue suspendido por falta de luz cuando iban 6-4, 6-7 y 3 iguales.
Por su lado, Alejandro Tabilo cayó seis lugares para quedar 167°, mientras que Tomás Barrios retrocedió uno y ahora es 241°.
Respecto al top ten, no hubo modificaciones y la lista sigue liderada por el serbio Novak Djokovic, y con el español Rafael Nadal y el ruso Daniil Medvedev completando el podio.
TOP TEN
1° Novak Djokovic (Serbia) 11.963 puntos (0) 2° Rafael Nadal (España) 9.810 (0) 3° Daniil Medvedev (Rusia) 9.700 (0) 4° Dominic Thiem (Austria) 8.365 (0) 5° Stefanos Tsitsipas (Grecia) 7.890 (0) 6° Alexander Zverev (Alemania) 6.125 (0) 7° Andrey Rublev (Rusia) 6.000 (0) 8° Roger Federer (Suiza) 5.875 (0) 9° Diego Schwartzman (Argentina) 3.765 (0) 10° Matteo Berrettini (Italia) 3.493 (0)
