The Government has expressed this Tuesday its concern about the evolution of the pandemic in Spain, which reaches a record in accumulated incidence and hospital occupation is progressively rising, and has shown its support for the autonomous communities that have approved or plan restrictions for New Year’s Eve . The Interterritorial Council could debate tomorrow the reduction of the quarantines of close contacts and of the asymptomatic
The Minister of Territorial Policy and Government Spokesperson Isabel Rodríguez (d) and the Minister of Labor Yolanda Díaz upon their arrival at the press conference after the weekly meeting of the Council of Ministers held at the Palacio de la Moncloa in Madrid, this Tuesday . EFE / Juan Carlos Hidalgo
“The Government endorses and supports the autonomous communities,” said its spokesperson, Isabel Rodríguez, at the press conference after the Council of Ministers, when asked about the restrictions to contain the spread of the virus aimed at limiting capacity, business hours and the hotel industry before New Year’s Eve and New Year.
“We follow with great attention, with concern, the evolution of the indicators”, said the spokeswoman for the Government.
Galicia and Euskadi are considering restrictions for the moment and Cantabria has already approved them, where from today nightlife will not be able to open and the hotel industry will have a capacity of 75% of its capacity in 50 of the 102 municipalities at a high level (3) of risk by contagion of covid-19, including all those with more than 5,000 inhabitants.
In addition, the Government of Aragon plans to publish an order this Tuesday to bring forward from Wednesday the closure of catering establishments at midnight and nightlife establishments at 02:00 until January 15, with a limitation in both cases of ten diners per table and prohibition of consuming standing.
The Government spokeswoman recalled that only 5 days ago the Chief Executive, Pedro Sánchez, met with the regional presidents. “Co-governance, the distribution of powers, has worked in this country,” said the minister, who defends the need to “adapt each response” to the situation of each territory.
Because, as he has said, they are the ones who best know the reality of the pandemic and the healthcare situation in their territory.
He has pointed out that the current data shows that in those groups where the injection of the booster dose had begun, it is in those that are least affected by the coronavirus and therefore he has requested that “the commitment of the autonomous communities and the Government” must address to intensify vaccination, which, however, must be accompanied by caution.
Above all, “given the incidence”, he has asked to be more careful in these days of festivities and family and friendly gatherings.
In addition, he has assured that the Government is willing to continue dialoguing with the autonomies and in this sense has alluded to the fact that the talks will continue tomorrow in the Interterritorial Health Council, which brings together the Minister of Health and the regional councilors of the branch every week .
Andalusia and Madrid put the reduction of quarantines on the table
The Andalusian Minister of Health, Jesús Aguirre, has reported this Tuesday that reducing quarantines in close contacts without symptoms is being studied, an approach that has also been put on the table by the Madrid Deputy Minister of Health Care and Public Health, Antonio Zapatero, They warn that the sixth wave needs to be tackled with different measures.
In Spain now these quarantines are only mandatory for unvaccinated people who have been close contacts without symptoms.
Aguirre explained at a press conference after the Andalusian Governing Council that the omicron variant causes more infections, but with less clinical incidence, so experts are approaching this sixth wave “in a different way”.
What is being analyzed is whether, for example, it is necessary for a close contact without symptoms to quarantine for ten days, if all contacts have to undergo a PCR or a test, or if the traceability of the cases should be left alone in those not vaccinated or who have symptoms, he has detailed.
He explained that only this week 250,000 tests have been carried out, which represents a million in a month, a “very large volume of personnel” within the Andalusian Health Service (SAS), so “it must be assessed if it has been efficient” .
According to Aguirre, these issues have already been discussed with the Ministry of Health, since this wave must be approached differently and that is why they are trying to “articulate the means we have within reality”.
For his part, the Madrid deputy minister recalled that the American Center for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC) has raised the possibility of reducing the isolation or quarantine of asymptomatic patients from ten to five days and monitoring with a mask five days after.
“The management of the pandemic now cannot be the same as it was a year ago or a few months ago due to the vaccination status of the population and the clinical and epidemiological characteristics of this variant. Changes are taking place in the international context” , pointed out the deputy minister, who has predicted that in the future there will be important changes in the management of the pandemic.
Tomorrow, Wednesday, the Interterritorial Health Council meets, where the regional councilors and the Ministry of Health will have the opportunity to discuss how to deal with a sixth wave that has raised the incidence of covid transmission well above a thousand cases per 100,000 inhabitants , a maximum not reached in Spain throughout the pandemic.
Asked about this matter at the press conference after the Council of Ministers, the Government spokesperson, Isabel Rodríguez, has avoided confirming whether the quarantines will be shortened and has referred to the technicians and to tomorrow’s meeting of the Interterritorial Health Council. As he has assured, “any decision” that the institutions adopt regarding the pandemic is made according to the “rigor of the technical teams.”
VOA responds to Russian government plans to block VOA Russian website
March 2, 2022
Today the Russian government warned the Voice of America of its intention to block the VOA Russian language service’s news website, www.golosameriki.com, unless it removes coverage of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The Russian government’s media regulator, Roskomnadzor, claims the news site “contains false messages about terrorist attacks or other kind (sic) of information of public concern.”
The media regulator demands that the VOA Russian service remove a news story from its site that provided factual reporting on the second day of the Russian invasion. The article included widely reported facts regarding Russian bombardment of cities, a Russian claim to have captured an airport close to Kyiv, and statements from witnesses as well as reporters inside Ukraine.
“Any attempts to interfere with the free flow of news and information are deeply troubling. We find this order to be in direct opposition to the values of all democratic societies,” says Acting VOA Director Yolanda López.
The warning to VOA follows a broader crackdown on the press by the Russian government. The same regulators also moved to shut down two Russian news organizations that reach large audiences, Ekho Moskvy and Dozhd, as well as Current Time’s website, a joint production of Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
“The Russian people deserve unfettered access to a free press and, therefore, we cannot comply with the Roskomnadzor’s request,” said Acting Director López.
About VOA
Washington, D.C. — Voice of America reaches a global weekly audience of more than 311.8 million people in 47 languages. VOA programs are delivered on satellite, cable, shortwave, FM, medium wave, streaming audio and video and more than 2,350 media outlets worldwide. It is funded by the U.S. Congress through USAGM.
“With the stubbornness of those of us who remain, it can be achieved much easier”, with this phrase Jamies Valle Macías refers to the coffee production project that he will be part of in Ituango.
This, after the National Government formally acquired the property, already close to two years after the old ETCR San Lucía was transferredfrom Ituango, to the municipality of Mutatá.
He is part of the 47 ex-combatants and their families who advance their reincorporation process in Ituango and of those who, against threats to their safety, made the decision to remain in this municipality in northern Antioquia.
Valle indicated that right now, since the space is a reality, they hope to continue advancing in carrying out their project.
“We look at this site here in the village of El Río, in the Las Mercedes farm and we are very happy to have been able to get here and we hope to continue advancing to be able to make our project a reality, what we want,” said Valle.
It refers to the estate of the Las Mercedes hacienda, of which the National Government acquired the 50 hectares for the consolidation of the productive projects of the 47 ex-combatants and their families.
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We are very happy to have been able to get here and we hope to continue advancing to make our project a reality.
Andrés Felipe Stapper Segrera, director of the Agency for Reincorporation and Normalization (ARN) explained that 30 hectares of this property will be used for planting and renewing coffee plantations, 10 more for planting bananas and the remaining 10 will be used for the construction of a housing project.
On this last point, he clarified that the houses will be for 12 ex-combatants and their families who were part of the former ETCR Santa Lucía who decided to stay and not be part of the concerted transfer process to the rural area of Mutatá advanced in July 2020.
This housing project will be built with resources from the Government of Antioquia.
Precisely, this was one of the issues that Governor Aníbal Gaviria exposed on February 9, during his agenda in Bogotá, before Carlos Ruiz Massieu, UN Representative and Head of the United Nations Verification Mission in Colombia.
(Keep reading: Daniel Quintero affirms that revocation resources will not be certified)
“In the Ituango ETCR, now in the transfer of 12 families of ex-combatants to a farm in Ituango, they will not only have the houses but also the productive projects, with the support of the Mayor’s Office, the Government and the ARN, so we will continue working in conjunction with the United Nations from all fronts,” said Gaviria.
In his turn, Ruiz Massieu stated that one of the concerns of the UN Mission was also that after the transfer, efforts will be made to continue accompanying those who remained in that areaas well as the communities that live in Ituango.
Through @AgenciaTierras The national government acquired 50 hectares of the Las Mercedes estate, in #Ituangofor the consolidation of the productive projects of the 47 ex-combatants and their families who today carry out their reincorporation process in this municipality. pic.twitter.com/mIKfZg6TvR
“The governor was telling me about the efforts being made to support the ex-combatants who stayed in Ituango, for us it is a concern and the work they are doing seems very important to us,” added Ruiz Massieu.
And it is that in June 2020, to the concern for their safety was added that of how to be able to execute the productive projects that they had been carrying out.
“For us it is a very important achievement, since when the people went to Mutatá, we were left without knowing what was going to happen. So, what we did was start to ask, to manage and ask the people who have more knowledge, how to do it, how are we going to do it”, the ex-combatant recalled at his turn.
A special coffee clustering project will be carried out at the Las Mercedes farm, which will also benefit 33 ex-combatants located in other municipalities and in the city of Medellin.
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They will produce, transform and market the grain produced on the farm under their own brand.
The ARN reported that this project will have its technical and financial support, in alliance with the National Federation of Coffee Growers, the Departmental Committee of Coffee Growers, the Government of Antioquia, the Antioquia Secretariat of Agriculture and the Seine.
In Anori they acquired two other properties
Overall, the National Government acquired 100 hectares of extension between the Ituango property and two more that are located in the municipality of Anoríso this impacts 160 people in the reincorporation process.
For now, it is known that the deeds for the La Manga and La Rinconada properties were signed in Bogotá in the first week of February, in addition to the Ituango property, where the old ETCR La Plancha is expected to be relocated.
“In the La Manga and La Rinconada properties, which together add up to 52.34 hectares, we are waiting for the start of the pre-feasibility studies to determine the feasibility of building a definitive housing project, which will allow us to move the old ETCR La Plancha , also located in Anorí, and to benefit about 100 people in the process of reincorporation and their families”, explained Stapper.
We are waiting for the start of the pre-feasibility studies to determine the feasibility of building a housing project
While the studies are being carried out, productive agricultural units will be developed on these two properties.
The reason for this is that being located just 15 minutes from the urban area of Anorí and 300 meters from the road that connects this municipality with Medellín, will improve the marketing of the products obtained.
Currently in Antioquia, 1,319 ex-combatants are advancing their reincorporation process.
Of these, 96 are in the municipality of Anorí and 72 of these live in the former ETCR La Plancha and 24 more in areas surrounding the municipality.
MELISSA ALVAREZ CORREA Editor of THE TIME kelcor@eltiempo.com
Sandra Milena Adarve was happy with a binding machine to make more shoes and generate other jobs in the La Unión neighborhood, in the 16th commune of Cali.
The entrepreneur says that she will improve her production processes.
(You can read: Valle del Cauca awaits start of the Mulaló – Loboguerrero project)
José Mina smiled because he will be able to manufacture more beds for pets and employ more mothers who are heads of households.
They were the joys in the El Pueblo coliseum, where the governor Clara Luz Roldán delivered the first supplies that will reach 2,109 beneficiaries of the program INN Valley in 18 communes of Cali.
The Valle INN fund delivered machinery, equipment and tools to entrepreneurs from four communes (13, 14, 16 and 21, ), with some 18,000 million pesos. “I have to thank the planning committees of each of the communes because from the Government of the Valley we promised to execute some resources in each of the communes of Cali and it was the committees that prioritized some resources for economic development and reactivation. Here we are fulfilling them, in Cali we are going to support more than 2,000 entrepreneurial projects,” said Governor Roldán.
Yesterday’s session was held in communes 13, 14, 16 and 21, in which 350 enterprises are the beneficiaries.
(In context: Valle INN, highlighted by Minhacienda as a model of economic recovery)
A good part of these 350 enterprises do not have a Mercantile Registry of the Chamber of Commerce. The Governor and the secretary of Economic Development of the district administration, Pedro Bravo, explained that this requirement is not necessary to compete and obtain support from Valle INN.
“Many entrepreneurs are informal, that with this project, plus the advice of the Secretariat, they will go to the formal economy,” said Bravo.
In fact, the Cali Chamber of Commerce, which issues commercial registration records, was one of the jurors.
Alex Quebrada cried when he remembered people who lost their businesses under the ‘drop by drop’.
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In the department, the Valle INN program has invested 55,000 million pesos.
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(Superservices won guardianship and will continue to manage Essmar in Santa Marta)
Through a guardianship, the ranchers of La Mojana (Between Bolívar and Sucre) hope that the Ministry of Agriculture opens the platform for the registration of 1,800 members and they can cancel the promised subsidies, as a result of the damage suffered by the floods.
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According to Enrique Martínez, president of the Cattlemen’s Association of La Mojana, the vast majority of the members of the association went bankrupt and could not register their names to receive aid from the National Government.
platform for recognition of all the farmers affected
… could not do anything, only through a court order could the platform be put at the service of the guild again
He said that the registration platform was open for 8 days and 1,800 of the affected ranchers were unable to access the registry.
“Ariel Zambrano, deputy director of the National Risk Management Unit, said that he could not do anything and that only through a court order could the platform be put at the service of the union again,” explained Enrique Martínez.
He pointed out that this is how they agreed to make use of that tool that seeks to open the platform for the recognition of all affected ranchers.
(Also: Public calamity decreed in Montería due to high temperatures and drought)
“There are more than 20,000 head of cattle that were lost during the floods. All the ranchers suffered with the emergency caused by the Cauca River and now it is expected that we will be able to access those resources”, they specified.
controversy over the situation
80,000 cattle are not moved from one place to another in two or three days. This takes time and it was not possible to register all the small farmers who lost everything
The situation suffered by ranchers and the non-registration of the vast majority of small and medium-sized owners in the single registry of the Ministry of Agriculture to receive aid has caused much controversy in the region.
Enrique Martínez, president of the union, said that when the registration platform opened, the ranchers were taking the animals to dry places to avoid further damage and could not register.
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“80,000 cattle are not moved from one place to another in two or three days. This takes time and it was not possible to register all the small ranchers who lost everything, ”he explained.
He also said that the deputy director of the Risk Unit was intransigent with the union, by not wanting to open the registration platform again and telling them that “too bad if they could not register.”
He affirmed that the guardianship was filed by ranchers from Majagual, Guaranda and Sucre, all from the La Mojana sub-region, that it was admitted and that the Ministry of the Interior, the Presidential Council for the Regions, the National Unit for Risk Management and the three municipalities.
They hope that the guardianship in its entirety will be ruled in favor of the ranchers and that they will be able to receive the promised aid.
Francis Xavier Barrios Special for WEATHER sincelejo
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On December 30, China’s state-owned Xinhua News Agency named the Xuzhou “China’s Happiest City” for 2021.
The city in eastern China’s Jiangsu province boasted dramatic economic growth and enlightened city planning, according to Jiangsu.net, resulting in the kind of blossoming that gains nationwide notice in China.
But within days, Xuzhou’s civic pride morphed into mortification when a blogger found a mother of eight chained by the neck to the wall of a hut and exposed to freezing weather. As the Olympic Games progressed in Beijing, the mother’s story went viral, and subsequent missteps by Xuzhou authorities drew local accusations of cover-ups and worldwide outrage.
The mother, Xiao Huamei, appeared in a video on Douyin (Chinese TikTok) shot by a blogger who documents unusual families, in this case, one with eight children, seven of them boys. In the video, behind the alleged father and all the youngsters, Chinese netizens spotted a chained woman.
On January 28, the video went viral. Amid the run-up to Lunar New Year festivities and the Beijing Winter Olympics, shocked netizens demanded answers: Who was this woman? Why was she chained up? How can she have eight kids with her husband given China’s reproductive controls?
Between January 28 and February 10, local authorities issued four reports on the situation. The muddled accounts stirred further public outcry, and many netizens expressed their suspicions that kidnapping and domestic abuse were central to the woman’s case.
Public pressure brought the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to reckoning for a long-hushed-up web of problems, such as the human trafficking resulting from the imbalanced male to female ratio, the result of a cultural preference for boys in a country that restricted families to one child from 1980 to 2013, when the policy began to loosen.
As of Tuesday, China’s social media platform Weibo was censoring the tag “Xiao Huamei,” and while discussion was allowed, the subject has been blocked from the hot topic list.
An official in the CCP Xuzhou Propaganda Unit told VOA Mandarin that authorities were investigating the case.
Understanding of laws banning domestic abuse “is relatively weak in rural parts of China, and there’s a lack of social governance, resulting in human trafficking,” the CCP official, who identified himself only as Mr. Xu, said.
“But we are working on it now. Please give us some space to get a clear picture,” he added.
Four conflicting reports
Xuzhou authorities have issued four contradictory reports since the woman was first seen on video.
County-level authorities issued the first two, which emphasized the woman had been diagnosed as mentally ill and dismissed concerns that she was being trafficked.
In the first report, published January 28, the same day the video went viral in China, authorities said the woman, a local resident, was married to a man named Dong Zhimin. The couple had eight children, said the report, which also stressed she had a serious mental illness.
A January 30 report said the woman was a beggar taken in by Dong’s father in June 1998. Although the local birth planning unit had performed “birth control measures” after the woman bore her first and second child, “both failed due to her physical condition
On February 7, city-level authorities reversed the second report and gave the woman’s name as Xiao Huamei, or “Little Plum Blossom,” which in Chinese sounds more like a nickname than a proper name.
This report, the third, said the woman came from a village in southern China’s Yunnan province, and in 1996, her mother had asked a woman identified only as Ms. Sang to take her daughter to Jiangsu province for treatment of her mental illness. The daughter disappeared, and Ms. Sang failed to inform Xiao’s parents or the local police.
Chinese netizens were not buying what the reports were selling.
“So all the previous investigation reports are lies!” one netizen said.
“How do you explain the chain on her neck?” asked another. “And how did they manage to get married if she’s mentally ill?”
“She went missing and no one cared to tell her family? And this is not human trafficking?” yet another netizen opined.
Facing unrelenting public outcry, the Xuzhou authorities on Thursday released the fourth, and latest, report. In it, they state that Xiao Huamei is a victim of human trafficking, and that three people have been arrested in connection with the case, including her husband, Dong, who has been charged with illegal detention. Ms. Sang and her husband have been charged with human trafficking
Continued pressure
Many netizens praised the latest report as a step closer to the truth. Others were angry that the authorities acted only after public outcry. Some still have questions.
“We need follow-ups. What’s her age? Where’s their marriage license?” one netizen asked.
“We need to see proof other than a report. If this is not the final investigation and the results are wrong again, someone needs to be held accountable,” another commenter wrote.
Xu, with the CCP Xuzhou Propaganda Unit, told VOA Mandarin on Friday that social services have the mother and her eight children in care.
Xu said that because of limited time and resources, the first two reports didn’t provide clear picture of the facts, which led to the conclusion that she wasn’t being trafficked.
“But now we are actively pursuing this case. I hope netizens and media can give us some room to conduct the investigation and not pressure us too hard,” he said.
Yao Cheng, a former lieutenant colonel of the CCP’s Navy Command and a women’s right activist, told VOA Mandarin that a third party needs to conduct the investigation to guarantee transparency.
“If the CCP is really confident in itself, it needs to allow other international organizations to conduct the investigation so people will actually believe the result,” he told VOA. Yao volunteered for the New York-based Women’s Rights in China, a nongovernmental organization, from 2007 to 2016.
Yao also pointed out that China’s longtime one-child policy has resulted in an imbalanced male to female ratio, especially in rural areas, where people value sons over daughters.
The “natural sex ratio” at birth is 105 boys for every 100 girls, according to the World Health Organization, because a few extra males are needed to offset their tendency to die at a younger age than females. But in China, the ratio has sometimes exceeded 120 boys for every 100 girls. The result is that in 2020, there were 34.9 million more males than females in China, making it a challenge for men to find a wife, especially in China’s rural areas, where gender imbalance is even greater, according to the BBC.
“The gender imbalance has resulted in more human trafficking of women in China’s rural areas,” Yao said. “Authorities and police usually turn a blind eye to these activities, and some even profit from it.”
Supplies, tools and raw materials, for 1,500 million pesos, were received by 171 entrepreneurs from Palmira by the Valle INN Municipios fund and the Palmira Municipal Mayor’s Office.
(You can read: In El Cerrito, Valle, they transform a campus into ‘Colegio 10’ with works)
The aid is part of the economic reactivation strategy of the departmental administration of Valle del Cauca.
“Every day one sees that there is ingenuity, young people with beautiful ideas and the only thing they need is for us to give them a push. For this reason, this year we are going to continue with our call as well as next year, it is the time in which the greatest support we need is for our entrepreneurs”affirmed the governor of Valle del Cauca, Clara Luz Roldán.
Of the 1,500 million pesos, the Departmental Government contributed 50 percent and the Mayor’s Office of Palmira the other 50 percent.
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Palmira is the municipality that most resources contributed as counterpart in these types of calls.
“We are supporting nascent ventures but also others that are consolidated in the generation of employment, minimarkets, beauty salons and restaurants, with this project the economy of Palmira is reborn,” said the Secretary of Economic Development and Competitiveness of Valle del Cauca, Pedro Andrés Bravo.
The entrepreneur María Cristina Hernández, who received a four-wire filleting machine, two shears and a presser foot, said that she will be able to grow her children’s clothing business to generate employment in Palmira.
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BOGOTA COLOMBIA). Thursday, February 10, 2022 (RPTV NEWS AGENCY). In El Charco, Nariño, a meeting is held between representatives of the National Government, headed by the Vice Minister of Defense, Sandra Alzate, with peasants from 85 villages in the rural area of this municipality located on the Pacific coast of Nariño, to try to find him. an immediate way out of the strike advanced by more than 5,000 peasants who ask the Army to end the stigmatization and withdraw from their villages because they fear falling in the middle of the crossfire in a possible confrontation with the FARC dissidents.
Apart from this situation, the workers of the El Charco mayor’s office began an indefinite strike that rejects the appointment of the third mayor in less than six months as manager. The officials assure that the new burgomaster is not a native of the municipality and that nobody knows him.
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The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration retrieved multiple boxes of records — including “love letters” from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un — from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort that had been improperly removed from the White House, a report said Monday.
The documents and mementos — which included correspondence from former U.S. President Barack Obama — should have been turned over at the end of Trump’s term under the Presidential Records Act.
But the agency did not get hold of them until last month, according to The Washington Post, citing unnamed sources. A former Trump aide quoted by the paper said they didn’t think Trump had acted with criminal intent.
The former president, waxing rhapsodic about his relationship with Kim, told a West Virginia rally in 2018: “We fell in love. No, really. He wrote me beautiful letters.”
The comment prompted the media, as well as Trump supporters and opponents alike, to dub the unusual correspondence the Trump-Kim “love letters.”
The recovery of the boxes has raised questions about Trump’s adherence to presidential records laws enacted after the 1970s Watergate scandal that require Oval Office occupants to preserve records related to administration activity.
Trump lost his bid last month to stop the Archives from releasing diaries, visitor logs, speech drafts and other White House documents to the House committee investigating the 2021 U.S. Capitol riot.
Some of the papers handed over had been “torn up by former President Trump” and taped back together, the Archives revealed, adding that it had also received a number of records that were still in pieces.
“It’s all a pristine example of Trump’s approach to the Presidency, namely that the vast power exists for him and not for the American people, to whom these records in fact belong,” former deputy assistant attorney general Harry Litman said on Twitter.
AFP reached out to the National Archives and Trump’s office for comment but there was no immediate response.
Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai is again denying that she had accused a former Communist Party official of sexually assaulting her in a social media post late last year.
L’Equipe, a French daily sports newspaper, published an interview it conducted with Peng in its Monday edition.
“I never said anyone had sexually assaulted me in any way,” Peng is quoted in the interview after she is asked directly if she actually wrote the post on her account on China’s Weibo social media platform.
In the November 2 post, Peng, a former Olympian who won titles at Wimbledon and the French Open, said former Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli coerced her into sex before it evolved into an on-off consensual relationship. Her post was quickly deleted and she vanished from public view for several days. She eventually appeared at a tennis event and spoke by video with Thomas Bach, president of the International Olympic Committee president, during which she said she was safe.
Her public absence sparked concern among some of the world’s top tennis players, including Naomi Osaka, Serena Williams, Billie Jean King and Novak Djokovic, and the Women’s Tennis Association suspended all of its sponsored tournaments in mainland China and Hong Kong.
Peng told L’Equipe the initial post had caused a huge “misunderstanding” and that she did not want it to attract any more attention, and insisted that she had deleted it herself “because I wanted to.” She also explained that her “disappearance” was simply due to her being unable to respond “to so many messages.” Peng said her personal life since the controversy surfaced had been uneventful, and stressed that her private life and personal problems should not be mixed with sports and politics.
Peng also told the newspaper she was retiring from tennis.
She also said she had dinner with IOC President Bach Saturday, which the IOC confirmed in a separate statement Monday.
Bach told the Reuters news agency when asked about Peng’s interview that any communication “is up to her, it is her life, it is her story.”
The newspaper said it submitted the questions to Peng in advance and conducted the interview in Chinese. Wang Kang, the chief of staff of the Chinese Olympic Committee, accompanied Peng during the interview and translated her answers for the reporter.
WTA Chairman and CEO Steve Simon called for an open investigation into Peng’s initial accusations after a Chinese state-run media outlet released a statement it said was an email Peng had sent to Simon in which she denied the allegations and insisted she was not missing or unsafe, but just “resting at home.”
Peng issued a similar denial back in December during a virtual interview that was posted on the website of the Singapore-based Chinese-language newspaper Lianhe Zaobao.
Some information for this report came from the Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
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.
The ex-president Alvaro Uribe, who these days is on political rampages throughout the country promoting the candidates of the Democratic Center in the face of the upcoming electoral contests for Congress and the Presidency, defended this Wednesday his government work in security matters to the commune 13 of Medellin. While his work was highlighted by some sectors of the community, others booed him as he passed through the sector.
“When our government arrived, the ‘recocha’ of criminals dominated this entire commune, and from here they planned all the criminal actions against the city. The victims were the citizens of this commune and the citizens of Medellín. Today what we have seen is joy, tourism, art. How beautiful to see Medellin from here. Before, this was a place of violence and blood, today it is a place of joy,” said Uribe.
En Medellín y Antioquia reconocemos las decisiones del Presidente @AlvaroUribeVel para salvar la comuna 13. La mano firme y el corazón grande, fueron fundamentales para recuperar a esta población de la violencia, y llevar programas sociales de calidad. Recuperó la esperanza! pic.twitter.com/TDqAT4pttK
In videos shared by militants from the Democratic Center, some people appear defending the president’s work in the commune. “Commune 13 was a sea of pain, a river of blood. The operation arrived, its mandate arrived, the color of the commune,” said a young man. “Before the operation orion We couldn’t leave our houses, we were kidnapped,” said another man who was at the political events with the former president.
Uribe himself pointed out that many politicians who go to the sector today, “thanks to what was done in that government, are simply dedicated to defaming that operation that we carried out with all transparency and with all the patriotism.”
The takeover of Commune 13 was one of the most controversial operations of the Uribe government. In fact, several generals of his Government are prosecuted for the so-called Operation Orion, in which, according to several sentences, the paramilitary groups joined members of the Public Forceto dislodge the militias from the The n of that sector of Medellin in October 2002.
In social networks, on the other hand, it has been shown that, parallel to the political acts, groups of residents rejected the visit of the former president. Videos are circulating on Twitter in which members of the community can be heard asking him to leave and questioning him about the disappearances in the operation, while Uribe moved along the escalators of the commune under heavy escort.
The former president had already been booed in previous days in a visit to Santa Marta, and in another in Caldas.
At some of the world’s most sensitive spots, authorities have installed security screening devices made by a single Chinese company with deep ties to China’s military and the highest levels of the ruling Communist Party.
The World Economic Forum in Davos. Europe’s largest ports. Airports from Amsterdam to Athens. NATO’s borders with Russia. All depend on equipment manufactured by Nuctech, which has quickly become the world’s leading company, by revenue, for cargo and vehicle scanners.
Nuctech has been frozen out of the U.S. for years due to national security concerns, but it has made deep inroads across Europe, installing its devices in 26 of 27 EU member states, according to public procurement, government and corporate records reviewed by The Associated Press.
The complexity of Nuctech’s ownership structure and its expanding global footprint have raised alarms on both sides of the Atlantic.
A growing number of Western security officials and policymakers fear that China could exploit Nuctech equipment to sabotage key transit points or get illicit access to government, industrial or personal data from the items that pass through its devices.
Nuctech’s critics allege the Chinese government has effectively subsidized the company so it can undercut competitors and give Beijing potential sway over critical infrastructure in the West as China seeks to establish itself as a global technology superpower.
“The data being processed by these devices is very sensitive. It’s personal data, military data, cargo data. It might be trade secrets at stake. You want to make sure it’s in right hands,” said Bart Groothuis, director of cybersecurity at the Dutch Ministry of Defense before becoming a member of the European Parliament. “You’re dependent on a foreign actor which is a geopolitical adversary and strategic rival.”
He and others say Europe doesn’t have tools in place to monitor and resist such potential encroachment. Different member states have taken opposing views on Nuctech’s security risks. No one has even been able to make a comprehensive public tally of where and how many Nuctech devices have been installed across the continent.
Nuctech dismisses those concerns, countering that Nuctech’s European operations comply with local laws, including strict security checks and data privacy rules.
“It’s our equipment, but it’s your data. Our customer decides what happens with the data,” said Robert Bos, deputy general manager of Nuctech in the Netherlands, where the company has a research and development center.
He said Nuctech is a victim of unfounded allegations that have cut its market share in Europe nearly in half since 2019.
“It’s quite frustrating to be honest,” Bos told AP. “In the 20 years we delivered this equipment we never had issues of breaches or data leaks. Till today we never had any proof of it.”
‘It’s not really a company’
As security screening becomes increasingly interconnected and data-driven, Nuctech has found itself on the front lines of the U.S.-China battle for technology dominance now playing out across Europe.
In addition to scanning systems for people, baggage and cargo, the company makes explosives detectors and interconnected devices capable of facial recognition, body temperature measurement and ID card or ticket identification.
On its website, Nuctech’s parent company explains that Nuctech does more than just provide hardware, integrating “cloud computing, big data and Internet of Things with safety inspection technologies and products to supply the clients with hi-tech safety inspection solution.”
Critics fear that under China’s national intelligence laws, which require Chinese companies to surrender data requested by state security agencies, Nuctech would be unable to resist calls from Beijing to hand over sensitive data about the cargo, people and devices that pass through its scanners. They say there is a risk Beijing could use Nuctech’s presence across Europe to gather big data about cross-border trade flows, pull information from local networks, like shipping manifests or passenger information, or sabotage trade flows in a conflict.
A July 2020 Canadian government security review of Nuctech found that X-ray security scanners could potentially be used to covertly collect and transmit information, compromise portable electronic devices as they pass through the scanner or alter results to allow transit of “nefarious” devices.
The European Union put measures in place in late 2020 that can be used to vet Chinese foreign direct investment. But policymakers in Brussels say there are currently no EU-wide systems in place to evaluate Chinese procurement, despite growing concerns about unfair state subsidies, lack of reciprocity, national security and human rights.
“This is becoming more and more dangerous. I wouldn’t mind if one or two airports had Nuctech systems, but with dumping prices a lot of regions are taking it,” said Axel Voss, a German member of the European Parliament who works on data protection. “This is becoming more and more a security question. You might think it’s a strategic investment of the Chinese government.”
The U.S. — home to OSI Systems, one of Nuctech’s most important commercial rivals — has come down hard against Nuctech. The U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, the U.S. National Security Council, the U.S. Transportation Security Administration, and the U.S. Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security all have raised concerns about Nuctech.
The U.S. Transportation Security Administration told AP in an email that Nuctech was found ineligible to receive sensitive security information. Nuctech products, TSA said, “are not authorized to be used for the screening of passengers, baggage, accessible property or air cargo in the United States.”
In December 2020, the U.S. added Nuctech to the Bureau of Industry and Security Entity List, restricting exports to them on national security grounds.
“It’s not just commercial,” said a U.S. government official who was not authorized to speak on the record. “It’s using state-backed companies, with state subsidies, low-ball bids to get into European critical infrastructure, which is civil airports, passenger screening, seaport and cargo screening.”
Passengers walk next to Nuctech security scanners at the Brussels Eurostar train terminal on Jan. 17, 2022.
In Europe, Nuctech’s bids can be 30-50% below their rivals’, according to the company’s competitors, U.S. and European officials and researchers who study China. Sometimes they include other sweeteners like extended maintenance contracts and favorable loans.
In 2009, Nuctech’s main European competitor, Smiths Detection, complained that it was being squeezed out of the market by such practices, and the EU imposed an anti-dumping duty of 36.6% on Nuctech cargo scanners.
“Nuctech comes in with below market bids no one can match. It’s not a normal price, it’s an economic statecraft price,” said Didi Kirsten Tatlow, and co-editor of the book, China’s Quest for Foreign Technology. “It’s not really a company. They are more like a wing of a state development drive.”
Nuctech’s Bos said the company keeps prices low by manufacturing in Europe. “We don’t have to import goods from the U.S. or other countries,” he said. “Our supply chain is very efficient with local suppliers, that’s the main reason we can be very competitive.”
Nuctech’s successes abound. The company, which is opening offices in Brussels, Madrid and Rome, says it has supplied customers in more than 170 countries and regions. Nuctech said in 2019 that it had installed more than 1,000 security check devices in Europe for customs, civil aviation, ports and government organizations.
In November 2020, Norwegian Customs put out a call to buy a new cargo scanner for the Svinesund checkpoint, a complex of squat, grey buildings at the Swedish border. An American rival and two other companies complained that the terms as written gave Nuctech a leg up.
The specifications were rewritten, but Nuctech won the deal anyway. The Chinese company beat its rivals on both price and quality, said Jostein Engen, the customs agency’s director of procurement, and none of Norway’s government ministries raised red flags that would have disqualified Nuctech.
“We in Norwegian Customs must treat Nuctech like everybody else in our competition,” Engen said. “We can’t do anything else following EU rules on public tenders.”
Four of five NATO member states that border Russia — Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland — have purchased Nuctech equipment for their border crossings with Russia. So has Finland.
Europe’s two largest ports — Rotterdam and Antwerp, which together handled more than a third of goods, by weight, entering and leaving the EU’s main ports in 2020 — use Nuctech devices, according to parliamentary testimony.
Other key states at the edges of the EU, including the U.K., Turkey, Ukraine, Albania, Belarus and Serbia have also purchased Nuctech scanners, some of which were donated or financed with low-interest loans from Chinese state banks, according to public procurement documents and government announcements.
Airports in London, Amsterdam, Brussels, Athens, Florence, Pisa, Venice, Zurich, Geneva and more than a dozen across Spain have all signed deals for Nuctech equipment, procurement and government documents, and corporate announcements show.
Nuctech says it provided security equipment for the Olympics in Brazil in 2016, then President Donald Trump’s visit to China in 2017 and the World Economic Forum in 2020. It has also provided equipment to some U.N. organizations, procurement records show.
Rising concerns
As Nuctech’s market share has grown, so too has skepticism about the company.
Canadian authorities dropped a standing offer from Nuctech to provide X-ray scanning equipment at more than 170 Canadian diplomatic missions around the world after a government assessment found an “elevated threat” of espionage.
Lithuania, which is involved in a diplomatic feud with China over Taiwan, blocked Nuctech from providing airport scanners earlier this year after a national security review found that it wasn’t possible for the equipment to operate in isolation and there was a risk information could leak back to China, according to Margiris Abukevicius, vice minister for international cooperation and cybersecurity at Lithuania’s Ministry of National Defense.
Then, in August, Lithuania approved a deal for a Nuctech scanner on its border with Belarus. There were only two bidders, Nuctech and a Russian company — both of which presented national security concerns — and there wasn’t time to reissue the tender, two Lithuanian officials told AP.
“It’s just an ad hoc decision choosing between bad and worse options,” Abukevicius said. He added that the government is developing a road map to replace all Nuctech scanners currently in use in Lithuania as well as a legal framework to ban purchases of untrusted equipment by government institutions and in critical sectors.
Human rights concerns are also generating headwinds for Nuctech. The company does business with police and other authorities in Western China’s Xinjiang region, where Beijing stands accused of genocide for mass incarceration and abuse of minority Uyghur Muslims.
Despite pressure from U.S. and European policymakers on companies to stop doing business in Xinjiang, European governments have continued to award tens of millions of dollars in contracts — sometimes backed by European Union funds — to Nuctech.
Nuctech says on its Chinese website that China’s western regions, including Xinjiang, are “are important business areas” for the company. It has signed multiple contracts to provide X-ray equipment to Xinjiang’s Department of Transportation and Public Security Department.
It has provided license plate recognition devices for a police checkpoint in Xinjiang, Chinese government records show, and an integrated security system for the subway in Urumqi, the region’s capital city. It regularly showcases its security equipment at trade fairs in Xinjiang.
“Companies like Nuctech directly enable Xinjiang’s high-tech police state and its intrusive ways of suppressing ethnic minorities. This should be taken into account when Western governments and corporations interface with Nuctech,” said Adrian Zenz, a researcher who has documented abuses in Xinjiang and compiled evidence of the company’s activities in the region.
Nuctech’s Bos said he can understand those views, but that the company tries to steer clear of politics. “Our daily goal is to have equipment to secure the world more and better,” he said. “We don’t interfere with politics.”
Complex web of ownership
Nuctech opened a factory in Poland in 2018 with the tagline “Designed in China and manufactured in Europe.” But ultimate responsibility for the company lies far from Warsaw, with the state-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council in Beijing, China’s top governing body.
Nuctech’s ownership structure is so complex that it can be difficult for outsiders to understand the true lines of influence and accountability.
Scott Kennedy, a Chinese economic policy expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said that the ambiguous boundaries between the Communist Party, state companies and financial institutions in China — which have only grown murkier under China’s leader, Xi Jinping — can make it difficult to grasp how companies like Nuctech are structured and operate.
“Consider if the roles were reversed. If the Chinese were acquiring this equipment for their airports they’d want a whole variety of assurances,” Kennedy said. “China has launched a high-tech self-sufficiency drive because they don’t feel safe with foreign technology in their supply chain.”
What is clear is that Nuctech, from its very origins, has been tied to Chinese government, academic and military interests.
Nuctech was founded as an offshoot of Tsinghua University, an elite public research university in Beijing. It grew with backing from the Chinese government and for years was run by the son of China’s former leader, Hu Jintao.
Datenna, a Dutch economic intelligence company focused on China, mapped the ownership structure of Nuctech and found a dozen major entities across four layers of shareholding, including four state-owned enterprises and three government entities.
Today the majority shareholder in Nuctech is Tongfang Co., which has a 71% stake. The largest shareholder in Tongfang, in turn, is the investment arm of the China National Nuclear Corp. (CNNC), a state-run energy and defense conglomerate controlled by China’s State Council. The U.S. Defense Department classifies CNNC as a Chinese military company because it shares advanced technologies and expertise with the People’s Liberation Army.
Xi has further blurred the lines between China’s civilian and military activities and deepened the power of the ruling Communist Party within private enterprises. One way: the creation of dozens of government-backed financing vehicles designed to speed the development of technologies that have both military and commercial applications.
In fact, one of those vehicles, the National Military-Civil Fusion Industry Investment Fund, announced in June 2020 that it wanted to take a 4.4% stake in Nuctech’s majority shareholder, along with the right to appoint a director to the Tongfang board. It never happened — “changes in the market environment,” Tongfeng explained in a Chinese stock exchange filing.
But there are other links between Nuctech’s ownership structure and the fusion fund.
CNNC, which has a 21% interest in Nuctech, holds a stake of more than 7% in the fund, according to Qichacha, a Chinese corporate information platform. They also share personnel: Chen Shutang, a member of CNNC’s Party Leadership Group and the company’s chief accountant serves as a director of the fund, records show.
“The question here is whether or not we want to allow Nuctech, which is controlled by the Chinese state and linked to the Chinese military, to be involved in crucial parts of our border security and infrastructure,” said Jaap van Etten, a former Dutch diplomat and CEO of Datenna.
Nuctech maintains that its operations are shaped by market forces, not politics, and says CNNC doesn’t control its corporate management or decision-making.
“We are a normal commercial operator here in Europe which has to obey the laws,” said Nuctech’s Bos. “We work here with local staff members, we pay tax, contribute to the social community and have local suppliers.”
But experts say these touchpoints are further evidence of the government and military interests encircling the company and show its strategic interest to Beijing.
“Under Xi Jinping, the national security elements of the state are being fused with the technological and innovation dimensions of the state,” said Tai Ming Cheung, a professor at UC San Diego’s School of Global Policy and Strategy.
“Military-civil fusion is one of the key battlegrounds between the U.S. and China. The Europeans will have to figure out where they stand.”
Said Fly, “We condemn the Belarusian government’s campaign to criminalize honest journalism and deprive the Belarusian people of the truth. We again adamantly reject this ridiculous, regime-imposed label—Radio Svaboda is not an ‘extremist organization.’ Aleh Hruzdzilovich and Andrey Kuznechyk are hostages taken by this lawless regime, not criminals. Factual reporting is not an ‘extremist’ activity, and journalism is not a crime.”
Authorities in Belarus have declared over 300 Telegram channels and communities “extremist”—from local chats to channels with hundreds of thousands of subscribers—making anyone who publishes or reposts “extremist” materials liable for up to seven years in prison. According to RFE/RL’s Belarus Service, seven of the 10 most-popular Belarusian telegram channels have been declared “extremist.”
Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty is a private, independent international news organization whose programs — radio, Internet, television, and mobile — reach influential audiences in 23 countries, including Russia, Ukraine, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the republics of Central Asia and the Caucasus. It is funded by the U.S. Congress through USAGM.
