For decades, the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians in Montana have lived in a state of neitherness — neither completely Native American nor non-Native American.   But last month, its 5,400 members received a gift they have waited decades for — federal recognition.
 
The Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians Restoration Act, sponsored by Senators Jon Tester and Steve Daines and Representative Greg Giaforte, was tucked into the National Defense Authorization Act, which U.S. President Donald Trump signed into law on December 20.
The bill gives the tribe the same benefits afforded treaty tribes and other recognized tribes the right to self-govern and a small land base of 200 acres, which the tribe must purchase and which will be held in trust by the government.  Tribe members will be eligible for assistance with education, health care, social services, law enforcement, and other programs.  
“It might not seem like a big deal to the folks who aren’t impacted,” Tester told reporters during a December 17 conference call, “but the truth is that this is going to allow the Little Shell to really move forward in a way that they’ve been trying to do for 150 years.”
Little Shell Tribe member Rylee Mitchell, a resident of Great Falls, Montana, is in her last year of high school and looking forward to attending college.
“I can apply for scholarships now because there are thousands of them open,” she said.  “But without being federally recognized, I could apply for only eight.”
The Mitchell family will now be able to access health care through the Indian Health Service, a federal agency that provides health care services to Native Americans and Alaska Natives.
Most importantly, federal recognition will give tribe members a sense of legitimacy they’ve been denied for more than a century.
“The other tribes in Montana, they have their own high schools and their own sports programs,” said Rylee’s mother Julie Mitchell.  “They get to keep their language and their traditions and their culture together.  
Nobody really understands the Little Shells’ history, she said, or how they ended up landless.

It’s a complex, spotty and much-disputed history: The Little Shell Band is descended from the Pembina, one of dozens of bands of Chippewa, (Ojibwe) who followed the buffalo from the western Great Lakes across the Plains states.   They eventually settled along the Red River dividing Minnesota and North Dakota and flowing north into Canada.  
They were what Montana historian Nicholas Vrooman referred to as a mixed-culture recombinant group — some having pure Chippewa ancestry, but the majority having mixed Ojibwe, Cree, Assiniboine, European and Metis heritage.  Despite their varied ancestry, they were a cohesive group with its own cultural identity.
The mid-19th Century brought great change to the Chippewa. The fur trade, which had previously sustained them, now declined. Buffalo were quickly disappearing from the Plains.  White settlers and the railroad were encroaching, and the U.S. government was working furiously to push Native Americans onto reservations or across the border into Canada.  
The turning point for the Little Shell Pembina came in 1892, when Chief Little Shell, the third of a succession of leaders by the same name, refused to sign the so-called “Ten Cent” treaty ceding nearly 10 million acres (4 million hectares) of prime farm land in the Red River Valley for 10 cents an acre and omitting many Little Shell families from the rolls.
Little Shell and most of his followers migrated into Montana, where they scattered, living in poverty and squalor on the fringes of settler towns “like they didn’t even exist,” said Little Shell Tribe member, historian and genealogist Brenda Snider.
   
“We never felt welcome by any of the other Montana tribes,” Snider said. “It was like we weren’t real Indians but ‘wannabe’ Indians.   And to the white people, we were just ‘trashy half-breeds.’”
Those attitudes, said Snider, persisted well into the present day.
Though scattered, Snider said the Little Shell managed to maintain their sense of unity and political cohesion.
“We call it the ‘Moccasin Telegraph,’” quipped Snider. “The families kept in touch with each other.”
They never stopped looking for federal recognition and a land base to call their own.  Tribes can be recognized either through an act of Congress or by petitioning the Interior Department (DOI) and meeting seven strict criteria proving historical, genealogical, and anthropological proof they have existed as a continuous governing body.
The Little Shell pursued both tracks.  With support from the Native American Rights Fund, they submitted tens of thousands of documents to DOI, but were ultimately turned down.    
It was a separate congressional effort led by U.S. Senators Steve Daines and Jon Tester and U.S. Representative Greg Gianforte that finally paid off.
Snider said the tribe must still submit an updated list of its members. It has not yet decided where their 200-acre reservation will be located.
“The government will sit together with our chairman and find a piece of available federal land in Montana.  One that has the right of access and water,” she said, chuckling, “not just some piece along Rattlesnake River.”
Two hundred acres is hardly enough land to accommodate an entire tribe, but it’s enough to house tribal offices and a cultural center.  
“I’m hoping we can educate more of our people and get some job training done,” she said.

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Illinois, the largest Midwestern state in the U.S.,  is beginning 2020 with the implementation of a new law that allows people to legally buy marijuana for recreational use. The Cannabis Regulation and Tax Act also also allows the governor to pardon thousands for past low-level cannabis convictions. VOA’s Mariama Diallo reports

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Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Friday called for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange to be released from prison in London, urging an end to what he described as his “torture” in detention.
Assange, 48, is in a British jail for skipping bail when he sought asylum in Ecuador’s embassy in London, where he spent nearly seven years to avoid extradition to Sweden over allegations of rape that were dropped in November.
Assange is also battling U.S. attempts to extradite him over Wikileaks’ publication of vast caches of leaked military documents and diplomatic cables. He faces a lengthy prison term if extradited to the United States.
A U.N. human rights investigator last year said Assange has suffered psychological torture from a defamation campaign and should not be extradited to the United States where he would face a “politicized show trial.”
Lopez Obrador, a leftist who has close ties with Britain’s opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, expressed his solidarity with Assange and said he hoped the former hacker and activist is “forgiven and released” from prison.
“I don’t know if he has recognized that he acted against rules and norms of a political system, but at the time these cables demonstrated how the world system functions in its authoritarian nature,” Lopez Obrador said in response to a question about Assange at a regular government news briefing.
“Hopefully consideration will be given to this, and he’s released and won’t continue to be tortured.”
Assange’s presence in London, holed up in Ecuador’s embassy and then in jail, has been a diplomatic irritation for Britain, affecting domestic politics and relations with several countries.
Corbyn, who was a guest of honor at Lopez Obrador’s inauguration in December 2018, said Assange should not be extradited to the United States “for exposing evidence of atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, whose Conservative Party trounced Labour in last month’s elections, has vowed to strike new trade deals with countries outside Europe after Britain’s departure from the European Union.

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Italy’s far-right League leader Matteo Salvini, looking to avoid trial for alleged kidnapping, has defended his decision to detain migrants on a coastguard boat last July, saying the move had been backed by the whole government.
Salvini was interior minister at the time and had pledged to curtail mass immigration from Libya by making it much more difficult for boat migrants to enter Italian ports.
In July, some two weeks before he pulled the League out of its coalition with the 5-Star Movement, Salvini refused to let 131 migrants disembark from the Gregoretti coastguard vessel until other European states agreed to take them in.
A special tribunal has recommended that Salvini stand trial for the incident on charges of illegally detaining the migrants, and he faces up to 15 years in jail if found guilty.
However, under Italian law, former ministers cannot be tried for actions undertaken while in office unless a parliamentary committee authorizes the probe.
The 23-strong committee is due to take a decision on Jan. 20, and Salvini’s lawyer handed over documents for his defense on Friday, including emails from Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte’s office, which Salvini says prove the government had backed his actions.
“The management of migrants was not the fruit of the autonomous will of the interior ministry, but an initiative of the Italian government,” Salvini wrote in the documents seen by Reuters, adding that he had acted out of “national interest”.
The Gregoretti investigation echoes another case from earlier last year when magistrates sought to try Salvini over his decision to keep 150 migrants aboard a coastguard ship for five days in August 2018.
On that occasion, the parliamentary committee blocked the request to pursue the probe, with Salvini’s then-coalition partner the 5-Star Movement rallying to his support, arguing that the decision to keep the migrants at sea was a collective one.
Salvini’s position seems less secure this time around, with 5-Star still furious over his decision to quit their coalition.
5-Star leader Luigi Di Maio said last month that Salvini had acted on his own initiative in the Gregoretti case, suggesting his party would vote for its former ally to stand trial.
Prime Minister Conte, who has repeatedly clashed with Salvini since forging a new coalition between the 5-Star and Italy’s center-left, said in December he did not recall being involved in the Gregoretti decision.
However, he acknowledged that his office sought help from European allies to take in the African migrants, with five countries eventually stepping forward to break the deadlock and allow the group finally to disembark.

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At least two people were killed and more than a dozen injured when a seven-story building under construction collapsed in southern Cambodia on Friday trapping workers under the rubble, police told AFP.
The building in coastal Kep province was meant to be a hotel but crumpled at around 4:30pm, with video circulating online showing concrete floors sandwiched together as firefighters and an excavator arrived.
Cambodian leader Hun Sen said in a Facebook post on Friday evening he was travelling to the site.
Around 30 people were believed to be trapped but 17 were pulled out and sent to hospital where two died, Ros Udong, spokesman for the Kep provincial administration, told AFP by phone.
Deadly accidents plague the kingdom’s poorly regulated building sector even as the country has enjoyed a construction boom.
In June nearly 30 people died after the collapse of a building under construction in Sihanoukville, a beach town undergoing a Chinese investment bonanza.
Last month at least three workers died and more than a dozen others were seriously injured after an under-construction dining hall at a temple collapsed in the tourist town of Siem Reap.
There are an estimated 200,000 construction workers in Cambodia, most unskilled, reliant on day wages and not protected by union rules, according to the International Labor Organization.

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A South African photojournalist has returned home after spending three years in captivity with the Islamic State in Syria, his family said Friday in Johannesburg. 
Shiraaz Mohamed was taken hostage in early 2017. The charity group Gift of the Givers said Mohamed was in the country to document the plight of Syrians under the nation’s grinding, brutal civil war.  In December, the charity tweeted that the photojournalist had been freed and was awaiting coordination between the South African and Turkish governments to fly home.
The circumstances surrounding Mohamed’s release are unclear. The Reuters news agency quoted Gift of Givers as saying the South African foreign ministry had confirmed it was in contact with Turkish intelligence, which said Mohamed was with them.  But the charity received no other information.
Turkey borders northern Syria, where Mohamed was kidnapped.
In a Friday statement, Mohamed’s family confirmed his return but declined to comment further, saying, “owing to his recent circumstances, he and our family are requesting that we be given some space.”

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Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, a veteran Iraqi militant who was closely allied with Iran and rose to be a senior militia commander during the war against the Islamic State group, was killed Friday in a U.S. strike that also felled Iran’s top general.
Al-Muhandis was the deputy commander of the Popular Mobilization Forces, an umbrella group of mostly Shiite paramilitaries. He was also the founder of the Kataeb Hezbollah, or Hezbollah Brigades. The U.S. blamed the group, which is separate from the Lebanese Hezbollah movement, for a rocket attack in northern Iraq last week that killed a U.S. contractor.
The militias, many of which are backed by Iran and trace their roots back to the Shiite insurgency against U.S. forces following the 2003 invasion, mobilized in 2014 when the Islamic State group swept across northern and western Iraq.
Fleeing Iraq
Al-Muhandis, who had spent much of his life as a secretive operative in Iran’s regional shadow wars, emerged as a public face of the force, a tall man with a gray beard and thick glasses who was often seen on the front lines directing his fighters by radio.
He was killed in an American airstrike near Baghdad’s international airport around midnight along with Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the commander of Iran’s elite Quds Force and the architect of its regional military alliances. Also killed was al-Muhandis’ son-in-law Mohammed Rida al-Jaberi.
The PMF said in a statement that al-Muhandis’ body was destroyed beyond recognition.
The 56-year-old militant, born Jamal Jaafar Ebrahimi but best known by his nom de guerre, began his political life with the Dawa party, a Shiite Islamist group that was crushed by Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in the 1970s. Like others in the party, including the future Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, al-Muhandis fled abroad and joined forces with Iran.
Al-Muhandis spent the next few decades in Kuwait and Iran, working closely with the Revolutionary Guard, especially during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. During his stay in Iran in the 1980s and 1990s, al-Muhandis worked with the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and its military wing, the Badr Brigades.
Return to Iraq
After the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 that toppled Saddam, al-Muhandis like many other Shiite leaders, returned to Iraq and played a role in politics, at one point serving as a member of parliament. Under Soleimani’s direction, Iran steadily expanded its influence, forging close ties with Shiite militant groups as well as major political factions. Al-Muhandis operated independently at first before founding Kataeb Hezbollah.
In 2009, the U.S. Treasury targeted al-Muhandis and Kataeb Hezbollah with sanctions, saying they “committed, directed, supported, or posed a significant risk of committing acts of violence against Coalition and Iraqi Security Forces.”
He was also convicted of planning the 1983 bombings against the U.S. and French embassies in Kuwait in which five Kuwaitis were killed. He was sentenced to death in absentia in Kuwait over the case. He was also linked to a 1985 assassination attempt against the emir of Kuwait.
When Kuwait raised the case of the bombings with Iraqi officials in the mid-2000s, al-Muhandis relocated to Iran. He did not return until after the U.S. withdrawal in 2011.
War against Islamic State
He re-emerged during the war against the Islamic State group, when his forces battled the Sunni extremists across western Iraq and eastern Syria. Those efforts also helped Iran to carve out a corridor of influence stretching across the Middle East to Lebanon and Israel’s doorstep.
Al-Muhandis used to give speeches in Arabic and Farsi.
In one of his speeches, al-Muhandis thanked Iran and specifically Soleimani for joining the fight against IS and sending weapons and ammunition by land and air.
“They gave what they could immediately,” al-Muhandis said. “This courage and generosity came at a critical time.
“When people speak about American and Russian weapons we ask them where were they in June 2014,” al-Muhandis said. That was the month IS seized large parts of Iraq, pushing all the way to the outskirts of Baghdad.
Today the PMF and allied militias control large parts of Iraq and neighboring Syria, where they are allied with President Bashar Assad and the Lebanese Hezbollah. Israel and the U.S. view the groups as part of an aggressive Iranian campaign to dominate the region.
US airstrike
Over the summer, PMF groups blamed Israel for mysterious drone attacks that targeted their positions in Iraq. The strikes eventually lead to the restructuring of the PMF to integrate them into the Iraqi military. The restructuring was approved by Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi.
On Sunday, U.S. airstrikes hit Kataeb Hezbollah posts in eastern Syria and western Iraq, killing 25 fighters and wounding dozens. Washington said the strikes were in retaliation for an attack on a base in northern Iraq that killed an American contractor and wounded four others.
Shiite militiamen and supporters retaliated by holding violent protests outside the U.S. Embassy for two days, causing damage to the entrances of the embassy. They withdrew Wednesday at the request of Iraqi officials.
In a recent interview, al-Muhandis was asked whether he sees himself one day outside the Popular Mobilization Forces. “It’s possible,” he replied. “God willing, as a martyr.”
Al-Muhandis is survived by his Iranian wife and two daughters.

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The United States struck a significant and potentially risky blow against Iran, killing the leader of the nation’s elite Quds Force in an airstrike in Iraq.
The Pentagon confirmed the death of Quds Force Commander General Qassem Soleimani in a statement late Thursday, saying the strike was launched, “at the direction” of U.S. President Donald Trump.
It further described the strike as a “decisive defensive action to protect U.S. personnel abroad.”
“General Soleimani was actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region,” the statement said.
“This strike was aimed at deterring future Iranian attack plans,” it said. “The United States will continue to take all necessary action to protect our people and our interests wherever they are around the world.”

Baghdad airportThe Defense Department statement shared few details of the strike itself, but Iraqi officials said a rocket struck a convoy traveling near Baghdad International Airport early Friday local time.
Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy commander of Iranian-backed Iraqi militias, known as the Popular Mobilization Forces, also died in the strike, Iraqi officials said, adding other top officials may have been killed, as well.
Even before the U.S. Defense Department confirmed the strike on Soleimani, photos claiming to show the Iranian general’s lifeless body were circulating on social media.

FILE – These photos show Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, left, in Tehran; and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, right, a commander in the Popular Mobilization Force.Iranian-backed militias in Iraq, as well as Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, also quickly confirmed the deaths of Soleimani and al-Muhandis, blaming the United States.
Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif called the U.S. strike an “act of terrorism,” tweeting it was an “extremely dangerous & a foolish escalation.”

The US’ act of international terrorism, targeting & assassinating General Soleimani—THE most effective force fighting Daesh (ISIS), Al Nusrah, Al Qaeda et al—is extremely dangerous & a foolish escalation.
The US bears responsibility for all consequences of its rogue adventurism.
— Javad Zarif (@JZarif) January 3, 2020
Iran Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, called for three days of national mourning and warned, “All Enemies should know that the jihad of resistance will continue with a doubled motivation, and a definite victory awaits the fighters in the holy war.”
President Trump did not immediately comment but tweeted a picture of the U.S. flag late Thursday.

pic.twitter.com/VXeKiVzpTf
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 3, 2020
Just days earlier, Trump warned Iran he was holding its leaders accountable for a series of repeated attacks by members of Iranian-backed militias on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.
“They will pay a very big price. This is not a warning. It is a threat,” he tweeted. But he told reporters Tuesday that he did not foresee the U.S. going to war with Iran.
“I don’t think Iran would want that to happen. It would go very quickly,” he said.

U.S. Army paratroopers of an immediate reaction force from the 2nd Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division, board their C-17 aircraft at Fort Bragg, N.C., Jan. 1, 2020.Paradigm shifts
The U.S. has already deployed 750 soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division to Kuwait to help bolster the defense of U.S. bases and personnel in the region. Defense officials said Thursday more troops would be sent as needed.
Among analysts and onlookers, though, there is a sense that whatever happens next, the paradigm between the United States and Iran has changed.
“The strike was a clear signal from the U.S. that the parameters of our confrontation with Iran have shifted fundamentally,” said Ilan Berman, senior vice president of the American Foreign Policy Council, in a message to VOA Persian. “Quite simply, the U.S. has demonstrated that it is no longer prepared to exercise restraint in the face of repeated Iranian provocation, the way it has in the past.”
“There is significant risk here,” Bill Roggio, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, told VOA, calling the strike that killed Soleimani, “the most significant” since the U.S. killed al-Qaida founder Osama bin Laden.
“Soleimani and Muhandis were revered by the Iraqi Shia militias. They will want blood,” he said. “It is unclear if the Iraqi security forces are able or even willing to do anything to prevent it.”
Troops in the region
The United States has about 5,000 troops in Iraq and about 55,000 more across the Middle East, all of whom could potentially be targeted by Iran.
“The key question is whether this will ultimately lead to sustained military confrontation — even war — between the U.S. and Iran and Iran and Israel,” former State Department Middle East analyst and negotiator, Aaron David Miller, tweeted. “Matters will get worse before they get worse.”

Suleimani’s assassination is among the most consequential in Middle East in decades.The key question is whether this will ultimately lead to sustained military confrontation — even war — between the US and Iran and Iran and Israel. Matters will get worse before they get worse.
— Aaron David Miller (@aarondmiller2) January 3, 2020
U.S. officials have repeatedly voiced concern about Iran’s military reach, warning Tehran’s forces are capable of targeting personnel and assets throughout the Middle East.
Some of that concern has focused on Iran’s ballistic missile technology and on Iran’s naval prowess. This past July, Iran also disrupted naval traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, seizing several oil tankers.
But there is also concern that Iran’s proxy forces, like the militias it supports in Iraq and Syria, are capable of inflicting considerable damage.
“When you’re dealing with groups like this, they are a hell of a lot more threatening and a hell of a lot more organized than anything we’ve seen out of many Sunni jihadist groups,” said Phillip Smyth, an analyst with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
“It doesn’t operate the same way you might think of, let’s say, the Islamic State,” he said. “You’re dealing with a far more organized apparatus.”
Despite the risk, some key Republican lawmakers praised the U.S. strike against Soleimani.
“President Trump has been clear all along — the United States will not tolerate Iran spilling American blood, and tonight he followed his words with action,” Republican James Inhofe, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee said in a statement late Thursday.
“The President made the brave and right call, and Americans should be proud,” Republican Senator Benn Sasse, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said. “General Soleimani is dead because he was an evil bastard who murdered Americans.”

My statement on the killing of Qassem Soleimani. pic.twitter.com/4Q9tlLAYFB
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) January 3, 2020
Former U.S. Vice President and current presidential candidate for the Democratic Party Joseph Biden was more cautious. While admitting Soleimani “deserved to be brought to justice for his crimes against American troops and thousands of innocents throughout the region,” Biden in a written statement said President Trump owes the American people an explanation of the strategy and plan to keep American servicemen and diplomats and allies safe at home and abroad.
“I hope the administration has thought through the second- and third-order consequences of the path they have chosen. But I fear this administration has not demonstrated at any turn the discipline or long-term vision necessary — and the stakes could not be higher,” he said.
Although Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps [IRGC] and Quds Force are part of the Iranian military, the U.S. State Department designated them as Foreign Terrorist Organizations this past April because of their ties with Middle Eastern terror groups like Hezbollah and Hamas.
The U.S. also blames the IRGC and Quds Force for the death of more than 600 U.S. service members in Iraq between 2003 and 2011.

At the time, @SecPompeo was asked if the US would target #Quds Force Cmdr Qassem Soleimani like it would an #ISIS leader
“I don’t have comments…when you say “target,” you’re usually talking about things that the Department of Defense does. I’ll allow them to respond ” he said pic.twitter.com/PPDtucbHHX
— Jeff Seldin (@jseldin) January 3, 2020
Earlier Thursday, top U.S. defense officials said Iran’s targeting of Americans had resumed.
“There’s been a sustained campaign at least since October,” General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters.
“We know the intent of this last attack [on a base in Kirkuk, Iraq] was, in fact, to kill American soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines,” he added. “Thirty-one rockets aren’t designed as a warning shot.”
Speaking alongside Milley, Defense Secretary Mark Esper warned the United States was also ready to take “preemptive action” against Iran.
“The game has changed. We’re prepared to do what is necessary,” he said.
VOA Persian Service and White House Senior Correspondent Steve Herman contributed to this report.

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Turkey’s parliament has approved a bill that allows troop deployment in Libya to support the internationally recognized government in Tripoli.Turkish lawmakers passed the bill on Thursday with a 315-184 vote.Most opposition parties voted against the bill.The Libyan government, headed by Prime Minister Fayez al-Serraj, asked Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for support as it fends off an offensive by General Khalifa Haftar’s forces to the east of the country, which are backed by Russia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and Jordan. As VOA’S Zlatica Hoke reports.

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With just a month to go until the Iowa Caucus — the first nominating contest in the U.S. presidential election — the race to choose a Democratic rival to U.S. President Donald Trump is intensifying. The only Latino candidate in the race, former mayor Julian Castro, withdrew Thursday while new fundraising numbers show Senator Bernie Sanders’ candidacy is stronger than expected. VOA’s congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson has more on the opening of election year 2020. 

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Interpol has formally asked Lebanon to arrest a fugitive, after the former automobile executive fled from Japan where he was awaiting trial for alleged financial misconduct.  Authorities charged him with pouring millions of his employer’s dollars into his own pockets.  VOA’s Arash Arabasadi takes us on a mysterious ride currently fueled with more questions than answers.

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Navy ships plucked hundreds of people from beaches and tens of thousands were urged to flee Friday before hot weather and strong winds in the forecast worsen Australia’s already-devastating wildfires.
More than 200 fires were burning, and warnings of extreme danger to come Saturday set in motion one of the largest evacuations in Australian history. Thousands have already fled at-risk coastal areas, creating traffic gridlock in places, and firefighters escorted convoys of evacuees as fires threatened to close roads.
Victoria Premier Daniel Andrew declared a disaster across much of the eastern part of the state, allowing the government to order evacuations in an area with as many as 140,000 permanent residents and tens of thousands more vacationers.
“If you can leave, you must leave,” Andrews said.

A contingent of 39 firefighters from the United States and Canada arrive at Melbourne Airport in Melbourne, Jan. 2, 2020.South Australia state’s Country Fire Service chief officer Mark Jones said the weather conditions were cause for concern because some fires were still burning or smoldering.
 
“The ignition sources are already there,” he said. “There are millions of sparks out there ready to go if they break containment lines.”
The early and devastating start to Australia’s summer wildfires has made this season the worst on record. About 5 million hectares (12.35 million acres) of land have burned, at least 19 people have been killed, and more than 1,400 homes have been destroyed.
This week, at least 448 homes have been destroyed on the New South Wales southern coast and dozens were burned in Victoria. Ten deaths have been confirmed in the two states this week, and Victoria authorities also say 28 people are missing. Fires are also burning in Western Australia, South Australia and Tasmania.
The navy was evacuating hundreds from the Victorian coastal town of Mallacoota, which has been cut off for days by wildfires, forcing as many as 4,000 residents and tourists to shelter on beaches. Landing craft ferried people to the HMAS Choules offshore.
Choules Commander Scott Houlihan said 963 people had signed up for evacuation by sea and more had been airlifted to safety.
A state of emergency was in place in New South Wales and a total fire ban.

Smoke and wildfire rage behind Lake Conjola, Australia, Jan. 2, 2020.State Rural Fire Service deputy commissioner Rob Rogers said strong winds and high temperatures Saturday will make the fire danger worse in many areas and urged those who can flee to do so.
“We know people have got a little bit of fire fatigue. They’ve been dealing with this now for months,” Rogers said. “But we need people to stay focused. Tomorrow is not the day to drop your guard. Take it seriously. If you’re in those areas where we put those maps out, do not be there.”
Morrison: ‘People are angry’
Prime Minister Scott Morrison visited the township of Bairnsdale in Victoria and received a warmer welcome than a day earlier in New South Wales.
Morrison cut short a visit to the town of Cobargo when locals yelled at him, made obscene gestures and called him an “idiot” and worse, criticizing him for the lack of equipment to deal with the fires in town.
In a radio interview Friday, Morrison said he understood the anger of people affected by the fires.
“People are angry and people are raw and people are upset,” he said. “Whether they are angry with me or they are angry about the situation, all I know is they are hurting and it’s my job to be there to try and offer some comfort and support.”
Smoke from the wildfires has choked air quality and turned daytime skies to near-nighttime darkness in the worst-hit areas.
It’s also blown across the Tasman Sea into New Zealand, where skies are hazy and glaciers have turned a deep caramel brown. The color change may cause more melting since the glaciers will reflect less sunlight.
 

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Lulu Wang, Lorene Scafaria, Melina Matsoukas and Greta Gerwig led Hollywood to a record year for women in the director’s chair. In 2019, women directed more of the most popular movies than any year before. 
Women directed 12 of 2019’s top 100-grossing films in 2019, according to a study released Thursday by USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative. That percentage of female filmmakers, 10.6%, is greater than researchers have recorded before, suggesting that some measure of change is finally coming to a film industry where inequality behind the camera has remained stubbornly persistent. 
It’s the most meaningful increase in several decades for female directors. Despite mounting outcry, the rate of female directors helming Hollywood’s top productions has long been largely stagnant. The previous high in USC’s annual study was 8%, in 2008. In 2018, only 4.5% of the year’s top films were directed by women. 
‘More progress needed’
“This is the first time we have seen a shift in hiring practices for female film directors in 13 years,” said Stacy L. Smith, one of the study’s authors. “One notable reason for this jump in 2019 was that Universal Pictures had five films with women directors at the helm in the top 100 movies. Yet there is still much more progress needed to reach parity for women behind the camera.” 
The high-profile success of several films had already made 2019 a historic one for women. Those include Wang’s The Farewell, one of the year’s most popular indie releases; Scafaria’s acclaimed Hustlers ($105 million domestically); Matsoukas’ Queen & Slim ($40.7 million); and Gerwig’s Little Women, which last week opened strongly with $29 million in its first five days of release. 

FILE – Director Jennifer Lee smiles during a press conference for her new movie “Frozen 2” in Seoul, South Korea, Nov. 25, 2019.Frozen II, with $1.2 billion in worldwide ticket sales, is close to setting a new box-office record for a movie directed by a woman. Jennifer Lee, who co-directed the film, set the record with the first Frozen film. In 2018, Lee became the chief creative officer of Walt Disney Animation Studios. 
Other notable films included Kasi Lemmons’ Harriet, Tina Gordon’s Little and Jill Culton’s Abominable. 
USC researchers singled out Universal Pictures, which put forward a slate of films with 26% directed by women. Universal is the only major studio with a female studio chief, Donna Langley. 
Netflix also fared well. While the streaming company’s films largely bypass theaters — leaving them outside the study’s parameters — 20% of Netflix’s 2019 movies were directed by women. 
Paramount Pictures, however, hasn’t released a movie directed by a woman in the last five years. 
Underrepresented directors
Four women of color directed one of the top 100 movies in 2019, though the overall statistics for underrepresented directors dipped. Underrepresented filmmakers were behind 16.8% of films in 2019, a decline from last year’s 21.4%, a record. 
“While 2019 is a banner year for women, we will not be able to say there is true change until all women have access and opportunity to work at this level,” Smith said. 
Another study released Thursday by the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University examined women in the top films as not just directors but writers, producers, executive producers, editors and cinematographers. Women accounted for 20% of all such roles in the year’s top films, up from 16% the year before. 
But the San Diego State University study, the 22nd annual Celluloid Ceiling authored by Martha Lauzen, found less progress when the movies researched were expanded to the top 500 films. In that metric, Lauzen found women held steady at 23%. 
“While the numbers moved in a positive direction this year, men continue to outnumber women 4 to 1 in key behind-the-scenes roles,“ Lauzen said in a statement. “It’s odd to talk about reaching historic highs when women remain so far from parity.” 
Overlooked for awards
Despite gains, female filmmakers have been largely overlooked in this awards season. Sunday’s Golden Globes, presented by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, includes no women nominated for best director. None of the 10 films nominated for best picture were directed by women, either. 
Rebecca Goldman, Time’s Up chief operating officer, earlier said those results were unacceptable. 
“This year, there have been twice as many women-led features than ever, with more films by female directors on the way,” Goldman said. “Women — and especially women of color — continue to be pushed to the sidelines by a system that holds women back, onscreen and off.” 

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The senior adviser to Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who plotted Brexit and steered his boss to last month’s election triumph, is on the lookout for “weirdos and misfits with odd skills” to help bring new ideas to Britain’s government.
“We want to improve performance and make me much less important” and within a year largely redundant,” Dominic Cummings said in a post on his blog on Thursday.
“We do not have the sort of expertise supporting the PM and ministers that is needed. This must change fast so we can properly serve the public.”
Cummings, who has made no secret of his disdain for much of the way Britain’s civil service operates, said he had been lucky to have worked with some fantastic officials in recent months.
“But there are also some profound problems at the core of how the British state makes decisions,” he said.
Cummings was one of the senior campaigners behind the Vote Leave victory in the 2016 Brexit referendum and was described by former Prime Minister John Major as “political anarchist.”
In his blog, Cummings said rapid progress could now be made on long-term problems thanks to the combination of policy upheaval after Brexit, an appetite for risk among some officials in the new government and Johnson’s big majority in parliament.
The government was looking to hire data scientists and software developers, economists, policy experts, project managers, communication experts and junior researchers as well as “weirdos and misfits with odd skills,” he said.
“We need some true wild cards, artists, people who never went to university and fought their way out of an appalling hell hole,” Cummings said.

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Shootings in the greater Rio de Janeiro metro area dropped nearly 24 percent in 2019, according to data published Thursday.
There were 7,363 shootings in 2019, down from 9,642 in 2018, according to the Fogo Cruzado organization, which compiled and verified the data.
The group reported 1,517 shooting deaths and 1,357 injuries from gunfire last year, slightly above 2018 levels. Fogo Cruzado doesn’t have access to official police registries, meaning total deaths are likely higher.
Shootings declined steadily in Brazil’s top tourist destination in the second half of 2019. In December, Fogo Cruzado registered 362 shootings, nearly half the number recorded in the same month a year earlier.
Gov. Wilson Witzel, who campaigned on a platform of zero tolerance for crime, boasted about the decline in shootings.
“Throughout 2019, we acted rigorously in the crackdown on crime, in addition to valuing our police,” Witzel tweeted. He has referred to criminals as “narco-terrorists” and proposed using helicopters as platforms for snipers, who could target anyone carrying large firearms.
Ignacio Cano, a professor at the State University of Rio de Janeiro, says the trend began in 2018 in Rio and other states, before governors were sworn in on Jan. 1, 2019.
Police figures compiled by website G1 show homicides fell 22% to 30,864 cases in the first nine months of the year, compared to the same period in 2018. That may be due to violence between rival drug trafficking gangs falling, Cano said.
Role of militias
The expansion of militias in Rio may also partly explain lower reports of shootouts in Rio. One estimate is that 2.2 million people in the metro area — out of more than 12 million residents — live under the thumb of militias, which were originally made up of former police officers, firefighters and military men who wanted to combat lawlessness in their neighborhoods.
“When militias come in, they expel trafficking from the area,” said Rafael Alcadipani da Silveira, a public security analyst and professor at the Getulio Vargas Foundation, a university in Sao Paulo. “There is a visceral relationship between militias and police, and you end up seeing the state teaming up with militias to expel crime.”
The paramilitary groups have become, for some experts, Rio’s biggest security threat, replacing one group of criminals with another, da Silveira warned. Their activities range from retailing smuggled cigarettes to providing cable TV, electricity or transport service, and are also known to extort businesses and carry out summary executions.
Fogo Cruzado, or “Crossfire,” is a free app that was created by Amnesty International Brazil in 2016. It helps residents track shootings in real time by combining crowd-sourcing data and monitoring social media.
 

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