Following Britain’s decision to ban Chinese tech firm Huawei from its 5G telecom network, Germany is emerging as the next potential battleground to check China’s expansion of influence in world affairs, which is increasingly seen as a serious challenge to democratic institutions worldwide.Germany’s decision on whether to include Huawei equipment in its own network “is still up for grabs,” said Reinhard Buetikofer, a member of Germany’s opposition Green Party who chairs the European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations with the People’s Republic of China.Britain’s decision “may very well have an impact on the decision Germany is about to make,” Buetikofer said in a phone interview from Berlin.Buetikofer said Britain’s plan to include Huawei in its next-generation network – which was abruptly reversed in a dramatic announcement last week – had been held out as a model by German supporters of the Chinese telecom giant.“In the past, supporters of having Huawei construct Germany’s 5G network often pointed out: ‘Look, the Brits knew that much more about Huawei than we do, if the Brits are not doing anything about it, why should we?’” But Britain’s July 14 decision has pulled out the rug from under that argument.Buetikofer, a strong advocate for decoupling his country from Huawei, greeted the British announcement with a challenge to German Chancellor Angela Merkel.FILE – Huawei headquarters building is pictured in Reading, Britain, July 14, 2020.“Now it’s Berlin’s turn to move!” he tweeted. “Does the chancellor really want to be the stumbling block preventing a united EU + transatlantic + 5Eyes stance?”The Five Eyes is a nickname for an intelligence-sharing alliance comprising the United States, Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.A German decision to exclude Huawei from its network would be a diplomatic win for the United States, which lobbied hard for the British reversal and is bringing pressure on other countries to follow suit. The Americans warn that Huawei equipment may contain “back doors” that will allow China to spy on sensitive communications.“We hope we can build out a coalition that understands the threat and will work collectively,” U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said during a trip to Britain and Denmark this week.But Buetikofer said his objections to the Chinese company are not influenced by the pressure from Washington. “I oppose Huawei’s playing a part in the German 5G network not because I want to do the U.S. a favor, but because I think it is a threat to German national security,” he said.As in other countries, the German argument over Huawei is rooted in a larger debate about the best way to deal with China’s rising power.Merkel emphasizes the importance of “dialogue” with Beijing, unswayed by the fierce international reaction to its new security law restricting long-established rights in Hong Kong. But others, including a significant number of German lawmakers, believe Beijing is not only an economic rival, but one that is doing all it can to replace democratic norms around the world with its own style of authoritarian rule.German Free Democratic Party legislator Johannes Vogel has argued that Beijing has been explicit in stating that goal. “It would be naive if we didn’t take their assessment at face value,” wrote Vogel, the deputy chair of the German-Chinese Parliamentary Friendship Group.Merkel has also argued in favor of Huawei on the basis of a “no-spying pact” her government secured from the company.But Buetikofer points out that Huawei founder and CEO Ren Zhengfei is a member of China’s ruling Communist Party.“Don’t take us for idiots,” he remarked during a recent podcast.Analysts have warned that China could retaliate against an unfavorable decision on Huawei by targeting Germany’s auto industry, and Buetikofer acknowledged to VOA that the industry plays a significant part in his country’s economy.Nevertheless, he said, “Germany’s national interest is not synonymous with the interests of Volkswagen, just as the U.S.’s national interest is not synonymous with the interests of GM.” 
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Kurdish forces say a planned joint counterterrorism raid with Iraqi forces against Islamic State militants was called off following a flag brawl with their Iraqi counterparts at a checkpoint in the north.  VOA’s Dilshad Anwar reports from the region in this story narrated by Namo Abdulla.Produced by: Nawid Orokzai
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The U.S. Senate on Thursday passed its version of the National Defense Authorization Act, a $740 billion bill setting policy for the Pentagon that President Donald Trump has threatened to veto over a provision removing Confederate names from military bases.The vote was 86-14, one of the few times the Republican-led Senate has broken from the president, and could pave the way for a fight later this year with the White House.The Senate and Democratic-led House of Representatives each passed versions of the bill, known as the NDAA, with far more than the two-thirds majorities needed to override a veto.The House bill also voted to include a provision to change the names of military facilities named after generals who fought on the pro-slavery side during the Civil War 155 years ago.Tributes to the Confederacy, and slave owners — like base names and statues — have come under increasing scrutiny amid widespread protests over racial injustice sparked by police killings of Black Americans.Now that the House and Senate have both passed versions of the bill, congressional negotiators will spend several weeks negotiating on a final, compromise NDAA, reconciling differences between the two versions.That compromise must pass both chambers before it can be sent for Trump’s signature or veto.The requirement to change the base names is likely to survive the process because it was passed by both chambers. Senate Republicans, who rarely break from Trump and have never overridden one of his vetoes, have urged the president to back off his veto threat.One difference is that the Senate bill does not include an amendment — offered by Republican Senator Mitt Romney — that would have restrained Trump’s plan to move troops from Germany to other parts of Europe.The House bill includes such a provision.
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A Hamburg court convicted a 93-year old German man of helping to murder 5,232 prisoners, many of them Jewish, at a Nazi concentration camp during World War II and gave him a suspended two-year sentence in one of the last cases against Nazi-era crimes.Rolled into the courtroom in a wheelchair and hiding his face behind a blue folder, Bruno D. acknowledged he had been an SS guard in the Stutthof concentration camp near Gdansk in what was then occupied Poland, but he said his presence did not amount to guilt.This did not convince the court in Hamburg, which found him guilty Thursday of being involved in the killings from August 1944 to April 1945.”How could you get used to the horror?” asked Judge Anne Meier-Goering as she read the verdict.About 65,000 people, including many Jews, were murdered or died at Stutthof, the museum’s website says. Prosecutors argued that many were shot in the back of the head or gassed.As Bruno D. was only 17 or 18 years old at the time of the crimes, he was tried in a youth court and sessions were limited to two to three hours per day because of his frail health.Prosecutors had called for a prison sentence of three years. In his final testimony to the court, he apologized for the suffering of victims but stopped short of taking responsibility.”I would like to apologize to all the people who have gone through this hell of insanity and to their relatives and survivors,” he told the court on Monday, broadcaster NDR and other media outlets reported.Some 75 years after the Holocaust, the number of suspects is dwindling but prosecutors are still trying to bring individuals to justice. A landmark conviction in 2011 cleared the way to more prosecutions, as working in a camp was for the first time found to be ground for culpability with no proof of a specific crime.
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After the outbreak of coronavirus in the Kurdistan region of Iraq, the regional government ordered lockdowns across the region and is asking everybody to stay at home. While the lockdown is impacting thousands, some people who used to depend on daily incomes are facing serious challenges providing food for their families. VOA’s Rebaz Majeed reports.Camera: Rebaz Majeed
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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is set to unveil a $1 trillion COVID-19 rescue package on Thursday, pushing past a Republican revolt over big spending and differences with the White House as the virus crisis worsens.The package, called CARES II, is made up of separate bills from 10 senators as McConnell seeks to replicate an earlier strategy to launch negotiations with Democrats. But the path will be tougher this time. GOP senators and President Donald Trump are at odds over priorities, and Democrats say it’s not nearly enough to stem the health crisis, reopen schools and extend aid to jobless Americans.The Republican leader is expected to deliver a speech shortly after the Senate opens, and then senators will begin rolling out their separate parts of the package, according to a Republican granted anonymity to discuss the plans.”Very productive meeting,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said while exiting a session late Wednesday at the Capitol.The centerpiece of the GOP effort remains McConnell’s liability shield to protect businesses, schools and others from coronavirus-related lawsuits.The package is not expected to provide any new money for cash-strapped states and cities, which are clamoring for funds, but Republicans propose giving $105 billion to help schools reopen and $15 billion for child care centers to create safe environments for youngsters during the pandemic.The $600 weekly unemployment benefit boost that is expiring Friday will be reduced, likely to $200, and ultimately adjusted according to state jobless benefits rates. Some Republicans say the boost is a disincentive to work, but others prefer a phased approach.”We cannot allow there to be a cliff in unemployment insurance given we’re still at about 11% unemployment,” said Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio.The bill is likely to be silent on the potential housing crisis as a federal eviction moratorium on millions of rental units expires in days.One key holdup in the talks was Trump’s push for a payroll tax cut, according to a Republican granted anonymity to discuss the private talks. Hardly any GOP senators support the idea. Instead, McConnell and some other Republicans prefer another round of direct $1,200 cash payments to Americans.Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said there will be another boost for small business lending in the Paycheck Protection Program. “It’s going to be big,” he said.The bills will also include tax breaks for businesses to hire and retain workers and to help shops and workplaces retool with new safety protocols.The breakthrough on testing money was key after days of debate between Republicans and the White House. Republicans wanted $25 billion, but the Trump administration said the $9 billion in unspent funds from a previous aid deal was sufficient. The two sides settled on adding $16 billion to the unspent funds to reach $25 billion, senators said. There will also be fresh funds for vaccines.Of the $105 billion for education, Republicans want $70 billion to help K-12 schools reopen, $30 billion for colleges and $5 billion for governors to allocate. The Trump administration wanted school money linked to reopenings, but in McConnell’s package the money for K-12 would likely be split between those that have in-person learning and those that don’t.Democrats, who already approved House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s more sweeping $3 trillion package two months ago, said the GOP infighting with Trump was delaying needed relief to Americans during the crisis.”We are just days away from a housing crisis that could be prevented,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.In their package, Democrats are calling for $430 billion to reopen schools, bigger unemployment benefits and direct aid checks and a sweeping $1 trillion for state and local governments. They also want a fresh round of mortgage and rental assistance and new federal health and safety requirements for workers.McConnell calls his proposal a “starting point” in negotiations with Democrats. Congress in March approved the massive $2.2 trillion CARES package, the biggest of its kind in U.S. history.The severity of the prolonged virus outbreak is upending American life. Schools are delaying fall openings, states are clamping down with new stay-home orders and the fallout is rippling through an economy teetering with high unemployment and business uncertainty. A new AP-NORC poll shows very few Americans want full school sessions without restrictions in the fall.Still, some Republicans said they are unlikely to approve any new aid.”I just don’t see the need for it,” Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., told reporters on Wednesday. 
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One of the great mysteries of the coronavirus is how quickly it rocketed around the world.  It first flared in central China and, within three months, was on every continent but Antarctica, shutting down daily life for millions. Behind the rapid spread was something that initially caught scientists off guard, baffled health authorities and undermined early containment efforts — the virus could be spread by seemingly healthy people.As workers return to offices, children prepare to return to schools and those desperate for normalcy again visit malls and restaurants, the emerging science points to a menacing reality: If people who appear healthy can transmit the illness, it may be impossible to contain.”It can be a killer and then 40 percent of people don’t even know they have it,” said Dr. Eric Topol, head of Scripps Research Translational Institute.Researchers have exposed the frightening likelihood of silent spread of the virus by asymptomatic and presymptomatic carriers. But how major a role seemingly healthy people play in swelling the ranks of those infected remains unanswered — and at the top of the scientific agenda.  The small but mighty coronavirus can unlock a human cell, set up shop and mass produce tens of thousands of copies of itself in a single day. Virus levels skyrocket before the first cough, if one ever arrives. And astonishing to scientists, an estimated 4 in 10 infected people don’t ever have symptoms.The slyness of the virus remains on the minds of many scientists as they watch societies reopen, wondering what happens if silent spreaders aren’t detected until it’s too late.Travelers with no coughs can slip past airport screens. Workers without fevers won’t be caught by temperature checks. People who don’t feel tired and achy will attend business meetings.And outbreaks could begin anew.The first hintsAs early as January, there were signs people could harbor the virus without showing symptoms. Still, many scientists remained unconvinced.  The concept of people unwittingly spreading disease has never been an easy one to grasp, from the polio epidemic of mid-century America to the spread of HIV decades later.  As COVID-19 emerged, health officials believed it would be like other coronaviruses and that people were most infectious when showing symptoms like cough and fever, with transmission rare otherwise.”We were thinking this thing is going to look like SARS: a long incubation period and no transmission during the incubation period,” said Lauren Ancel Meyers, a disease modeler at the University of Texas at Austin.Behind the scenes, scientists like Meyers were sharing their alarming finding with health officials. By scouring the websites of Chinese health departments, Meyers and her team found more than 50 cases between Jan. 21 and Feb. 8 where the person who brought the virus home didn’t develop symptoms until after infecting a family member.  “When we looked at the data, we said, ‘Oh no, this can’t be true,'” Meyers said. “It was shocking.”Clues on a cruise shipRebecca Frasure, who contracted the virus while aboard the Diamond Princess cruise, sat in bed in Japan in late February, frustrated to be kept hospitalized even though she didn’t have any symptoms.  “I’m perfectly healthy except having this virus in my body,” Frasure said.  Without widespread and frequent testing, it’s impossible to know how many people without symptoms might carry it. The Diamond Princess, which idled in the Port of Yokohama while the virus exploded onboard, enticed researchers.A mathematical model built by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine aimed at estimating how many infected people without symptoms were being missed indicated that a startling three-quarters of infected people on the Princess were asymptomatic.In Washington state, similar clues emerged for Dr. Jeff Duchin as a team of investigators examined the Life Care nursing home — the site of the first major U.S. cluster of cases — and found health care workers were spreading the virus to other elder care facilities. They believed at least some were working while infected but before feeling symptoms.  In March, more than half the residents at another nursing home who tested positive didn’t have symptoms.All that underscored the need to shift gears and acknowledge the virus couldn’t be totally stopped.  “This disease is going to be extremely hard to control,” Duchin recalled thinking.Unanswered questionsThe nose and mouth are convenient entryways for the coronavirus. Once inside, the virus commandeers the cell’s machinery to copy itself, while fending off the body’s immune defenses. Virus levels skyrocket in the upper airway, all without symptoms early on. Many scientists believe that, during these days, people can spread virus just by talking, breathing or touching surfaces.  In the truly asymptomatic, the immune system wins the battle before they ever feel sick.  As it became clearer that healthy people could spread the virus, U.S. health authorities opted not to wait for scientific certainty. In early April, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended people wear masks.Days later, Chinese researchers published a paper saying patients are most infectious two to three days before developing symptoms. Evidence continues to accumulate, and the CDC now estimates 40% of transmission is occurring before people feel sick.  Still, doubt remains among scientists, most notably among the World Health Organization, which has discounted the importance of asymptomatic infection, though it recently began to acknowledge that possibility and advised people to wear masks.  U.S. health officials blame China for delays in sharing information on silent spread. But Topol contends the U.S. could have mounted its own testing program with viral genome sequencing.  That’s no small matter: Gaining scientific clarity earlier would have saved lives.”We’ve been slow on everything in the United States,” Topol said. “And I have to say it’s shameful.”
 
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A U.N. program is calling for a guaranteed Temporary Basic Income for nearly 3 billion of the world’s poorest people to shield them from the worst impact of COVID-19. The proposal argues the financial aid would help slow the spread of the pandemic by enabling impoverished beneficiaries to stay home.The United Nations Development Program says that 1 billion people live below the poverty line on $1.90 a day. Nearly 2 billion others live just above the poverty line but are at risk of falling below. About 70 percent work in the informal sector. They are self-employed, unpaid and not protected by any social insurance program.Despite COVID-19 lockdown measures, people who work in the informal sector are forced to leave their homes to eke out enough money to support themselves and their families. U.N. Development Fund chief economist and lead author of the report George Gray Molina told VOA their prospects of weathering the current crisis without a guaranteed income are bleak.“What we will see is quite horrific,” he said. “People with no jobs, no livelihoods, no income, with containment policies that are variable. Some are working, some are not working. If they do not work, then you see a spread of the virus. It gets worse and worse. So, it is a vicious cycle, and this can be part, we think, of breaking that vicious cycle.”The UNDP estimates $1.2 trillion would be needed to provide a Temporary Basic Income for nearly 3 billion of the poorest people in 132 developing countries for six months.Molina notes this sum is nearly equivalent to the $1.3 trillion of what developing countries owe in external debt payments this year. He says one way that countries could pay for the Temporary Basic Income, or TBI, would be to defer payment of their external debt for a year.“The Secretary General of the U.N. has called for a comprehensive debt standstill, which would include all private creditors and also official bilateral creditors,” he said. “So, that is one source that we think could work. It is a standstill for one year, so, you would stop paying the bank for a year, but then you would repart paying the bank as soon as the TBI is over.”Several countries already have taken steps to introduce a Temporary Basic Income. For example, UNDP reports Togo has distributed more than $19.5 million in monthly financial aid to nearly 13 percent of the population through its cash transfer program. Women who work in the informal sector are the main beneficiaries.It says Brazil and Colombia recently began registering people as a prelude to receiving financial aid. It adds that Spain recently approved a monthly budget of $289 million to supplement the incomes of 850,000 vulnerable families and 2.3 million individuals. 
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U.S. federal agents fired tear gas at protesters gathered outside the federal courthouse in Portland, Oregon, late Wednesday.Mayor Ted Wheeler was among those standing by a fence in front of the courthouse when the agents fired the tear gas.Protesters have demonstrated in Portland for 56 consecutive days, rallying against police violence, racial inequality and the recent deployment of the federal forces in the city.The mayor arrived at the protest area earlier in the day and pledged his solidarity with the crowd, but his presence was largely rejected as many yelled at him.Critics have faulted Wheeler for not controlling the city’s police force, which threatened its own use of force with tear gas and arrests Wednesday night as Portland police declared the gathering a riot. Others, including business owners who have seen their operations disrupted by the protests say Wheeler has failed to bring the situation under control. A riot has been declared outside the Justice Center. Disperse to the north and/or west. Disperse immediately. Failure to adhere to this order may subject you to arrest or citation, or riot control agents, including, but not limited to, tear gas and/or impact weapons.— Portland Police (@PortlandPolice) July 23, 2020Also Wednesday, the Oregon attorney general filed a lawsuit accusing the federal agents of arresting protesters without cause and using excessive force, which federal authorities have disputed.  
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