Wildfires have burned a record-breaking 1.25 million hectares in California as of Saturday. Washington state is enduring its second-largest area burned. A half-million people are under a fire evacuation warning or order in Oregon, one-tenth of the state’s population.The devastation is not unexpected. Climate experts have been sounding the alarm for a long time, said University of California, Merced, wildfire expert LeRoy Westerling.”We’ve been doing modeling and simulations for years now that indicate that these really severe widespread fire seasons are coming, beyond anything that we’ve really experienced in the historical record,” he said. “And we’re seeing that emerge in real time, year by year here in California and around the western United States. So in that sense it’s not surprising at all.”On the other hand, he added, living through it is another story. “It feels very real and very surprising every year as it ratchets up and gets a little more horrible.”Heating up, drying outWildfires need dry plants to burn, and climate change is helping increase the supply, Westerling said.Higher temperatures mean flammable materials dry out faster. California and Oregon have already warmed about 1.1 degrees Celsius on average since the start of the 20th century, and Washington is about 0.8 degrees C warmer, Boats are partially obscured by smoke from a wildfire at a marina on Detroit Lake burned by the Beachie Creek Fire, Sept. 12, 2020, in Detroit, Ore.The warming climate affects water supplies throughout the year. Mountain snowmelt is a critical long-lasting source of water in much of the region. But less precipitation is falling as snow and more as rain, which runs off faster. That means less water is available when the dry summer months arrive.Those summers have been especially dry. According to Margi Wyatt, right, is comforted by a friend after returning home to find her mobile home destroyed by wildfire in Estacada, Ore., Sept. 12, 2020.Plus, a growing number of people are living in vulnerable areas near wilderness, raising the risk of loss of life and property.And more people means more fires, whether from power lines, campfires, cigarettes, fireworks or, more rarely, arson.More to comeAnd this is just the beginning.A fire season like this one is “becoming more common, and it is projected to continue going in this direction” in the coming decades as climate change ratchets up, according to Erica Fleishman, director of the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute at Oregon State University.Temperatures are expected to continue rising. Total annual precipitation might not change much, but it is expected to come in fewer, larger storms, she said.Summers are predicted to be drier. “We already got very little (summer) precipitation, but we’re expecting even less,” said U.S. Department of Agriculture Northwest Climate Hub Director Jessica Halofsky.Add to that the lessening snowpack, she said, and “there’s going to be more fire in the Pacific Northwest, and a kind of ballpark (estimate) is maybe two to three times the annual area burned in the future than we’ve had in the past.”Predicted decades agoWith dozens missing in Oregon and at least 19 dead in California this year, Western officials are calling out the effects of climate change.“This is not an act of God,” Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said Friday. “This has happened because we have changed the climate of the state of Washington in dramatic ways.””We’re in the midst of a climate emergency,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Friday. “We’re experiencing what so many people predicted decades and decades ago. But all of that now is reality.”It’s little comfort to the scientists who predicted it.”It’s really not satisfying being correct,” Oregon State’s Fleishman said. “You wish that you were not, in these cases, and it’s heartbreaking.”
…

When flames chased Chuck and Janie Dee down the mountain two years ago, they thought they’d never be back.Yet there they were Sunday, parking a camper next to their dirt lot and the shell of what had been their swimming pool, excited for their role in restoring their hometown of Paradise to what it was before the deadliest wildfire in California history destroyed their home and most of the community.They installed a septic tank. They filed for a building permit. They were really doing it.The couple made it three days before they had to flee again. They awoke after daybreak Wednesday to darkness, the sky blackened by smoke as the ridge above them glowed orange. Their minds went blank as fear reintroduced itself.Heading down the mountain again, Janie Dee couldn’t help but doubt their decision to return.”I wondered if we were really doing the right thing,” she said.The fire never made it to Paradise as other foothill communities bore the terrible brunt, suffering thousands of destroyed structures. But the flames paused the hopeful, exciting and — at times — frustrating work of rebuilding a town that has become synonymous with heartbreak.In the nearly two years since the Camp Fire, Paradise has tried to entice people back. The road sign heading into town still boasts of a population of more than 26,000. But the reality is closer to 4,000 now, local leaders say.Paradise Town Councilman Steve Crowder stands on his property in Paradise, Calif., Sept. 10, 2020. Crowder lost his home in a 2018 wildfire that destroyed most of the town. But he has since built a new house.The 2018 fire struck two weeks before Thanksgiving, destroyed roughly 19,000 structures in and around Paradise and killed 85 people. Before the fire, the town averaged about 25 to 30 new homes built per year, according to Vice Mayor Steve Crowder. As of Wednesday, the town has issued 1,051 building permits for single-family homes and 345 of them are built.With so much demand, Paradise hired a private company to act as the city’s building department, which they set up in a building donated by Bank of America.Many local governments shut down when the coronavirus hit. But Paradise kept its building department going — with a few modifications — to prevent a slowdown in permits.But rebuilding is expensive. New homes must have special fire-resistant siding and roofs, and property owners have to pay to clear their lots of debris before they can rebuild. A government program to pay for the removal of thousands of hazardous trees has been delayed for months by a dispute over the contract.FIRE – In this photo from November 2019, a building in Paradise burned by the fire still stands, a reminder of the destructive force of the wildfire. (Elizabeth Lee/VOA News)Meanwhile, the town is covered with RVs — the result of a local law letting people live on their property if they meet certain requirements. But that law is set to expire at the end of the year, and it’s unclear if the town council will extend it because of opposition from homeowners.”I’ve got people from standing homes and new construction saying, ‘We didn’t do this to live in an RV park,’ ” Crowder said.Town leaders are also wrestling with how to make the town safer by both preventing wildfires and making it easier for people to flee.The Paradise Parks and Recreation District is looking into building a buffer zone around the town by buying land and turning it into parks that would limit trees and other fuel for wildfires.The evacuation plan before the Camp Fire split the town into zones and had them leave at different times. But the 2018 fire came so quickly everyone had to leave at once, clogging the few roads out of town — which briefly happened again Wednesday. The council is weighing plans to connect various roads throughout town to give people more avenues of escape.Communication is still a problem. The latest fire to threaten the town came when Pacific Gas & Electric had shut off power in Paradise and parts of more than 20 counties for fear of high winds causing power lines to spark fires — as happened in 2018.No electricity made it harder for people to know what was happening and whether they needed to leave. The town has plans to install a siren system but is waiting on funding.All of those issues have framed the November election. It’s the first local election in Paradise since the fire, giving residents a chance to weigh in on the town’s future. Three of the five town council seats are on the ballot, and 15 people are running for them.Paradise Town Council candidate Steve Oehler stands in the parking lot of a Starbucks in Paradise, Calif., Sept. 10, 2020. Oehler lost his home in a 2018 wildfire that destroyed most of the buildings in the town. But he has since rebuilt.They include Steve Oehler, who moved to Paradise six months before the 2018 fire and has since rebuilt and moved back. He says the current council doesn’t respect property rights.”Paradise was built by pioneers,” he said. “The people that are coming back are the pioneers of 2020. They’re the people that are taking nothing and turning it into something.”Construction resumed in Paradise on Thursday. Cement mixers poured a foundation for one house as falling ash from nearby fires swirled around the construction workers. It’s a reminder of the danger of living in some of the most beautiful parts of California and a potential deterrent to bringing people back.But the Dees’ second thoughts about returning to Paradise didn’t last long. They thought of their son and daughter-in-law — who have bought the lot across from them — and their friends who stayed in Paradise and welcomed them back with such excitement.One day after they fled, the Dees were back, sitting in lawn chairs outside their camper beneath the smoky skies.”Just like tornado alley. We see this on television. Oh, that whole town got torn up by tornadoes. We ask each other, ‘Why do they keep living there?’ ” Chuck Dee said. “And here we are. We want to continue living here with the threat of fires. I guess it just depends on what you like.”
…

India and China have agreed to disengage their troops and deescalate tensions that flared following a fresh dispute along their contested border in the Himalayan mountains. However, analysts say overcoming their differences will not be easy. Anjana Pasricha reports from New Delhi.
…

Calmer winds and rising humidity helped firefighters battle more than 100 wildfires Saturday that continued to rage largely uncontrolled along the U.S. West Coast from California to Washington state and beyond, incinerating entire towns and killing at least 24 people.Authorities were concerned, however, that the receding flames could lead to the discovery of more bodies across the blackened terrain in the region.“We are preparing for a mass fatality incident based on what we know and the numbers of structures that have been lost,” Andrew Phelps, director of the Oregon Office of Emergency Management (OEM), said Friday.More than 40,000 people in Oregon have been evacuated and some 500,000 — more than 10% of its population — remained under some level of evacuation protocol as fires in the state destroyed thousands of homes and burned hundreds of thousands of hectares. Oregon Governor Kate Brown on Friday amended Thursday’s statement by OEM that said a half-million people throughout the state had been ordered to evacuate.A woman is seen at a makeshift distribution center for people displaced by the wildfires, at a parking lot in Oregon City, Ore., Sept. 11, 2020.The Oregon Convention Center in Portland has been transformed into a shelter for evacuees. Other evacuation centers were opened across the state, while many evacuees have simply taken refuge in their cars in large parking lots.In southern Oregon, an apocalyptic scene of burned residential subdivisions and trailer parks stretched for kilometers along a highway — a scene mirrored in parts of California, where the governor gave a blunt assessment.“This is a climate damn emergency. This is real and it’s happening. This is the perfect storm,” California Governor Gavin Newsom said. “What we’re experiencing right here is coming to communities all across the United States of America unless we get our act together on climate change.” More than 68,000 people are under evacuation orders in California.Health warningsThick smoke and haze blanketed much of the region, triggering health warnings and prompting officials to urge residents to remain indoors.In Oregon’s most populated region, helicopters dropped water and fire retardant on two fires that threatened to merge.Brown said Friday that dozens of people were missing in Jackson and Marion counties.In California, the largest fire in the state’s history was burning in the Mendocino National Forest, about 190 kilometers northwest of Sacramento.The amount of land burned in Washington state in just the past five days has made this the state’s second-worst fire season, after 2015.”This is not an act of God,” Washington Governor Jay Inslee said Friday. “This has happened because we have changed the climate of the state of Washington in dramatic ways.”A commercial aircraft is seen as smoke from wildfires covers an area at the Portland International Airport, in Portland, Ore., Sept. 12, 2020.This year’s wildfires in California have already burned record areas of land. The year also saw the largest wildfire in the state’s recorded history, along with five of the top 10 largest fires in state history. The fire season is still young in the region, where wildfires have historically intensified in the fall.In addition to beating back the wildfires, authorities are now challenged with fighting misinformation on social media sites that the fires were ignited by arsonists from far right and far left groups. The FBI said Friday that it had investigated some claims and so far had found them to be untrue.Arrest madeOn Friday, however, the Jackson County Sheriff’s Department in Oregon announced that Michael Bakkela, 41, had been arrested on two counts of arson and other charges in connection with the Almeda fire in southern Oregon. Bakkela has denied starting the blaze.The sheriff’s department also said a man was found dead near an ignition point of the Almeda fire, which burned hundreds of homes, and that a search was underway for about 50 missing people.Meanwhile, meteorologists said California’s wildfires were responsible for the orange glow in the sky that people across Britain woke up to Friday.Meteorologist Simon Lee told The Telegraph: “Meteorologically speaking, in the last few days we have seen a very strong and straight, west-east jet stream, flowing across the North Atlantic from North America to Europe, which has undoubtedly helped rapidly and coherently transport the aerosols from North America.”
…

Thousands of Belarusians demonstrated Saturday in Minsk to demand the release of opposition leader Maria Kolesnikova, who was jailed this week after she resisted expulsion from the country.Video broadcast by Polish-funded satellite TV channel Belsat and independent outlet Tut.by showed masked Belarusian riot police violently detaining at least 40 women who were thrown into vans as scuffles erupted in the city’s central Freedom Square.A woman wears a T-shirt with a sign of an old Belarusian flag during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus, Sept. 12, 2020.Saturday’s protests were a precursor to a massive women’s rally expected on Sunday to protest police violence and allegations of electoral fraud. Some of the women protesters chanted “Bring back our Masha,” referring to Kolesnikova, while others beat saucepans.Kolesnikova, who has been in a Minsk jail since Monday, has been accused of undermining national security as part of a criminal investigation against leaders of the Coordination Council, which was formed last month to negotiate a transition of power after President Alexander Lukashenko won a sixth term in office.Opposition parties, the United States and the European Union allege the August 9 election was rigged.Lukashenko, who denies the voting was fraudulent, accuses council members and activists of colluding with Western nations to try to create a parallel government.Thousands of people have been detained over five weeks of protests triggered by the contested August 9 election. At least three people have been killed and hundreds hurt as police have aggressively dispersed peaceful protesters with rubber bullets, clubs and stun grenades.U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Tuesday said the U.S. and other countries are considering bringing sanctions against “those involved in human rights abuses and repression in Belarus.”
…

A Pakistani journalist has been arrested in the port city of Karachi, accused of spreading hateful content against the country’s military on social media, according to police authorities and the journalist’s family.Bilal Farooqi, who works for the English-language Express Tribune newspaper, was arrested at his home on September 11.”Through his [social media] posts, Bilal Farooqi defamed the Pakistan Army and anti-state elements used these posts for their vested interests,” a police report seen by Reuters said.The report also alleged that his online activity spread religious hatred and incited mutiny against the military.Farooqi’s family told local media that police seized his mobile phone during a search of their home.Journalists and press freedom advocates have accused the Pakistani military and its agencies of pressuring media outlets to smother critical coverage.His arrest is the latest in a series of such moves against journalists who have been critical of the government or militaryIt also comes days after Prime Minister Imran Khan insisted that Pakistan has a free media.Police cited the country’s cybercrime law that critics say contains vague language that can be used to criminalize basic online activities.The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights earlier this week expressed concern at instances of incitement to violence against journalists and human rights activists.”We have raised our concerns directly with the government and we have urged immediate, concrete steps to ensure the protection of journalists and human rights defenders who have been subjected to threats,” it said in a statement.
 
…

Iranian wrestler Navid Afkari was executed on Saturday after being convicted of stabbing a security guard to death during anti-government protests in 2018, state media said, in a case that has sparked international outcry.
 
Afkari was executed “this morning after legal procedures were carried out at the insistence of the parents and the family of the victim,” the media quoted the head of the justice department in southern Fars province, Kazem Mousavi, as saying.
 
Afkari was convicted of killing Hassan Turkman, a water company security guard, and other charges. Iran’s Supreme Court rejected a review of the case in late August, according to state media.
 
Afkari, a 27-year-old Greco-Roman wrestler, had said he was tortured into making a false confession, according to his family and activists, and his attorney says there is no proof of his guilt.
 
Iran’s judiciary has denied Afkari’s claims.
 
A global union representing 85,000 athletes called on Tuesday for Iran’s expulsion from world sport if it executed Afkari.
 
Afkari’s case had sparked an outcry from Iranians on social media and human rights groups. U.S. President Donald Trump also called on Iran this month not to execute the wrestler.
 
The killing of the security guard took place during some of the worst unrest in a decade over economic hardships. Iran’s clerical rulers have blamed the street protests what they call “thugs” linked to exiles and foreign foes – the United States and Israel.
 
Iranian state television aired a video last week in which Afkari appeared to confess to Turkman’s killing. State television showed what appeared to be written confessions by Afkari, but he said in a recording circulated on social media that he was coerced into signing the documents.
 
“I hit twice, once and then again,” Afkari was shown saying with a stabbing gesture during a police reconstruction of the killing.
 
…

Anthony Fauci, the top U.S. infectious disease expert, said Friday it will be well into next year before life begins to return pre-pandemic normalcy.  That all depends, he said, on whether a vaccine is available later this year.Fauci told MSNBC that “by the time you mobilize the distribution of the vaccinations, and you get the majority or more of the population vaccinated and protected, that’s likely not going to happen till the mid or end of 2021.”Hours after Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine announced that Dr. Joan Duwve would be the state’s new health director, Duwve turned down the position because she was informed of the harassment her predecessor, Dr. Amy Acton, had faced because of lockdown orders she gave early in the coronavirus outbreak.Duwve, who was South Carolina’s public health director, said in a statement in South Carolina’s The State newspaper, “In conversations preparing for the transition to the Ohio Department of Health, I was informed that the former director’s family had faced harassment from the public.”  Duwve said, “While I have dedicated my life to improving public health, my first commitment is to my family. I am a public figure. My family is off-limits. I withdrew my name from consideration to protect my family from similar treatment.”Some hospitals in the U.S. have been turning down part of their allocated supply of remdesivir, the COVID-19-fighting drug made by Gilead Sciences, the U.S. Health and Human Services Department confirmed Friday.From July 6 to September 8, state and territorial public health systems accepted about 72% of the remdesivir they were offered by HHS, a spokesperson confirmed Friday to Reuters. Hospitals then bought about two-thirds of what the states and territories accepted.The government has been leading the distribution of the drug, but that effort expires at the end of the month, and some hospitals are stockpiling remdesivir because they don’t know what the availability of the drug will be after September and want to be prepared if the pandemic flares this winter.Gilead did not respond to a request for comment from Reuters.Hospital say their supplies of the drug are adequate partly because they are only using it to treat the sickest patients despite the Food and Drug Administration greenlighting its use in more cases.Dr. Adarsh Bhimraj, an infectious disease specialist at the Cleveland Clinic, said he is skeptical about using remdesivir in patients with moderate COVID-19, especially given the price.The resulting surplus of remdesivir, which costs $3,120 for a six-vial intravenous course, contrasts the early days of the pandemic, when the new drug was in short supply in some regions.For the first time since mid-March, Canada has gone 24 hours without reporting a death from COVID-19, according to public health agency data released late Friday.Canada has 9,214 deaths from COVID-19 and 137,676 confirmed cases of the coronavirus disease as of Friday, according to Johns Hopkins University data.Clown Tapetito, wearing protective gear amid the new coronavirus, poses for a photo before disinfecting a home free of charge, in El Alto, Bolivia, Sept. 11, 2020.Most of the country’s provinces are easing their pandemic restrictions and schools are opening for in-person classes, leading to a mild uptick in infections in the last few days. The rest of the provinces, including British Columbia have added new curbs to halt the spread of the virus.Health officials say Canada’s experience with SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, helped them to be better prepared. SARS killed 44 people in Canada, the only country outside Asia to report deaths from that outbreak in 2002 and 2003.Canada’s first recorded case of coronavirus was in Toronto, on January 25.The global count of COVID-19 cases is just over 28.5 million, according to Johns Hopkins University.  The U.S. continues to lead the world with the most infections at more than 6.4 million and deaths at more than 193,000.  
…

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said on Friday that a “U.S. spy” was captured while spying on the largest refining complex in the country, which is going through a severe fuel shortage crisis.In a live broadcast on state television, Maduro said the man was arrested on Thursday in the northwest state of Falcon where he was spying on the Amuay and Cardon oil refineries.They captured “a Marine, who was serving as a Marine on CIA bases in Iraq,” Maduro said. “He was captured with specialized weapons, he was captured with large amounts of cash, large amounts of dollars and other items.”Maduro did not give further details, but said the detainee was giving a statement in custody.Neither the U.S. State Department nor the White House immediately responded to requests for comment.Amuay and Cardon make up the Paraguana Refining Center, which has a nominal processing capacity of 971,000 barrels per day. Both have experienced multiple outages in recent years that the opposition blames on mismanagement and lack of maintenance.Word of the alleged U.S. spy came after a Venezuelan court last month sentenced two former U.S. Green Berets to 20 years in prison for their role in a failed incursion in May.Separately during Friday’s broadcast, Maduro said that in recent days security forces had also foiled a plot to cause an explosion at another oil refinery, El Palito in Carabobo state.He did not elaborate.Hit by U.S. sanctions that have exacerbated acute fuel shortages, the government on Friday announced a new fuel distribution initiative and said it was planning new refining projects, without providing further details. 
…

Drive-in theaters were once a big part of American car culture in the mid-’60s. But air-conditioned theaters eventually put most of them out of business.  But these days, with movie theaters shut down because of the coronavirus, drive-in theaters are experiencing something of a renaissance. VOA’s Towhidul Islam visited a drive-in theater in rural Virginia and filed this report narrated by Bezhan Hamdard.
Camera: Towhidul Islam    Produced by: Bezhan Hamdard
…

The economic impact of the coronavirus continues to linger in New York City, where lines to pick up donated food are still much longer than usual, according to a local charity group. Food Bank for New York City says it has distributed 30 million meals to New Yorkers, triple the number compared with last year. VOA’s Mariama Diallo reports.
…

Smoke pollution from wildfires raging in California and across the Pacific Northwest worsened in San Francisco, Seattle and Portland, Oregon, on Friday, giving those cities and others in the region some of the world’s worst air quality.Public health officials warned residents to keep indoors with the windows shut, to set air conditioners to run on recirculated air instead of fresh, and to use air purifiers if they had them. Meanwhile, they wrestled with whether to open “smoke shelters” for homeless people or others lacking access to clean air amid the COVID-19 pandemic and concerns about herding people indoors.”The same population that is most vulnerable to the virus is also most vulnerable to the smoke,” Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan said during a news conference.Winds shiftThe sky turned a hazy, grayish white across the Northwest as winds that had previously pushed much of the smoke offshore shifted, bringing unhealthy levels of near-microscopic dust, soot and ash particles to Portland, Seattle and Vancouver, British Columbia. San Francisco also continued to suffer from smoke pollution; those four cities topped the list of major cities with the worst air quality Friday, according to IQAir.com, which tracks air quality around the world.The particles are small enough that they can penetrate deep into the lungs, and health effects can include chest pain, arrhythmia and bronchitis. Those with preexisting conditions such as heart and lung disease or asthma are especially at risk.FILE – Under darkened skies from wildfire smoke, a jogger makes his way along McCovey Cove outside Oracle Park, Sept. 9, 2020, in San Francisco.The smoke was expected to linger through the weekend, another reminder of the vast and severe effects of climate change. In a news conference Friday, Washington Governor Jay Inslee insisted on calling the blazes “climate fires” rather than wildfires.”This is not an act of God,” Inslee said. “This has happened because we have changed the climate of the state of Washington in dramatic ways.”Seattle ordered parks, beaches and boat ramps closed through one of the last hot weekends of the summer to discourage outdoor recreation, and officials were opening a clean-air shelter Friday afternoon that can hold 77 people. The facility, which had been set up as an overflow COVID-19 care facility, is large enough to allow for social distancing, they said.’Weather relief centers’San Francisco officials were also opening “weather relief centers” that will stay open through the weekend, said Mary Ellen Carroll, director of the city’s Department of Emergency Management. City buses were free for everyone so those who need to can reach the centers.Much of California was covered by a thick layer of smoke being pumped into the air by dozens of raging wildfires. In San Francisco, the gray air smelled of burned wood and visibility was clouded by “very unhealthy” air, according to the Bay Area Air Quality District.Residents were also asked to avoid activities that could further degrade the air quality, including unnecessary driving, lawn mowing and barbecuing.Working in University Place, a Tacoma suburb, Washington state Department of Ecology spokesman Andy Wineke said the smoke had obliterated his typical view of the Olympic Mountains.”I can barely see my neighbor,” he said.
…

South Sudan’s central bank said Friday that it planned to ban the use of foreign currency nationwide to prevent further depreciation of the South Sudanese pound against the U.S. dollar after prices of food and other basic commodities have skyrocketed in recent weeks and months. Juba resident Saida Juan said prices were higher each time she headed to the market. The mother of seven said a kilo of meat, which sold for 700 South Sudanese pounds a few months ago, now costs 2,500 South Sudanese pounds, an increase that means her family can afford to eat only green vegetables these days. She called on government officials to do everything in their power to stabilize prices. “Traders selling goods in the markets have been blaming the price hikes on the increase in the exchange rate of the South Sudanese pound and the U.S. dollar. My message to our leaders is that they should try by all means possible to not allow foreign currency to dominate our markets, because the dollar is not our currency. We are really suffering,” Juan told South Sudan in Focus. FILE – A man walks past several mobile money kiosks in Juba, South Sudan, Sept. 10, 2019.On Thursday, the Business Committee of South Sudan’s National Assembly summoned Bank of South Sudan Governor Gamal Abdallah Wani, Finance Minister Salvatore Garang Mabior, and Erjok Bullen, deputy commissioner of the National Revenue Authority, to answer questions about the depreciation of the South Sudanese pound.  Wani attributed the country’s high inflation rate to the 62% drop in international oil prices, ongoing violence in parts of the country, and increased military spending.  South Sudan earns only $4 to $6 per barrel of crude today, or $30 million a month. In 2011, South Sudan earned $900 million a month from oil exports.  Wani told the committee the Bank of South Sudan would issue new regulations banning the use of foreign currency, adding “everybody is carrying foreign currency illegally.” Government-approved exchanges should be the only entities exchanging pounds for dollars, Wani said. “That is why we need the national payment system, because we don’t know how much is going out in terms of the outflow and we don’t know how it is coming in terms of the inflows. The outflows, 50 million, hundreds of millions, what is it for? Is it to buy weapons to come and overthrow the government, or what is it for?” Wani told the committee. On Friday, the exchange rate was $1 for 500 pounds on South Sudan’s black market. The official rate hovered just above $1 to 55 pounds.  Economic state of emergency in SudanIn Sudan, the government declared an economic state of emergency to curb the country’s skyrocketing inflation and rapid depreciation of the Sudanese pound. The government has formed a joint security force and special courts to arrest and punish people who engage in smuggling or illegal trading of foreign currency. Sudan’s acting Finance Minister Hiba Mohamed Ali blamed the steep drop in the value of Sudan’s currency on smugglers and currency traders who she said are deliberately trying to sabotage Sudan’s economy and stifle the transitional government.”The dollar has increased at a maddening rate on the parallel market,” she said. “We have followed this with our colleagues in the security sector and their reports have indicated this is a systematic plan of sabotage through the use of forged currency, speculation in gold prices, and buying at high costs and refusing to sell,” Ali told reporters Thursday in Khartoum. FILE – A merchant in the Central African Republic shows Sudanese bank bills, Dec. 20, 2017.In July, Sudan’s Central Bureau of Statistics recorded an annual inflation rate of 143%, after June’s inflation rate of 136% and May’s rate of 114%. On Friday, $1 was selling for close to 300 Sudanese pounds on Sudan’s black market.   The Sudanese government is enacting urgently needed security and legal measures to crack down on smugglers of gold and subsidized goods, Ali said. “We hereby activate a state of economic emergency, the formation of a joint force to protect the Sudanese economy, which will be comprised of the army, the police, the rapid support force, the general intelligence, and the customs authorities,” Ali announced Thursday.  The unprecedented move was triggered by the rapid depreciation of the Sudanese pound against the dollar, said Suliman Baldo, a senior adviser at the Sentry, a Washington-based organization that tracks corruption in African governments.   “In the space of some 40 days, the dollar has passed from 150 or 140 Sudanese pounds to the dollar to some 300. Therefore, the rate of depreciation was very ominous,” Baldo told South Sudan in Focus. Baldo said the government must do more than crack down on illegal traders to turn around Sudan’s “economic crisis.”  Sudan’s Central Bank should implement restrictions on the amount of money people can withdraw in a day, monitor the circulation of cash in the country and bring military spending under the oversight of the finance ministry, said Baldo.   “The government really needs to take tough actions to try to basically stop dealings in cash, you know, Sudanese dealing in big sacks of Sudanese pounds,” Baldo told VOA. 
…