Month: December 2021

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken warns Russia Wednesday that any military action in Ukraine will have severe consequences. He plans to meet separately Thursday with both the Ukrainian and the Russian foreign ministers in Stockholm to discuss the heightened border tensions. VOA’s Senior Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports.
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Protests echoed in Washington Wednesday on both sides of America’s decades-old debate over abortion as the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments on a state law that would restrict the practice. VOA’s Carolyn Presutti reports.
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Russia said on Wednesday it was ordering U.S. Embassy staff who have been in Moscow for more than three years to fly home by January 31, a retaliatory move for a U.S. decision to limit the terms of Russian diplomats.

The step, the latest in an escalating diplomatic row, comes after Russia’s ambassador to the United States said last week that 27 Russian diplomats and their families were being expelled from the United States and would leave on January 30.

Washington says the diplomats were not expelled but had been in the country for longer than a new three-year limit.

“We … intend to respond in the corresponding way. U.S. Embassy employees who have been in Moscow for more than three years must leave Russia by January 31,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova told a briefing.

The RIA news agency reported that Zakharova said the new U.S. rules meant Russian diplomats who had been forced to leave the United States were also banned from working as diplomats in the United States for three years.

“Before July 1 next year, unless Washington waives the three-year rule and compromises, more [U.S.] workers [in Russia] will leave in numbers commensurate with the number of Russians announced by the State Department,” she said.

Washington informed Russia over a year ago that its diplomats would be allowed to stay for only three years but could be replaced by other diplomats, according to a State Department spokesperson.

“I want to be clear, this is not an expulsion,” the spokesperson said, adding the rule change was designed to have Russia rotate its diplomats with similar frequency to that of the U.S. Embassy in Moscow.

Further reductions in U.S. Embassy staff in Moscow would put pressure on an operation that Washington has already described as being close to a “caretaker presence” amid tit-for-tat expulsions and other restrictions.

The embassy is the last operational U.S. mission in the country after consulates in Vladivostok and Yekaterinburg were closed, and it has shrunk to 120 staff members from about 1,200 in early 2017, Washington says. 

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said it was not too late for Washington to stop Moscow from following through on the new expulsions if it abandoned its own plans to force out Russian diplomats. 

Ties between Washington and Moscow, at post-Cold War lows for years, are under pressure due to a Russian troop buildup near Ukraine.
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Marking the 33rd annual World AIDS Day on Wednesday, the Biden administration announced it would ramp up its domestic and international efforts to fight the HIV virus, which has killed 36 million people worldwide in four decades.

President Joe Biden also released Wednesday the domestic-focused National HIV-AIDS Strategy, which aims for a 90% reduction in new HIV cases in the U.S. over the next nine years. Currently, about 1.2 million Americans are thought to be living with the virus. The epidemic peaked in the U.S. in the 1980s.

The administration has said that racism that leads to unequal medical care is itself “a public health threat” that needs to be acknowledged in the battle against the virus. 

The president offered two new measures aimed at ending the epidemic in the United States by 2030 and boosting U.S. efforts to end the spread of HIV, the virus that can progress to AIDS, around the world.

“Today, we once more raise a two-story-tall red ribbon from the North Portico of the White House to remember how far we have come,” Biden told an audience of American activists, politicians and medical experts, including AIDS research pioneer Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “And the work we have left to finish, so we never forget the prices paid all along the way.” 

Internationally, where the bulk of new infections occur, the U.S. seeks to increase donor funding. On Wednesday, Biden said the U.S. would host the Global Fund to Fight AIDS replenishment conference next year. The U.S. is the fund’s largest donor, contributing about $17 billion to it last year. That’s in addition to a commitment Biden made earlier this year in which he sent $250 million of American Rescue Plan funding to the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), a program established in 2003 by President George W. Bush to combat the disease internationally.

Slow, unequal response 

Still, it’s not clear whether even that infusion of funds will right the ship. The United Nations’ AIDS organization said Wednesday that the global goal to end the epidemic by 2030 has been derailed — and not just by the coronavirus pandemic that upended global health policy and practices.

“Even before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, many of the populations most at risk were not being reached with HIV testing, prevention and care services,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization. “The pandemic has made things worse, with the disruption of essential health services and the increased vulnerability of people with HIV to COVID-19. Like COVID-19, we have all the tools to end the AIDS epidemic, if we use them well. This World AIDS Day, we renew our call on all countries to use every tool in the toolbox to narrow inequalities, prevent HIV infections, save lives and end the AIDS epidemic.” 

Tedros has warned that discrimination and inequality are at the root of the epidemic, and that inattention to these problems would lead to 7.7 million AIDS-related deaths in the next 10 years. 

Other critics have knocked Biden for not moving fast enough on his promises to fight HIV. In August, the world’s premier medical journal, The Lancet, published a critique of Biden’s pace in nominating a new leader for PEPFAR. Biden announced his pick for the job, Cameroon-born John Nkengasong, a U.S. citizen who heads the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in late September. The Senate received the nomination in mid-October and referred it to the Committee on Foreign Relations, where it remains.

“During his candidacy, U.S. President Joe Biden committed to prioritizing the global AIDS response,” the authors — two American and two African activists — wrote in the medical publication. “This promise has been contradicted by a 6-month delay in nominating an ambassador-at-large to lead PEPFAR, which has functioned without a presidentially appointed health diplomat since Ambassador Deborah L. Birx was detailed to the White House Coronavirus Task Force in February 2020.”

On Wednesday, as he recognized Nkengasong among the crowd gathered at the White House, Biden was hopeful.

“We can do this,” he said. “We can eliminate HIV transmission. We can get the epidemic under control in the United States and in countries around the world. We have a scientific understanding. We have treatments. We have the tools we need. We’re going to engage with people with lived experience with HIV and ensure that our efforts are appropriate and effective and centered around the needs of the HIV community.”
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The Biden administration in its new HIV/AIDS strategy calls racism “a public health threat” that must be fully recognized as the world looks to end the epidemic.

The strategy released Wednesday on the annual commemoration of World AIDS Day is meant to serve as a framework for how the administration intends to shape its policies, research, programs and planning over the next three years.

The new strategy asserts that over generations “structural inequities have resulted in racial and ethnic health disparities that are severe, far-reaching, and unacceptable.”

New HIV infections in the U.S. fell about 8% from 2015 to 2019, but Black and Latino communities — particularly gay and bisexual men within those groups — continue to be disproportionately affected, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data.

African Americans make up about 13% of the U.S. population but accounted for more than 40% of new infections. The Latino population accounted for nearly 25% of new infections but makes up about 18.5% of the U.S. population.

Historically, gay and bisexual men have been the most disproportionately affected group. They account for about 66% of new HIV infections, even though they account for only 2% of the population, according to the CDC. In 2019, 26% of new HIV infections were among Black gay and bisexual men, 23% among Latino gay and bisexual men, and 45% among gay and bisexual men under the age of 35.

To reduce the disparities, the strategy includes calls for focusing on the needs of disproportionately affected populations, supporting racial justice, combating HIV-related stigma and discrimination and providing leadership and employment opportunities for people with or at risk for HIV.

Besides addressing racism’s impact on Americans battling the virus or at risk of contracting it, the new strategy also puts greater emphasis on harm reduction and syringe service programs, encourages reform of state laws that criminalize behavior of people with HIV for potentially exposing others and adds focus on the needs of the growing population of people with HIV who are aging.

More than 36 million people worldwide, including 700,000 in the U.S., have died from AIDS-related illnesses since the start of the epidemic more than 40 years ago. Nearly 38 million people are living with HIV, including 1.2 million in the U.S.

President Joe Biden is scheduled to deliver remarks to commemorate World AIDS Day. His administration recently announced it will host the Global Fund to Fight AIDS replenishment conference next year. The United States has contributed about $17 billion to the fund, about a third of all donor contributions.

A giant red ribbon, a symbol of support for people living with HIV, was also displayed on the North Portico of the White House to mark World AIDS day. The two-story ribbon display has become an annual tradition at the White House since 2007.

“Honored to continue this tradition on #WorldAidsDay, remembering the lives lost to HIV/AIDS and supporting those living with the virus across the world,” first lady Jill Biden said in a Twitter posting that included a photo of her posing in front of the ribbon display. 
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Jacqueline Avant, a Los Angeles philanthropist and the wife of music legend Clarence Avant, was fatally shot in Beverly Hills, California, early Wednesday, according to authorities and a Netflix spokeswoman. 

Netflix spokeswoman Emily Feingold confirmed that Jacqueline Avant was killed in the shooting. Avant’s daughter, Nicole, is married to Ted Sarandos, Netflix co-CEO and chief content officer. 

Jacqueline Avant, 81, was a local philanthropist who was the president of the Neighbors of Watts and served on the board of directors of the International Student Center at the University of California-Los Angeles. 

Her husband, Clarence Avant, is known as the “Godfather of Black Music” and was recently inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Former President Barack Obama and Vice President Kamala Harris were among those who paid tribute to him in a video made for the induction ceremony in October. 

Nicole Avant, who served as U.S. ambassador to the Bahamas from 2009 to 2011, is now a film producer whose work includes a 2019 Netflix documentary about her father, “The Black Godfather.” In an interview with NBC News about the documentary, she praised her mother.

“My mom is really the one who brought to my father and our family the love and passion and importance of the arts and culture and entertainment,” she said. “While my father was in it, making all the deals, my mother was the one who gave me, for example, my love of literature, my love of filmmaking, my love of storytelling.” 

Beverly Hills police have not identified Jacqueline Avant as the victim in Wednesday’s violence. They have said only that detectives were investigating a shooting that killed one person.

The coroner’s office has not yet officially identified the person, either, but said the victim was reported as a woman in her 80s. 

The suspect or suspects fled the scene and have not been found, Beverly Hills police said in a news release. 

Police received a call at 2:23 a.m. reporting the shooting in a neighborhood. Officers found a person with a gunshot wound, who was later pronounced dead. 

The shooting was reported on the street where the Avants live, according to voter registration records. 

The police chief was expected to hold a briefing later in the day with more information. 

The Avants were married in 1967. They had two children, Nicole Avant and Alexander Du Bois Avant. 

Clarence Avant, 90, is a Grammy-winning executive, concert promoter and manager who mentored and helped the careers of artists including Bill Withers, Little Willie John, L.A. Reid, Babyface, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. 

He founded Sussex Records and Tabu Records in the 1960s and 1970s and was the chairman of Motown Records in the 1990s. 

Basketball icon Earvin “Magic” Johnson wrote on Twitter that he and his wife were devastated by the news of Avant’s death, calling her “one of our closest friends.” 

“This is the saddest day in our lives,” he wrote. 

U.S. Representative Karen Bass, a Democrat from California, said she was heartbroken by the violence. 

“Mrs. Avant was a force of compassion and empowerment locally and nationally for decades, as well as a model of service and giving back to those who needed it most,” Bass wrote on Twitter. 
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Supply-chain snarls continue to delay imports from Asia. And those delays are mirrored for exporters shipping goods to Asia. Titi Tran reports from Southern California.
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The late American entertainer and civil rights activist Josephine Baker has become the first Black woman to be inducted into the Pantheon in Paris, the highest honor that France bestows.

Legendary entertainer Josephine Baker famously sang that she had two loves — “J’ai Deux Amours” — my country and Paris.    

She was born in Saint Louis, Missouri, but having come to Paris to perform, she reveled in life here, free of the institutionalized racism and segregation at home.    

Baker quickly became the darling of Parisian society, as people flocked to see her perform in her trademark banana skirt, or in shimmering sequins at the city’s nightspots.     

She made France her home, dividing her time between Paris and a fairytale castle she bought in southwest of the country.    

Baker became French by marriage — and as soon as World War II began, she joined the French Resistance, famously saying “I want to give myself to France, do what you want with me.” 

Her fame served her well —she was able to pass coded messages in her music scores without being stopped.    

She hid Resistance fighters and fleeing Jews in her castle.    

She also fought against racism in the U.S., becoming active in the civil rights movement.  

Her family said it saddened her that she had to leave home to be treated as an equal. 

On Tuesday, she became, the first Black woman, the first American and the first professional entertainer to enter the Pantheon, reserved as the final resting place for just dozens of France’s greatest, including Victor Hugo, Voltaire, and Marie Curie.    

The moving ceremony was led by French president Emmanuel Macron, who called Baker an “exceptional figure” who embodies the French spirit.

He noted that she fought for the freedom and equality of all. 

Outside, her music played to the crowds who had come to watch this historic moment.  

At the request of her surviving children, Baker’s remains will stay in Monaco where she was buried. 

Instead, a plaque was placed on a cenotaph containing soil from the four places dearest to her heart: St Louis, Paris, her castle and Monaco. 
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Secretary of State Antony Blinken has again warned Russia of “serious consequences” for any escalatory actions toward Ukraine, as he meets with NATO allies during a trip to Latvia and Sweden. VOA’s senior diplomatic correspondent Cindy Saine reports.
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The United States is reaching out to allies in response to Russia’s military build-up along its border with Ukraine.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke by phone with Polish Minister of National Defense Mariusz Blaszczak Tuesday to discuss what the Pentagon has repeatedly described as Moscow’s “unusual military activity.”

The two also shared concerns about the situation along Poland’s border with Belarus, where Polish officials have accused the Belarus regime of using thousands of migrants to raise tensions.

They “discussed ways to enhance deterrence along NATO’s Eastern Flank,” according to a U.S. Defense Department readout of the call.

Austin made the call while en route to Seoul for talks with his South Korean counterpart.

Ukrainian intelligence officials say Russia has positioned about 90,000 troops along the border with Ukraine and in Crimea, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014.

Multiple U.S. officials have said Washington and its European allies are planning for “a number of contingencies,” fearing Moscow’s saber-rattling may be more than tough talk.

U.S. officials have called U.S. support for Ukraine “rock solid” and are considering a number of tools to deter Moscow.

Separately, a top British intelligence official warned Tuesday that Moscow is engaging in increasingly “brazen activity.”

“We and our allies and partners must stand up to and deter Russian activity which contravenes the rules-based international system,” MI6 Chief Richard Moore said during a speech at the International Institute of Strategic Studies.

“Moscow should be in no doubt of our support for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, within its internationally-recognized borders, including Crimea,” Moore added.

Russian officials, for their part, have accused the U.S. and its allies of stoking tensions in the region.

Russia’s TASS news agency quoted Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu last week as saying Moscow was “witnessing a considerable increase in the U.S. strategic bombers’ activity near the Russian borders.”

Shoigu also alleged U.S. strategic bombers “practiced employing nuclear weapons against Russia actually simultaneously from the western and eastern directions.”

The U.S. has provided Ukraine with $2.5 billion in security assistance since 2014, including $400 million in 2021 alone.

Recent deliveries include patrol boats for the Ukrainian navy and 80,000 kilograms of ammunition for Ukrainian forces.
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Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Federal Reserve Board Chair Jerome Powell on Tuesday illustrated just how many unknowns were facing the U.S. economy as a new strain of the virus that causes COVID-19 emerged and U.S. lawmakers battled over whether to raise the country’s debt limit. 

Yellen and Powell appeared before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs as a new variant of the virus, dubbed omicron, was showing up in multiple countries. Experts are still trying to assess whether omicron is more dangerous than the delta variant, the dominant strain worldwide. 

Both Yelen and Powell addressed the emerging new variant in their prepared remarks. 

Yellen echoed President Biden’s call Monday for Americans to get vaccinated against the virus if they haven’t already and to get a booster shot if eligible. But she did not address the new variant’s potential impact on the economy. 

“At this point, I’m confident that our recovery remains strong and is even quite remarkable when put in context,” Yellen said, noting that a year ago, the concern was that the United States might “slip into a prolonged recession.” 

Powell expressed a little more concern, saying, “The recent rise in COVID-19 cases and the emergence of the omicron variant pose downside risks to employment and economic activity and increased uncertainty for inflation.” He said people’s concerns about the virus could reduce their willingness to work in person, slowing hiring and intensifying supply chain disruptions.

Effects on inflation 

Lawmakers were eager to grill Powell over how he plans to address rising inflation, which hit a 31-year high of 6.2% for the year ending in October. The Fed chair suggested that the central bank might accelerate its plan to slow down the rate of asset purchases it has been using to stimulate the economy during the pandemic. 

Powell conceded, however, that scientists need more time before they can give policymakers additional details about the severity of the omicron variant.

“What I’m told by experts is that we’ll know quite a bit about those answers within about a month,” he said. “We’ll know something, though, within a week or 10 days. Then, and only then, can we make an assessment of what the impact would be on the economy. As I pointed out in my testimony, for now, it’s a risk. It’s a risk to the baseline. It’s not really baked into our forecast.” 

“When you back away from this testimony and the Q&A, what you are left with is a high degree of uncertainty,” Mark Hamrick, senior economic analyst for Bankrate.com, told VOA. “It is frustrating for everybody who’s paying attention to COVID-19, as well as those who are participants in financial markets. A high degree of uncertainty can be regarded as toxic for investors.” 

‘We have to be humble’ 

Senator Thom Tillis, a Republican from North Carolina, demanded to know when the central bank would get back to “a normal execution of Fed policy” rather than suggesting that it is possible that the country might have to return to broad lockdowns as it did in the winter of 2020. 

Powell pushed back on the idea that the Fed is still responding to the virus in the way it did in the early months of the pandemic. 

“I’m not thinking that the effects on the economy will be remotely comparable to what happened last March with the shutdowns — or that there will be additional shutdowns,” he said.

He said that he expected the economic consequences of new waves of the virus to diminish, but added, “We have to be humble about our ability to predict this or to really understand. But we’re not at all thinking that we haven’t made progress on the economy.” 

Debt limit fears

Treasury Secretary Yellen used some of her time to focus on a different threat to the U.S. economy. She pointed out that the federal government will, sometime in the coming weeks, reach the statutory limit on borrowing by the Treasury, known as the debt limit.

Yellen warned members of Congress that after December 15, she cannot not guarantee that the United States will be able meet its financial obligations unless the Treasury is allowed to borrow money above the debt limit. 

“I cannot overstate how critical it is that Congress address this issue,” Yellen said. “America must pay its bills on time and in full. If we do not, we will eviscerate our current recovery. In a matter of days, the majority of Americans would suffer financial pain as critical payments like Social Security checks and military paychecks would not reach their bank accounts. And that would likely be followed by a deep recession.” 

Democrats, currently in charge of the House and Senate, have the ability to raise the debt limit but have been reluctant to do so without Republican support. They have insisted that Republicans must share the responsibility for raising the federal debt, which was created by policies adopted by both parties.

Republicans have been saying very explicitly, for most of the last year, that they will not provide any votes, and that the Democrats must raise the debt limit on their own. 

 
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Author Alice Sebold apologized Tuesday to the man who was exonerated last week in the 1981 rape that was the basis for her memoir “Lucky” and said she was struggling with the role she played “within a system that sent an innocent man to jail.” 

Anthony Broadwater, 61, was convicted in 1982 of raping Sebold when she was a student at Syracuse University. He served 16 years in prison. His conviction was overturned on November 22 after prosecutors reexamined the case and determined there were serious flaws in his arrest and trial. 

In a statement released to The Associated Press and later posted on Medium, Sebold, the author of the novels “The Lovely Bones” and “The Almost Moon,” said that as a “traumatized 18-year-old rape victim,” she chose to put her faith in the American legal system. 

“My goal in 1982 was justice — not to perpetuate injustice,” Sebold said. “And certainly not to forever, and irreparably, alter a young man’s life by the very crime that had altered mine.” 

Melissa Swartz, an attorney for Broadwater, said he had no comment on Sebold’s statement. 

Sebold wrote in 1999’s “Lucky” of being raped and then spotting a Black man in the street several months later who she believed was her attacker. 

Sebold, who is white, went to police. An officer said the man in the street must have been Broadwater, who had supposedly been seen in the area. 

After Broadwater was arrested, Sebold failed to identify him in a police lineup, picking a different man as her attacker because she was frightened of “the expression in his eyes.” 

But prosecutors put Broadwater on trial anyway. He was convicted based largely on Sebold identifying him as her rapist on the witness stand and testimony that microscopic hair analysis had tied him to the crime. That type of analysis has since been deemed junk science by the U.S. Department of Justice. 

Broadwater, who was released from prison in 1998, told AP last week he was crying “tears of joy and relief” after his conviction was overturned by a judge in Syracuse. 

Sebold, who has not previously commented on Broadwater’s exoneration, said in her statement, “I am grateful that Mr. Broadwater has finally been vindicated, but the fact remains that 40 years ago, he became another young Black man brutalized by our flawed legal system. I will forever be sorry for what was done to him.” 

Broadwater remained on New York’s sex offender registry after he was released from prison and has worked as a trash hauler and a handyman. 

“It has taken me these past eight days to comprehend how this could have happened,” said Sebold, now 58. “I will continue to struggle with the role that I unwittingly played within a system that sent an innocent man to jail. I will also grapple with the fact that my rapist will, in all likelihood, never be known, may have gone on to rape other women, and certainly will never serve the time in prison that Mr. Broadwater did.” 

 
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The House of Representatives committee investigating the deadly Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol riot said on Tuesday that Mark Meadows, who served as former President Donald Trump’s chief-of-staff, has provided it with records and agreed to appear soon for a deposition. 

“Mr. Meadows has been engaging with the Select Committee through his attorney. He has produced records to the committee and will soon appear for an initial deposition,” Democratic Representative Bennie Thompson, chairman of the House select committee, said in a statement. 

Thompson did not rule out future action against Meadows. Noting that the panel expects all witnesses to provide all the information requested that it is lawfully entitled to receive, Thompson said: “The committee will continue to assess his degree of compliance with our subpoena after the deposition.” 

Trump has urged his associates not to cooperate with the committee, calling the Democratic-led investigation politically motivated and arguing that his communications are protected by executive privilege, although many legal experts say that legal principle does not apply to former presidents. 

On Jan. 6, Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in a bid to prevent Congress from formally certifying his 2020 presidential election loss to Democrat Joe Biden. Shortly before the riot, Trump gave a speech to his supporters repeating his false claims that the election was stolen from him through widespread voting fraud and urging them to go to the Capitol and “fight like hell” to “stop the steal.” 

‘An understanding’ 

Meadows’ lawyer George Terwilliger did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

Terwilliger said in a statement to CNN that the two parties had reached an understanding on how information can be exchanged moving forward, stating that Meadows and the committee are open to engaging on a certain set of topics as they work out how to deal with information that could fall under executive privilege. 

Meadows was a Republican House member until he left in 2020 to join Trump’s administration. 

Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon already has been criminally charged with contempt of Congress, pleading not guilty, after defying a committee subpoena. The select committee is meeting  on Wednesday to consider seeking similar charges against Jeffrey Clark, who served as a senior Justice Department official under Trump. 

Meadows was called to appear before the committee this month, but did not do so. 

Agreeing to appear for a deposition does not guarantee that Meadows will provide all the information requested in the committee’s subpoena. Clark appeared, but committee members said he did not cooperate with investigators. 

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer told reporters on Tuesday that he expects the Democratic-led chamber to vote on Clark’s contempt recommendation this week, if the panel approves it as expected. 

 
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