Fire erupted Thursday in a building under construction in India that is owned by the world’s largest vaccine maker, but the company said it would not affect production of a COVID-19 vaccine.The fire broke out at a Serum Institute of India (SII) building in the western city of Pune.Fire official Prashant Ranpise said the cause of the fire was not immediately clear, but it was contained to a facility under construction to boost production of the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine.SII CEO Adar Poonawalla sought to reassure the global community the fire did not affect the company’s production of the vaccine, labeled COVISHIELD in India, which many low- and middle-income countries are depending on to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.“I would like to reassure all governments & the public that there would be no loss of COVISHIELD production due to multiple production buildings that I had kept in reserve to deal with such contingencies,” Poonawalla tweeted.Ranpise said three people were rescued from the fire and no one was injured.  SII has been contracted to produce a billion does of the vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University.Poonawalla told the Associated Press in December that his family-owned company hopes to increase production capacity from 1.5 billion doses to 2.5 billion doses annually by the end of this year. He said the new facility is part of the plan.Wealthy countries already have bought 75% of the 12 billion coronavirus vaccine doses expected to be produced this year. Consequently, SII is likely to produce most of the vaccines that will be used by developing countries. 
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Bangladesh officials say they expect to begin a third effort to repatriate hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees to their homes in Myanmar’s Rakhine state in June.The target date – seen as premature by many Rohingya – emerged from this week’s talks between the two countries under Chinese mediation.“We proposed beginning the repatriation by March. But Myanmar said that for some logistical reasons they would need some more time,” said Bangladesh Foreign Secretary Masud Bin Momen, who led the Bangladeshi side in the tripartite meeting Tuesday.“Following our meeting, it appears, we would be able to begin the repatriation by June,” Momen told reporters in Dhaka.Bangladesh Relocates 2nd Group of Rohingya Refugees Officials say more than 1,800 Rohingyas arrived at Bhasan Char aboard several ships, a day after leaving overcrowded, squalid camps in Cox’s Bazar districtMyanmar’s deputy minister for international cooperation U Hau Do Suan and China’s vice foreign minister Luo Zhaohui represented their respective countries in the 90-minute virtual meeting.But many Rohingya in the sprawling refugee camps around Cox’s Bazar say they are unwilling to return to Myanmar before a series of long-standing demands are met.“Myanmar has to guarantee to return the full citizenship rights to all Rohingya — this is our main demand,” said Jan Mohammad, a Rohingya refugee who fled to Bangladesh in 2017 and lives in the Balukhali refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar.“We all want to return to our native villages in Rakhine. Violent crimes were committed against the Rohingya in Rakhine that led to our exodus from Myanmar. All perpetrators have to be held accountable for their crimes, he told VOA. “And, there must be a neutral international security force to ensure our safety in Rakhine.”HRW: 200 Homes Burned in Rakhine, MyanmarRakhine faces another mass destruction of homes amid refugee crisis He added, “I am sure no Rohingya will be ready to go back to Rakhine if Myanmar does not care to fulfill our demands.”Subjected to ethnic violence in Myanmar, minority Rohingya Muslims have for decades escaped persecution and economic hardship in Myanmar by fleeing to neighboring Bangladesh, where more than 1.2 million of the refugees now live, mostly in congested shanty colonies.After some 750,000 Rohingya crossed into Bangladesh following a brutal military-led campaign in Rakhine in 2017, international pressure forced Myanmar to agree that it would take back the Rohingya refugees.But efforts at repatriation failed in 2018 and 2019, when the Rohingya refused to return home, saying they still felt unsafe in Rakhine, and that Myanmar had not assured them of full citizenship rights.China subsequently offered to help the two countries find a solution, beginning with a tripartite meeting in New York in January 2020. Tuesday’s meeting was a continuation of that effort.Bangladesh has repeatedly said the congested country is overburdened with Rohingya refugees. Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen, said some weeks ago that “there is no other alternative” to the Rohingya crisis except repatriation.At Tuesday’s meeting, Bangladesh proposed that representatives from the international community, including the United Nations, be present in Rakhine to oversee the repatriation. China and Myanmar reportedly welcomed the proposal, but no concrete decision was taken.  Bangladesh also proposed that the populations of whole villages in Rakhine be returned together, which could make them feel safer. Myanmar officials said they would like to begin with 42,000 Rohingya, whose identities have already been verified from a list of 840,000 refugees previously provided by Bangladesh.Bangladesh also proposed that Myanmar send a delegation to Cox’s Bazar to interact with Rohingya refugee community leaders and try to persuade them to return. Foreign Secretary AK Abdul Momen said his nation is doing its best to begin the repatriation as soon as possible.“We could not succeed to begin the repatriation on two attempts in the past. But we have learned some lessons in the process. We are trying our best to be successful this time,” he said.The foreign secretary noted that 90,000 Rohingya children have been born in the Cox’s Bazar refugee camps in the past three years.“The Rohingya population is growing in Bangladesh. The growth of the population will give rise to new complications. For us there is no alternative to begin the repatriation on a fast track,” the foreign secretary said.“We have put our heart and soul into this process to begin the repatriation as soon as possible.”
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Pakistan said Wednesday that it had successfully test-fired a medium-range ballistic missile into the Arabian Sea, aimed at “revalidating” the weapon’s operational and technical parameters.The Shaheen III surface-to-surface missile, which the country first fired in 2015, can carry nuclear and conventional warheads up to 2,750 kilometers.The range, analysts said, enables the liquid-fueled, multistage rocket to reach targets anywhere in neighboring India, Pakistan’s archrival, and in parts of the Middle East.The military said its top commanders, including the head of the Strategic Plans Division (SPD) that oversees Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program, witnessed Wednesday’s “successful flight test, with its impact point in the Arabian Sea.” It shared no further details.Pakistani officials said the test was part of Islamabad’s resolve to maintain a “policy of credible minimum deterrence,” stressing the “posture is India-centric.”Regional tensionsThe two nuclear-armed South Asian nations have fought three wars and several limited conflicts since gaining independence from Britain in1947.Bilateral tensions have deteriorated in recent years over disputed Kashmir, which both New Delhi and Islamabad claim in full and has sparked most of the wars.Bid for attention?Wednesday’s missile test by Pakistan came hours before President Joe Biden’s inauguration. The move, critics said, could be an attempt by Islamabad to draw the attention of the incoming U.S. administration to the heightened tensions in South Asia.Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said Tuesday that his government intended to convey to the Biden administration that Islamabad was seeking regional peace to promote economic prosperity.“We wanted a good, healthy relationship with India. Unfortunately, the present [Indian] regime has by their actions vitiated the climate,” Qureshi told a virtual seminar organized to discuss Pakistan-U.S. ties.“What we want to tell them [the U.S.] is that we are for peace. We never shy away from engagement, from dialogue, but the environment that is being created [by India] is not very healthy,” Qureshi said.New Delhi alleges Islamabad is backing militant groups operating in the Indian-administered part of Kashmir and plotting terrorist attacks in India.Pakistan rejects the charges as an attempt by India to divert international attention from “atrocities” security forces are allegedly inflicting on Kashmiris in the Indian-ruled part of the divided region.    
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Bangladesh officials say they expect to begin a third effort to repatriate hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees to their homes in Myanmar’s Rakhine state in June.The target date – seen as premature by many Rohingya – emerged from this week’s talks between the two countries under Chinese mediation.“We proposed beginning the repatriation by March. But Myanmar said that for some logistical reasons they would need some more time,” said Bangladesh Foreign Secretary Masud Bin Momen, who led the Bangladeshi side in the tripartite meeting Tuesday.“Following our meeting, it appears, we would be able to begin the repatriation by June,” Momen told reporters in Dhaka.Bangladesh Relocates 2nd Group of Rohingya Refugees Officials say more than 1,800 Rohingyas arrived at Bhasan Char aboard several ships, a day after leaving overcrowded, squalid camps in Cox’s Bazar districtMyanmar’s deputy minister for international cooperation U Hau Do Suan and China’s vice foreign minister Luo Zhaohui represented their respective countries in the 90-minute virtual meeting.But many Rohingya in the sprawling refugee camps around Cox’s Bazar say they are unwilling to return to Myanmar before a series of long-standing demands are met.“Myanmar has to guarantee to return the full citizenship rights to all Rohingya — this is our main demand,” said Jan Mohammad, a Rohingya refugee who fled to Bangladesh in 2017 and lives in the Balukhali refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar.“We all want to return to our native villages in Rakhine. Violent crimes were committed against the Rohingya in Rakhine that led to our exodus from Myanmar. All perpetrators have to be held accountable for their crimes, he told VOA. “And, there must be a neutral international security force to ensure our safety in Rakhine.”HRW: 200 Homes Burned in Rakhine, MyanmarRakhine faces another mass destruction of homes amid refugee crisis He added, “I am sure no Rohingya will be ready to go back to Rakhine if Myanmar does not care to fulfill our demands.”Subjected to ethnic violence in Myanmar, minority Rohingya Muslims have for decades escaped persecution and economic hardship in Myanmar by fleeing to neighboring Bangladesh, where more than 1.2 million of the refugees now live, mostly in congested shanty colonies.After some 750,000 Rohingya crossed into Bangladesh following a brutal military-led campaign in Rakhine in 2017, international pressure forced Myanmar to agree that it would take back the Rohingya refugees.But efforts at repatriation failed in 2018 and 2019, when the Rohingya refused to return home, saying they still felt unsafe in Rakhine, and that Myanmar had not assured them of full citizenship rights.China subsequently offered to help the two countries find a solution, beginning with a tripartite meeting in New York in January 2020. Tuesday’s meeting was a continuation of that effort.Bangladesh has repeatedly said the congested country is overburdened with Rohingya refugees. Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen, said some weeks ago that “there is no other alternative” to the Rohingya crisis except repatriation.At Tuesday’s meeting, Bangladesh proposed that representatives from the international community, including the United Nations, be present in Rakhine to oversee the repatriation. China and Myanmar reportedly welcomed the proposal, but no concrete decision was taken.  Bangladesh also proposed that the populations of whole villages in Rakhine be returned together, which could make them feel safer. Myanmar officials said they would like to begin with 42,000 Rohingya, whose identities have already been verified from a list of 840,000 refugees previously provided by Bangladesh.Bangladesh also proposed that Myanmar send a delegation to Cox’s Bazar to interact with Rohingya refugee community leaders and try to persuade them to return. Foreign Secretary AK Abdul Momen said his nation is doing its best to begin the repatriation as soon as possible.“We could not succeed to begin the repatriation on two attempts in the past. But we have learned some lessons in the process. We are trying our best to be successful this time,” he said.The foreign secretary noted that 90,000 Rohingya children have been born in the Cox’s Bazar refugee camps in the past three years.“The Rohingya population is growing in Bangladesh. The growth of the population will give rise to new complications. For us there is no alternative to begin the repatriation on a fast track,” the foreign secretary said.“We have put our heart and soul into this process to begin the repatriation as soon as possible.”
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Afghanistan’s High Peace Council says an immediate cease-fire is a top priority for the Afghan government negotiators in the second round of the intra-Afghan talks in Doha. Meanwhile, activists have expressed their concerns over a recent surge in targeted killings in Afghanistan. VOA’s Samsama Sirat reports from Kabul. 
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Pakistan is fencing its border with Afghanistan for security. The move is unpopular with local tribes who say it impacts their relations and livelihoods. Ayesha Tanzeem reports.Producer: Marcus Harton 
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Pakistan is fencing its border with Afghanistan for security. The move is unpopular with local tribes who say it impacts their relations and livelihoods. Ayesha Tanzeem reports.Producer: Marcus Harton 
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Authorities in Pakistan said Monday they have arrested a university student in the southern port city of Karachi for allegedly collecting and sending funds to Islamic State militants fighting in Syria.  
 
Separately, the Pakistani military said its forces raided a hideout near the country’s western border with Afghanistan and killed two senior “terrorists” in the ensuing firefight. It said that a third militant “got injured and apprehended.”
 
The counterterrorism department in Sindh province, of which Karachi is the capital, identified the detained suspected IS operative as Umar Bin Khalid, a final year student at the city’s NED University of Engineering and Technology. He was trying to board a train before being taken into custody on Sunday.
 
The department noted that a “forensic examination” of Khalid’s two cellphones established his links to a group “raising funds in Pakistan for Daesh and sending them to Syria.” Daesh is the Arabic name for Islamic State.
 
The statement said the detainee was involved in the fundraising activity for the last two years, and he was in contact “directly with families of terrorists plotting terrorism in Pakistan and Syria.”
 
IS has taken credit for plotting deadly attacks in Pakistan in recent years. They include the kidnapping and slaughtering earlier this month of 10 coal miners in the southwestern Baluchistan province.
 Raid near Afghan border
 
The Pakistani military, while sharing details of Monday’s raid in the South Waziristan border district, said the two slain militants were “active members” of the outlawed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, commonly known as the Pakistani Taliban.  
 
The statement said the men were “terrorist trainers,” experts in bomb-making, and plotted attacks against security forces in the region. One of the slain militants, it said, played a role in a bomb attack three months ago that killed six soldiers and injured several others.
 
South Waziristan and the adjoining North Waziristan districts had until a few years ago served as sanctuaries for local and foreign militants blamed for terrorist attacks on both sides of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.  
 
However, Pakistani officials say sustained security operations in recent years have killed thousands of militants and forced others to take refuge in volatile Afghan border areas.
 
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Officials in Afghanistan said Sunday two female judges working for the Supreme Court were shot dead in the capital, Kabul, the latest victims of targeted killings in recent months. 
 
A court spokesman said the slain judges were on their way to work in the morning when unknown assailants ambushed and fired on their official vehicle.  
 
The city police confirmed a third female judge and the women’s driver were also wounded in the attack, saying an investigation is underway. 
 
No one immediately took responsibility for the deadly ambush. A spokesman for the Taliban insurgency denied its involvement. Afghan officials say currently there are more than 250 women judges in the country and nearly 400 female prosecutors. 
 
Sunday’s violence is the latest in a string of mostly unclaimed assassinations targeting officials, politicians, prosecutors, doctors, journalists and civil society activists mostly in and around Kabul. 
 
President Ashraf Ghani condemned the assassination of female judges, but he again blamed the Taliban for being behind the targeted killing spree. While reiterating his call for the insurgents to declare a ceasefire, the Afghan leader stressed that “violence and terrorism” are not the way to resolve issues. Acting U.S. ambassador in Kabul Ross Wilson also condemned the assassinations of female supreme court judges and called for a prompt investigation.  He also stopped short of blaming the Taliban.   “The Taliban should understand that such actions for which it bears responsibility outrage the world and must cease if peace is to come to Afghanistan,” Wilson wrote on Twitter. (1/2) The United States condemns today’s assassinations of female supreme court judges and calls for a prompt investigation. My condolences to the families of the victims and wishes for a speedy recovery to those injured.— Chargé d’Affaires Ross Wilson (@USAmbKabul) January 17, 2021 The U.S. Embassy Sunday reminded Americans not to travel to Afghanistan due to increased terrorist attacks, kidnappings, criminal violence and civil unrest throughout the country. 
  
“Hotels, residential compounds, international organizations, embassies, and other locations frequented by foreign nationals, including U.S. citizens, are known to be under enduring threat. U.S. citizens already in Afghanistan should consider departing,” said an embassy statement. For its part, the Taliban accuses the Kabul government of plotting the targeted killings to defame the group and subvert intra-Afghan peace talks, brokered by the United States. 
 
Some of the attacks have been claimed by Islamic State militants operating in the country. 
 
The intra-Afghan peace negotiations, which began last September in Qatar, have so far not made any significant progress.  
 
The dialogue is a crucial outcome of the February 2020 agreement the U.S. signed with the Taliban to promote a negotiated settlement to nearly two decades of Afghan war and bring home the remaining American troops. 
 
Washington announced last Friday it had cut U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan to 2,500 as part of the deal, which requires all American and NATO-led troops to leave the country by May 2021. 
 
In return, the Taliban has given counterterrorism security guarantees and pledged to negotiate a permanent ceasefire as well as a political power-sharing understanding with the Afghan government through the ongoing talks.  
 
  
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Turkey has often been described as the gateway between Asia and Europe and because of its location, millions of refugees have arrived in the country as a way station in their effort to migrate to Europe. VOA’s Hilmi Hacaloglu and Umut Colak filed this report on how Afghan refugees are struggling to survive in Istanbul. Bezhan Hamdard narrated their report. 
Camera: Umut Colak         Producers: Hilmi Hacaloglu and Umut Colak
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Ten climbers from Nepal made history Saturday when they became the first in winter to reach the summit of Pakistan’s K2, the world’s second-highest mountain at 8,611 meters (28,251 feet).The Nepalese team’s historic ascent came on the same day a Spanish climber from a separate K2 expedition died. Sergi Mingote, 49, fell more than 500 meters (1,640 feet).K2 is the last of the world’s 14 tallest mountains, all higher than 8,000 meters, to be scaled in wintertime. It is in the Pakistani portion of the Karakoram range along the Chinese border and is known as the world’s most dangerous and technically challenging peak.“The impossible is made possible! K2 Winter – History made for mankind, History made for Nepal!” Nirmal Purja wrote on Twitter after reaching the top along with fellow Nepali climbers. THE IMPOSSIBLE IS MADE POSSIBLE ! FILE – Porters set up tents at the Concordia camping site in front of K2 summit in the Karakoram range of Pakistan’s northern Gilgit region, Aug. 14, 2019.This winter an unprecedented four teams totaling about 60 climbers arrived in Pakistan to converge on K2, which is about 200 meters shorter than Mount Everest, the world’s tallest peak in Nepal’s part of the Himalayan range.While the sheerness of the slopes and overall exposure create a technically challenging climb, mountaineers say weather is always “the great opponent” on K2 year-round.“Summit winds reach hurricane force, still-air temperatures are well below -65 degrees and the winter’s low barometric pressure means even less oxygen – so the margins of error are almost nonexistent, the smallest mistake can have catastrophic consequences,” the Nepalese team wrote on its webpage before undertaking the mission.
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Britain’s BBC’s Urdu Service Friday ended its contract for its half-hour, five-day-a-week television news show on a Pakistan’s AAJ News channel, due to what the BBC said was continued interference in its programs. “We have experienced interference in our News bulletins since October 2020 and gave AAJ TV ample time to return the program to air,” said a statement from the director of World Service Group, Jamie Angus.‘Since this interference continued, despite efforts in good faith on both sides, the BBC had no alternative but to end the partnership with immediate effect,” the statement said.Shahab Zuberi, the channel’s CEO, refused to comment when contacted by VOA.The BBC had been running its half-hour news show on AAJ TV since 2015. Over the years, the show was taken off air several times but for a few days only. This time, the show was taken off air in October and has not returned.VOA’s Urdu language service has a similar half-hour, five-day-a-week news show on AAJ TV. VOA has also experienced occasional disruptions with its show’s airing, as well as occasional censorship of content within a show without prior warning.Insiders from across the Pakistani media landscape say the pressure to censor content comes from multiple fronts, including government officials or institutions filing cases against journalists to intimidate them, Islamist extremists who threaten violence, and the judiciary that threatens contempt-of-court notices.However, the most intense pressure comes from Pakistan’s powerful military that has either directly or indirectly ruled the country for most of its 70-year existence and continues to wield immense control.VOA’s Urdu and Pashto language websites in Pakistan were blocked in 2018 over coverage of an ethnic rights movement called the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement. The movement had an antagonistic relationship with the military, which it accused of human rights violations in Pakistan’s tribal areas bordering Afghanistan.The military, on the other hand, accused the movement of receiving funding from the intelligence agencies of Afghanistan and India to malign Pakistan and undermine the advances it made in clearing up the tribal areas of militant groups. Pakistan’s then-information minister, Fawad Chaudhry, claimed the sites were blocked for “false and prejudiced reporting.”  FILE – Pakistani Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry speaks to The Associated Press, in Islamabad.”The stories they were doing were only projecting a particular narrative without any impartial view. There are many things happening in our country, and most are positive,” he said at the time.More than two years later, the websites remain blocked.Pakistan fares poorly in international press freedom indices, ranking 145th out of 180 countries in Reporters Without Borders 2020 World Press Freedom Index.“The influence of this military ‘establishment,’ which cannot stand independent journalism, has increased dramatically since Imran Khan became prime minister in July 2018,” the organization’s website says describing the press freedom situation in Pakistan.Human Rights Watch’s World Report 2021, published this week, says media in Pakistan face a “climate of fear” impeding coverage and forcing journalists to self-censor.News channels in Pakistan sometimes disappear from a lineup on cable without warning, or are moved to a different, much higher number, making them difficult to find. Journalists have faced enforced disappearances, death threats, or online harassment.   Last year, journalist Matiullah Jan was abducted from outside his wife’s school, only to be released 10 to 12 hours later after intense pressure from journalists’ organizations, rights groups, and opposition political leaders.Three journalists, Absar Alam, Bilal Farooqi, and Asad Ali Toor were charged with sedition for comments they made on social media.Mir Shakil ur Rehman, the owner of Jang and Geo group, one of Pakistan’s largest media companies, was arrested in March over alleged corruption in a 34-year-old property transaction and remains in custody.Local Urdu language services of the BBC and The Independent, also British, recently faced online hate campaigns including thousands of trolls.“Calling for journalists to be murdered, with the aim of intimidating and silencing anyone critical of the authorities, is completely unacceptable,” Reporters Without Borders said in a press release, calling on the government to disown the campaigns.Arsalan Khalid, Prime Minister Imran Khan’s focal person for digital media, said the definition of harassment needed to be clarified.“Wherever there is real harassment, whether it’s journalists, or women, or anyone else, the government has zero tolerance for that,” he said, but added that action required “exact, specific proof.”“You cannot call it harassment if social media users, with facts and figures, correct some fake news filed by a journalist,” he said.  FILE – Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan speaks during an international conference in Islamabad, Pakistan, Feb. 17, 2020.Khan has repeatedly claimed that Pakistani media are freer than are media in many European countries. Khan and his ministers point to the daily talk shows on the more than a dozen television news channels in Pakistan that invite both government and opposition leaders as guests and allow a heated debate on the government’s performance.The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, an independent rights watchdog, expressed concern on what it called the “growing censorship in Pakistan” in one of its press releases in October last year. However, its general secretary, Harris Khalique, put partial blame on opposition political parties for not highlighting the issue.“The opposition parties have raised the issue of freedom of expression but neither initiated any debate in the parliament nor encouraged enough of a public outcry,” he said, adding that the voice of a political leader carries much more weight than the voice of a rights activist.He also decried “the erosion of the institution of editor.”  Over the years, owners have increasingly taken on the job themselves and Khalique said they were more likely to allow their commercial concerns to determine editorial policy.  “Hence, the pushback to censorship and curbing of dissent that we had witnessed during similar regimes in the past seems to have weakened now,” he said.
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India began its COVID-19 vaccine campaign Saturday.   Frontline workers are slated to receive the first inoculations.  The campaign began after Prime Minister Narendra Modi delivered a nationally televised speech. “We are launching the world’s biggest vaccination drive and it shows the world our capability,” Modi said. COVID-19 deaths worldwide exceeded 2 million Friday, according to Johns Hopkins University, a year after the coronavirus was first detected in Wuhan, China. “Behind this terrible number are names and faces, the smile that will now only be a memory, the seat forever empty at the dinner table, the room that echoes with the silence of a loved one,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told reporters Friday. Worldwide COVID-19 Deaths Top 2 MillionUN secretary-general says death toll worsened by lack of global coordination   Guterres also said the death toll “has been made worse by the absence of a global coordinated effort,” and added that, “science has succeeded, but solidarity has failed.”  The United States remains at the top of the COVID case list with the most cases and deaths. Johns Hopkins reports more than 23 million COVID-19 cases in the U.S., with a death toll rapidly approaching 400,000.  Some states, having vaccinated their front-line workers, have opened vaccinations to older people but have been overrun with requests. Medical facilities are on the verge of running out of vaccines. In many instances, the technology used to take the requests has crashed.   President-elect Joe Biden unveiled a plan Friday to speed up the U.S. COVID-19 vaccine rollout, including increased federal funding, setting up thousands of vaccination centers, and invoking the Defense Production Act to expand the production of vaccination supplies.Biden Will Seek to Increase Federal Support to Speed Up Vaccine Rollout President-elect says he will invoke Defense Production Act The wide-ranging plan is part of Biden’s effort to achieve his goal for 100 million Americans to be vaccinated within 100 days. “You have my word: We will manage the hell out of this operation,” he told reporters near his home in Wilmington, Delaware. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned Friday that a newly detected and highly contagious variant of the coronavirus may become the dominant strain in the U.S. by March.  The variant, first detected in Britain, threatens to exacerbate the coronavirus crisis in the U.S., where daily infection and hospitalization records are commonplace. Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline.Download File360p | 9 MB480p | 12 MB540p | 16 MB720p | 29 MB1080p | 59 MBOriginal | 75 MB Embed” />Copy Download AudioCampaign Aims to Convince Americans COVID Vaccine SafeThe CDC said the variant apparently does not cause more severe illness but is more contagious than the current dominant strain. Later Friday, the Oregon Health Authority reported that an individual with “no known travel history” had tested positive for the British variant.   “As we learn more about this case and the individual who tested positive for this strain, OHA continues to promote effective public health measures, including wearing masks, maintaining six feet of physical distance, staying home, washing your hands, and avoiding gatherings and travel,” the agency said in a statement.  Also Friday, some U.S. governors accused the Trump administration of deceiving states about the amount of COVID-19 vaccine they can expect to receive. Government officials say states were misguided in their expectations of vaccine amounts. U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar told NBC News on Friday that the U.S. does not have a reserve stockpile of COVID vaccines as many had believed. However, he said he is confident that there will enough vaccine produced to provide a second dose for people.Biden Announces $1.9 Trillion Coronavirus Relief PackageTransition team describes plan as ‘ambitious but achievable’The two COVID-19 vaccines approved for use in the U.S. — made by Pfizer and Moderna – are designed to be given in two doses several weeks apart.Pfizer said in a statement Friday that has been holding onto supplies of second doses for each of its COVID-19 vaccinations shipped so far, and anticipates no problems supplying them to Americans.  As of Friday, the U.S. government said it had distributed over 31 million doses of the vaccine. The CDC said about 12.3 million doses had been administered.Earlier on Friday, Pfizer announced there would be a temporary impact on shipments of its vaccine to European countries in late January to early February caused by changes to its manufacturing processes in an effort boost output.The health ministers of six EU countries — Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia – said the Pfizer situation is “unacceptable.””Not only does it impact the planned vaccination schedules, it also decreases the credibility of the vaccination process,” they said in a letter to the EU Commission about the vaccine delays.In Brazil, the country’s air force flew emergency oxygen supplies Friday to the jungle state of Amazonas, which is facing a growing surge in the virus. Health authorities in the state said oxygen supplies had run out at some hospitals because of the high numbers of patients. Brazil’s Health Ministry reported 1,151 deaths from COVID-19 Thursday, the fourth consecutive day with more than 1,000 fatalities. China reported its first COVID-19 death in eight months Thursday amid a surge in the country’s northeast as a World Health Organization team arrived in Wuhan to investigate the beginning of the pandemic. China’s death toll is 4,796, a relatively low number resulting from the country’s stringent containment and tracing measures.  China has imposed various lockdown measures on more than 20 million people in Beijing, Hebei and other areas to contain the spread of infections before the Lunar New Year holiday in February. The relatively low number of COVID-related deaths in China has raised questions about China’s tight control of information about the outbreak.  The WHO investigative team arrived Thursday after nearly a year of talks with the WHO and diplomatic disagreements between China and other countries that demanded that China allow a thorough independent investigation.   Two members of the 10-member team were stopped in Singapore after tests revealed antibodies to the virus in their blood, while the rest of the team immediately entered a 14-day quarantine period in Wuhan before launching their investigation.  The coronavirus was first detected in Wuhan in late 2019 and quickly spread throughout the world.   Officials said Thursday that infections in the northeastern Heilongjiang province have surged to their highest levels in 10 months, nearly tripling during that period.   Elsewhere in Asia, Japanese authorities have expanded a state of emergency to stop a surge in coronavirus cases.   Coronavirus infections and related deaths have roughly doubled in Japan over the past month to more than 317,000 cases and more than 4,200 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.  The emergency was initially declared a week ago and was expanded to cover seven new regions. The restrictions are not binding, and many people have ignored requests to avoid nonessential travel, prompting the governor to voice concern about the lack of commitment to the guidelines.  Indonesia reported 12,818 new infections Friday, its largest daily tally.  
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Kazakhstan has been leading the way in repatriating Kazakh foreign fighters and their families held in Kurdish-controlled prisons and camps in northeastern Syria, with experts debating whether such efforts could be a model for other countries that have citizens held in Syria.
“Kazakhstan has invested substantial government resources and partnered with nongovernmental organizations across the country to provide initial intake support and longer-term follow-on support at 17 regional support centers,” said Gavin Helf, a senior expert on Central Asia at the United States Institute of Peace.
He told VOA that Kazakh authorities have tried to reduce social stigmatization of returnees by issuing clean passports and documents that will allow them to integrate more easily.
Following the military defeat of the Islamic State terror group in March 2019, U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) captured thousands of foreign fighters and their families.
The SDF says it currently holds about 2,000 foreign fighters and 13,000 foreign women and children who are family members of IS-linked fighters.
It is unclear how many Kazakh nationals are still being held in Syrian prisons and detention camps, but some monitor groups say an estimated 1,000 Kazakhs traveled to Syria at the peak of that country’s civil war in 2012 to join IS.
According to Kazakh officials, the Central Asian country so far has repatriated more than 700 Kazakh nationals from Syria, including 33 IS fighters, 187 women and 490 children.
U.S. officials have commended Kazakhstan’s efforts to repatriate and rehabilitate its citizens from Syria.
Chris Harnisch, deputy coordinator for Countering Violent Extremism at the U.S. State Department, said Kazakhstan was the first country to step up after the U.S. government called on countries to take back their nationals held in Syria.
“When they [Kazakh government officials] initiated their first repatriation operation, they didn’t just dip their toe in the water, they said, ‘We’re going to bring back effectively as many Kazakhstanis as we could,’ ” Harnisch said last week during an online event held by the Atlantic Council.
Kazakh officials say their effort to take back these individuals from Syria is based on humanitarian grounds.
“Given the number of women and kids, this is a humanitarian operation,” said Yerzhan Ashikbayev, Kazakhstan’s deputy foreign minister.
“They were without access to their basic needs of food, shelter, clean water, health and education,” he said during the Atlantic Council’s event, adding that the Kazakh women and children were exposed to different types of threats and violations, such as sexual abuse, exploitation and potential recruitment by terrorist groups.How successful is repatriation?
Experts are split, though, about the effectiveness of Kazakhstan’s efforts after the repatriation of these former IS fighters and their families.
Noah Tucker, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center who has interviewed many of the Kazakh returnees from Syria, says the humanitarian nature of the repatriation could be an important step toward preventing future violent extremism in Kazakhstan.
“Many of these people have been featured in media reporting and documentaries and been allowed to tell their stories about what they saw in Syria and what happened there,” Tucker said, adding that Kazakhstan’s major benefit from these repatriation efforts is the ability to facilitate a smooth reintegration of the returnees back into society.
Other experts, however, say Kazakhstan’s lenient approach in prosecuting some adult returnees and its lack of preventive measures on reoccurrence of radicalism among the returnees could be a challenge for the country in the long term.
“Lack of prosecution and receiving heroes’ treatment after returning from being members of a terrorist organization doesn’t send the right message to the public,” Vera Mironova, a researcher at Harvard University, told VOA, adding that many of the returnees are being used as a propaganda tool by the Kazakh government to project the power of the ruling elite.
U.S. officials said Washington has played an important role in providing Kazakh authorities with assistance for effective rehabilitation programs for the returning individuals.
Analyst Helf said Kazakhstan has taken a very “ideological” approach to the problem, measuring success by external modifications of behavior, such removing the hijab, a veil worn by conservative Muslim women.
“Although they do provide other material and mental welfare support, in Kazakhstan the primary emphasis is on de-radicalization,” he said. “They are weaker on the longer-term issues of trauma-informed care and PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder], educational accommodations for children with cognitive and emotional learning gaps, and long-term social work and tracking.”
But Steve Weine, a professor of psychiatry at University of Illinois who is involved in Kazakhstan’s reintegration efforts, says a rehabilitation program has been designed in a way that offers mental health care, family support, education and job opportunities for those who have been repatriated from Syria.
The program “is working on all these levels; it’s doing what needs to be done,” Weine said at the Atlantic Council event, adding that reintegration “is not simply an issue of de-radicalizing or separating people from ideology.”
He noted that a successful reintegration process should involve all aspects of resettlement, including housing, employment and public safety.
John Herbst, director of the Eurasia Center at the Atlantic Council and a former U.S. ambassador to Uzbekistan and Ukraine, said that Kazakhstan’s repatriation program is “enlightened, very smart and it meets all of U.S. interests” regarding countering violent extremism in Central Asia.
According to the Soufan Center, a New York-based research group, more than 5,000 individuals from Central Asian countries have traveled to Syria and Iraq to join IS.Calls for more repatriation
Kurdish officials in Syria have called on countries to take back their detained citizens, warning that they do not have enough resources to keep IS prisoners and their families in captivity indefinitely, especially during the coronavirus pandemic.
Several Western countries, such as the United States, France, Germany, Britain and Finland, and countries from other parts of the world have repatriated some of their citizens.
On Wednesday, France said it had brought home seven children of French foreign fighters held in Syria, bringing the number of repatriated children to 35.
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The U.S. military has met its goal of reducing the number of troops in Afghanistan to about 2,500 by Friday, a drawdown that appears to violate a last-minute congressional prohibition.
 
President Donald Trump, who ordered the reduction in November, said Thursday that troop levels in Afghanistan had reached a 19-year low, although he did not mention a troop number. Last February his administration struck a deal with the Taliban to reduce American troop levels in phases and to go to zero by May 2021, although it is unclear how the incoming Biden administration will proceed.
 
President-elect Joe Biden, who has advocated keeping a small counterterrorism force in Afghanistan as a way to ensure that extremist groups like al-Qaida are unable to launch attacks on the United States, faces a number of questions on Afghanistan. One is how and whether to proceed with further troop cuts.
 
Trump in his brief statement alluded to his longstanding desire to get out of Afghanistan entirely.
 
I will always be committed to stopping the endless wars,'' he said, referring to U.S. wars that have dragged on in Afghanistan since 2001 and in Iraq for much of the period since 2003.
 
Although senior military officials had cautioned against speedy troop reductions in Afghanistan, Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller announced on November 17 that he was implementing Trump's order. As a result, military commanders scrambled to pull more than 1,500 troops out of the country in the last few weeks. At Trump's order, commanders also cut U.S. troop levels in Iraq to 2,500 from about 3,000 in the same period.
 
The Afghanistan decision was seen by some as unnecessarily complicating the decision-making of the incoming administration. Trump at the time had refused to acknowledge that he had lost the election and would be ceding to Biden on Jan. 20. Some in Congress, including fellow Republicans, opposed Trump's decision.
 
Under the National Defense Authorization Act passed by Congress two weeks ago, the Pentagon was explicitly forbidden to use money from this year's or last year's budget on reducing the number of troops below 4,000 — or below the number that was in the country the day the bill was finalized, which was January 1. Trump vetoed the measure, but both the House and Senate voted to override his veto.
 
The Pentagon has not yet fully explained how it squares its continued drawdown with the legal prohibition. In response to questions about this, the Pentagon issued a written statement saying,DoD will adhere to all statutory provisions of the FY21 National Defense Authorization Act, to include those in Section 1215 that impact the ongoing drawdown in Afghanistan.”
It said it has been working with the National Security Council on the most efficient means to ensure consistency amidst an anterior drawdown already occurring across Afghanistan, and in a manner that continues to ensure the safety of U.S. personnel.''
 
The defense legislation provides two conditions under which the Pentagon could get around the prohibition — a presidential waiver or a report to Congress assessing the effect of a further drawdown on the U.S. counterterrorism mission in Afghanistan and the risk to U.S. troops there. As of Thursday, the Pentagon had met neither of those conditions.  
 
The prohibition on completing the drawdown put the Pentagon in a bind, coming weeks after it had begun the drawdown, which involved a large logistical effort to remove equipment as well as troops. Because of less-than-transparent military procedures for counting troops in Afghanistan, it is possible the 2,500 figure may be misleading.
 
The main reason for concern about a too-quick troop withdrawal is what the Pentagon sees as continued high levels of Taliban violence against the Afghan government. Some U.S. officials have questioned the wisdom of fully withdrawing, in accordance with the February 2020 agreement with the Taliban, if violence remains high.  
 
The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001 was aimed at overthrowing the Taliban regime, running al-Qaida out of the country and laying the groundwork for a globalwar on terrorism.” It turned into something more ambitious but less well-defined and became far more costly in blood and treasure.
During Biden’s time as vice president, the U.S. pushed U.S. troop totals in Afghanistan to 100,000 in a failed bid to compel the Taliban to come to the negotiating table. When Trump took office four years ago there were about 8,500 troops in the country, and he raised it to about 13,000 that summer.
 
Last month, when he met with Afghan officials in Kabul and with Taliban representatives in Qatar, Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he emphasized to both sides that in order to give fledgling peace talks a chance, they must rapidly reduce levels of violence.
 
“Everything else hinges on that,” Milley told reporters.
 
During Milley’s visit, Army Gen. Scott Miller, the top commander of U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan, told reporters that the Taliban had stepped up attacks on Afghan forces, particularly in the southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar, and against roadways and other infrastructure.
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Authorities in northwestern Pakistan have removed 12 police officers from service and penalized 45 others for not preventing an Islamist mob from setting ablaze and destroying a minority Hindu temple. 
 
On December 30, about 2,000 activists of a religious party attacked the temple in the remote Karak district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.  
 
A high-powered investigation into the incident found that the enraged mob had entered the Hindu place of worship without any intervention by police personnel deployed to guard the property.  
 
The findings released late Thursday said that the 12 police officers were fired because they “ran away” instead of trying to protect the temple from the mob attack. 
 
“They are found guilty of the charges. They show[ed] cowardice, negligence and irresponsibility in the discharge of their official obligations,” the report said. It stressed that these acts “caused disrepute” to the police department. 
 
Provincial police chief Sanaullah Abbasi said that 45 additional police personnel have also been given “minor punishment” and 33 of them have been suspended from the service for a year.  
 
The provincial government has announced it would reconstruct the historic temple.  
 
Earlier this month, Pakistan’s Supreme Court also ordered the rebuilding of the Hindu place of worship and asked authorities to make those who staged the destructive attack pay for the reconstruction. The court is due to conduct a fresh hearing in the case next week. 
 
The Hindu community was renovating and expanding the temple complex with the permission of local administration, but the plan enraged a local radical Muslim cleric and led his supporters to attack the property.  
 
A swift police crackdown, using videos of the vandalism released on social media,  arrested dozens of rioters, including the cleric who is accused of inciting the mob attack. 
 
Hindus represent approximately 1.6% of majority-Muslim Pakistan, a country of about 220 million people. 
 
Attacks on Hindu places of worship and those of other minorities in the country are not uncommon. The violence, say critics, is often encouraged by the Islamic country’s strict blasphemy laws.  
 
In December 2020, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom published a report that found Pakistan had the most cases of state enforced blasphemy laws, with 184 cases identified between 2014 and 2018.  
 
The U.S. subsequently renewed Pakistan’s designation as a “country of particular concern” for its “systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of freedom of religion or belief.” 
 
The Pakistani government rejected the U.S. designation as “arbitrary” and the outcome of a “selective assessment” and raised “serious doubts about the credibility of the exercise.” 
 
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Asia’s chicken farmers are confronting the region’s worst bird flu outbreak in years, with the deadly virus affecting farms stretching from Japan to India, roiling some poultry prices and showing no signs of easing.More than 20 million chickens have been destroyed in South Korea and Japan since November. The highly pathogenic H5N8 virus last week reached India, the world’s No. 6 producer, and has already been reported in 10 states.While bird flu is common in Asia at this time of year due to migratory bird flight patterns, new strains of the virus have evolved to become more lethal in wild birds, making countries on flight pathways particularly vulnerable, say experts.”This is one of the worst outbreaks ever in India,” said Mohinder Oberoi, an Indian animal health expert and former advisor to the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).”There’s a lot of disease in crows and ducks. People are scared of the disease in crows. They know they fly far and think they’ll infect their poultry or even people.”The Asian outbreak comes as Europe suffers its worst bird flu outbreak in years, and follows on the heels of COVID-19, which hurt poultry sales early on in some places amid false disease concerns but is now driving up demand due to more home cooking. Chicken prices in India fell almost a third last week as wary consumers, increasingly nervous about disease since the pandemic, steered clear of the meat.Bird flu cannot infect people through poultry consumption, and the H5N8 virus is not known to have ever infected humans, but consumers are still fearful, said Uddhav Ahire, chairman of Anand Agro Group, a poultry company based in the western city of Nashik.Live chicken prices are already as low as 58 Indian rupees ($0.79) a kilogram, below the cost of production, he said.In South Korea and Japan, no market impact has been seen yet, officials said, with stronger demand for chicken meat for home cooked meals during lockdowns having a greater effect on prices.Virus evolutionThe rapid and wide geographic spread of the latest outbreaks make this one of the worst waves in Asia since the early 2000s.In Japan, where outbreaks have been reported from Chiba near Tokyo to more than 1,000 kilometers away in Miyazaki on Kyushu island in just two months, fresh cases are still occurring.”We can’t say risk of the further spread of bird flu has diminished as the migration season for wild birds will continue till March, or even April in some cases,” said an animal health official in the agriculture ministry.The H5N8 viruses detected in Japan and Korea are very similar to those that spread through Europe in 2019, which in turn evolved from viruses that were prevalent in 2014, said Filip Claes, head of the FAO’s Emergency Centre for Transboundary Animal Diseases.A different variant circulating in Europe since late 2020 is also causing significant damage.The new strains are causing more harm now that they are more lethal in wild birds, said Holly Shelton, influenza expert at Britain’s Pirbright Institute.”It’s quite clear that this virus has established itself in the wild bird population and so now there’s a greater propensity for it to spill over back into poultry farms,” she said.A compulsory flu vaccination for poultry in China has protected the region’s top producer, even though the virus has killed wild swans there.Indonesia, Asia’s No. 2 producer, is only a temporary transit point for wild birds, reducing its risk of infection, said Fadjar Sumping Tjatur Rassa, director of animal health at the Agriculture Ministry.Still, the country has banned live bird imports from countries with H5N8 and set up a surveillance system for early detection of the virus, he said.With no major bird flight pathways over Southeast Asia, countries like Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia have so far been spared H5N8 outbreaks but face risks from the movement of people and goods.”It will keep spreading until another virus comes along to replace it,” said Shelton.
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India’s national security adviser, Ajit Doval, traveled to Afghanistan Wednesday, where officials said he discussed with President Ashraf Ghani cooperation against terrorism and Afghan peace-building efforts. 
 
Doval’s visit comes just days after India officially began its two-year tenure as a non-permanent member of the 15-nation United Nations Security Council, where it will chair three crucial sanctions committees, including one related to the Islamist Taliban of Afghanistan. 
 
The Taliban Sanctions Committee designates individuals and entities associated with, and supplying, selling or transferring arms to the Afghan insurgent group. Those listed are subject to an asset freeze, arms embargo and travel ban.   
 
“Both sides discussed counterterrorism cooperation and efforts for building regional consensus on supporting peace in Afghanistan,” Ghani’s office said after his meeting with the Indian national security adviser.  
 
The Afghan president vowed that his country and India “in joint efforts with NATO and the United States, will be able to succeed in the fight against terrorism.” In return, Doval offered assuring more cooperation” with Kabul. 
 
India has long denounced the Taliban and accused rival Pakistan of sheltering and backing the Islamist group’s violent campaign against the Afghan government. 
 
Islamabad denies the charges, and in turn alleges New Delhi is using Afghan territory to plot cross-border terrorist attacks against Pakistan, which shares a 2,600-kilometer mountainous border with Afghanistan.  
 
Pakistani leaders also accuse India of working to subvert U.S.-initiated Afghan peace efforts. 
 US-Taliban deal 
 
The U.S. credits Islamabad with facilitating Washington’s landmark pact with the Taliban in February 2020, and the ensuing peace dialogue between the insurgent group and a team representing Kabul.  
 FILE – In this Feb. 29, 2020 file photo, U.S. peace envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, left, and Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban group’s top political leader sign a peace agreement between Taliban and U.S. officials in Doha, Qatar.The so-called intra-Afghan negotiations underway in Qatar are aimed at finding a political power-sharing deal that would end nearly two decades of war in Afghanistan. 
 
The U.S.-Taliban deal requires all American and NATO troops to leave Afghanistan by May 2021, to close what has been America’s longest war in return for the insurgent group’s security assurances. 
 
The U.N. Security Council’s sanctions committee has listed several top insurgent leaders, and removal of their names is one of the key provisions in the U.S.-Taliban deal.  
 
A Taliban spokesman played down the significance of India taking charge of the sanctions committee. 
 
“The issue of the Security Council’s blacklist is part of our agreement with the U.S. and America is committed to ending the blacklist,” Zabihullah Mujahid told VOA when asked for his group’s reaction. He declined further comment.  
 
Wednesday’s visit to Kabul by Doval followed reports suggesting New Delhi could boost military assistance to Afghanistan in the wake of the U.S.-led international military drawdown.  
 
The assurance was given last week by the Indian foreign minister in a phone conversation with his Afghan counterpart, Indian media reported. 
 
The Pakistani military this week reiterated allegations the Indian spy agency, Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), is operating militant camps in Afghanistan and backing Islamic State loyalists there to conduct terrorism.  
 
“As far as Afghanistan is concerned, yes, there is Daesh footprint over there and it is being supported by RAW, and there is a lot of evidence available on that account,” Pakistani military spokesman Major-General Babar Iftikhar told a news conference Monday. He used the local name for Islamic State’s Afghan affiliate. 
 
Both New Delhi and Afghan leaders reject Pakistani allegations.
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In an unprecedented move, the head of the Afghan Taliban has restricted officials in the insurgent group from marrying more than once. Three Taliban officials who spoke to VOA on condition of anonymity said the move is aimed at easing financial burdens on the group, as officials have frequently sought money from the militant organization for multiple marriages.“We instruct officials of the Islamic Emirate, in accordance with Islamic Sharia (Islamic jurisprudence), to avoid second, third, and fourth marriage if there is no need,” said a written message dated January 9, from Taliban chief Mawlawi Hibatullah Akhundzada.Two Taliban officials shared the Pashto-language statement with VOA and said the instructions have been distributed widely by the leadership among their ranks. Heads of various units of Taliban were instructed to share it with their subordinates.One of the three VOA sources said the directive was in response to “many complaints.” Some Taliban officials have approached their superiors for help in paying dowry or ‘bride price.’“Up-to two million Afghanis (nearly $26,000) are paid for dowry in some parts of Afghanistan and the Taliban officials would seek this money for their second marriage,” the source said.‘Bride price’ is a term used for money paid by the groom to the bride’s family, a custom in some Pashtun tribes in parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan.  The source also said many Taliban with multiple wives keep them in separate houses and require additional money for their upkeep.  One of the other two Taliban officials said the top leadership was worried about bad publicity after Afghan media reported on weddings of some Taliban leaders, calling them “extravagant affairs.”The Taliban supremo’s message indicated serious concerns for the reputation of its officials.   “Families of several officials of the Islamic Emirate do not have a lot of money.  Therefore, more marriages could affect their prestige, trustworthiness, and personality,” the message said.The “Islamic Emirate” is a name the Taliban uses for themselves.The written message went on to express worries over possible loss of credibility, or even an incentive for corruption, if money becomes central to a Taliban leader’s existence.“Protect yourself against accusation and disgrace,” it said, adding that “transparency” and “gaining trust” were essential for a jihadi role.The signed statement tried to affirm the message that abstaining from multiple marriages would protect Taliban from “accusations of bribery, misappropriation, or embezzlement in the ‘Bait ul Maal’ (public treasury)” and save them from seeking illicit sources of wealth.Through this message, one of the Taliban sources said his supreme leader had conveyed to the public and his followers that “Taliban officials will not be allowed to use the movement’s money for personal gains.”  Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid did not directly comment when asked about the message, saying he was “gathering information on the subject.”  However, he did not deny the message’s existence.The move is considered extraordinary for a group that follows an extreme version of Islamic jurisprudence. Islam allows men to have up to four wives at once. However, the practice of keeping multiple wives is frowned upon in some Muslim communities that hold more progressive or liberal views on marriage.  The Taliban chief assured his followers in his message that the instructions are based on Islamic injunctions and have the support of religious scholars.However, he said the restrictions are relaxed for two kinds of officials: those who spend their own money and resources, or those who have a “legitimate need.”Legitimate needs are described as not being able to produce a child from a first marriage, not being able to produce a male child, or those who need to marry the widow of a brother.In addition, those who wish to marry any widow, without spending too much, are also shown leniency.  Taliban officials who spend their own resources still need permission from the leadership and would have to show that their financial status could satisfy people into believing that “they are spending their own money,” say the sources.The message from the Taliban chief says the leadership is trying to make marriages simpler for all.“Young men and women and all the destitute should be able to perform simple marriages like the ones performed by companions of Prophet Muhammad,” he said.
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The sun’s golden rays fall on Goa’s smooth, sandy beaches every evening, magical as ever but strangely quiet and lonely. This holiday season, few visitors are enjoying the celebrated sunsets in the Indian party hotspot.
The unspoken fear of the coronavirus is sapping Goa’s vibrant beach shacks and noisy bars of their lifeblood.
A Portuguese colony until 1961, this western Indian state usually comes alive in December and January, its tourism-led economy booming with foreign travelers and chartered flights bringing in hordes of vacationers.
Over the past decade, Goa had been transforming from a seasonal mecca for both hippy backpackers and rich vacationers to a second home destination for India’s middle class.
Construction was booming, raising worries over the impact on fragile environments. Apartments overlooking the sea, on river fronts or surrounded by forests have been in great demand.
The pandemic and the ensuing travel restrictions have changed everything, possibly forever.
Along the popular beaches in North Goa from Candolim to Calangute to Morjim, many landmark coffee shops, tattoo parlors and shack bars with sunbeds have shut permanently. Nightlife in popular party hubs has died.
Seema Rajgarh, 37, is a lonely figure on nearly deserted Utorda beach in South Goa, her blue sari set against the expanse of the Arabian sea as she hawks jewelry made of beads and stones. None of the handful of domestic tourists is interested in buying them.
On good days during the holiday season, the mother of three girls, the youngest not yet two years old, said she used to make 2,000 rupees ( $27).
Now, times are bleak.
“Some days, I make barely 200 rupees ($2.7), not enough to even buy milk and food for my children,” she said.
Rajgarh’s husband, a cook, lost his job during the nation-wide lockdown imposed in March to contain the spread of the coronavirus infections. He remains unemployed.
School fees for the children are long overdue. Rent is three months behind.
“This virus has devastated our lives,” Rajgarh said.
In 2019, more than 8 million tourists visited Goa, including more than 930,000 foreign tourists. Some 800 chartered flights arrived from Russia, Ukraine, the UK and Japan among other countries, according to the state tourism department.
As of August, only 1.1 million had visited, including just over 280,000 foreign tourists.
An official report on the impact of COVID-19 on Goa released in December estimated a loss of nearly $1 billion for the tourism industry due to the lockdown in April-May. Potential job losses are expected to be the range of 35% to 58%. More than onein-three of Goa’s 1.6 million people work in tourism.
Goa has accounted for over 51,000 of India’s more than 10 million reported coronavirus cases, with 749 deaths. The lingering aftermath of the abrupt disruption in economic activity has tempted many business owners to call it quits.
Sitting at home last summer during the lockdown, designer Suman Bhat, whose luxury label “Lola by SumanB” with its flowing draped silhouettes is popular among Bollywood celebrities, struggled over whether to shut down her flagship brand store in Goa’s capital Panjim or wait out the slump in sales.
Bhat managed to retain her workers but had to give up her beloved retail space, moving to a less costly location in August.
“It was a hard goodbye for me. You put in so much money into the business to create a customer experience –- and that is completely taken away from you. There is no way for someone to see, touch and feel your product anymore,” she said.
Bhat says her workers are exhausted by the new routines of sanitizing, testing and worry. With the pandemic’s end still not in sight, the future remains uncertain.
“Can my clothing be evening wear when there is no evening to go to ? Is it fair to ask people to pay that kind of money when everybody is trying to save up ?” she asked herself.
“Everyone is just exhausted. You don’t know when a worker will say he has fever. What do you do? Shut down everything? Tell everyone to get tested, sanitize and spray everything? You are in problem solving mode all the time,” she said.
Months after the lockdown began to ease, Goa is showing signs of life. Domestic tourist arrivals surged during the year-end holidays. Casinos have been reopened and visitors are no longer required to show negative coronavirus test reports, unlike in most other Indian states.
But things are hardly back to normal.
Yoga teacher Sharanya Narayanan is struggling to make sense of what has been lost.
Narayanan, 34, came to Goa from Mumbai in 2008 to perform aerial acrobatics at a club and has stayed on to make it her home.
She was teaching in multiple locations but had to switch to virtual lessons during the lockdown. When wellness centers were allowed to reopen in August, only one of her jobs came back — her own private class.
“The pandemic has changed everybody’s life – including mine,” she said.
“I miss the sense of anonymity that I enjoyed earlier in Goa. That every time I didn’t have the same set of people to meet, it was always changing, evolving so I was able to recreate myself without a sense of stagnation,” she said. “It is the transient nature of things that is so appealing about Goa.”
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Pakistan is concluding its phase three human trials of a Chinese company’s coronavirus vaccine. Health officials say the test of CanSinoBio’s vaccine are nearly complete and show promise. Pakistan is one of seven countries testing the Chinese vaccine. VOA’s Ayesha Tanzeem reports from the Pakistani capital, Islamabad.Camera:  Malik Waqar Ahmed   
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India’s Supreme Court has indefinitely placed on hold three controversial farm laws that have triggered the biggest farmers protest in decades and formed a committee to resolve the impasse between the government and the farmers.However, farm leaders spearheading the six-week long stir vowed not to call off the protest that has seen tens of thousands of farmers camp on major highways on the outskirts of New Delhi demanding the roll back of the legislation.   “We are going to suspend the implementation of the three farm laws until further orders,” Chief Justice Sharad Arvind Bobde said on Tuesday after a three-judge bench heard several petitions challenging the laws. The court called it a “victory for fair play.”   The farmers’ protest has emerged as a major challenge for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, with the government refusing to repeal the laws and farmers refusing to settle for anything less.   Farmers stand outside their tents at the site of a protest against new farm laws, at the Delhi-Uttar Pradesh border in Ghaziabad, India, Jan. 11, 2021.The government has defended the laws saying they would modernize agriculture and help farmers raise their incomes by affording them new opportunities to market their produce to private companies.But farmers say the laws favor powerful corporations and fear they will dismantle the protection afforded by a decades-old system under which the government buys farm produce such as rice and wheat at what is called a “minimum price.”  India’s Supreme Court has slammed the government’s failure in resolving the farm protest, saying it was “extremely disappointed.” Chief Justice Bobde said that the impasse between the two sides was causing distress to farmers and that the situation at the protest sites was getting worse.Eight rounds of negotiations between the government and the farmers have remained deadlocked with farm leaders turning down the amendments offered by the government.   “We don’t know what consultative process you followed before the laws. Many states are up in rebellion,” the court said on Monday.   The court said the committee of experts would consider all issues related to the farm laws and told protesting farmers to cooperate with it.”This is not politics. There is a difference between politics and (the) judiciary and you will have to cooperate,” the court has said to the farmer unions.A farmer gets a shave from a barber at the site of a protest against new farm laws, at the Delhi-Uttar Pradesh border in Ghaziabad, India, Jan. 12, 2021.Some agricultural experts who support the farmers were also skeptical that setting up a committee would resolve the impasse.“Looking at some of the names of experts on the committee, the outcome is preordained. All members are pro-laws and pro-reforms brought in by the government. Their public position on this is very clear,” says Devender Sharma, a farm economist.Political analysts say a “trust deficit” that has emerged after the government pushed the laws hastily in parliament in September without adequate consultation with opposition parties has made it harder to end the standoff.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted Azerbaijani and Armenian leaders on Monday, marking the first meeting since Russia brokered a peace deal that ended a six-week conflict over the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region.
 
As he sat down for talks with the two leaders at the Kremlin, Putin said the truce has been successfully implemented, laying the foundation for a fair settlement to the conflict.
 
The recent conflict that cost thousands of lives on both sides gained international attention after the Azerbaijani military began expanding into the region in late-September. Despite being recognized as Azerbaijani, Nagorno-Karabakh has been run by ethnic Armenians since 1994, when another Russia-brokered truce ended a six-year-long separatist war in the region. No peace deal was signed back then.
 
In November,  Putin brought his Azerbaijani and Armenian counterparts together to sign a peace agreement. The new deal establishes that Azerbaijan will hold on to specific areas that it has taken during the most recent conflict, while Armenia agreed to hand over additional adjacent areas.  
 
Azerbaijani leaders overwhelmingly saw the deal as a major triumph, with President Ilham Aliyev describing the agreement as of “historic importance.”
 
In Armenia, however, the deal was deeply criticized, sparking mass protests and calls for the resignation of the country’s prime minister. On the occasion, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan called the deal “incredibly painful both for me and both for our people,” but saw it as a necessary step to prevent Azerbaijan from overruling the region.
 
As Pashinyan left for Moscow on Monday, Armenian protesters tried to block his access to the airport. Police later dispersed them.
 
Since November, Russia has deployed around 2,000 peacekeepers to Nagorno-Karabakh, who will be stationed in the region for at least five years. Putin has also indicated on Monday that the three countries will establish a working group to restore traffic links in the region.
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Officials in Afghanistan say they are investigating last week’s counter militancy airstrike that reportedly killed at least 18 civilians, including women and children.The Afghan air force air conducted the raid on late Saturday in the Khashrod district of southwestern Nimruz province, which security officials claimed killed about some 14 Taliban insurgents.However, area residents and members of the provincial council said one of the rockets hit and destroyed a house, killing 18 members of the same family.The Taliban denied the presence of its fighters in the area at the time of the airstrike.Reports of the civilian casualties triggered severe criticism of the Afghan government and calls from domestic as well as international partners for a thorough investigation into the incident.On Monday, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani responded by announcing that he had instructed Nimruz authorities “to mobilize all resources to reach out to families of the martyrs.”“I also instruct the defense and security officials to conduct a thorough investigation and share findings with office of the president,” Ghani’s office quoted him as saying.The United Nations welcomed Ghani’s pledge to investigate the incident but emphasized the need for accountability.Critics, however, questioned the effectiveness of the Afghan government’s resolve to investigate the killing of civilians in Saturday’s incident. 
 
“Yes, there have been many investigations promised over the years with nothing made public and no accountability for violations of IHL (international humanitarian law),” tweeted Patricia Gossman, the associate Asia director for Human Rights.“Important to change that pattern now and carry out genuinely thorough investigation and hold those responsible to account,” added Gossman on Monday. The European Union delegation in Afghanistan stressed the protection of civilians during armed conflict was a “cornerstone” of international humanitarian law.“Recent reports of civilian casualties following air strikes in Nimruz & Helmand provinces must be thoroughly investigated & justice ensured, as for all similar cases,” the EU mission tweeted on Monday.Last week, a government aerial raid against the Taliban in Lashkar Gah, the capital of southern Helmand province, killed at least five members of a family, including three children.The United Nations reported in October that at least 2,100 Afghan civilians were killed and more than 3,800 wounded in the first nine months of 2020. It blamed Afghan airstrikes for about eight percent of the civilian casualties.  Afghan security officers inspect the site of a bombing attack in Kabul, Jan. 10, 2021.The U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan noted that in the third quarter of 2020 child casualties rose 25 percent over the previous three months.In his Monday’s statement, Ghani asserted that “Taliban and other terrorists groups are using people and public places as their shield which is a main driver of civilian casualties.”Fighting has continued in Afghanistan even as the Taliban and representatives of Kabul negotiate a peace deal in Doha, the capital of Qatar, that would end the country’s long conflict.The so-called intra-Afghan dialogue is a product of an agreement the United States signed with the Taliban in February 2020. The document is aimed at ending the war in Afghanistan and bringing home the remaining U.S. troops from what has been America’s longest war. 
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