Welcome to this edition of NewsHero for December 28, 2019. This week’s coverage reflects topics explored by 24 different sources in 53 articles by 61 journalists.
We hope you are enjoying a pleasant holiday season and we send our best wishes for a happy and prosperous new year. See you in 2020!
Weekly Brief 1
Humanitarian/Human Rights
Dr. Dairon Elisondo Rojas, a 28-year-old Cuban native waiting for asylum in the U.S., has become the only full-time physician at a makeshift encampment for 2,500 migrants in Mexico.
Dr. Dairon Elisondo Rojas, a doctor from Cuba, treated patients in a migrant camp in Matamoros, Mexico. Credit. Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York Times
Four ACLU attorneys recently took a look back on 2019 and moments that stood out for them in a year filled with plenty of work.
Deputy Director for Transgender Justice, LGBT and HIV Project Chase Strangio named the historic October argument for the Aimee Stephens case at the Supreme Court as a highlight.
Brigitte Amiri, Deputy Director of the Reproductive Freedom Project, said that despite ongoing challenges fighting for reproductive rights, there were also some great legislative victories, including a number of key laws passed in Maine.
Dale Ho, Director of the Voting Rights Project, chose defeating the citizenship question on the 2020 census as a favorite moment from 2019.
Director of the Immigrants’ Rights Project Omar Jadwat said that blocking the Remain in Mexico policy, even if only briefly as litigation continues, was a standout moment from the year.
International Justice Mission (IJM) and partners rescued five children (four boys and one girl, between the ages of 8 and 15) who had been trafficked into the fishing industry in Ghana and enslaved there for six months.
According to a 2015 study by Médecins Sans Frontières and the Srinagar-based Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, or IMHANS, nearly one in five people in Kashmir show symptoms of PTSD. Rising rates of untreated mental illness in Indian-administered Kashmir have been exacerbated by years of conflict, while an ongoing military clampdown, now in its fifth month, is reportedly adding to civilian trauma. Separate 2016 research published by IMHANS and ActionAid estimated that 11.3 percent of the population had a mental health disorder.
Psychiatrist Dr. Saleem Yousuf speaks at Srinagar’s Shri Maharaja Hari Singh hospital. Masrat Zahra/TNH
Members of the People’s Peace Movement of Afghanistan were abducted by the Taliban, a police spokesman said Wednesday. According to reports, twenty-six activists were kidnapped when the Taliban ambushed the peace movement’s six-vehicle convoy.
The Syrian Response Coordination Group, a relief group active in northwestern Syria, reports that more than 216,000 people have fled their homes in recent weeks amid intense bombardment by government forces. Many have nowhere to go, while others have been heading toward the Turkish border for safety.
British doctors, including health professionals with UK Emergency Medical Team and Brighton and Sussex University Hospital NHS Trust, opted to spend holiday time battling the measles in Samoa. The Pacific island has been overwhelmed by more than 5,500 cases of the disease. Nearly eighty people have died, and almost all of them are children under five. The British medics are working alongside local teams and volunteers from around the world.
Riley Howell, the 21-year-old University of North Carolina student who gave his life during a shooting on the school’s Charlotte campus in April, has been made a Jedi Master in the Star Wars galaxy. Howell was known for his love of the sci-fi franchise and Lucasfilm took note, including his name as a character in the book Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker – The Visual Dictionary.
Sources:
Four Lawyers. Four Projects. One Non-Stop Year. - ACLU,
Five Children in Ghana Will Spend Christmas in Freedom - International Justice Mission
Kashmir’s mental health crisis goes untreated as clampdown continues - The New Humanitarian
Stranded on Border, This Migrant Became the Camp Doctor - The New York Times
Afghan official says Taliban abducted 26 peace activists - AP
Afghan People's Peace Movement marchers 'kidnapped by Taliban' - BBC News
Relief group: 216,000 have fled homes in northwest Syria - AP
We gave up Christmas to fight measles in Samoa - BBC News
UNC Shooting Hero Riley Howell Honored as 'Star Wars' Jedi - Time
Saudi Court's 'Sham Trial' Draws Fire In Khashoggi Murder
Critics claim corrupt ruling shields guilty masterminds
A picture of slain Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi is seen in Istanbul on October 2, 2019. (AP/Lefteris Pitarakis)
The Saudi public prosecutor’s office announced Monday that a court had sentenced five people to death and three to prison for their roles in the October 2018 killing of Saudi journalist and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.
The individuals sentenced were not identified by name and the killing was found to be “spontaneous.” Former Deputy Intelligence Chief Ahmed al-Asiri was acquitted due to lack of evidence, and Saud al-Qahtani, a former adviser to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was investigated but not charged in the murder.
The outcome contradicts the conclusion of the CIA and other western intelligence agencies that Prince Mohammed directly ordered Khashoggi’s assassination, an allegation the kingdom has vehemently denied. Qahtani, along with 16 other Saudis, was sanctioned by the U.S. last year for his alleged role in the killing.
“Conducting a sham trial for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi and sentencing five people to death shows that the Saudi government under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is committed to an ongoing mockery of justice,” said Sherif Mansour, Committee to Protect Journalists Middle East and North Africa Program Coordinator. “The international community, including the U.S., must not allow Saudi Arabia to keep evading justice in the Khashoggi case."
Agnès Callamard, a UN special rapporteur who authored an inquiry into Khashoggi’s death but was barred from access to the secretive trial, said the ruling that the murder was a spontaneous rather than premeditated crime was “anything but justice.” Callamard tweeted: “Under international human rights law, the killing of Khashoggi was an extrajudicial execution for which the state of Saudi Arabia is responsible.”
The Committee to Protect Journalists and other press freedom activists hold a candlelight vigil in front of the Saudi Embassy in Washington D.C. to mark the anniversary of the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Sarah Silbiger/Reuters
Turkey’s foreign ministry also said the judgment was "far from meeting … expectations” on delivering justice. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s top press aide, Fahrettin Altun, tweeted: “To claim that a handful of intelligence operatives committed this murder is to mock the world’s intelligence.” Altun also tweeted that the verdict of the “sham trial” was “an insult to the intelligence of any fair observer.”
Hatice Cengiz, Khashoggi’s fiancee, described the trial as unfair and invalid, adding that the executions of those sentenced would further conceal the truth. “If these people are executed without any chance to speak or explain themselves, we might never know the truth behind this murder,” Cengiz said in a statement on Tuesday. “I’m calling upon every authority in the world to condemn this kind of court decision and urgently prevent any execution, because this would just be another step in concealing the truth.”
Khashoggi disappeared after going to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to obtain documents for his planned wedding. His body was reportedly dismembered and removed from the building and his remains have not been found.
Sources:
Saudi Arabia sentences 5 to death for killing of Jamal Khashoggi - Bloomberg
Khashoggi's fiancee says execution of those convicted would conceal truth - Reuters
Turkey urges international media to pursue Khashoggi case after 'sham trial' - TheHill
'Mockery of justice’ after Saudis convict eight over Khashoggi killing - The Guardian
Saudi court sentences 8 for Jamal Khashoggi killing - Committee to Protect Journalists
Weekly Brief 2
Humanitarian/Human Rights
“The Year of the Protest” was a name given to 2019 in a piece from NBC News. Demonstrations were sparked by social unrest over economic instability, government corruption and inequality in Hong Kong, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Chile, Colombia, Bolivia, and Venezuela among others.
Dr. Marie-Roseline Bélizaire is a field coordinator for health workers who are part of the anti-Ebola effort in the Democratic Republic of Congo. She is an epidemiologist with the World Health Organization. Lindsay Mackenzie/WHO
“Global Women Who Took A Stand In 2019” were featured on NPR, including Gulalai Ismail, a Pakistani activist whose life was threatened for taking a stand against sexual violence perpetrated by security forces. Also featured were Dr. Marie-Roseline Bélizaire, a field coordinator for the World Health Organization's Ebola response teams in Congo; Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Lynsey Addario, known for her coverage of war (and who has been kidnapped twice while on assignment); Fatou Jallow, who won a beauty pageant sponsored by the Gambian president when she was 18 and says she was raped by President Yahya Jammeh; Miss Universe 2019 Zozibini Tunzi of South Africa, who took a stand on “natural” beauty, gender equality and climate change; the participants in the Girl Up 2019 Leadership Summit; six young women who went to the UN with the Global Girls' Bill of rights; and the millions of women in India who joined hands in a 385-mile wall of protest.
Canada’s child protection hotline, using Arachnid, a computer program designed to find and report illicit imagery, brought down several websites popular with sexual predators.
Christian Assembly Church is reportedly wiping out $5.3 million in medical debt for thousands of low-income Los Angeles area residents. Using more than $50,000 worth of donations from parishioners, the church is working with a debt-forgiveness nonprofit to help erase bills for 5,555 households who earn less than twice the federal poverty level.
Turkey's Constitutional Court has ruled that the country's block on accessing Wikipedia is unconstitutional. The court said the ban violated rights concerning freedom of expression, and ordered it be lifted. The Turkish government barred the website in 2017 because of entries suggesting Turkey had co-operated with jihadist militants in Syria.
Volunteer workers sort through donated clothing for the needy in a tent near Martyrs' Square in central Beirut. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)
As Lebanon’s protest movement enters its third month, the economic crisis is hurting everyone, with layoffs, salary cuts, and prices all on the rise. Protesters are relying on each other, not the state, to get by. Monetary donations have been organized, and campaigns to collect food, winter clothes and helplines for people in economic and emotional distress have emerged. Stores have offered discounts and set up boxes for donations of clothes or money, while some restaurants have offered to deliver free food, and bakeries put out bread for anyone in need.
As protesters demand elections be made more fair, Iraq’s parliament has approved a new electoral law, but political deadlock is still holding up the selection of an interim prime minister, threatening renewed unrest. Protesters are demanding an overhaul of a political system they see as corrupt and keeping most Iraqis in poverty.
In his “Urbi et Orbi” (to the city and the world) Christmas Day message, Pope Francis called for peace in the Holy Land, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq, Venezuela, Ukraine and several African countries caught up in conflicts. The pope also noted migrants forced by injustice “to emigrate in the hope of a secure life.”
People in Rwanda and other poor countries are suffering from a lack of prescription painkillers, while people in rich countries are dying from overuse of them. Rwanda has come up with a solution to its pain crisis: morphine, which costs just pennies to produce and is delivered to households across the country by public health workers.
Animals
Bottom trawler fishermen (they use nets to scoop up deep-dwelling fish) are making a comeback in a rare environmental success story on the Oregon coast. The fishermen are reinventing themselves as a sustainable industry less than two decades after authorities closed huge stretches of the Pacific Ocean because of species depletion.
The male black rhino calf, which has not been named yet, was walking about 90 minutes after its birth at the Potter Park Zoo in Lansing, Mich. Credit Kaiti Chritz/Potter Park Zoo
A 12-year-old black rhino at a Michigan zoo named Doppsee delivered a newborn calf in a rare zoo birth for the endangered species. The arrival of the male calf, which hasn’t been named yet, was the first time that a black rhino had been born at the Potter Park Zoo in Lansing, Mich., in its 100-year history, according to a news release.
Sources:
In 2019, protesters took to the streets around the world to demand change - NBC
Fearless Women: In 2019, These Global Activists Stood Up For Their Belief - NPR
Fighting the Good Fight Against Online Child Sexual Abuse - The New York Times
Church erases $5.3 million in medical debt for poor L.A. families - Los Angeles Times
Wikipedia ban: Top court calls for Turkey to lift block - BBC News
Lebanese help each other as economic crisis crushes lives - AP
Iraq passes electoral reforms but deadlock remains - Reuters
Israel army admits 'mistakes' over attack that killed Gaza family - Al Jazeera
Pope's "Urbi et Orbi'' message: Francis decries "walls of indifference" migrants face in new lands - CBS News
Pope defends migrants, calls for peace in Christmas message - Reuters
Pope offers hope against darkness in Christmas Day message - AP
Pope marks joyful Christmas Eve after less-than-joyful year - AP
Pope offers hope against darkness in Christmas Day message - The Washington Post/AP
Rwanda avoids US-style opioids crisis by making own morphine - AP
Rust Belt region banks on becoming hub for electric vehicles - AP
West Coast fishery rebounds in rare conservation 'home run' - AP
Black Rhino Born at Michigan Zoo on Christmas Eve - The New York Times
NewsHero Editorial
Art by Mark Minnig
Protests In Hong Kong Flare Up On Christmas Eve
Pro-democracy activists join together for free holiday dinner
Volunteer medics treated a protester in Tsim Sha Tsui who was injured in a clash. Lam Yik Fei/NY Times
Protesters in Hong Kong rallied on Tuesday in streets and at shopping malls, signaling a rise in tensions after weeks of calm. Police clashed with demonstrators in neighborhoods around the city, using tear gas and pepper spray in attempts to quell the pro-democracy activity.
Two dozen people were injured, including one protester who fell over a railing in a shopping mall while trying to avoid arrest, and another who fell from the roof of a restaurant that was being raided by the police.
“Confrontation is expected, it doesn’t matter if it’s Christmas,” said Chan, a 28-year-old restaurant worker who was part of a crowd which was met by police outside a shopping center. “I’m disappointed the government still didn’t respond to any of our ... demands. We continue to come out even if we don’t have much hope,” said Chan, who provided only his last name.
Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam said in a Facebook post on Wednesday that many residents and tourists were disappointed that their “Christmas Eve celebrations have been ruined.”
Protesters queue for a free Christmas dinner offered by a local restaurant in Hong Kong, China, December 25, 2019. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson
Hundreds of protesters and their supporters gathered on Wednesday outside a tiny restaurant in Hong Kong for an unconventional Christmas dinner, sharing paper plates piled high with food.
Post-it notes cover the front of a local restaurant offering protesters free Christmas dinner in Hong Kong, China, December 25, 2019. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson
“Hong Kongers are more united this Christmas [than] in previous years,” said Glory, the 31-year-old owner of Kwong Wing Catering, as he served food from silver trays. “Actually there is no Christmas atmosphere [this year], but there is a strong sense of unity,” he said. All of the food offered at the dinner was free and prepared by the restaurant or donated by a number of sponsors.
Hong Kong has been the scene of anti-government protests since June which show no signs of letting up.
Sources:
Protesters, Police Clash as Hong Kong Tensions Rise - WSJ
Demonstrators Stage Anti-Government Christmas Eve Protests In Hong Kong - NBC News
Santa Hats and Tear Gas: Hong Kong Protests Flare Again - The New York Times
'It doesn't matter if it's Christmas' - Hong Kong pro-democracy activists keep up protests - Reuters
'We're all family now': Protesters gather for free Christmas dinner in Hong Kong - Reuters
Weekly Brief 3
Politics
Protesters demanding the impeachment of Donald Trump in New York on June 7, 2018. Erik McGregor/LightRocket/Getty Images via Vox
Alaska Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski said she was “disturbed" after hearing Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other top GOP senators were coordinating the impending impeachment trial with the White House. Murkowski, who has previously been critical of the partisan nature of the House impeachment inquiry, is now taking on McConnell and South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham for both claiming there would be “total coordination” between the U.S. Senate and President Trump over his own impeachment trial.
Maryland Democrat Senator Christopher Van Hollen said that he'd asked the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to investigate the charges against President Trump to determine whether he had violated the Impoundment Control Act, which sets out "narrow circumstances" under which the executive branch may withhold funds. Congress must be notified if funds are to be withheld, and no notification was given to Congress, said Van Hollen.
The U.S. flew four surveillance planes over the Korean peninsula Wednesday, according to an aviation tracker, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported. North Korea had threatened to give Washington a “Christmas gift” unless the U.S. makes concessions in nuclear talks with the country. The implied threat has analysts and ex-officials urging the Trump administration to consider tougher treatment toward Pyongyang in 2020.
Emails disclosed in federal court filings expose how ICE used social media and information obtained by for-profit data brokers to track down and arrest an immigrant in Southern California. In the emails, ICE officials discussed the person’s Facebook status and posts, and confirmed his identity through pictures that had been posted. ICE ultimately arrested the person after he “checked in” to a Home Depot on Facebook.
U.S. national security leaders from past and present recently met with officials from 24 states for a training session near Washington. At the gathering 120 state and local election officials were given military-style preparations for combating potential interference in the upcoming presidential election. While the federal government will be on high alert, gathering intelligence and scanning systems for suspicious cyber activity, it will be the state and county officials who will be on the ground charged with identifying and dealing with any hostile acts.
In this Monday, Dec. 16, 2019, photo, a booklet is held up during an exercise run by military and national security officials, for state and local election officials to simulate different scenarios for the 2020 elections, in Springfield, Va. These government officials are on the front lines of a different kind of high-stakes battlefield, one in which they are helping to defend American democracy by ensuring free and fair elections. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny had his Moscow headquarters raided by authorities on Thursday. Navalny was dragged out by force and laptops were confiscated. Additionally, Navalny has said one of his employees was “kidnapped” from his Moscow apartment and sent to a remote Arctic military base. Navalny, President Vladimir Putin's most vocal opponent, said Ruslan Shaveddinov, a staffer at his Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), was taken to Novaya Zemlya Island in the Arctic Ocean, “in less than a day.”
Voters on Thursday chose to give Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu an overwhelming victory in a primary election for leadership of the ruling Likud party. Official results announced early Friday showed Netanyahu with 72 percent of the votes, and challenger Gideon Saar with 28 percent. The win is a boost for Netanyahu ahead of a general election in March.
Sources:
Moderate GOP Sen. Murkowski ‘disturbed’ by McConnell’s impeachment comments - Fox News
GOP Senator 'Disturbed' Mitch McConnell Coordinating Impeachment Trial with Trump, Demands 'Fair Process' - Newsweek
Trump Violated Another Law, the Impoundment Control Act, by Withholding Ukraine Aid, Democratic Senator Van Hollen Says - Newsweek
Trump and Ukraine aid: Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen asks watchdog to provide findings from aid review - CBS News
Christian Post Editor Resigns Over Editorial Defending Trump - The New York Times
US flies four spy planes over North Korea amid Christmas threat: report - TheHill
Trump urged to ‘lower the boom’ on North Korea amid new threats - Fox News
How ICE Uses Social Media to Surveil and Arrest Immigrants - The Intercept
State officials are at the core of 2020 election security - AP
Russian opposition leader's office raided - TheHill
Russian opposition leader says staffer 'kidnapped' and sent to Arctic base - CNN
Russian authorities crack down on critics with raids and conscription - The Washington Post
Russian authorities raid Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny's Moscow office - Reuters
Anti-Putin activist Ruslan Shaveddinov 'forcibly conscripted' and sent to Arctic - The Guardia/AFP
Netanyahu wins party vote in boost ahead of Israeli election - Reuters
Israel’s Netanyahu wins Likud party primary challenge in landslide - Fox News
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