Iranian Americans are closely watching the unfolding situation in their home country as protests continue in Tehran over  the Iran military’s admission on Saturday that it mistakenly shot down a civilian Ukrainian plane, killing all 176 on board.Many Iranian Americans have taken to the streets to express their support for the Iranian people and their demands in the ongoing protests in Iran.On Sunday, dozens of Iranian-American activists gathered in Washington D.C, to honor the victims of the Ukrainian plane crash and to show support for their fellow countrymen who reportedly have been facing a violent government crackdown on recent protests.”I’m here to support the Iranian people [and] be their voice,” said Monir, an Iranian-American, who only gave her first name. “If you go in the streets  [in Iran], you might be jailed, you might be killed in the streets, and these people are so brave,” she said as she was standing with a crowd in downtown Washington.خطاب به رهبران ايران: معترضان خود را نكشيد. هزاران تن تاكنون به دست شما كشته يا زنداني شده اند، و جهان نظاره گر است. مهمتر از ان، ايالات متحده نظاره گر است. اينترنت را دوباره وصل كنيد و به خبرنگاران اجازه دهيد ازادانه حركت كنند! كشتار مردم بزرگ ايران را متوقف كنيد! Candles and flowers are displayed with condolences offered to the families of the passengers of the Ukrainian jetliner shot down by Iran by accident at a memorial at the “2020 LA Convention for Free Iran,” Jan. 11, 2020.”One of the biggest points of contention has been this idea of wanting to support the Iranian protest movement against the Islamic regime in Iran while the same time not beating the drums of war,” she told VOA in a phone interview.Demands  evolvedSome activists said demands of Iranian protesters have evolved over the years from basic reforms to regime change.”If you listen to people on the streets of Tehran and other Iranian cities, it is clear that people are fed up with this regime,” said Ahmad Batebi, a human rights activist based in Washington, who was imprisoned in Iran for his role in a student protest movement in 1999.”In today’s Iran, there are two governments,” he told VOA. “One that is just a façade, which is represented by people like [Iranian President Hassan] Rouhani and [Foreign Minister Javad] Zarif.”The other is the government that works in the shadow and holds real power is represented by the Supreme Leader and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Batebi said.In April 2019, the U.S. government designated the IRGC a terrorist organization.  Lobbying lawmakers  Sadegh Amiri, another Iranian-American activist who lives in Annapolis, Maryland, said that his objective is to raise more awareness among the American public about what has actually been happening in Iran.“”We reach out to local lawmakers [in Maryland] and ordinary people to tell them Iran is not what they see on television,” he said. “We would like people in America to understand (that) Iranian people wish to live in freedom, and that this current regime in Tehran doesn’t represent them,” he told VOA.People gather for a candlelight vigil to remember the victims of the Ukraine plane crash, at the gate of Amrikabir University that some of the victims of the crash were former students of, in Tehran, Iran, Jan. 11, 2020.Ali Afshari of the Iranians for Secularism and Democracy, an advocacy group based in the U.S., says Iranian Americans could be effective in two ways in response to the latest events in Iran.  “First we, in the diaspora, need to amplify the voices of protesters on the ground,” he told VOA, adding that, “we need to empower people so that can sustain their demands against the Iranian regime.””Second we need to be more active in terms of reaching out to lawmakers and policymakers in Washington. Iranian Americans have a historic responsibility to convey accurate information and facts from inside Iran to people in the United States,” Afshari added.  DivisionsAnalysts say there are many differences among Iranian Americans that reflect their political, ethnic and cultural diversity.  Shahed Alavi, an Iranian political analyst based in Washington, says when it comes to attitude towards the Iranian government, there are three types of people within the Iranian American community.”There are those who fully support a regime change in Tehran and hope this ongoing protest movement will turn into something bigger,” he said.  “There are others who believe that Iranian people have the right to protest, but they don’t think the U.S. should interfere in Iranian affairs.”However, he added, “the silent majority among the Iranian community in America refuses to get involved or even have an opinion about that’s happening in Iran, because they visit Iran and still have relatives there. So they simply fear retribution from the Iranian regime.”VOA’s Persian Service, Cindy Saine  and  Saqib  Ul  Islam contributed to this story from Washington.  
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Leila Ben Gacem guides a visitor through the Tunis Medina, ducking the cars and carts rattling down narrow, cobblestoned streets, and the occasional smear of dog poop.”Historically, the Medina was the heart of trade, craft and art, and it’s structured with many souks — each dedicated to a specific craft,” she says.She points down the maze of roads towards markets dedicated to coppersmiths, and those making Tunisia’s famous, flat-topped chechia hat, which exports to Libya and parts of sub-Saharan Africa.A rooftop view of the Tunis Medina. (VOA/Lisa Bryant)A municipal councillor in a village outside the capital, Ben Gacem is also a social entrepreneur on a mission; helping not only to preserve the Medina’s ancient buildings and community, but also to revitalize trades that once powered this historic quarter, some of which risk going extinct.”If investments are inclusive and pay attention to shared economy,” she says, “then maybe the whole community will grow together.”It’s a lesson that might inform Tunisia’s next government, still under construction nearly three months after elections. The Arab Spring’s only democracy to date, the North African country is challenged to turn around its sluggish economy and deepening poverty that has fed emigration and unrest.  While up to one-third of Tunisia’s youth are jobless, some old Medina trades are struggling for manpower.A fading traditionAt his cramped shop, Mohammed Ben Sassi reverently opens an old Quran he is working on, its pages decorated in blue and gold. Behind him are piles of half-finished tombs. At 64, Ben Sassi is the Medina’s only surviving bookbinder.Bookbinder Mohammed Ben Sassi admires an antique quran he is working on. (VOA/Lisa Bryant)”There’s demand, but young people are no longer interested,” Ben Sassi says.He isn’t the only craftsman facing challenges. While central Medina still houses more than 500 artisan workshops, that number is about half what it was fifty years ago, according to Ben Gacem’s research. The decline, she believes, translates to a broader loss for the country’s very identity.‘’Throughout history, Tunisians have worked  with their hands,” she says. “I can’t imagine a Tunisian family that doesn’t have an artisan.”The reasons for the decline are multiple, Ben Gacem says. The country’s sinking economy and currency have made some quality raw materials unaffordable, driving artisans to abandon trades handed down through generations. Others have switched to inexpensive substitutes –making the final product less attractive to buyers.But revitalizing these trades might also suggest a broader rethink of one key economic driver. Tourism has largely turned around Tunisia’s beachfronts and deserts, and less on its artistic heritage — including the centuries-old Medina, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.A man making water pipes. The Medina’s artisans have declined sharply over the past half century. (VOA/ Lisa Bryant)”We’re not promoting Tunisia with all it’s wealth, especially in the tourism industry,” Ben Gacem says. “We haven’t communicated the best story. We have communicated the easiest story.”Revitalizing the MedinaFounded in the 7th century, the Tunis Medina was restored under hardline president Zine el Abidine Ben Ali, but suffered under the 2011 revolution that ousted him, and subsequent instability. Building codes were sidelined, traditional residents fled to safer places, and squatters occupied historic mansions. Tunisians from the south moved in, further fraying a once close-knit community.”But the revolution also had a positive impact,” says architect Soulef Aouididi of the Medina Conservation Association. From the association’s headquarters in a sumptuous, 19th-century palace, she describes new civic groups springing up, including those offering school tours of the Medina, helping the next generation better appreciate its history.Aouididi’s association also organizes events bringing together the quarter’s disparate population, to help restitch relations.”Our strategy is to safeguard the buildings, but also the social heritage,” she says.Several blocks away, a pair of elegant guesthouses offer another experiment in community development. Ben Gacem has converted two dilapidated Medina mansions into boutique tourist hotels, tapping local residents to run them, and sourcing her supplies from area businesses.A dilapidated old mansion being restored in the Medina. Tunisia’s revolution offered a mixed fallout for the quarter. (VOA/Lisa Bryant)She also networks with local artisans like Ben Sassi, organizing workshops so hotel guests can learn about their craft, as one way to bring in business—while offering tourists an “authentic experience” of Tunisia.”It’s part of creating a new economic dynamic to preserve the artistry and culture around historical urban spaces,” Ben Gacem says.The last hat maker?Whether such initiatives can help to preserve old trades however is uncertain.”Young Tunisians aren’t interested in working,” says Mohamed Troudi, a chaouachine, or chechia hat maker, as he points to his own calloused hands. “They want office, Facebook and a coffee at 10 am.”Troudi himself started his career as a computer technician. He soon made a U-turn back to the family trade.  Like Ben Sassi, he is part of Ben Gacem’s network of artisans. He has no lack of business—in no small part because the numbers of chaouachine are dwindling.At 28, he is the Medina’s youngest traditional hat maker. One day, he fears, he may be its last.”See that old man,” Troudi says, pointing to a colleague across from his workshop. “His son doesn’t want to work in the trade, so his store will shut. It’s a big problem.”
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Долар послабшав на 15 копійок, свідчать дані на сайті Національного банку України.

На 13 січня його офіційна вартість встановлена на рівні 23 гривень 97 копійок.

Курс євро також знизився – з 26,8 до 26,59 гривні.

 
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Contempt for regulators, airlines and their own colleagues coupled with a casual approach to safety: a series of emails by Boeing employees paint an unflattering portrait of a company culture of “arrogance” imbued with a fixation on cost-cutting.The emails underscore the task awaiting incoming CEO David Calhoun when he takes the company’s reins on Monday, under intense pressure to restore public confidence — and that of aviation regulators worldwide — after two fatal crashes of the 737 MAX aircraft.The emails were contained in some 100 pages of documents dated between 2013 and 2018 and transmitted to U.S. lawmakers by the Seattle-based aviation giant. The messages were seen by AFP after their release Thursday.Often cutting, dismissive, mocking or cavalier, the messages show that Boeing’s current difficulties reach far beyond the 737 MAX, shining a light on a level of dysfunction that seems almost unimaginable for a company that helped democratize air travel — and which builds the US president’s iconic Air Force One airplane.The emails show that Boeing tried to play down the role of its MCAS flight-control system in order both to avoid the costs involved in having to train pilots on the system in flight simulators and to speed the federal green-lighting of the MAX plane.Investigators singled out the role of the MCAS (the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System) in the fatal crashes of MAX planes flown by Indonesia’s Lion Air (Oct. 29, 2018) and Ethiopian Airlines (March 10, 2019).Those crashes claimed 346 lives and led to the plane’s worldwide grounding last March.”I want to stress the importance of holding firm that there will not be any type of simulator training required,” one Boeing employee messaged a colleague on March 28, 2017, a few months before the MAX received federal certification.The message went on: “Boeing will not allow that to happen. We’ll go face-to-face with any regulator who tries to make that a requirement.”A few months later, the same employee — a test pilot — bragged about having “save(d) this company a sick amount of $$$$.”The names of most of the employees who sent the messages were blacked out.’I wouldn’t’In 2018, several employees working on the MAX simulators complained of encountering numerous technical difficulties.”Would you put your family on a MAX simulator-trained aircraft? I wouldn’t,” said a message sent in February 2018, eight months before the first crash.”No,” a colleague agreed.Two other employees said they were concerned about the impact on Boeing’s image at a time, they said, when the company’s leaders seemed obsessed with the idea of gaining ground on Airbus’s narrow-body A320neo.”All the messages are about meeting schedule, not delivering quality,” one employee said.A colleague replied: “We put ourselves in this position by picking the lowest-cost supplier and signing up to impossible schedules.”Why did the lowest-ranking and most unproven supplier receive the contract? Solely because of the bottom dollar.”Robert Clifford, a US lawyer representing victims’ families from the Ethiopian Airlines crash, said the Boeing culture led to “unnecessary and preventable deaths.””Excuses will not be heard,” he said in a statement on his law firm’s website.’Ridiculous’The documents also show Boeing employees questioning the competence of the company’s engineers.”This is a joke,” an employee wrote in September 2016, in a reference to the MAX. “This airplane is ridiculous.””Piss poor design,” said another, in April 2017.And yet for decades Boeing was seen as representing the very best in aerospace engineering and design. It developed the 747, nicknamed the “queen of the skies,” and contributed to the Apollo program that sent man to the moon.The aerospace company and its huge network of suppliers are goliaths of the U.S. economy.In June 2018, one employee messaged his own analysis of the problem: “It’s systemic. It’s culture. It’s the fact that we have a senior leadership team that understands very little about the business and yet are driving us to certain objectives” while not “being accountable.”Michel Merluzeau, an analyst with Air Insight Research, said, “Boeing needs to re-examine an operational culture from another era.”Greg Smith, Boeing’s interim chief executive officer, insisted that “these documents do not represent the best of Boeing.”In a message to staff sent Friday and seen by AFP, he added, “The tone and language of the messages are inappropriate, particularly when used in discussion of such important matters.”Some emails are dismissive of federal regulators, starting with those from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) who approved the MAX.”There is no confidence that the FAA is understanding what they are accepting,” an employee wrote in February 2016.Nor were airlines spared.”Now friggin’ Lion Air might need a sim(ulator) to fly the MAX, and maybe because of their own stupidity,” an employee wrote in June 2017, more than a year before a 737 MAX crashed near Jakarta. “Idiots!”Yet another employee, this one more somberly, wrote in February 2018: “Our arrogance is (our) pure demise.” 
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A decade after the devastating earthquake that killed more than 200,000 Haitians and left millions more homeless life has not improved for many survivors.    Ma Drapo, Sent Mari and Taba Isa, three refugee camps located in the capital, Port-au-Prince, is where survivors are living post-quake. Residents of Sent Mari told VOA Creole they lack clean water, sanitation and food.This quake survivor says there are no bathrooms, so residents have to improvise. (Matiado Vilme/VOA Creole)”We’ve been living here since January 12 (2010),” one man said. “We have no access to water, financial revenue, employment, water – there are many other things we don’t have access to – but you know how it is, we’re Haitians -wherever you’re living, there are people to support even though we don’t have the means to do that.  “We don’t have bathrooms,” a woman living in a makeshift house with a tin roof said. “But when we have to go, there’s a place we walk to, to do our business.”This resident of Taba Isa decries the lack of security. (Renan Toussaint/VOA Creole)In Ma Drapo, a refugee camp for handicapped quake survivors, residents decry the violence.”There’s non-stop shooting, so we can’t leave in peace,” a woman told VOA Creole. “We are running around all day for fear of being shot. We (have to) grab our kids and run and sometimes we don’t even know where we’re going.”This resident of Sent Mari lost his leg in the earthquake. (Matiado Vilme/VOA Creole)A man who lost his leg in the quake said he has been living there for almost nine years now. “They don’t value us at all,” he said. “We are lacking basic needs. Our homes are crumbling, government officials never visit us to see how we’re living. We have tons of problems.” The man said the only good thing that has happened is that they were recently provided with electricity. Residents are grateful, but they have many other basic needs. He called on the international community to take a closer look at what’s happening with handicapped survivors.This resident represents the deaf members of the camp. He also lost a leg in the earthquake. (Matiado Vilme/VOA Creole)Another nine-year resident of the camp, who told VOA Creole he is an interpreter for the deaf residents, said he had signed petitions and sent letters asking for assistance. He is still waiting for a response. “There are bullet casings everywhere, we have no security, we don’t have anything, we’re suffering,” he said. President Jovenel Moise has acknowledged the lack of adequate housing for earthquake survivors and said the government is still working to rectify that.This Taba Isa resident says the government has abandoned them. (Renan Toussaint/VOA Creole)At the Taba Isa camp, a woman told VOA Creole she had been relocated after the earthquake and has lived there ever since. “They initially told us it was for three years, but three years has become 10 years,” she said. “And we have no security, we are charged with protecting ourselves and I’d like to know if they have plans to construct houses for us at some point.”The mother of two said the residents are isolated, having no access to hospitals or adequate schools for their children.This mother of three says the government has not fulfilled its promises to build adequate homes for survivors. (Renan Toussaint/VOA Creole)Another female resident spoke about the lack of attention. “In the beginning they were coming often to take care of us but it’s been a long time since we were visited (by government officials). We aren’t living well. If heavy rain falls, we’re at risk. Our children can’t go to school because of overcrowding,” she said.”If you’re asking about government assistance, it’s zero,” a male resident said. “When we call the police station, no one comes. Even if there’s an arrest warrant out against the person we are calling them about, they just ignore our calls.” A view of some of the makeshift homes in the Ma Drapo quake survivor camp. (Matiado Vilme/VOA Creole)In his speech marking the 10th anniversary of the earthquake, Moise called on Haitians to unite and rekindle the spirit of unity and humanitarianism that was prevalent in the country after the earthquake hit, in 2010.”As we face these difficult circumstances, we need this type of solidarity more than ever,” Moise said. “That unity, that fraternity that was our strength, and (which) kept us from losing hope.”Makeshift homes are seen in the Sent Mari camp for earthquake survivors in Port au Prince, Haiti. (Matiado Vilme/VOA Creole)Homes are seen in the Taba Isa earthquake survivor camp in Port au Prince, Haiti. (Renan Toussaint/VOA Creole)
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A violent mob assault on the U.S. embassy in Baghdad. The targeted killing of an Iranian general ordered by President Donald Trump. An accidental missile strike of a Ukrainian commercial airliner. A tightening of U.S. economic sanctions on Iran. The detention of the British ambassador in Tehran.We are barely beyond the first week of a new year and a new decade, but already the alarming and chaotic news coming out of the Middle East makes it difficult not to feel a sense of foreboding for what’s to come. Historical forces seem to be moving on paths impossible to identify precisely, but lead in the general direction of danger, political analysts and historians say.And all this takes place at a time when the world already had plenty to worry about.Trump has been impeached and awaits a trial seeking his removal from office that could begin in the Senate later this week. North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un continues to threaten the U.S. and has declared that he will no longer observe a ban on nuclear tests. Overseas, Australia is on fire. Britain is edging ever closer to Brexit.A Middle East on the edgeWith the crisis in the Middle East one miscalculation away from spiraling out of control, and a suite of other international fires to put out, many key posts in the Trump administration’s national security apparatus are filled by unconfirmed officials or sit empty altogether.It’s little wonder that newspapers across the country are running stories on the rise in the number of people seeking mental health care for anxiety.At times like these, a little historical perspective can be helpful.FILE – Iranians burn an Israeli and a U.S. flag during an anti-U.S. protest in the capital Tehran, Jan. 4, 2020, over the killings of Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani and Iraqi paramilitary chief Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.Parallels to 1968Robert Dallek, noted historian and author, points out that this is not the first time the United States has been beset by seemingly overwhelming problems.”You know, we’ve been through many difficult moments,” Dallek said in an interview with VOA. “Like 1968, when the country was locked into the war in Vietnam and you had inner-city riots, and [Lyndon] Johnson announced he wasn’t going to run for president again.”At the time, a travel agency in France was pitching vacations in the United States with the tagline, “See America while it lasts,” Dallek said.”It was a time when people also thought that America was slowly coming to an end and might be heading into a new Civil War, and so there are echoes of that here,” he said. However, he stressed that there are reasons to be hopeful. The United States did not descend into war, the war in Vietnam eventually came to an end, and civil unrest abated.None of this, however, is to suggest that the real anxiety Americans feel is misplaced or imagined. Perhaps the most stressful issue facing Americans right now is the crisis unfolding in the Middle East.Attack on US Embassy in BaghdadOn New Year’s Eve, Americans woke up to the news that the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad’s Green Zone was under siege by a mob that had broken into a reception area and set part of the structure on fire. The protests followed a December 29 U.S strike against Iranian-backed Kataeb Hezbollah sites in Iraq and Syria in retaliation for the killing of a U.S. civilian contractor near the Iraqi city of Kirkuk two days earlier. The Pentagon announced that it was dispatching troops to the region, a number that quickly grew into the thousands.FILE – Pro-Iranian militiamen and their supporters set a fire in front of the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, Iraq, Jan. 1, 2020.Later on Twitter, Trump promised retribution if the attackers, reported to have connections to an Iran-backed militia group, harmed embassy personnel or damaged U.S. property. “This is not a Warning, it is a Threat. Happy New Year!” he wrote.US drone strike on SoleimaniTwo days later, shortly after landing at Baghdad International Airport, General Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s notorious Quds Force, was killed in a drone strike that had been personally ordered by Trump.Soleimani, who directed operations that have led to the killing of hundreds of American soldiers in Iraq and untold thousands of civilian deaths across the Middle East, was generally considered the second-most-powerful figure in the Iranian government.Iran, promising revenge, observed three days of mourning for Soleimani before launching missiles at two installations in Iraq housing American military personnel. There was reason to believe that the missile strikes were more symbolic than dangerous.But any hope that the limited Iranian response might reduce the tension in the region was dashed just hours later, when a Ukrainian jetliner with 176 travelers on board crashed outside Tehran. By the weekend, it had become clear that nervous Iranian air defense forces, on alert for U.S. retaliation after the strikes in Iraq, shot down the plane by accident, a fact that Iran eventually admitted.FILE – A picture of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, killed in a U.S. drone strike at Baghdad airport, is seen on a building which formerly housed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, Iran, Jan. 7, 2020.More sanctions for IranThe United States announced Friday morning that it would impose new economic sanctions on Iran. These would come on top of existing penalties that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has described as the most punishing the U.S. has ever levied on another country. Many Democratic lawmakers and some Republicans complained that Trump, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and other senior administration officials have misled Congress and the public in arguing that Suleimani had posed an “imminent” threat.In Tehran on Saturday, the ambassador of Britain was arrested and held for several hours after attending a vigil for the 176 people killed in the attack on the Ukrainian airliner. The highly unusual step by Iran was accompanied by accusations that the diplomat incited street protests against the Iranian regime, a charge the British government hotly denied.Within the U.S., the collective response to the unfolding crisis in the Middle East has been unease about where all this will end. Social media has been rife with references — some joking, some not — to an imminent World War III. But experts point out the likelihood of all-out war between the United States and Iran is low.At the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, professor of political science Michael Horowitz and senior fellow Elizabeth Saunders wrote Friday, “Blowback may be coming, and the U.S. strike against Soleimani may increase the risk of bad outcomes short of an all-out war. Those are reasons for concern. But it’s critical to distinguish such consequences from a general war.”They added, “There will no doubt be consequences — but general war remains unlikely.”FILE – Various rates and prices for currencies and gold coins are displayed at an exchange bureau, in Tehran, Iran, Aug. 21, 2019.A desire for ‘normalcy’Dallek, the presidential historian, said that in his view, the most likely outcome of a lengthy period of civic stress is an electorate primed for a return to perceived normalcy. This is something the Democrats are counting on as the 2020 presidential campaign heats up.”I think the outcome of all this is going to be like in 1968, when the country wanted to get back to some kind of continuity,” Dallek said.It was that election in 1968, of course, that gave the United States the Nixon presidency. 
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The White House is voicing strong support for Iranian protesters who took to the streets to decry the shoot down of a Ukrainian commercial jetliner outside Tehran last week. VOA’s Michael Bowman reports, the Trump administration faces continued bipartisan pressure from Congress to provide more details on the intelligence that prompted the U.S.’s targeted killing of an Iranian general, as Democrats seek to rein in the president’s ability to unilaterally order military action against Iran.
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