The 14-day coronavirus quarantine has ended for 195 Americans brought out of Wuhan on the first evacuation flight to the US. They’re now free to go home.  But the virus continues to spread and this week more than 400 scientists from around the world will be discussing the issue at a gathering convened in Geneva by the World Health Organization.  Also Tuesday, the World Health Organization officially named the virus COVID-19  (Corona Virus Disease 19) . VOA’s Mariama Diallo reports.
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Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas went to the United Nations Tuesday to protest President Donald Trump’s peace proposal for the Palestinians and Israel.In an impassioned 35-minute speech to a packed Security Council chamber, the Palestinian leader urged the international community to reject the Trump plan. “This plan, or any part in this plan, should not be considered as an international reference for negotiations,” Abbas said. “This is an Israeli-American preemptive plan in order to put an end to the question of Palestine.”The Palestinians have rejected the deal, which they see as heavily favored toward Israel and not giving them a sovereign, contiguous state with East Jerusalem as its capital.  Abbas said the U.S. can no longer be the sole Mideast mediator and called for an international conference that would revive the dormant Middle East Quartet made up of the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations.But despite his anger, he did not rule out negotiations with Israel based on previous internationally agreed parameters.“In this historic moment, I would like to extend my hand for peace again, before we waste this final opportunity, and I hope to find a real partner in Israel,” Abbas said.Israeli ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon speaks during a Security Council meeting at United Nations headquarters, Feb. 11, 2020.Israel’s U.N. envoy Danny Danon accused Abbas of paying “lip service” to peace talks, saying if he was serious about negotiating he would be in Jerusalem or Washington, not at the United Nations. He then called on Abbas to step down.“Let’s not beat around bush: progress toward peace will not be made as long as President Abbas remains in his position; this is the reality,” Danon said. “Only when he steps down, can Israel and the Palestinians move forward.”The U.S. ambassador, Kelly Craft, defended President Trump’s peace plan as “realistic and implementable” and said it is an “opening offer” and not set in stone.The U.S. plan is more than a path to Palestinian independence, it is a blueprint for the construction of a flourishing Palestinian state.”Other council members were not as certain. Several expressed concerns that internationally agreed parameters were being set aside and unilateral actions set in motion.
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BRUSSELS/WHITE HOUSE — U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper says dissolving the bilateral agreement with the Philippines that covers visiting U.S. military forces there “would be a move in the wrong direction.”Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte gave formal notice to the United States of his decision to scrap the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) late Monday after repeated threats to downgrade the two countries’ military alliance. The 1998 agreement provides legal permission for thousands of U.S. troops who rotate into the Philippines for dozens of military and humanitarian assistance exercises each year.”We just got the notification late last night. We have to digest it,” Esper told reporters on route to a NATO conference in Brussels.FILE – Defense Secretary Mark Esper speaks during a news conference at the Pentagon in Washington, Dec. 20, 2019.The U.S. defense secretary said the move, set to take effect in 180 days, runs counter to bilateral efforts with the Philippines and collective efforts with regional allies to push China toward abiding by international norms in the region.”As we try to bolster our presence and compete with (China) in this era of great-power competition, I think it’s a move in the wrong direction, again for the long-standing relationship we’ve had with the Philippines, for their strategic location, for the ties between our peoples and our countries,” Esper said.A senior Trump administration official echoed Esper’s remarks.”We are disappointed by the decision of the government of the Philippines,” the official said in a statement Tuesday.”The United States shares a long history with the government and people of the Philippines and recognizes that regional and global security is best served through the strong partnership that is enabled by the Visiting Forces Agreement,” the official added. “We will continue to work with our Philippine government partners to strengthen this relationship in a way that benefits both our countries.”Duterte has indicated that he favors relations with China and Russia over ties with the U.S.  His spokesman said Tuesday the reason for terminating the VFA was to allow the Philippines military to be more independent.”I don’t think it’s necessarily tied to China. As you know, it’s tied to some other issues,” Esper told reporters. “So again, I’m going to take this one step at a time. I don’t get too excited about these things.”The move also comes after the top commander in Duterte’s war on drugs, former police chief Ronald dela Rosa, said his U.S. visa was rescinded following the detention of a senator critical of Duterte.U.S. credibility in the regionOne of the U.S.’s oldest allies walking away from a security pact would be a serious blow to U.S. credibility as a regional security provider, said Gregory Poling, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.Poling noted that since coming to office, Duterte has said he wishes to distance the Philippines from the United States, end their long-standing alliance, and enter a strategic alignment with China.If the VFA termination is implemented, it would allow the Philippine president to “effectively undermine the credibility of the U.S. commitment to defend the Philippines, furthering his goal,” Poling said.The VFA termination would effectively do away with the 2014 Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement between the U.S. and the Philippines and render the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty between the two countries largely hollow.The VFA is the “nuts and bolts of the Mutual Defense Treaty” and meant to help defend the Philippines against attacks, said Derek Grossman, senior defense analyst with the RAND 
Corporation.”By not having the ability for U.S. troops to move freely into the Philippines, to operate there and to move military equipment into the Philippines makes it much more difficult for the U.S. to make good on its obligations under the mutual defense treaty,” Grossman added.Analysts say without access to the Philippines, the U.S. will not be in a position to rapidly respond to threats from China in the South China Sea. They say it will also weaken U.S. counterterror and intelligence gathering in the region, and undermine the ability to protect freedom of the seas and contest Chinese coercion in the South China Sea.FILE – A U.S. fighter jet takes off from the U.S. aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan to patrol the international waters off the South China Sea, Aug. 6, 2019.Bargaining tacticThe notice to terminate the decades-old military pact with Washington may be a bargaining strategy from the Duterte administration.Malacañang spokesman Salvador Panelo told reporters during a press conference Tuesday that after the VFA termination notice, the U.S.-Philippines relations “remains warm” and that “hopefully, it would be warmer.””I’ve been noticing that those who’ve been criticizing the U.S. government policies have been given the preferential attention by the U.S. government,” Panelo said. “When they are being criticized, they tend to court you back.”The termination would take effect after 180 days, unless both sides agree to keep it. A lot can happen before it expires, said defense analyst Grossman, adding that he would not be surprised if Trump and Duterte would soon take steps to reconcile the matter.In a speech late Monday, the Philippine president said Trump had tried to save the agreement but that he had rejected it.”America is very rude. They are so rude,” he said.Trump has invited Duterte and other Association of South East Asian Nation leaders to attend the US-ASEAN summit to be held in Las Vegas this March. Duterte has said that he will not attend.Steve Miller contributed to this report.
 
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It could have been a scene taken from “The Thick of It,” the internationally acclaimed British comedy series satirizing the inner workings of the British government.The country’s top political reporters, collectively known as the Lobby, were summoned last week to No. 10 Downing Street for a special post-Brexit briefing, but once they had arrived, those considered hostile to Brexit or Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative government were excluded.That provoked the fury of the entire Lobby with all reporters walking out in protest. Britain’s main national newspapers reacted in anger — with even pro-Johnson tabloid newspapers criticizing the rare upset of the well-established protocols of parliamentary reporting and the Conservative government’s seeming determination to pick and choose who receives briefings.“Information which should be available on the record, and of a type which was briefed freely in the past, is now being handed out as a favor to selected journalists in the expectation of favorable coverage,” said Adam Boulton, political editor of Sky News. “No. 10 is trying to control the media, and everyone in our democracy should be afraid,” he tweeted.Last week’s spat came just days after Cabinet ministers were told to boycott a flagship BBC morning radio news program, which has a reputation for criticizing government officials. The squabble is being seen as an opening skirmish in what’s likely to turn into a long-running Johnson campaign to try to refashion key British institutions in ways more favorable to the ruling Conservatives, also known as Tories.Dominic Cummings a British political strategist and special adviser to Prime Minister Boris Johnson walks into 10 Downing Street in London, July 30, 2019. Prime Minister Johnson and his chief strategic adviser, Dominic Cummings, an iconoclast who’s been likened to Steve Bannon, U.S. President Donald Trump’s onetime firebrand counselor, appear determined to remake the BBC and the civil service, curb what they see as judicial overreach and political activism by judges, sidestep the so-called mainstream media and shake up Britain’s liberal-leaning universities.Not since Britain’s Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher, took on public institutions in the 1990s, lambasted reporters as “moaning minnies,” (Note: minny is a carp fish) and described her Cabinet ministers as lacking a backbone, has Britain’s so-called establishment been so nervous — and outraged.The wider war was declared by Cummings in his less than discreet blog last month when he complained about what he dubbed “The Blob,” a reference to the 1988 remake of a Hollywood science fiction movie of the same name in which an amorphous, amoeba-like organism devours everything in its path. Cummings’ “blob” is an eclectic mix of cautious bureaucrats, academics, the mainstream media, judges and the traditional mouthpieces of British business, the Confederation of British Industry, the CBI, and the Institute of Directors.FILE – The sun shines through a European Union flag hanging outside Parliament in London, Oct. 28, 2019.For Cummings and his boss they are reactionary forces, which are pro-European Union, liberal-leaning and far too politically correct — as well as lacking optimism about post-Brexit Britain and Downing Street’s upbeat vision of a “global Britain.”Recently, Cummings called for “weirdos and misfits” to apply for jobs in Downing Street and the government quarter of Whitehall, saying what the new Johnson government needs is “true cognitive diversity” and not “more drivel about ‘identity’ and ‘diversity’ from Oxbridge humanities graduates.”Graduates from the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge have traditionally dominated the corridors of British power.The Johnson-led and Cummings-advised government is moving quickly to combat the blob. Ministers are talking about decriminalizing non-payment of television licenses, which partly fund the BBC. And they are considering a judicial shake-up which could see Britain’s Supreme Court disbanded. Judges could see more restrictions introduced to hedge in their discretionary powers when sentencing.FILE – A street cleaner clears fall leaves from the front of 10 Downing Street, London, Britain, Nov. 6, 2019.The Downing Street door is being slammed shut on the CBI and the Institute of Directors. None of their officials was invited this month to a keynote Johnson speech outlining his plans for post-Brexit Britain.And when it comes to the mainstream media, the government is copying the Trump White House by using social media sites — from Twitter to YouTube — to promote its governing narrative. On Brexit night, Johnson did not appear on any national television programs to welcome in a new era; instead Downing Street posted a broadcast straight to the internet.Johnson supporters say the British prime minister has no choice but to take on the blob. Allister Heath, editor of The Sunday Telegraph and a prominent Johnson cheerleader, says, “It’s now or never – Boris must beat the Blob or be suffocated by it.” He says the blob exists, “but no longer in small town America: its new home is Whitehall, and it has developed a predilection for gobbling up Tory politicians and advisers.”Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban arrives for an EU summit in Brussels, Dec. 12, 2019. Others, though, see the Johnson game plan as having political affinity with the populist shake-up under way in Hungary, where Prime Minister Viktor Orban, a champion of what he once dubbed “illiberal democracy,” has taken on his country’s public institutions and battled a not dissimilar cast of foes.Last month, Orban praised Johnson as one of the “the most courageous, the most dynamic” leaders and one of the most likely “to effect change.” A former Johnson aide and influential Conservative commentator, Tim Montgomerie, returned the compliment at two research group events in December and January in Budapest, Hungary, where he praised Orban for “interesting early thinking on the limits of liberalism” and compared the two populist leaders.He said, “Long-term trends in economics and culture” are “changing how people align themselves,” and predicted Johnson’s Britain and Orban’s Hungary would forge a “special relationship.”But not all Johnson supporters are as sanguine and fear the British prime minister may be over-reaching by taking on too many powerful institutions at once. Writing in the business daily City AM, Michael Hayman, a co-founder of Seven Hills, a London-based communication consultancy, warned, “Boris has a war to fight, and he’s going to need all the friends he can get.”
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Національний банк України встановив на 12 лютого курс 24 гривні 42 копійки за долар, це на 10 копійок менше за офіційний курс на 11 лютого.

За даними Finance.ua, станом на 16:30 тренд на українському міжбанківському валютному ринку змінився, котирування зросли до 24 гривень 49–52 копійок за долар.

Як інформує сайт «Мінфін», у день проведення аукціону з розміщення ОВДП «НБУ купував долар по 24,42 гривні і цим майже повністю прибрав надлишок валюти на ринку». «За оцінками учасників ринку, (регулятор) купив близько 45–55 мільйонів доларів», – ідеться в повідомленні.

Національний банк України знизив облікову ставку на 2,5% – до 11% з 31 січня 2020 року. «Національний банк продовжує пом’якшення монетарної політики, щоб забезпечити інфляцію на рівні цілі 5% та підтримати стійке економічне зростання», – заявили в НБУ.

Наступне засідання правління Національного банку України з питань монетарної політики відбудеться 12 березня 

Облікова ставка є одним із інструментів, за допомогою якого Нацбанк встановлює для комерційних банків орієнтир щодо вартості кредитів і депозитів. Опосередковано цей параметр впливає і на функціонування валютного ринку, регулюючи приплив валюти від нерезидентів.
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Долар втратив ще 10 копійок, свідчать дані на сайті Національного банку України.

Довідкове значення курсу долара встановлене на рівні 24 гривень 42 копійок.

Свого пікового значення у 2020 році долар досяг 4 лютого, коли він коштував 25 гривень 8 копійок. Після цього він стабільно падає.
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Judges must resist the temptation to bend their rulings to personal racial, religious or partisan preferences and instead uphold the rule of law, even when that leads to unpopular decisions, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas said Tuesday.“Each time a judge sidesteps or manipulates the law to achieve his or her desired outcome, the rule of law suffers and is undermined and, eventually, compromised,” Thomas said in a keynote speech during the dedication of Georgia’s new judicial center in Atlanta.Thomas is a Georgia native, born in the Pin Point community near Savannah. It wasn’t long ago that courthouses like the one being dedicated Tuesday were segregated, he noted.Segregation endured, he said, not only because of prejudices and a lack of understanding, but also because of a “lack of courage among those who knew or should have known better, especially in the judicial branch of government.”Having the courage to uphold the rule of law may lead judges to decisions that aren’t popular at the time, Thomas said.“Our decisions should not be driven by a desire to be revered or lionized for reaching certain outcomes. We are not mass media icons,” he said. “We are judges, nothing more and nothing less.”The new Nathan Deal Judicial Center is named after the Georgia governor who served from 2011 to 2019 and pushed through broad reforms to the state’s criminal justice system.On hand for Tuesday’s dedication, Deal got choked up as he thanked all the people who helped make the building possible.The new judicial center houses the state’s two appellate courts — the Georgia Supreme Court and the Georgia Court of appeals. It is also slated to be home to the new statewide business court.
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Ukraine’s first and currently only television channel in the Crimean Tatar language says it is on the brink of shutting down operations due to lack of government funding.ATR hasn’t received $2 million that the government allocated for the channel in this year’s state budget, a statement by the channel said on Feb. 10.The channel said it received $610,000 on its account on Dec. 28, but couldn’t access the money because banks were closed that day so it had to return the money, as required by law.A portion of the $2 million that was allocated this year was transferred to ATR’s account, but the channel said the state treasury had blocked access to it.In response, ATR has launched a fundraising campaign and is broadcasting from an empty studio without presenters and guests.ATR is a part of a media holding that is majority-owned by Lenur Islyamov and initially stopped broadcasting in Crimea after the occupying Russian authorities refused to issue a broadcasting license after annexing the Ukrainian peninsula in 2014.It resumed broadcasting on June 17, 2015, in Kyiv via satellite throughout Ukraine, including in Crimea, supported mostly with government money.Islyamov said in a statement that without the channel, Ukraine will never get back Crimea.”We know who our focus group is. We know it is the people who support us, those people who know about us, and those who want to return to Crimea with us,” he said. “Without us, we won’t be able to return to Crimea. We are the bridge that is being laid to Crimea.”Due to the financial shortfall, ATR has slashed 90 percent of its own programming, dismissed 45 percent of its staff, reduced news broadcasts, and stopped broadcasting live, Islyamov said.In addition to ATR, a children’s TV channel and a radio channel are part of the holding.Separately in January, Ukraine’s public broadcaster shut down international broadcasting and closed its Crimean Tatar-, Arabic-, and English-language departments. 
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Afghan officials say a suicide blast near a military academy in Kabul early Tuesday killed at least six people, including four soldiers.The bomber detonated explosives trapped to his body at a checkpoint near the entrance to the capital city’s Marshal Fahim Military Academy.Interior Ministry spokesman Nasrat Rahimi said the blast injured at least 12 people, including both civilians and military personnel.There were no immediate claims of responsibility for the attack but the military academy has been the target of suicide bombings in the past by the Taliban insurgency and Islamic State militants.Tuesday’s violence came after around three months of a lull in such attacks in Kabul, mainly attributed to ongoing peace negotiations between the United States and the Taliban.A suicide car bombing in the Afghan capital last November had killed at least 12 people, including a foreign national working with the United Nations.  The turbulent months-long U.S.-Taliban dialogue being hosted by Qatar has appeared to bog down in recent days over Washington’s demands for the insurgent group to commit to a “significant and lasting” reduction in violence before a deal is signed to end the 18-year-old Afghan war, America’s longest.
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