In accepting the Democratic Party’s nomination for president Thursday, Joe Biden set out to make President Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic the central issue in the November election. VOA’s Brian Padden reports on the conclusion of the virtual Democratic National Convention, which also strove to showcase party diversity and unity in opposition to Trump without physically gathering, to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
Produced by: Barry Unger
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Hundreds of people took to the streets of the Polish city of Bialystok on Thursday evening to demonstrate against the regime of President Alexander Lukashenko in Belarus.Protesters held a banner reading in Polish: “60 kilometers from here people are fighting for freedom.”Bialystok is a major city near the Polish-Belarusian border.Demonstrators of both Belarusian and Polish origins marched with a gigantic red-and-white former flag of Belarus, which has become the symbol of the nation’s democracy movement.The protesters marched to the front of the Belarusian consulate for a rally.Speakers at the rally who also marched with protesters were Mayor of Bialystok Tadeusz Truskolaski and his deputy Robert Tyszkiewicz, the head of the Parliamentary Team for Belarus.  
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The Open Technology Fund, a group that uses federal grants to promote internet freedom technologies worldwide, filed a lawsuit late Thursday against the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), alleging it has breached its contracts by withholding $18 million in funding.Filed in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, the suit asks the court to award OTF the funds it claims are due from USAGM, the parent of Voice of America.“We really see this as a last resort,” Laura Cunningham, acting CEO and president of OTF, said. “We have tried numerous ways to prevail upon USAGM to release our funds so we can resume our operations. As a result, we have no other choice but to move forward with legal action at this point.”A spokesperson for USAGM did not respond to a request for comment about the lawsuit by the time of publication.Earlier Thursday, a USAGM spokesperson said the agency “has already provided $10.9 million in U.S. taxpayer funding this year to OTF, including $1.6 million in July. Given that, USAGM was both stunned and deeply concerned to learn that OTF has decided to cancel or freeze dozens of contracts.”A running battleThe lawsuit is the latest twist in a monthslong battle between OTF, an independent non-profit organization and USAGM, a federal agency with a mission to “inform, engage, and connect people around the world in support of freedom and democracy.”At issue is whether USAGM, under its new chief executive Michael Pack, can control OTF, decide who runs the organization, how it spends money and if it receives funds.On Tuesday, OTF received an emailed letter from USAGM that gave the organization 10 days to come into compliance with its contracts, after a series of letters from USAGM asking for records, according to the suit.OTF’s leadership viewed the 10-day deadline as a threat to terminate the contract, which would mean the end of the organization and its projects.$1.6 million depositOn Wednesday, OTF leaders saw a $1.6 million deposit in the organization’s bank account.On Thursday, Rep. Michael McCaul, the lead Republican on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, tweeted about the $1.6 million, saying it came after both Republicans and Democrats expressed “serious concern” about the funding delay for July.“USAGM & Pack have a long way to go to restore our trust, & the first step is immediately transferring funding to OTF for August,” he tweeted.USAGM & CEO Pack have a long way to go to restore our trust, & the first step is immediately transferring funding to OTF for August.— House Foreign Affairs GOP (@HouseForeignGOP) August 19, 2020Internet freedom projectsFounded in 2012 at Radio Free Asia, another USAGM grantee, OTF became an independent nonprofit grantee of USAGM in November 2019. Its budget for fiscal year 2020 is $20 million, plus $9.8 million that USAGM had awarded to OTF but had been held by Radio Free Asia, according to the lawsuit.When Pack took the helm of USAGM after receiving Senate confirmation, he attempted to install new leaders at OTF. A U.S. appeals court in July blocked the staff changes.Earlier this week, USAGM announced it was reviving its Office of Internet Freedom and making two grants to firms that work on internet firewall circumvention technology. The two recipients had received contracts from OTF.“OTF is obligated to spend money that is allocated to it for internet freedom on internet freedom,” a USAGM spokesperson said Thursday. 
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Police in Portland, Oregon, said Thursday they have declared a riot 17 times and arrested a total of more than 500 people during nightly demonstrations throughout the city that began in late May following the death in police custody of George Floyd in Minneapolis.Data released by the Portland Police Bureau showed fires were set by protesters on 41 of the 83 nights of protest, acts of vandalism were committed on 49 nights, and projectiles were thrown during at least 58 nights.Since the protests began on May 29, police have recorded seven nights that were free of vandalism, fireworks or intentionally set fires.”When criminal behavior occurs, especially behavior threatening the safety of those near the event or those targeted by the event, law enforcement must respond,” police said in a statement on the department’s website.Also Thursday, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction barring federal agents from dispersing or arresting journalists or legal observers during the ongoing protests. The American Civil Liberties Union had sued over the police actions.For weeks, police officials have received questions regarding where demonstrations have been taking place in the city, crimes that occur and police actions. In response, the department released a timeline of the protests.The most recent data was from Wednesday night, when police said two people were arrested and protesters lit fires, committed vandalism and threw projectiles.Police declared a riot, meaning six or more persons were engaged in “tumultuous and violent” conduct and intentionally or recklessly created a grave risk of public alarm.Protesters clashed with federal agents for the first time in weeks at a demonstration targeting a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building.Windows were spray-painted and broken before a riot was declared and authorities used tear gas and other riot control methods to break up the crowd, The Oregonian/OregonLive reported.Several officers suffered minor injuries after they were hit with rocks.  
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The government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is blocking U.S. citizens in the country from leaving, rebuffing efforts by Washington to arrange humanitarian evacuation flights, a State Department spokeswoman said Thursday.”We have made offers in the past that would allow U.S. citizens to leave, but all were rejected by Maduro and his cronies,” the spokeswoman, Morgan Ortagus, said in an emailed statement, adding that Washington was looking at all options to ensure the secure return home of U.S. citizens.She did not say how many Americans were stuck in Venezuela.Washington has disavowed the government of Maduro and instead recognizes opposition leader Juan Guaido as Venezuela’s legitimate leader, even though Maduro remains in control of state institutions.Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza wrote on Twitter on Thursday that Caracas had offered to repatriate U.S. citizens via flights to the United States on state-owned airline Conviasa.That proposal would be impossible under Trump administration sanctions that bar flights between the two countries and prohibit U.S. citizens from dealings with Conviasa.U.S. diplomat James Story of the Venezuela Affairs Unit, based in neighboring Colombia, said last week that Americans were being held hostage by Maduro’s government.”I have more than 800 people who have asked for my support in helping leave the country,” Story said in an interview with Venezuelan journalist Vladimir Villegas broadcast online.He did not say how many of those were U.S. citizens. It was not immediately clear how many Americans are in Venezuela.Countries including Spain have been allowed by Maduro’s government to organize flights to repatriate their citizens.The United States and about 60 other countries recognize Guaido and regard Maduro’s 2018 re-election as a sham. But Maduro has remained in power, backed by the OPEC nation’s military as well as Russia, China, Cuba and Iran.U.S. officials say privately that Maduro’s continued rule despite heavy U.S. sanctions has been a source of frustration for U.S. President Donald Trump.
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U.S. space weather forecasters say the Earth on Thursday received a glancing blow from a “coronal mass ejection” (CME) – effectively, a solar eruption – first detected on the surface of the sun four days ago.  The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the agency responsible for monitoring the weather for much of North America, also does its best to monitor “weather” in space.   NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center Lead Forecaster Bob Rutledge said space weather is, for the most part, solar activity. The forecasters use satellites and other Earth-based instruments to monitor what the sun is sending out. For example, solar wind consisting of protons and electrons in a state known as a plasma continuously flows out of the sun. But during periods of high solar activity, Rutledge said, forecasters watch for CMEs, which can eject billions of tons of plasma and magnetic field material from the sun’s corona. One such event was observed Sunday, and by its size and the rate of its speed as it left the sun, it was forecast to pass by the Earth on Thursday. Rutledge said this was not a big event, and even if the full force of it hit the Earth, it would have minimal effect — a G-1 or less on their geomagnetic storm scale. At this level, such an event might cause some fluctuations on the power grid, possibly some minor effects on satellite operations, and maybe aurora borealis (northern lights) activity in northern latitudes.  Rutledge said that if this event were a G-5 — the top of the geomagnetic storm scale — there could be widespread blackouts or even collapse of the power grid; satellites could see problems with orientation or basic operations; navigation systems could be useless for a matter of days; and auroras could be seen as far south as Florida or other Southern U.S. states. Rutledge said forecasters monitor minor events like Thursday’s near miss so they can better predict much bigger events when they come. 
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Officials in Afghanistan say clashes between security forces and the Taliban insurgency, and a roadside bomb blast have killed about three dozen people, including civilians.  
 
Thursday’s deadly violence raged as U.S.-led efforts to push Afghan rivals to negotiate a political settlement to the country’s long war have slowed, if not halted, over the release of Taliban prisoners by Kabul.  
 
A local government spokesman in northeastern Takhar province told VOA insurgents staged a pre-dawn assault on security outposts in Khwaja Bahauddin district, killing14 Afghan forces and injuring four others.
 
Separately, the Taliban stormed several checkpoints in eastern Nangarhar province late Wednesday and killed at least six security personnel.  
 
A provincial government spokesman said the fighting in Khogyani district also inflicted “heavy casualties” on the assailants but he did not give further details.  
 
The Taliban in a statement claimed credit for the attack in Khogyani but did not discuss insurgent losses.
 
Elsewhere in Logar and Wardak provinces, army operations killed at least six Taliban rebels and injured many others, reported an Afghan group monitoring the ongoing violence in the country.
 
Meanwhile, an overnight mortar attack in northern Kunduz province and a roadside bomb blast in central Ghor province reportedly killed eight civilians, including three children.  
 
Official Afghan media quoted the Kunduz governor as blaming the Taliban for the rocket attack, though residents in the area accused Afghan forces of firing the mortar. The insurgents did not comment on the attack and there were no claims of responsibility for the roadside bombing.
 Prisoners controversy  
 
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani in nationally televised remarks Thursday again urged the Taliban to cease hostilities and join the peace talks, insisting his government had removed “all obstacles” to the peace process. 
 
But Ghani would not say whether he intended to free the remaining 320 insurgent prisoners, a key Taliban condition for opening much hoped for peace negotiations.FILE – Taliban prisoners’ documents are checked as they are released from Pul-e-Charkhi jail in Kabul, Afghanistan, Aug. 13, 2020.The dialogue and the release of up to 5,000 insurgent inmates are part of a landmark agreement the U.S. sealed with the Taliban in February to end the nearly 19-year Afghan war.  
 
The government, which was not part of the deal, has freed all but 320 prisoners, citing security and other concerns. In exchange, the Taliban has released all promised 1,000 Afghan forces it was holding captive.  
 
Afghan officials have lately called for the insurgents to free more captured government soldiers. Critics see the new demand against the decision of a traditional Afghan public grand assembly of elders or Loya Jirga, that advised Ghani to free all Taliban prisoners.
 
The Afghan president, while addressing the assembly, also pledged he would immediately sign a decree to set free the inmates to clear the way for talks with the Taliban.
 
For its part, the U.S. military has begun drawing down troops in Afghanistan under the agreement that seeks a complete withdrawal of all American and NATO troops by July 2021 in return for the Taliban’s counterterrorism and political reconciliation assurances.
 
Laurel Miller, the program director at the International Crisis Group, has underscored the need for urgently launching the long-awaited intra-Afghan peace talks.
 
“It is crucial to recognize that the conditions for a peace deal are only going to worsen. They are not going to improve,” Miller warned while participating in an online event at the Brookings Institution on Wednesday.
 
“A U.S. departure from Afghanistan without a peace deal would likely result in a protracted and intensified civil war, in which many Afghans will suffer,” said Miller, a former U.S. envoy to Afghanistan.
 
President Donald Trump said in a television interview earlier this month that the U.S. military is largely out of Afghanistan and the number of troops will be reduced to below 5,000 by November from the current level of about 8,600 personnel.  
 
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Jihadists linked to Islamic State have abducted hundreds of people in a town in northeastern Nigeria.  Local militia say the armed group came with more than 20 trucks on Tuesday evening to take away the hostages. Security experts say the abduction signifies an attempt by jihadists to re-establish their strongholds in the region after years of military campaigns.
The northeastern town of Kukawa, where the attack took place Tuesday evening, lies in Borno state, close to the shores of Lake Chad. 
Local militia say Islamic State fighters, dressed in military uniforms, battled soldiers guarding the town before taking hundreds of hostages.  
 
One of the militia fighters, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the soldiers suffered losses.  He says what has happened is very disheartening. I hear people saying the soldiers killed were 10 in number, he says, but honestly, they are more than 10 and their military vehicles and motorcycles were also taken. Most of the people kidnapped had recently returned after fleeing Kukawa during a bloody attack by Boko Haram fighters in 2018.  For two years, Nigerian authorities have been encouraging displaced people in the northeast to return to their homes, following military operations that degraded the strength of jihadist groups.  But security expert Lawrence Alobi in Abuja says the effort to resettle internally displaced persons came too soon.       “They took things for granted, knowing fully well that this place has been an area where the terrorists or the bandits had controlled and these people who are being resettled were attacked — that’s why they were moved to the IDP camps,” said Alobi. “From the security point of view, you need to think ahead and plan ahead, you have to anticipate crisis. You need to anticipate that if they come back, what happens?” 
The current location of the Kukawa hostages is unknown, and the kidnappers have not made any demands.  Authorities have deployed fighter jets on a search and rescue operation. Security expert Ebenezer Oyetakin says the attack is likely a statement by the jihadist group. 
“All of these abductions is just to spite the government, to say yes we can still do something. But definitely from the fact that they were holding more than 19 local govenments under them before, and today they are not holding even a ward under their control, but running, doing hit and runs shows and demonstrates that our security performed better than the past but there are so much yet to be done,” said Oyetakin.
A decade of jihadist violence in the northeast has killed some 30,000 people, displaced more than three million and plunged the region into a humanitarian crisis. 
 
Last Monday, President Muhammadu Buhari met with security chiefs and governors in the northeast and assured security will be restored to the region.  
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The World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) Europe office said it has begun discussions with Russia regarding the COVID-19 vaccine that the nation approved last week without the advanced trials normally required to prove a vaccine works.In a virtual news conference from the organization’s Copenhagen office, the WHO Europe’s senior emergency official Catherine Smallwood said there have been several direct discussions between Russia’s teams and the WHO’s pre-qualification colleagues, primarily on how the organization is going to assess the potential vaccine.The WHO Europe’s regional director, Hans Kluge, said that while any potential vaccine is good news, all must go through the same vigorous assessments. Smallwood added “This concern that we have around safety and efficacy is not specifically for the Russia vaccine, it’s for all of the vaccines under development.”  Smallwood acknowledged that the WHO was taking an “accelerated approach” to try to speed development of coronavirus vaccines but said “it’s essential we don’t cut corners in safety or efficacy.”Kluge cautioned that even once a vaccine or vaccines are approved, that will not be the end of the pandemic. “The end of the pandemic will be the day when everyone of us will take the responsibility and have been learning how to behave with the virus. And that depends on us, that day can even be tomorrow.”
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Vice President Mike Pence poked fun at Democrats during a visit to Wisconsin on Wednesday for canceling their in-person national convention in Milwaukee in favor of a virtual gathering due to the coronavirus pandemic.
“I did hear the Democrats were supposed to have their national convention in Wisconsin, but they couldn’t make it,” Pence said during a visit to metal fabricator Tankcraft Corporation in Darien, about 50 miles southwest of Milwaukee. “That’s really nothing new. I heard on the way here that Joe Biden hasn’t been to Wisconsin in 659 days.”
Biden’s last in-person campaign stop in Wisconsin was on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus on Oct. 30, 2018, in the waning days of the midterm election. He has hosted virtual events and was supposed to accept the presidential nomination at the convention on Thursday, but due to COVID-19 will instead deliver his speech from his home in Delaware.
Pence’s visit was his fifth this year to Wisconsin, which narrowly backed Donald Trump during his 2016 campaign and is viewed as a battleground state in November’s election. It came two days after Trump held a rally in Oshkosh and a day after Trump’s son Eric Trump made a stop in Milwaukee.
“Get used to seeing us, because President Donald Trump and I are going to be back to Wisconsin again and again and again to earn four more years in the White House.,” Pence said. “When the other side’s online, we’re going to be on the streets.”
Although Pence dinged Democrats for their all-virtual convention, Republicans also canceled a planned in-person convention in Florida due to a spike in COVID-19 cases. Instead, Republicans will hold business portions of their convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, as originally planned.
Trump plans to deliver his acceptance speech from the White House.
Biden’s Wisconsin state director Danielle Melfi said in a statement that Trump and Pence have failed Wisconsin as COVID-19 cases rise, communities don’t have enough testing supplies and health care workers face a shortage of protective equipment.
 “As the Democratic National Convention continues, the contrast between Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’ unifying vision for America and Trump and Pence’s failed leadership could not be more stark,” Melfi said.
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Police in the city of Portland said they fired crowd control munitions and tear gas on Wednesday night to break up a gathering of about 200 people who threw rocks, lit fires and vandalized a U.S. immigration agency building.
Law enforcement officials had declared a riot for a second successive night, calling a protest near the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office an “unlawful assembly.”
Federal officers fired pepper balls and set off a few smoke devices, the Oregonian newspaper reported earlier.
Protests against racism and police brutality have swept the United States since the death on May 25 of George Floyd, a 46-year-old African-American man, after a white police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes.
The Portland protests are among those that have erupted occasionally in arson and violence, with federal officers sent into the northwestern city repeatedly clashing with crowds targeting its federal courthouse.
Wednesday’s protest began in the Elizabeth Caruthers Park before demonstrators marched toward the ICE building.
“All persons near SW Bancroft St and SW Bond Ave must disperse,” police had said on Twitter, warning the marchers they faced arrest and the use of tear gas, crowd control agents and impact weapons if they did not comply.
Two arrests were made on charges of “interfering with a peace officer and disorderly conduct,” police said in a statement. The arrested men were booked into the Multnomah County Detention Center.
Police officers sustained minor injuries, the statement added, without specifying how many were injured.
Police had also declared a riot on Tuesday after protesters lit fires, threw rocks and smashed windows at county government offices in another location, in violence that also led to two arrests and a minor injury for an officer.
U.S. Attorney General William Barr drew fire from Democratic lawmakers this month for sending federal officers to disperse protesters in the city
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