The job losses in Kenya that resulted from the COVID-19 lockdown have also hurt Kenyan artists, who are trying to find different ways to promote their craft and make a living.  Some are using their art to spread health messages about the coronavirus, as Lenny Ruvaga reports from Nairobi.
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President Donald Trump exchanged barbs Sunday with the mayor of Portland, Oregon, less than 24 hours after a man was killed as Black Lives Matter protesters and Trump supporters clashed in the Pacific Northwest city’s streets.At a press conference Sunday afternoon, Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler urged protesters not to turn violent or attempt retribution in the wake of Saturday night’s shooting death.The president, apparently watching the broadcast, tweeted his criticism.Ted Wheeler, the wacky Radical Left Do Nothing Democrat Mayor of Portland, who has watched great death and destruction of his City during his tenure, thinks this lawless situation should go on forever. Wrong! Portland will never recover with a fool for a Mayor….— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 30, 2020After Trump called Wheeler, a Democrat, a “fool” and blamed him for the “great death and destruction” in the liberal city, Wheeler, who was visibly angry, addressed Trump through the TV cameras, calling his comments “classic Trump.”“You’ve tried to divide us more than any other figure in modern history and now you want me to stop the violence that you helped create,” Wheeler said to Trump. “What America needs is you to be stopped so we can come back together as one America.”The mayor continued at length, bringing up everything from Trump’s sexist comments about women to his “racist attacks on Black people.”Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline.Download File360p | 6 MB480p | 9 MB540p | 12 MB720p | 29 MB1080p | 50 MBOriginal | 56 MB Embed” />Copy Download AudioLast week, as he accepted the Republican nomination for president, Trump used Portland as an example of the dystopian future Americans can expect if his opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden, defeats Trump in the November 3 election.Voters “won’t be safe in Joe Biden’s America,” the president said.But Biden told MSNBC last week that Trump views the street violence “as a political benefit to him. He’s rooting for more violence, not less.”The rally Saturday in support of the president drew hundreds of trucks full of supporters into Portland, some of whom shot paintball guns from the beds of pickup trucks, while protesters on the street threw objects back at them.A police statement said officers heard gunfire and found a white man dead from a gunshot wound to the chest. Witnesses said the man was wearing a hat bearing the insignia of Patriot Prayer, a far-right group based in Washington state that has previously clashed with protesters.Joey Gibson, the leader of the group, told The Associated Press that he knew the man who died.“I can’t say much right now. All I can do is verify that he was a good friend and a supporter of Patriot Prayer,” Gibson said of the shooting victim in a text exchange.And police are asking anyone with information to come forward.“This violence is completely unacceptable,” Portland Police Chief Chuck Lovell said early Sunday, “and we are working diligently to find and apprehend the individual or individuals responsible.”A top Trump administration official, acting Homeland Security chief Chad Wolf, on ABC’s “This Week” show blamed the extended violence in Portland on state and local officials for “not allowing law enforcement to do their jobs.”“The violence needs to end,” Wolf said. He said the federal government continues to offer law enforcement assistance to Portland beyond previously sending in troops that subsequently were withdrawn.“They continue to refuse federal assistance to bring this to an end,” Wolf said of Oregon and Portland officials. In Portland, he said “you see exactly how not to protect your city.”“My message to anyone protesting: Please do that peacefully,” Wolf said.Trump retweeted a video showing the caravan of his supporters driving into Portland, calling them “Great Patriots.” On CBS’s “Face the Nation” show, Wolf rejected a suggestion that by applauding the parade of vehicles, Trump heightened tensions.“Absolutely not,” Wolf said.The Portland shooting was the latest incident stemming from racial unrest across the United States as Americans have protested racial injustice and police abuse of minorities following the May 25 death of a Black man, George Floyd, while in police custody in Minneapolis, Minnesota.President Trump on Tuesday is to visit one of those cities, Kenosha, Wisconsin, even though the state’s governor, Tony Evers, has asked him not to come.#Wisconsin governor asks @POTUS not to go to Kenosha on Tuesday. https://t.co/XYim01py5h— Steve Herman (@W7VOA) August 30, 2020On August 23, a white police officer shot a Black man, Jacob Blake, seven times in the back while trying to arrest him in a domestic dispute, spawning several nights of protests, in one of which two people were shot dead and another wounded.A day later, Kyle Rittenhouse, a white 17-year-old resident in the nearby state of Illinois, who said he was in Kenosha to protect businesses in the street protests, was charged in the killings.“The circumstances of that are still being investigated,” Wolf said.The Homeland Security chief called on local officials to “take early action” to quell street violence.“You can stop this,” he said. “The federal government will provide assistance.” 
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The pro-Western Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS) of President Milo Djukanovic was narrowly ahead of Montenegro’s pro-Serbian and pro-Russian alliance in parliamentary elections Sunday, pollster CEMI said in a preliminary forecast.On the basis of 89% of ballots from a sample of polling stations, CEMI forecast the DPS secured 34.8% of votes, while the alliance of mainly Serb nationalist parties, For the Future of Montenegro, which wants closer ties with Serbia and Russia, was just behind with 32.7%.As neither of the two largest contenders will secure the 41 deputies in the 81-seat parliament needed to rule alone, they would need to seek coalition partners.The Peace is Our Nation, an alliance of centrist parties also opposed to the DPS, came third with 12.5% of the votes, CEMI said. Another alliance led by the green United Reform Action (URA) party received 5.7% of the votes.The result was a major setback for the DPS, which has been in power for three decades, and Djukanovic, who led the country through the violent collapse of the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, the dissolution of a state union with Serbia in 2006 and steered it into NATO in 2017.A pro-Serb government might move the country closer to Serbia and Russia, but it is not expected to lead it out of NATO and to abandon its EU membership bid.Nela Savkovic, a DPS official, told reporters that the party had secured enough votes to form a coalition with “traditional partners” that include national minorities and some smaller parties.At the headquarters of the Democratic Front, which is the mainstay of For the Future of Montenegro, the leader of the pro-Serb alliance, Zdravko Krivokapic, claimed victory.”Dear citizens, we are expressing our gratitude for your perseverance and dignity … the regime has fallen,” Krivokapic, a university professor, told his jubilant backers.Krivokapic’s alliance and the DF are backed by the powerful Serbian Orthodox Church, which holds daily protests against a law adopted last December that allows the state to seize religious assets whose historical ownership cannot be proven.Politicians from the DF were also implicated in a failed 2016 election day plot staged by Russian agents and a group of Serb nationalists aiming to topple the government, assassinate Djukanovic, who then served as the prime minister, and halt the country’s accession to NATO.Opposition leaders and democracy and rights watchdogs have long accused Djukanovic and his party of running Montenegro for three decades as their own corrupt fiefdom with links to organized crime.The DPS denies this. Djukanovic, who faces re-election as the country’s president in 2023, and his top associates have in turn accused Serbia and Russia of using the Church and the pro-Serb opposition to undermine the independence of the mountainous coastal republic, its NATO membership and its EU membership bid.Any future government must tackle an economic downturn that started in 2019 and was aggravated by the coronavirus pandemic, which gutted revenues from tourism that is a key driver of the economy.According to the International Monetary Fund, Montenegro’s economy is forecast to contract by nearly 9% this year and recover in 2021. 
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The United States is planning to reduce its troop levels in Iraq, President Donald Trump and other U.S. officials said.Trump tweeted Saturday that the U.S. is “planning to cut” its military presence in Iraq, without giving further details.U.S. planning to cut military presence in Iraq – https://t.co/d1MGNQ2QsA— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 30, 2020The president’s tweet included a link to an article reporting that U.S. forces in the region would decrease from 5,200 to 3,500, a figure that was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.U.S. military officials also have confirmed the planned reduction of U.S. forces in Iraq. “We are reducing troop levels as the Iraqi capability to defeat ISIS remnants and prevent its resurgence improves,” said Pentagon spokesperson Commander Jessica L. McNulty, using an acronym for the Islamic State (IS) terror group. “Any reduction of U.S. forces in Iraq will be determined through careful coordination with the government of Iraq, as well as with our coalition and NATO partners, and calibrated to our shared security interests and progress in the campaign against ISIS,” McNulty said in a statement to VOA. Iraqi officials haven’t yet made any announcements about the troop reduction.Discussions between the two countries about the future of U.S. forces in Iraq began earlier this year. The matter was also discussed during last week’s visit of Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi to the White House. Experts said after defeating IS in major Iraqi cities, including Mosul, the Iraqi military has proved its effectiveness in combating the militants. “The Iraqi armed forces are able to manage the military operations on the ground,” said Hussein Ali Allawi, professor of national security at Nahrain University in Baghdad. “But the role of the U.S.-led international coalition remains important for close air support, deep reconnaissance and aerial intelligence that are characteristics of the international coalition’s advisory mission in Iraq.”He told VOA that while the campaign to destroy IS remnants in Iraq continues, the Iraqi government still needs the expertise of “the international coalition in reorganizing the Iraqi armed forces, reforming the security sector, strengthening intelligence capacity building and bridging civil-military relations.”The ultimate objective for Washington and Baghdad is to withdraw the remaining 3,500 U.S. troops from Iraq within three years starting from August, Allawi added.Last week, U.S.-led coalition troops withdrew from Iraq’s Taji military base and handed it over to Iraqi security forces. The handover of the base, located north of Baghdad, was the eighth transfer of the coalition portion of an Iraqi base back to Iraqi security forces, the coalition said in a statement.  VOA’s Pentagon correspondent Carla Babb contributed to this report. 
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The Vatican has announced that the faithful will be readmitted to the general audiences Pope Francis holds on Wednesday as the Holy See slowly begins easing restrictions imposed by COVID-19. Francis has spoken about the pandemic on various occasions including the past week when he said it has both “exposed and aggravated” social inequalities. Sabina Castelfranco has more for VOA.For more than six months, due to COVID-19, Pope Francis has been holding his customary Wednesday general audiences in his private library inside the Vatican and the faithful all over the world were able to receive his message streamed online, but no one was present.   The Vatican announced that as it begins easing restrictions imposed by the coronavirus, a limited number of faithful would start to be readmitted to the papal audiences starting Wednesday. The audiences will not be held in Saint Peter’s Square as in the past, but in a closed courtyard of the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace. There will be a maximum number of 500 seats available in the courtyard and entry to the area will open two hours ahead of the scheduled start of the audience. FILE – A bar employee wears a protective face mask while standing at St. Mark’s Square amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Venice, Italy July 9, 2020.Italy was the first country in Europe to be hard hit by COVID-19, which killed more than 35,000 people on its territory. The situation improved significantly over the summer but the number of infected people over the past week has started to grow again with more than 1,000 daily cases being reported.  This has led authorities to warn there could be new closures and new measures implemented if the numbers cannot be contained.  FILE – Pope Francis reads his “Urbi et Orbi” (“To the City and the World”) message in St. Peter’s Basilica with no public participation due to an outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) on Easter Sunday at the Vatican.Due to the virus crisis, Pope Francis was forced to celebrate Easter this year in solitude, in front of an empty Saint Peter’s Square. The Pope has spoken on numerous occasions about the sorrow and hardship caused by the pandemic during these months and the consequent economic difficulties faced by many. Pope Francis has said that the pandemic has both “exposed and aggravated” social inequalities. He added that not everyone can work from home and that school was “abruptly interrupted” for some children. He added that while “some powerful nations can issue money to deal with the crisis,” that would mean “mortgaging the future for others.” He said, “these symptoms of inequality reveal a social illness; it is a virus that comes from a sick economy.” FILE – Pope Francis poses with a baby as her mother (L) takes a picture, during a visit to parish San Gregorio Magno in Rome, April 6, 2014.Pope Francis has always been fond of direct contact with people and shook the hands of many and hugged children and kissed babies in his audiences before the pandemic. He was fond of travelling both in Italy and abroad. It remains unclear if and when the 83-year-old pontiff will be able to return to those habits.  
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White House adviser Jared Kushner on Sunday trumpeted the recent agreement by Israel and the United Arab Emirates to establish diplomatic relations as a historic breakthrough and said “the stage is now set” for other Arab states to follow suit, but he gave no indication that any new deals were imminent. Appearing alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the U.S. National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien, Kushner spoke a day before he is to join a senior Israeli delegation on the first commercial flight from Israel to the UAE. The flight holds great symbolic value and is a key step in what is expected to be full normalization between Israel and the UAE. The Aug. 13 announcement makes the UAE just the third Arab country to establish full diplomatic relations with Israel, and the first to do so in over 25 years. It reflects a shifting Middle East in which shared concerns over Iran have overtaken traditional wall-to-wall Arab support for the Palestinians. “Today obviously we celebrate a historic breakthrough for peace,” Kushner said, adding that the deal will create “previously unthinkable” economic, security and religious cooperation. “While this peace agreement was thought by many to be impossible, the stage is now set for even more,” he said, claiming he has heard optimism throughout the region since the deal was announced. “We must seize that optimism and we must continue to push to make this region achieve the potential that it truly has,” said Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and chief Mideast adviser. Israel and the UAE have moved quickly to cement their ties over the past two weeks. Almost immediately, they opened direct phone lines, and Cabinet ministers have held friendly phone conversations.  On Saturday, the UAE formally ended its commercial boycott of Israel, although the two countries have quietly conducted business for years. Monday’s flight of an El Al plane from Tel Aviv to Abu Dhabi will be the first known flight of an Israeli commercial airliner from Israel to the Emirates. The two Mideast countries are expected to sign a formal agreement at the White House in the coming weeks. But so far, predictions by Israeli and American officials, including Kushner, that other Arab countries would follow the UAE have not yet materialized.  U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo toured the region last week, stopping in Sudan, Bahrain and Oman — three countries widely seen as candidates to establish ties with Israel — but appeared to leave empty-handed. The flurry of U.S. diplomatic activity comes as the Trump administration presses ahead with ambitious plans to promote Arab-Israeli rapprochement even in the absence of a settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which had long been seen as a prerequisite for Israel to reach peace deals with all of its Arab neighbors.  The UAE deal gave the Trump administration a welcome foreign-policy victory ahead of November’s presidential election. Facing a tough reelection battle, the White House is eager to build on that momentum. Gulf Arab countries, which like Israel share deep animosity toward Iran, have shown an increasing willingness to make back-channel ties with Israel public. Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the agreement with the UAE would bring “unbridled” trade and opportunities.  “You will see how the sparks fly,” he said. Trump unveiled a Mideast plan in January that has been rejected by the Palestinians, who say it unfairly favors Israel. The Palestinians seek the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip — areas captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war — for an independent state. The Trump plan offers them limited autonomy in 70% of the West Bank, leaving Israel in overall control of the territory, and a symbolic presence on the outskirts of Jerusalem, while handing Israel control of the city’s sensitive holy sites. Netanyahu said the deal with the UAE proves the Palestinians no longer have a “veto” over regional peace. The Palestinians have accused the UAE of treason. “If we have to wait for the Palestinians, we will have to wait forever,” Netanyahu said. “As more Arab and Muslim countries join the circle of peace, the Palestinians will eventually understand their veto has dissipated and they will be hard pressed to stay outside the community of peace.”  
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The U.N. migration agency reports Insecurity and flash flooding is upending the lives of hundreds of thousands of internally displaced people in the Lake Chad Basin.  
Chad’s Lake Province borders Cameroon, Nigeria and Niger.  The region has been under repeated attacks by multiple armed groups since 2015 forcing millions of people to flee.   The International Organization for Migration reports more than 360,000 people in this part of Chad are forcibly displaced.  IOM spokesman, Paul Dillon says new figures show a 22 percent increase in the number of people who have fled their homes since April.  This, he says, means that over half of the region’s population now is considered displaced because of the protracted insurgency.  “Recurrent security attacks and incursions by non-state armed groups since the beginning of the year prompted the Chadian Government in March to declare the departments of Fouli and Kaya, two of Lake Chad’s borderlands departments as war zones,” he said. “Complicating the forced displacement in response to the security issues, the Lake Region is experiencing the highest rainfall in nearly 30 years.”   IOM reports flash flooding of villages and fields have prompted nearly 12,000 people to flee between August 8 and 16, one of the highest numbers it has ever recorded in such a short period.    Dillon calls this a worrying trend as the displacement keeps recurring with increasing frequency.  He says people are facing a double security and environmental crisis amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic. “Three-quarters of the displaced persons IOM identified live in displacement sites, most of which are made from straw and metal structures,” he said. “Many of them sleep in the open without adequate protection from the ongoing, continuing bad weather, with limited access to amenities such as water, hygiene installations, health services and COVID-19 protective equipment.”  IOM is providing emergency humanitarian aid to thousands of vulnerable people, including temporary or semi-permanent shelters, and non-food items including hygiene kits, sleeping mats and basic cooking equipment.   The agency says it also is involved in a range of peacebuilding, community stabilization and recovery activities. 
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The U.N. refugee agency says tens of thousands of Nicaraguan refugees and asylum-seekers in Costa Rica are going hungry because COVID-19 restrictions have eliminated job opportunities.More than 81,000 Nicaraguans have sought international protection in Costa Rica from rights violations and political persecution in Nicaragua. Before the pandemic, the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees reports, most of the refugees and asylum-seekers could find work to support themselves.This situation has changed dramatically for the worse because of lockdowns and other restrictions imposed to curb the impact of COVID-19. The UNHCR reports more than three-quarters of Nicaragua’s refugee population is going hungry as a direct consequence of these measures.UNHCR spokeswoman Shabia Mantoo said forcibly displaced Latin Americans largely depend on the informal economy to earn a living.  These jobs, she said, have essentially dried up because of COVID-19.  She said most of these families now eat only two meals a day.“Only 59% of refugee families in Costa Rica are reporting steady work-related income streams as of the end of July.  And, this is a staggering decrease from 93% before the COVID-19 pandemic hit.  So, this now leaves many also at risk of eviction and homelessness.  A fifth of Nicaraguan refugees surveyed in Costa Rica said they now do not know where they will live in the next month,” she said.A recent survey of 21% of Nicaraguan refugees and asylum-seekers indicates at least one member of their households is thinking of returning to Nicaragua because they cannot make a living.  Mantoo told VOA more than 3,000 asylum claims in Costa Rica, most from Nicaraguans also have been withdrawn.“Families are reporting that they are considering these returns back to Nicaragua where maybe what is driving them is this pressing socioeconomic condition—the desperation, the hardship, the poverty that they are enduring …That is just the data that we have and it points as part of the bigger picture that we are seeing—sort of a pressing humanitarian situation there for refugees driving premature returns, but also affecting day-to-day lives,” she said.  Mantoo said the UNHCR is stepping up cash assistance programs throughout Central America to support vulnerable forcibly displaced people.  In face of the worsening situation in Costa Rica, she said her agency and its partners are working with the government to support asylum-seekers and refugees who cannot return to Nicaragua. 
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India reported 78,761 new coronavirus infections in 24 hours on Sunday, the highest single day rise in the world since the pandemic began, while the county is continuing to open its economy.It was the fourth consecutive day that India has registered more than 75,000 infections.With a population of 1.4 billion people, India is the third most infected nation in the world, behind the United States and Brazil, with 3.5 million cases and more than 63,000 deaths, according to official statistics provided by the country’s health ministry.In several European cities Saturday demonstrators rallied against restrictions that have been imposed since the COVID-19 outbreak began.Tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets of Berlin to march against mask-wearing and social distancing rules. Police say they arrested about 300 protesters. In London, demonstrators in Trafalgar Square rallied against what they said is the “medical tyranny” that has been placed on them by masks and distancing.A man with a placard reading in German: ‘Watch out! Covidiot’ takes part in a protest against the increasing coronavirus preventative measures in Zurich, Switzerland, Aug. 29, 2020.A few hundred protesters in Paris demonstrated against the capital’s mandatory mask-wearing mandate.In Zurich, about 1,000 demonstrators skeptical of COVID-19 rules called for a “return to freedom.”U.S. President Donald Trump said in a statement Saturday night that he is extending the federal cost-sharing for the deployment of the National Guard in Louisiana to help with the state’s response to COVID-19 and to help facilitate the Southern state’s economic recovery.Public health departments throughout the United States are calling on the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to reverse changes the federal agency recently made to its public coronavirus testing guidelines.The Big Cities Health Coalition and the National Association of County and City Health Officials, which represent thousands of local departments, sent a letter Friday to the heads of the CDC and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services requesting that the agencies reverse a decision to stop testing people who have been exposed to the virus but are asymptomatic.The organizations called on the government agencies to reinstate recommendations that people who have been exposed to the virus be tested even if they are asymptomatic.At least 33 states are not following the new CDC guidelines and continue to recommend testing for all people who have been exposed to COVID-19 regardless of symptoms, according to an analysis by Reuters news agency.Johns Hopkins University reports there are more than 25 million COVID-19 cases worldwide. The United States has almost 6 million infections, followed by Brazil with 3.8 million and India with 3.5 million.   
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Israel hopes to hold a signing ceremony in Washington for its normalization deal with the United Arab Emirates by mid-September, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet said on Sunday.The date for such an event could be decided by senior aides to Netanyahu and to U.S. President Donald Trump when those officials fly to Abu Dhabi on Monday for talks, Israeli Regional Cooperation Minister Ofir Akunis told public broadcaster Kan.Top Trump adviser Jared Kushner and the other U.S. delegates were due in Israel on Sunday to prepare for the UAE mission.”This (normalization) agreement is expected to be signed in the month of September in the city of Washington,” Akunis said.”That is meant to be one of the outcomes of the talks in the next 24 hours in the Emirates — setting a date for the signing.”Akunis added that the Netanyahu government hopes the ceremony will take place “before our Rosh Hashanah” or Jewish new year, which is on September 18.Israel and the UAE announced on August 13 that they would normalize diplomatic relations in a deal brokered by Trump. The agreement reshapes the Middle East order, from the Palestinian issue to relations with Iran.On Saturday, the Gulf power announced it was scrapping its economic boycott against Israel, allowing trade and financial agreements between the countries.Officials from the two countries have said they are looking at cooperation in defense, medicine, agriculture, tourism and technology.”We are talking about commercial deals worth $500 million in the initial stages, and this will keep rising all the time,” Akunis said.Such bilateral deals, he said, will give rise to “trilateral investments, in other words, in additional projects with other countries in the region”. He did not name these countries.The U.S. and Israeli delegations are due to travel together to Abu Dhabi on an El Al Israel Airlines Ltd plane, Israel’s first direct flight between Tel Aviv and the UAE capital.El Al released pictures of the Boeing 737-900 jet that will take the delegates. The word “peace” in English, Hebrew and Arabic is inscribed on the exterior above the cockpit windows for the occasion. 
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