Indaba zesiNdebele Ekuseni - Voice of America
Indaba zesiNdebele Ekuseni - July 19, 2024
This is VOA News, I'm Michael Brown, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump continues to speak on the final night of his party's convention in Milwaukee, saying earlier quote, "We must not criminalize dissent or demonize political disagreement, which is what's been happening in our country lately, at a level that nobody has ever seen before." He went on to say, "And in that spirit, the Democrat Party should immediately stop weaponizing the Justice Department and labeling their political opponent as an enemy of democracy, especially since that is not true." He added, "In fact, I am the one saving democracy for the people of our country." Meantime, there's a renewed push from top Democrats to get President Joe Biden to end his reelection bid. We have more on that story from the AP's Sagar McGonnie. Sources say former President Obama has privately expressed concerns to Democrats about his former running maids' campaign, and ex-house speaker Nancy Pelosi has privately warned the president Democrats might not win the House if he stays in. Congress's top two Democrats have also shown concerns. And strategist Nathan Dashel says they cannot unite with the president to top the ticket. The Biden campaign rejects reports the president may be softening to the idea of leaving the race. Sagar McGonnie, Washington. "European Union Commission President Ursula Von DeLayan said Thursday the most important topic for the EU is defending his democracy after her reelection by the European Parliament for five-year term." "Our democracy is under attack from inside and from outside, and therefore it is crucial that the Democratic forces stand together to defend our democracy." Von DeLayan will now assemble her team known as the College This 27-member group includes commissioners from each European Union country proposed by the national government. For more news, join us at BOANews.com. This is BOA News. A Russian court said closing arguments are set for Friday. An American journalist Evan Gurskabish espionage trial, he was back in a Russian court Thursday for the second hearing, and what is widely seen as a sham trial. Media had no access to the courtroom, the Wall Street Journal reporter, who was first detained in the eastern city back in March as accused of espionage, Russia has not provided any evidence to substantiate that claim. Gurskabish, his publisher, and the United States all deny the charge. Leaders from across Europe are gathering at an English country mansion for a summit for the European political community. The focus is on migration and Ukraine, but the meeting on Thursday was clouded by worries about whether the United States will remain a reliable ally if Donald Trump wins a second presidency. Newly elected British Prime Minister Keir Stommer welcomed about 45 national leaders to an estate northwest of London to discuss restoring relations between Britain and the European Union neighbors and wake of Brexit. Officials in the Central African Republic, say at least 300 rebels, have dropped their weapons in the past month in an operation jointly organized by the United Nations Peacekeeping Forces and government troops. Moki Edwin Kenzika reports from neighboring Cameroon. C.A.R. officials say the rebels who have dropped their weapons since June 10, belong to the coalition, the portrayed Polishan German, whose name translates into English as the coalition of patrons for change or CPC. The C.A.R. government sees the CPC as a coalition of six rebel groups created in 2020 to disrupt the country's presidential and legislative elections in December of that year. Moki Edwin Kenzika, V.O.N. News, Yawundi, Cameroon. A Kenyan court has suspended a police ban on protests in the capital. The High Court said Thursday that citizens have a right to demonstrate peacefully. Police had barred protests in Nairobi and definitely before the court decision, they said that protests lacked leadership that would ensure peaceful demonstrations. The largest housing provider for unaccompanied migrant children has been accused of severe pervasive and unwelcome sexual abuse of an harassment of children in its care. The U.S. Justice Department saying Thursday that Southwest key employees including supervisors have abused children in its care since at least 2015. For details on much more news, we invite you to join us at our website, VOANews.com. I'm Michael Brown, VOA News. Former President Trump accepts the Republican nomination for president. Ukraine starts building AI wardrobes. AI drone development in Ukraine is helping identify targets and fly drones into them. Navigation and more complex programs including interconnected swans. And the latest fashion must have for the well-dressed Republican. A patch over my right ear as Donald Trump wears one. We do it in solidarity with our president Trump. Today is Friday, July 19th, and this is VOA's international edition. I'm Scott Wolterman and I'm Alexis Strope. Tonight, with faith and devotion, I proudly accept your nomination for president of the United States. Former U.S. President Donald Trump made it official on Thursday night, accepting the Republican nomination for president. Delegates and fellow citizens, I stand before you this evening with a message of confidence, strength and hope. Four months from now we will have an incredible victory and we will begin the four greatest years in the history of our country. Together we will launch a new era of safety, prosperity and freedom for citizens of every race, religion, color and creed. And discord and division in our society must be healed, we must heal it quickly. As Americans, we are bound together by a single fate and a shared destiny. We rise together or we fall apart. I am running to be president for all of America, not half of America, because there is no victory in winning for half of America. Trump, 78, has put behind him a torrent of scandals. His unprecedented attempt to overturn his 2020 election lost to Biden and his 34 felony convictions in May at a New York criminal trial. Now with Republicans more united behind him than ever, he is increasingly bullish about a shock return to power. While Trump was basking in the glow of the faithful at the Republican National Convention, US President Joe Biden was facing physical and political isolation Thursday as he deals with COVID and more calls from his Democrats that he step aside as the party's nominee. With more on this, here's VOA White House bureau chief Patsy Woodakaswara. The Republicans are pledging unity and support behind their presidential nominee, former President Donald Trump, during their national convention this week. For President Joe Biden, it's a lonelier scene. He is isolating in his home in Delaware following a positive COVID test. This amid calls from prominent Democrats for him to step down, analysts say it's looking grim for the president. Larry Sabato, University of Virginia, center for politics via Skype. Those Democrats can't even decide whether Biden is really in trouble or not, and if he is, how to get him out of the race, and if they get him out of the race, who should replace him and how? Now that's pretty fundamental. Meanwhile, the Republicans have gotten their act together. They've had a great convention, and Donald Trump, because in part of the assassination attempt, probably has more public support than he ever has had. Privately, the president is reportedly listening to concerns. Publicly, he is resisting calls to step aside. I've demonstrated that I know how to get things done for the country, in spite of the fact that we couldn't get it done, but there's more to do, and I'm reluctant to walk away from that. 65% of Democrats say Biden should step aside, according to an AP-NORC poll. American University presidential historian Alan Lichtman said it is the height of a following and ignorance to claim you know, based on the polls, which constantly change, who's going to win and who's going to lose, and you should force candidates out just because you think they can't win. American University presidential historian Alan Lichtman's keys to the White House system has accurately predicted all but one U.S. election results since 1984. He says Democrats should stick with Biden. Lichtman's system ignores polling, including that 70 percent of Americans said they are not confident that Biden has the mental capacity to be president. For Trump, it's 51 percent. What happens now is anybody's guess. If Biden agrees to step aside, the most orderly scenario would be for him to endorse an alternative candidate. Vice President Kamala Harris would be a logical choice, at least financially, because as part of the Biden-Harris ticket, she would inherit their campaign war chest. Patsy Vida, what are viewing news, Washington. There has been a sharp rise in threats of violence in the United States in recent months as division and anger is fueled by divisive issues, politicians, and social media. In the U.S. state of Georgia, a man has been indicted on federal charges for just that. Having us now to talk about this is VOA national security correspondent Jeff Seldin. So tell us about this latest incident out of Georgia. The Department of Justice and the FBI announced on Thursday that they arrested a 34-year-old man from Roswell, Georgia, John Woodbury, and he was arraigned on charges that he was making threats to injure the director of the FBI, Christopher Ray, and also others. According to the criminal complaint, he was posting on a social media platform known as "Fortune," and he said things like, "Let me show them what a curse bird Nazi looks like, time to burn down these bleeping people, hanging them from trees, other threats like that." Now, making the FBI director and his family afraid of stepping outside of their home, the FBI says it's investigating the case, and of course, this one individual so far has been arrested in his facing charges. Now, there was an incident just the day before in Florida, do we know anything about that? Yeah, in that situation, there was a 39-year-old man from a town called Quincy, Florida, who was arrested on a complaint that he was making threats against the President of the United States. And so, apparently, the threats were enough that they boarded criminal, you know, at both the level of criminality. It wasn't just political discourse as it is in the United States, so he was arrested and he had his first court appearance on Wednesday of this week, and this, of course, goes into the broad threat landscape that the U.S. is facing, the threat environment where, you know, just not so long ago, within the week, there was an assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump, while he was at a campaign rally, and again, national security, homeland security, law enforcement officials had been warning for years about escalating tensions in high-risk threat environments where all sorts of threats are just flying, and where all sorts of people are seizing on a variety of grievances, whether it's a personal grievance, a political grievance, and finding ways to try to act out on that. And so, the threat level is high, law enforcement is looking for any signs that somebody, whether it's a political figure, who, you know, vocally or nationally, who could be targeted, whether it's a religious institution that could be targeted, there's so much that they are worried about, and the threat environment is so volatile that it's likely we will see more of these types of arrests, more of these cases as the weeks go by and as we get closer to the presidential election. Hopefully, not more incidences of them actually carrying out their threats. Jeff Selden, we always Jeff Selden, thank you so much for the update. Anytime. We're following these other stories from around the world. The United States will give another $203 million to help millions of civilians affected by the war in Sudan, and making the announcement, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas Greenfield, called on other nations to step up their aid. Sciences Divided National Assembly has kept a centrist member of President Emmanuel Macron's party as Speaker. Speaker Yell Bronpiva has been the head of the National Assembly since 2022, and retained her post after three rounds of voting in the lower house of parliament. A woman has become the top commander of Canada's military for the first time. General Jenny Kerrigan officially took over command of the Canadian Armed Forces on Thursday. One of the key weapons in the Russian war on Ukraine has been the drone. The race for technical innovation in drone warfare has been fast and furious since the start of the invasion. Now, a handful of Ukraine's start-ups are developing artificial intelligence systems to fly a vast fleet of drones, as we hear in this report from Reuters correspondent Sean Hogan, it's taking warfare into uncharted territory. Ukraine's start-ups are developing artificial intelligence systems to fly fleets of drones in a race to gain a technological edge in their battle against the Russian invasion. Kyiv hoped AI-enabled drones on the front line will combat increasing signal jamming by Russia and enable unmanned aerial vehicles to work in larger groups. AI drone development in Ukraine is helping identify targets and fly drones into them, navigation and more complex programs, including interconnected swarms. Swarma is one of many tech firms developing software linking a large number of drones that would be beyond humans' capacity to control. This can be made instantly across the group through AI, with a human only stepping into green light automated strikes. CEO of Swarma, Sirhe Kuprienko, explains how it works. "You have 25 drones approaching your position, you just hit them all, that's the one story. And the different story when you hit first and every other drone just changes its trajectory and attacks you from different sides, this is what makes Swarma so powerful and so scary at the same time. This is why every single more than Western military, the print has Swarma as a part of the cable work planning, our strategy." The software called Styx directs a web of reconnaissance and strike drones in the air and on the ground. It's still under development and has only been trialled on the battlefield experimentally, his employer Yarek explaining how it operates. "The drone now flies on autopilot mode using our software. We assigned it with a mission and it built its own flying route. We just told it that it shouldn't fly through certain areas. We gave it a no-fly zone. It now flies along these restricted areas." As both sides roll out electronic warfare that disrupt signals between pilots and drones, it rates of non-AI drones are decreasing. Some of Ukraine's long-range drone strikes targeting military facilities and oil refineries hundreds of miles inside Russia are already using swarming methods. However, there are ethical concerns for the use of weapons that aren't operated by humans. A 2020 European Parliament research paper warned that such systems could commit violations of international humanitarian law and lower the threshold of going to war. In the Central African Republic, at least 300 rebels have dropped their weapons in the past month. C.A.R. officials say it's because of a joint operation organized by United Nations peace keeping forces and government troops. Even so, peace seems to be a distant hope for the troubled nation. Loki Edwin Kinzeca reports from neighboring Cameroon. C.A.R. officials say the rebels who have dropped their weapons since June 10 belong to the coalition the Partard Polishangi-Mang, whose name translates into English as the coalition of patrons for change or CPC. The C.A.R. government sees the CPC as a coalition of six rebel groups created in 2020 to disrupt the country's presidential and legislative elections. In December of that year, Balalou Maxim is a government spokesperson. He spoke on state television on Wednesday. Balalou says he congratulates at least 250 CPC rebels who decided to drop their weapons instead of fighting to die when attacked by the Central African Republic Committee. He says he wants other rebels still hiding in the bush and attacking civilians on state institutions to know that they will be killed if they do not drop weapons they are carried. This week, forces of the UN stabilization movement in the Central African Republic or miniscare said an additional 44 fighters of another rebel group, the UPC, laid down their arms in the south eastern town of Bocchih. Miniscare says many weapons were seized but gives no further details. Central African Republic officials said the oppression to neutralize arms groups or get fighters to surrender is to make the country more peaceful before local elections later for October ahead. These would be the first local elections in the CAR since 1988. At least 5,000 rebels have surrendered their arms within the past 11 years officials say that fighting has yet to stop in the country. The UN says some of the rebels who surrender end up rejoining arms gangs due to hardship and poverty. Ali Duharlali is the president of the C.A.R. Qatar Wanchas Union. He says his association will not lend telling the C.A.R. government and the international community that the rebels who are Qatar Wanchas are willing to drop their weapons if given a few cattle or goods to help them get a source of livelihood. He says the rebels either refuse to surrender or go back to arms groups a few months after their surrender because of hunger. Rights groups including human rights watch have often reported that C.A.R. rebel and arms groups commit war crimes including deliberately killing civilians, raping women and girls and destroying civilian property. In 2019, the government and 14 arms groups signed an African Union and UN sponsored peace agreement but the deal failed to stop the fighting as six of the 14 arms groups refused to honor their commitments following disagreements of a power sharing and amnesty for arrested of fleeing rebels. The C.A.R. has been wrecked with violence and instability since 2013 when a rebel group forced them presidents Francois Bozizi out of office, Maqui Edwin Kinzuka, V.O.N. News, Yawundi. Kamaru. The OA's international edition continues. I'm Scott Wolterman. And I'm Alexis Strope. In S.Watini this week, two former members of parliament were sentenced to prison terms. They were convicted of terrorism. It marks a significant escalation of the tensions between the monarchy and those advocating for democratic reform. No, Yukanya Musi reports from the capital Babani. The two men were arrested in July 2021 during pro-democracy protests that were violently put down by security forces. Dozens were killed in the violence. They were pressing for reforms to a complex system of non-party elections that ensured S.Watini's ruler, King M. Swatini III, faced no meaningful dissent. Rights group Amnesty International urged S.Watini authorities to immediately quash what it called the unjust and baseless convictions and sentences of the former members of parliament. Alfeas Murmalou, a spokesperson for the S.Watini government, told V.O.A.'s English to Africa service. The convictions were discharged through the provisions of the law, which guarantees the rights of each and everyone who has been sentenced to appeal to a higher court. Tandazasi Lolo, a spokesperson for the Swaslan Liberation Movement Swalimo, told V.O.A. that despite the harsh sentences handed down by the S.Watini court, the country's pro-democracy movement remains resolute in its pursuit of democratic reform. "The MPs were strong inside the chambers of parliament and outside. In calling to say we need a prime minister that has been elected by the people, not a prime minister that is being appointed by the key. And for that reason, they were sentenced, they were arrested and charged with a highness of elses, as if they were criminalized, they were murderers and terrorists." Political analyst Sibusi Sol de Sabatzi sees the sentences as a major setback for democracy and human rights in S.Watini. He says the sentences are a classic example of guilty until proven innocent, with mere allegations being enough to secure a conviction. "See that the intention was to induce fear and I think most of them are so I do now live in that shade of fear that we don't want to do what this people did." According to human rights activist Laki Lamini, the harsh sentencing of the MPs signals a wider attack on democracy and human rights in S.Watini. He says the country is a dictatorship with the monarchy using state security forces to suppress dissent and violate fundamental human rights. "We remain in a cruel system of government, which is an absolute monarch, where there's immunity from the security forces against human rights activists and political activists and human rights defenders, where they cannot be able to access justice in the courts, where they cannot be able to hold on to demonstration, where they cannot exercise their freedom of the right to political participation, the right to a freedom of expression, the right to freedom of access to the media, the right to freedom of assembly." A lawyer for the true former MPs say they plan to appeal their sentences. "Nawukanya Musi, Babane, S.Watini." There's a theory in robotics called the Uncanny Valley. It predicts that a robot appearing almost human will risk eliciting eerie feelings in people who see it. Now, Japanese scientists at the University of Tokyo have come up with a method to attach living skin tissue to robotic faces and make them smile, a breakthrough that might overcome the Uncanny Valley. Reuters correspondent Angela Johnston explains. "To create the smiling robot, scientists grow human cells into the shape of a face. A smile is produced from embedded ligament-like attachments that pull it into a wide grin." Here's lead researcher, Shouji Takeuchi. "Until now, no one had figured out how to make the living skin move, so I think by attaching these actuators and anchors, it became possible to manipulate living skin for the first time. This is a new technology that we developed." Takeuchi says living tissue has a number of advantages over metal and plastic, such as skin's ability to repair itself. The hope is to add more features to the lab-grown skin, including a circulatory system and nerves. Takeuchi says the work could potentially lead to safer testing for cosmetics and drugs, or be used to cover robots one day. One problem he still faces is the so-called Uncanny Valley. That's the unsettling feeling that comes when robots start to resemble humans a little too closely. Takeuchi says he hopes to overcome it. "Various things have been talked about to reduce the creepiness, but I think one of the important matters is the materials. I think that making robots out of the exact same materials as humans and having them show the same expressions might be one key to overcoming the Uncanny Valley." That was Reuters correspondent Angela Johnston. And finally, Donald Trump has been appearing at the Republican convention, wearing a large bandage on his right ear, where he was shot on Saturday at a rally in Pennsylvania. Now, people attending the convention are wearing bandages on their right ears, too. "We just wanted to give our hearts, we wanted to show them our love, our respect, our admiration, and if he needs to go through something, he's going to fight, fight, fight. We want him to know that the Arizona delegation feels the same way, we'll go through it with him." "Will the well-dressed Republican carry the trend forward?" "I think it's important today, where next week, it won't be as my gut feel." This has been International Edition on The Voice of America. "On behalf of everyone here at VOA, thank you so much for joining us." For pictures, stories, videos and more, follow VOA News on your favorite social media platform and online at VOANews.com. In Washington, with Alexis Stroff, I'm Scott Walterman.