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Social media companies are taking down videos and images that could be vital in prosecuting serious crimes, according to a new report from Human Rights Watch. Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are increasingly using artificial intelligence algorithms to remove material deemed offensive or illegal. Human Rights Watch says vital evidence is being missed or destroyed. Henry Ridgwell reports.
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Britain’s health secretary, Matt Hancock, has announced new lockdown measures on the northeast of England after a significant surge in coronavirus cases there. Hancock told parliament that beginning Friday, people in the region would not be allowed to socialize with others outside their households or support groups. Restaurants and bars would be allowed to provide only table service, and “leisure and entertainment venues” would have to close between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m.  The health secretary told parliament Thursday the government does not take the steps lightly, and it understands the impact the restrictions can have on families, business and communities. But, he said, “We must follow the data and act. And the data says that we must act now.” Earlier this week, the British government had tightened restrictions across the country, banning social gatherings of more than six people. Residents across England have been struggling to access the COVID-19 testing system since an increase in cases raised the demand for tests. Hancock said the huge spike in demand for coronavirus testing for people who do not have symptoms was creating challenges in the system, after members of parliament shared stories of people without symptoms not being able to get tested. Reuters news agency reports official statistics show Britain recorded 3,991 new positive cases of COVID-19 on Wednesday, compared with 3,105 the day before. The news agency also reported a further 20 new deaths from COVID-19. Britain’s overall death toll from the virus is 41,773, the highest in Europe, according to Johns Hopkins University. 
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Greek authorities have begun moving thousands of refugees to a new army-built camp on the island of Lesbos after a fire destroyed the country’s largest migrant facility last week.  More than 12,500 people from 70 countries, mostly refugees from Afghanistan, African nations, and Syria, were left without shelter and access to food, water, and proper sanitation when fire decimated the overcrowded Moria camp.  Authorities dressed in masks and white protective suits have so far guided some 1,800 migrants and refugees, who had been sleeping in makeshift shelters on the side of the road, to the new temporary facility at Kara Tepe near the port of Mytilene.  Seventy female officers were flown in to organize the transfer of women and children to the new camp. No violence was reported.  A dog sits next to migrants as they sleep on a road leading from Moria to the capital of Mytilene, on the northeastern island of Lesbos, Greece, Sept. 17, 2020.”As long as it is peaceful, we believe it is a good move,” said Astrid Castelein, head of the U.N. refugee agency’s office on Lesbos. “Here on the street it is a risk for security, for public health, and it’s not dignity, which we need for everyone.” Authorities have charged five Afghan asylum-seekers with starting the fires. Law enforcement officials say that the blazes broke out after 35 people tested positive for the coronavirus, triggering a lockdown of camp residents. A small group of inhabitants objected to being put into isolation. There have been no reported deaths as a result of the fires. Greek officials say the new camp is equipped to host at least 5,000 people, but many migrants are hesitant to move there. Moria had a capacity of roughly 2,700 people but was home to more than 12,500 at the time of the blaze.  The Greek government said it aims to replace open-air tent facilities with formal migrant centers that have temporary housing options, but a number of migrants and refugees hope to leave Lesbos. They say they fear that the living conditions at camp Kara Tepe will be no better than they were at Moira, which international aid groups had called “appalling.” Medical careDuring the operation to move residents to the temporary camp, they were tested for the coronavirus and so far, 35 have been found positive.  A child sits between plastic bags as migrants pull their belongings in Kara Tepe, near Mytilene, the capital of the northeastern island of Lesbos, Greece, Sept. 17, 2020.The nongovernmental medical aid organization Medecins Sans Frontieres, known as Doctors Without Borders, says that Greek police denied the health care workers access to its new clinic in Lesbos. According to the group, it took several hours before its workers were finally allowed to reopen their facilities, but says it was “highly concerning” that their critical medical care services were compromised during the move. Critics of the Moria camp say that the inhuman conditions there were a symbol of Europe’s failed migration policies.  The number of migrants seeking refuge on Greek islands near Turkey has fallen significantly since 2015, although camps remained overcrowded. In the past, the Greek government has accused wealthier European Union nations of failing to share the burden of assisting refugees, migrants, and asylum-seekers as they seek a new life in Europe.  Transfer to GermanyThe German government said this week it would take in 1,553 migrants, many of whom are families with refugee status, who had been living at camp Moria at the time of the fire.  Migrants wait to enter a new temporary refugee camp in Kara Tepe, near the capital of the northeastern island of Lesbos, Greece, Sept. 17, 2020.German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Monday that any transfer of migrants to Germany would need to go hand-in-hand with a broader European initiative to support the refugee crisis in Greece.  Merkel has voiced support for the Greek government to build a new reception center for migrants and refugees on Lesbos. The structure would be managed by EU agencies. Following the fire, Greece’s top public order official said plans to decongest migrant camps will be accelerated. On Tuesday, the Greek government vowed that the island of Lesbos will be emptied of refugees by early April 2021.  In a statement to The Guardian newspaper, Greece’s civil protection minister Michalis Chrysochoidis said, “Of the roughly 12,000 refugees here currently, I foresee 6,000 being transferred to the mainland by Christmas and the rest by Easter. The people of this island have gone through a lot. They’ve been very patient.”
 
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Associates of Alexei Navalny say traces of the nerve agent used to poison the Russian opposition politician were found on a water bottle in the hotel room he was staying in in the Russian city of Tomsk.Navalny, 44, felt unwell while on a plane on his way from Tomsk to Moscow in late August, forcing the airliner to make an emergency landing in the city of Omsk, where he was rushed to a hospital. He was later flown to the Charite clinic in Berlin, Germany, where toxicology tests provided “unequivocal evidence” that the gravely ill Kremlin-critic had been poisoned with a nerve agent from the Soviet-era Novichok chemical group.Navalny’s blog on Instagram said on September 17 that his associates were still in the Xander hotel in Tomsk when news of the politician’s illness broke. They immediately rushed to Navalny’s vacated and yet-to-be-cleaned room, where they collected any suspicious items they saw, including an opened bottle of mineral water with the brand name that translates as “Holy Spring.”The Proekt website on September 17 quoted one of Navalny’s associates who said that the bottle was taken to Berlin by one of Navalny’s team members, Maria Pevchikh, who is a resident of the United Kingdom.
The Hague-based Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said on September 17 that it is providing technical assistance to Germany in investigating Navalny’s case of poisoning with the nerve agent.Poisoned Russian Opposition Leader Posts Photo from Hospital BedAlexei Navalny, surrounded by his family as he sat up in bed, says he was pleased to be able to breathe independently”A team of experts from the Technical Secretariat independently collected biomedical samples from Mr. Navalny for analysis by OPCW designated laboratories. Results of this analysis are forthcoming and will be shared with the German authorities,” the statement said.Germany has demanded Russia explain the incident, but Russia has vehemently denied any involvement and has pressed Germany to share the evidence that led to the verdict Navalny was poisoned.Navalny has led nationwide protests against Russian President Vladimir Putin, and has been attacked with a dangerous chemical and fallen ill in Russian custody in the past.Among the Kremlin opponents who have been killed or targeted in recent years are investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya, former Russian security officer Aleksandr Litvinenko, former Russian Deputy Prime Minister and opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, and former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal, among others.Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, were poisoned by Novichok in the British city of Salisbury in 2018, and British investigators have implicated Russian security agencies. OPCW tests confirmed use of the highly toxic substance.Members of the OPCW agreed in November 2019 to expand the agency’s list of banned “Schedule 1” chemicals for the first time to include the Novichok family of nerve agents. That ban went into effect on June 7, 2020.The OPCW was established in 1997 as a technical body to enforce the Chemical Weapons Convention. It has played an active role in monitoring the use of banned chemical weapons in the Syrian war, which has made its work highly political.
 
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Only about six percent of the world’s professional classical music orchestras are headed by women. But in France, there is a drive to change that, including La Maestra – an international competition for women conductors in Paris.  The winner of the contest, which attracted more than 200 applicants from Asia, Europe and the Americas, will be announced later this month.Laurent Bayle, director of the Paris Philharmonic which is co-hosting La Maestra, said the victor and runner-ups will get two years of intensive mentoring and other support.Experts say there is a need for that kind of encouragement. While women head nearly 40 percent of Belgian orchestras, just three percent of French orchestras have female conductors.  In the U.S., only eight percent of orchestras are led by women. The Philharmonic is doing better— 30 percent of its visiting conductors this current season are women, an uptick from a few years ago.A mix of factors hamper women’s advancement in the field, from historical to cultural. Bayle said that in France, for example, the country’s theoretically egalitarian, so-called “Republican values” frown on affirmative action initiatives supporting women and other minorities.  Claire Gilbault is one of France’s rare female conductors, heading the Paris Mozart Orchestra, which is co-hosting this event. She noted that men head all major musical institutions — and share power among themselves. This contest is breaking new ground in another way: the jury is headed by a female conductor and is gender balanced.Of course, for this all-women competition, performance is the key criteria.Italian Sara Caneva competes in La Maestra. She is both a conductor and classical music composer. (L. Bryant/VOA)Twenty-nine-year-old Sara Caneva from Italy faced extra stress as the first candidate to perform. The coronavirus pandemic has not helped.”It’s the first, it’s after a long time without conducting because of the lockdown, and all the potential commitment that just vanished,” she said.Holly Hyun Choe from the U.S. felt better about her performance. She is currently a conductor in Switzerland.”My first goal is to be an international conductor, to be conducting at the highest level possible,” Choe said. “Of course that has to come with a lot of luck and a lot of hard work, and your own talent. And I also have to be honest with myself…can I make it to the top, do I have what it takes? …But I think to dream big is always good.”The Philharmonic’s Bayle said this contest’s ultimate goal is not just to hand out prizes, but rather to encourage other European orchestras to invite these conductors to perform and, as Choe puts it, to dream big.
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The United States vowed to assert a “snapback” of all prior international sanctions on Iran, effective 8 p.m. Eastern Time on September 19, with more announcements to be made this weekend and next week as to exactly how Washington is planning to enforce the “returned U.N. sanctions.”“We will return to the United Nations to reimpose sanctions so that the arms embargo will become permanent next week,” said U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo Wednesday during a joint press conference with British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab.“I think we absolutely agree that Iran must never be — never be allowed to obtain a nuclear weapon,” said Raab. “We also, I think, share the view that the diplomatic door is open to Iran to negotiate a peaceful way forward. That decision, that choice is there for the leadership in Tehran to take.” He stopped short of saying whether or not and how Britain will implement the snapback sanctions.Britain, France and Germany, the so-called E3, said in August that they cannot support the U.S. move to restore U.N. sanctions on Iran, saying the action is incompatible with efforts to support the Iran nuclear deal.U.S. special envoy for Iran and Venezuela Elliott Abrams speaks during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, Aug. 4, 2020.“Whether those countries will in fact ignore the U.N. sanctions [under U.N. Security Council resolution 2231] remains to be seen,” U.S. special envoy for Iran and Venezuela Elliott Abrams told reporters in a Wednesday phone briefing. He added the E3 and other European countries had told Washington that they don’t want the Iran arms embargo to end, but they were unable to take any action that kept the UN arms embargo in place.Abrams said the returned sanctions include “a ban on Iran engaging in enrichment and reprocessing-related activities, the prohibition on ballistic missile testing and development, and sanctions on the transfer of nuclear and missile-related technologies to Iran.”U.S. officials warn that an Iran free from restrictions would lead to further regional destabilization, intensified conflicts and a regional arms race.Iranian armed forces members march in a military parade in Tehran, Sept. 22, 2018.The U.S. tried but failed on August 14 to extend an expiring arms embargo against Iran through a resolution at the United Nations Security Council.The embargo against the sale or transfer to or from Iran of conventional weapons is set to expire on October 18, under the 2015 nuclear deal, known formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).With the extension blocked, Washington saw triggering a snapback of U.N. sanctions under Security Council Resolution 2231, which implemented the Iran nuclear agreement, as the only path for restoring the arms embargo.As the U.S. prepares to snap back sanctions against Iran this weekend, E3 nations are largely seen as likely to ignore them. Some experts said there would be a limited impact on European economies, unless the U.S. punishes those nations with secondary sanctions.“The immediate U.S. goal in trying to re-impose sanctions is to prevent the end of the U.N. arms embargo in mid-October. But even if the Europeans recognize the U.N. embargo ends next month, British and EU companies are not going to start selling tanks to Tehran. The U.S. expects Chinese and firms to look for arms deals, and they will probably sanction those companies bilaterally. But that doesn’t bother the Europeans very much,” said Richard Gowan, U.N. director of International Crisis Group (ICG).“Overall, the U.S. has realized that this is not a useful fight to pursue,” Gowan told VOA on Wednesday. “Equally, E3 diplomats say that they would prefer to avoid a big public row over snapback too, to limit the harm to relations with Washington.”Under the JCPOA concluded on July 14, 2015, the five permanent U.N. Security Council members, plus Germany, agreed with Iran to gradually lift international sanctions in return for limits on Tehran’s nuclear activities, to prevent it from making a nuclear bomb. It also opened Iran’s markets back up to many foreign investors.The United States withdrew from the deal in May 2018, re-imposing unilateral sanctions on Iran. In response, Tehran resumed some of its nuclear activities, and in July 2019, it breached the deal by exceeding limits on both uranium enrichment and stockpile levels. Iran denies that its nuclear activities are for military purposes. 
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Doctors and local politicians in Turkey are voicing concerns that the government is downplaying the scale of the resurgent coronavirus outbreak. The latest official figures suggest there are around 1,700 new infections and around 60 deaths every day across the country – but doctors say the numbers don’t add up. As Henry Ridgwell reports, opposition politicians accuse the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of a cover-up.
Camera: Memet Aksakal and Henry Ridgwell   Produced by: Marcus Harton  
 
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Belarusian opposition leader and human rights advocate Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya has expressed regret that President Alexander Lukashenko met with Russian President Vladimir Putin, as a leading human rights organization accused Belarusian security forces of unlawfully arresting thousands of people and torturing hundreds of others. The two authoritarian leaders met Monday at a Black Sea resort in Sochi, when Putin granted the Belarusian government a $1.5 billion loan during a period of unrest in Belarus. The meeting was their first since mass protests erupted in Belarus after Lukashenko was reelected to a sixth term in an election widely viewed as rigged.   FILE – Opposition supporters take part in a rally against police brutality following protests to reject the presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus, Sept. 13, 2020.Tsikhanouskaya, Lukashenko’s election opponent who has left Belarus, said she and other opposition leaders do not consider Lukashenko the legitimate president and that his meeting with Putin is further evidence of the need for change “after new fair elections when the new president will be in power.” Putin recognizes Lukashenko as the legitimate leader of Belarus, despite the ongoing mass protests. Detentions, tortureEarlier this week, Human Rights Watch accused Belarusian security forces of detaining and torturing people in the days after Lukashenko’s reelection. HRW said its findings were based on interviews with 27 former detainees, most of whom were arrested between Aug. 8 and 12, 14 people with knowledge of the arrests, and an examination of 67 videos and written accounts from former detainees and their relatives. FILE – People detained during recent rallies of opposition supporters, who accuse Alexander Lukashenko of falsifying the polls in the presidential election, show their marks from beatings as they leave the Okrestina prison, in Minsk, Aug. 14, 2020.The detainees said they were subject to beatings, electric shocks and other forms of torture, resulting in injuries such as broken bones, electrical burns, mild traumatic brain injuries, kidney damage and cracked teeth. At least one detainee was allegedly raped. Mass arrests resumed in the first week of September. The Interior Ministry reported that 600 people were apprehended Sept. 6 alone. The Ministry said another 774 people were arrested in Minsk and other Belarusian cities for holding unsanctioned demonstrations Sunday. Belarusian authorities also have targeted foreign journalists and local reporters working for foreign and local independent media organizations. HRW said dozens of the journalists have had their media credentials revoked, or have been expelled or harassed.  A journalist in Hrodna said he was arrested despite showing authorities his media credentials. He suffered two broken wrists at the hands of an officer with a Russian special police unit. Exiled Belarus Opposition Leader Pleads for ‘Help Now’ Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya urged international pressure, including sanctions on Alexander Lukashenko and his government following a disputed election Response from Lukashenko Opposition parties, the United States and the European Union allege the election was rigged.  Lukashenko denies the voting was fraudulent and blamed the unrest on meddling by western countries. Russian news agencies quoted him this week saying he has nothing to discuss with the opposition, and that he would be open to constitutional reforms and a potential new presidential election. During his meeting with Lukashenko, Putin endorsed the possibility of Belarus amending its constitution to lay the groundwork for new elections. VOA’s Ukrainian Service contributed to this report.  
 
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The U.S. government announced sanctions Wednesday on two Russian nationals for their role in the theft of at least $16.8 million worth of cryptocurrency.In the phishing scheme, which was conducted in 2017 and 2018, Danil Potekhin and Dmitrii Karasavidi allegedly created web sites that looked like legitimate currency exchange sites. Victims would enter their information, which was then used to access real accounts.The two, who were identified by the Treasury Department and the Department of Homeland Security, then allegedly laundered the stolen cryptocurrencies through multiple virtual currency exchanges using fake profiles.“The individuals who administered this scheme defrauded American citizens, businesses and others by deceiving them and stealing virtual currency from their accounts,” Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said in a statement. “The Treasury Department will continue to use our authorities to target cybercriminals and remains committed to the safe and secure use of emerging technologies in the financial sector.”According to the statement, the government seized millions of dollars in virtual currency and U.S. dollars in an account owned by Karasavidi.
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A Paris court has sentenced former World Athletics chief Lamine Diack to four years in prison on charges of corruption, money laundering and abuse of confidence.  The charges stemmed from a Russian doping scandal, and for accepting Russian money to finance the 2012 election campaign of a Senegalese president.
 
The judgment has 87-year-old Senegalese Lamine Diack, ex-World Athletics, or IAAF chief, serving two years in jail, with an additional two-year suspended sentence. The court also fined him nearly $600,000, the maximum under French law.  
 
Diack’s lawyers say they will appeal what they describe as a profoundly unfair verdict. Either way, Diack appears unlikely to go to jail. The presiding judge predicted a conditional release, given his age.  
 
Diack’s Dakar-based son, Papa Massata Diack, got a tougher sentence in absentia — five years in prison, along with a nearly $1.2 million fine. The younger Diack is accused of overseeing a vast network of corruption as a former IAAF marketing adviser.  
 
Papa Massata Diack refused to attend the Paris trial. Speaking to reporters in Dakar earlier this week, he insisted he was innocent. In addition, an investigation against him is underway in Senegal.  
 
During the Paris trial, the senior Diack also denied corruption. He admitted to slowing the handling of Russian doping allegations, but he said it was to snag lucrative Russian sponsorship deals that would help shore up the organization’s finances.  
 
Furthermore, the senior Diack denied charges of taking Russian funds to finance the successful 2012 election campaign of Senegalese President Macky Sall.   
 
Trial observers say Diack’s testimony was often confusing. One of Diack’s lawyers urged leniency, saying it was important he die in dignity in his native land. Prosecutors argued Diack’s behavior deeply tarnished the IAAF.  
 
A once-powerful figure in the sports world, Diack headed the IAAF for 16 years, before stepping down in 2015. Olympic gold medalist Sebastian Coe took over as head of the organization, which has been renamed World Athletics.  
 
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