When you are up in the mountains in Nepal, we would suggest you to be ready for anything. Weather forecasts for Lukla are never correct and different sources will give you different information. If it is a really bad day in terms of weather, the airlines will themselves cancel the flight and you might have to wait till the weather clears. Yes, flying in high altitude is never easy, even on a clear sunny day, the plane might face turbulence because of the wind blowing from the mountains. But overall the flight to Lukla is very exciting and it’s an experience that you will never forget
Heavy fighting continued Sunday between Armenian and Azerbaijan forces in Nagorno-Karabakh, a primarily ethnic Armenian region in Azerbaijan.
Azerbaijani officials said Armenian forces had begun attacking Azerbaijan’s second largest city, Ganja. Unverified videos on Twitter from government officials show damaged buildings.
Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry rejected accusations that Azerbaijan’s military had targeted civilians. Officials in Nagorno-Karabakh have said nearly 200 of their service personnel had been killed. Azerbaijan confirmed the deaths of at least 24 civilians.
Armenian, Azerbaijani Forces Continue to ClashOngoing conflict over breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh is threatening to erupt into all-out war
In a statement released Sunday, the International Committee of the Red Cross condemned the violence.
“All feasible measures must be taken to protect and spare civilians and civilian infrastructures like hospitals, schools and markets. Water supply for civilians must also be protected. These are obligations under international humanitarian law,” Martin Schüepp, ICRC Eurasia regional director in Geneva, said in the statement.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said late Saturday that his forces “raised the flag” over the strategic town of Madagiz and had taken several villages.
The Armenian Defense Ministry said separatist forces in Nagorno-Karabakh had fended off a large Azerbaijani attack, and spokeswoman Shushan Stepanian pointed to intense fighting “along the entire front line,” saying Armenian forces had shot down three Azerbaijani planes.
Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry denied any aircraft were shot down and said Armenian personnel had shelled civilian territory.
Azerbaijan has not offered details on military casualties.
Vahram Poghosyan, a spokesman for Nagorno-Karabakh’s president, said Saturday on Facebook that intelligence showed that about 3,000 Azerbaijanis were killed in the fighting, without providing details.
Armenian Defense Ministry spokesman Artsrun Ovannisian said later Saturday that 2,300 Azerbaijani troops were killed, including about 400 in the previous day; however, this claim cannot be verified.
President Aliyev has demanded the withdrawal of Armenia from Nagorno-Karabakh as the only way to end the fighting.
Meanwhile, Nagorno-Karabakh authorities have called on the international community to “recognize the independence” of the enclave as “the only effective mechanism to restore peace.”
Armenian and Azerbaijani forces ignored calls this past week by the United States, France and Russia for an immediate cease-fire in Nagorno-Karabakh, as fighting escalated to levels not seen since the 1990s. The three countries co-chair the OSCE Minsk Group, which is tasked with finding a peaceful solution. The OSCE is the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
Armenian separatists seized Nagorno-Karabakh, formerly an autonomous territory within Azerbaijan, in a bloody war in the 1990s that killed an estimated 30,000 people.
Talks to resolve the conflict have been halted since a 1994 cease-fire agreement among Armenia, Azerbaijan and Nagorno-Karabakh.
When most of us think of Jonah Hill, we think of funny movies. Indeed, his early films were the ones I first saw, and, as it happens, they were the ones that stuck in my mind. From his debut in I ♥ Huckabees, to Superbad , Knocked Up, andGet Him to the Greek (among many others), he has delivered us reliably from seriousness.
But in spite of Jonah’s mountain of successes, he has struggled with the best of us: namely, low self-esteem stemming from body shaming, a phenomenon he’s experienced most of his life. Turns out it’s not only women who are held to impossibly high standards: they apply to everyone, and it’s always damaging. Why Was Jonah Hill Threatened By Channing TatumLife Stories
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Moving past body shame
Jonah, 36, started acting when he was young, leaving him wide open to public criticism about his body, an experience shared by many child actors who don’t exactly fit the mold of conventional attractiveness. Jonah has been vocal about how working on his directorial debut, Mid90s (2018), helped him to reflect on this for the first time. Mid90s is about a 13-year-old wannabe skateboarder just trying to fit in.
While working on the movie, Jonah also put together a highly personal magazine called Inner Children, in which he wrote about his body image issues, past and present.
I became famous in my late teens and then spent most of my young adult life listening to people say that I was fat and gross and unattractive.
“And it’s only in the last four years writing and directing my movie, Mid90s, that I’ve started to understand how much that hurt and got into my head,” he wrote. Jonah’s frank openness in his written project, which includes interviews with other celebs about learning to love themselves, resonated with his hundreds of thousands of followers. “I’ve never related to something more in my whole life . . . . Seriously thank you,” wrote one commenter.
Inevitable comparisons, from Brad Pitt to Leonardo DiCaprio
Part of being a famous star who happens to be on the bigger side is that people inevitably compare your physical appearance to that of your mainstream attractive costars. In Jonah’s case, these include Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio and Channing Tatum, with whom he has become friends.
Starring opposite the famous Hollywood hotties like Brad and Leonardo, was enough to position him in the way of unsavory criticism. During an interview for Le Grand Journal, French journalist Ornella Fleury made a rather bad joke.
“I have a fantasy. It’s that me and you find ourselves in a hotel bedroom one night, we’re talking, you’re making me laugh, and then all of a sudden your pals DiCaprio and Brad Pitt walk in, and you leave,” Fleury said.
Needless to say that the joke was nothing short of terrible and took Jonah off-guard. It also shows just how much body-shaming is prevalent in the media, and how bigger men have been framed as “undesirable.” Jonah being a comedian does not entitle others to making fun of his looks.
Thankfully, while his friendships with famous, conventionally attractive men have put him in the way of crude remarks like the one above, they’ve also led him to make change–but on his own terms.
Jonah quickly became friends with Tatum when they co-starred in the action comedies 21 Jump Street (2012) and 22 Jump Street (2014).
They became close and comfortable with one another, which, of course, led to discussion about their striking visual contrast: Jonah has struggled with his weight since he was a teen while Tatum was once a stripper and seems to have maintained his washboard abs.
It was only natural, then, that Hill went to Tatum for weight loss advice. “I gained weight for this movie War Dogs, and then I wanted to get in better shape,” Jonah said on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon in 2017.
So I called Channing Tatum, and said, ‘Hey, if I ate less and go to a trainer, will I get in better shape?’ And he said, ‘Yes, you dumb motherf—–, of course you will, it’s the simplest thing in the entire world.’
A culture that values thinness
Jonah’s relationship with his weight has been anything but linear. In July 2011, after a sustained effort to lose weight so he might land more serious roles, he appeared at the 2011 ESPN ESPY Awards, indeed having dropped a significant amount of weight.
He did this by consulting with a trainer and a nutritionist, and by changing his diet. If outward appearances are any indication, it does seem to have worked to a degree, as he did play two of his more serious dramatic roles after losing weight, specifically in Moneyball (2011), and The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)—which landed him an Academy Award nomination.
After regaining weight for his role in War Dogs (2016), Jonah picked his weight loss efforts back up, hoping to drop 40 pounds. He took up boxing, quit drinking beer, and kept a food journal which he shared with a nutritionist daily.
In the summer of 2017, Jonah had lost a lot of the weight he set out to lose, and People published an article titled, Jonah Hill Walks Through NYC in Muscle-Baring T-Shirt: Jonah Hill looked fitter than ever as he walked through New York City on Sunday after losing weight.
But Jonah’s sister, ActressBeanie Feldstein, who has also lost weight and been complimented about it, has spoken out about how this can be just as problematic as insulting someone for being heavy. While she realizes that people mean well, she says these compliments come from “a culture that values thinness.”
To me, the most remarkable element of Jonah’s weight loss journey is not how he has more than once lost physical weight, but how he has managed to harness creativity (directing a film and creating a magazine) to free himself from the deeply ingrained, emotional beliefs that kept him living in shame for so long.
It’s not just weight Jonah has dropped; he has also managed to shed an unnecessarily heavy body complex that ruled his life for many years—one whose basic premise (thinner is better) is simply out of touch with reality.
YAOUNDE – October 4 marks a year since Cameroon held its Major National Dialogue to solve the Anglophone separatist crisis that has killed at least 3,000 people in four years. Cameroonians and some participants at the dialogue say that fighting has continued unabated and that most parts of the English-speaking regions are ungovernable, an indication the event was a failure, but the government maintains it was successful.
Eric Tataw, a U.S.-based Anglophone activist says the National Dialogue organized by Cameroon president Paul Biya a year ago to solve the separatist crisis has failed woefully. Tataw says for peace to return to the restive English-speaking regions the international community should force Cameroon to organize what he calls true dialogue in another country.
FILE – People gather at the Congress Palace during the opening session of the National Dialogue called by President Paul Biya, in Yaounde, Cameroon, Sept. 30, 2019.
“The Grand National Dialogue was a publicity theater by the Cameroonian authorities to please the international community. Any such discussion will be done on an international scene with Cameroon and Ambazonia as equal parties, where we will decide peacefully on the separation of these two countries,” he said.
Ambazonia is the English-speaking state that rebels want to form. Tataw said when the dialogue was held from September 30 to October 4, 2019, the U.N. was reporting 2,000 deaths in the then two-year conflict. Now, in the year since the dialogue ended, the U.N. is reporting an additional 1,000 deaths, indicating how tense the crisis is.
Former Cameroonian Prime Minister Philemon Yang says the fighting has been reduced but he says barbarism has continued because an insignificant minority of English speakers are using violence to try to split Cameroon. Yang says the government is determined to solve the crisis but will never allow Cameroon to be divided.
FILE – Cameroon former prime minister Philemon Yang, in an undated picture.
“On the part of the government the negotiations were very frank. The only thing which was raised which had nothing to do with the demands of the teachers and the lawyers is what has come to be called secession. I do not like that word, and most Cameroonians did not even want to hear that word. People love this country and at that dialogue we discovered that this country has more friends than enemies,” said Yang.
Yang said among the achievements of the dialogue was the liberation of prisoners in October 2019, the creation of assemblies of chiefs, regional assemblies and regional councils for the English-speaking North-West and South-West regions with each of the two regions having elected presidents, vice presidents, secretaries and public affairs management controllers. Yang said powers were also given to the National Commission for the Promotion of Bilingualism and Multiculturalism to give the same status to the English and French languages to reduce domination by the French-speaking majority.
The government also created demobilization centers where ex-fighters who surrender their guns are pardoned. A $163 million special fund for the reconstruction of the English-speaking North-West and South-West regions was launched by the government, as agreed to at the dialogue.
Paul Tasong, coordinator of special fund says fighting and limited resources have slowed the first phase of the reconstruction exercise.
“As of now we have close to 10% of the close to 90 billion CFA Francs [$163 million] which is expected to be spent on this first phase of the plan, which is a recovery phase,” he said. “We are looking forward to embarking on missions to our friendly countries to make sure that some of the promises that have been made are brought to maturity.”
The U.N. reports that the separatist war has forced more than 500,000 people to flee their homes since the conflict erupted in late 2017. Ongoing armed clashes, civilian casualties and the burning of houses, hospitals and other infrastructure are causing further displacement.
Michael Bibi, auxiliary administrator of the Catholic Diocese of the English-speaking southwestern town of Buea, who also took part at the dialogue, says Cameroon should negotiate a cease-fire for peace to return.
“If we have this fighting every day, it will be very difficult for us to do lots of things that can be done. That is our prayer and our wish that if there is a cease-fire and all the gunshots and all the fighting were to stop, it is going to be very helpful in order for peace to return in both [English speaking] regions,” he said.
Violence erupted in 2017 in Cameroon’s English-speaking regions when teachers and lawyers protested alleged discrimination at the hands of the French-speaking majority. The military reacted with a crackdown and separatist groups took up weapons, claiming that they were protecting civilians.
ROME – Seven bodies were found in a region straddling the French-Italian border near Nice on Sunday after torrential rains swept houses and roads away, officials in both countries said.
Five of the bodies were discovered in northwestern Italy, including four washed up on the shore between the towns of Ventimiglia and Santo Stefano al Mare, near the French frontier. Some of the corpses might have been swept down the coast from France.
Two more were found in France, including a shepherd found by an Italian search and rescue team. The other body was found in a vehicle that had been swept away by flash-flooding in the village of Saint-Martin-Vésubie.
It brings to nine the number of people found dead after fierce rains and howling gales lashed the border area on Friday. French firefighters said another 21 people were missing, eight of them known to be as a direct result of the storm.
The bad weather caused millions of euros in damage, with several road bridges swept away in Italy, and streets in some towns littered with debris, mud and overturned cars.
Officials in the Piedmont region reported a record 630 mm (24.8 inches) of rain in 24 hours in Sambughetto, near Switzerland, more than half its annual average rainfall.
In Limone Piemonte, a three-story house was swept off its foundations and into a river. In the nearby village of Tanaro, floodwaters destroyed the local cemetery, sweeping away dozens of coffins.
In France, almost 1,000 firefighters were drafted into the Alpes-Maritimes region to look for the missing and re-establish communications. More than two dozen primary and secondary schools in the area are closed until further notice, local authorities said.
Up to 500 mm (19.5 inches) of rain fell in less than 10 hours, a volume not seen since records began, Prime Minister Jean Castex said on Saturday.
WASHINGTON – While more findings are surfacing about the destruction of mosques and shrines in the Xinjiang Muslim region of China, some Uighurs tell VOA that Chinese authorities have banned the Islamic marriage vow known as nikah in wedding ceremonies, a claim corroborated by an article previously written by a Chinese official.
A Uighur couple in their late 20s, who spoke to VOA on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, had to omit nikah during their wedding ceremony after lawfully registering and obtaining a marriage certificate issued by the local government in China’s northwest region of Xinjiang last fall.
Nikah is a formal Islamic marriage vow. It is considered integral to a religiously valid Islamic marriage and outlines the rights and responsibilities of the groom and the bride. Verses from the Quran are read, and a religious scholar must be involved. The majority of Uighurs follow the Sunni denomination of Islam, and Islamic religious elements such as nikah play a significant role in their traditional marriage.
“Even though we are granted religious freedom on paper [in the Chinese constitution], we were already fully aware that attempting to have the ritual would put us on the list [for detention],” the couple told VOA.
“Having that [nikah vow] in weddings nowadays here [in Xinjiang] equals to being a religious extremist, which would land anyone involved in the ritual in reeducation or even a long prison sentence,” they said.
Official affirmation
In an article posted in 2018 on the Chinese social media platform WeChat, Behtiyar Ablimit, a committee member of the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in Poskam county in southern Xinjiang, attested to the government’s proscription of nikah, while contradicting Chinese official statements, which often emphasize that the religious rights of Uighurs are “fully respected” in Xinjiang.
The “four activities” referred to are wedding, funeral, naming and circumcision ceremonies.
“With the return of the ‘four activities’ to the secular world, not only [Chinese Communist] Party members and public officials but also a lot of masses spontaneously reject the interference of religion on the ‘four activities,’ and they do not invite religious figures to their weddings, funerals, naming and circumcision ceremonies,” the article said.
According to Tim Grose, a professor of China studies at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in Terre Haute, Indiana, the CCP has been restricting the religious elements of Uighur traditional ceremonies since the 2010s.
“By monitoring and eliminating the religious elements of these rituals, the CCP can take another step in their efforts to secularize and therefore Sinicize the Uighurs,” Grose said, adding that the “four activities” provided Uighurs an opportunity to express their distinct ethno-religious identity.
Nury Turkel, a commissioner on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), told VOA his organization was deeply concerned about the Chinese government’s ban on traditional Uighur marriage ceremonies.
“As USCIRF noted in its 2020 annual report, these restrictions are part of the government’s campaign to forcibly assimilate Uighur Muslims into Han Chinese culture,” Turkel said, adding that USCIRF monitors such violations of religious freedom and informs the U.S. president, Congress and the rest of the U.S. government through its reporting.
Destruction of religious sites
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) last week released a report about the destruction of mosques and Islamic sites in Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR).
The report, which used satellite imagery, estimated that approximately 16,000 mosques in Xinjiang (65% of the total) have been destroyed or damaged as a result of Chinese government policies.
“An estimated 8,500 have been demolished outright, and for the most part, the land on which those razed mosques once sat remains vacant. A further 30% of important Islamic sacred sites (shrines, cemeteries and pilgrimage routes, including many protected under Chinese law) have been demolished across Xinjiang, mostly since 2017, and an additional 28% have been damaged or altered in some way,” the report said.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin called the ASPI’s report “nothing but slanderous rumors” against China, adding that “such a shoddy report has no credibility at all.”
Rian Thum, a historian of Islam in China at the University of Nottingham, told VOA that the CCP sees threats to its control through racist and Islamophobic lenses.
“Expressions of distinctive culture are treated as a threat, even more so when that culture is connected to Islam,” Thum said.
Defending policies in Xinjiang
When faced with international backlash over the persecution of Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang in recent years, including the detention of nearly 1.8 million in internment camps, Chinese authorities reject the accusations, saying it is running a “transformation-through-education centers” campaign in Xinjiang where it faces “threat” from extremism and terrorism.
Last week, Chinese President Xi Jinping said his government’s policy in Xinjiang has achieved great results, while hailing the CCP’s “unprecedented achievements” since 2014.
“Practice has proved that the party’s strategy of governing Xinjiang in the new era is completely correct and must be adhered to for a long time,” Xi said during a high-level CCP meeting on Xinjiang policy in Beijing, according to Xinhua, a Chinese state-run news agency.
Joanne Smith Finley, an expert on Uighur studies at Newcastle University, said the Chinese state has associated all forms of Uighurs’ Islamic practice, however peaceful and ordinary, with religious extremism.
“The Chinese state under Xi Jinping has become increasingly Han-majoritarian and Han assimilationist since 2012. It has reconstructed the Uighur body, mind, language, religion and culture as an existential and biological threat to the Chinese nation,” she told VOA.
WHITE HOUSE – U.S. President Donald Trump returned to the White House Monday evening after 72 hours of hospitalization for COVID-19.
In a show of fitness, he climbed the steps of the South Portico, standing on the Truman Balcony where he removed his mask, gave a double thumbs-up gesture and saluted the Marine One helicopter as it prepared to take off from the South Lawn. Without putting his facemask back on, the president then walked into the White House where others were awaiting his arrival.
Earlier, as he walked out of the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, Trump said, “Thank you very much, everybody.”
Stepping off the helicopter and walking toward the White House residence, the president paused to turn to the cameras, waved and gave a thumbs-up. Asked by VOA how he was feeling, a muffled reply of “real good” could be heard.
Trump’s reelection campaign said the Republican president, trailing former Vice President Joe Biden in the polls, plans to participate in the Oct. 15 second debate against the Democratic Party nominee.
President Donald Trump gives two thumbs-up on the Blue Room Balcony upon returning to the White House, Oct. 5, 2020.
“Though he may not entirely be out of the woods yet, the team and I agree that all our evaluations, and most importantly, his clinical status, support his return home” to the White House, which has medical facilities and practitioners to monitor the president around the clock, his primary physician, Dr. Sean Conley, told reporters Monday afternoon.
“Every day a patient stays in the hospital unnecessarily is a risk to themselves,” he added. “Right now, there’s nothing being done upstairs here that we can’t safely conduct down home.”
Before leaving the hospital, the president tweeted, “Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life,” adding that he felt better than he did 20 years ago.
Speaking with reporters at the hospital, Conley, an osteopath and a commander in the U.S. Navy, declined to answer some questions, such as the condition of the president’s lungs, citing patient confidentiality.
The president is taking a steroid, dexamethasone, which is typically not administered in mild or moderate cases of the coronavirus, along with a five-day course of remdesivir, an antiviral medication.
Trump’s physicians remain “cautiously optimistic and on guard, because we’re in a bit of unchartered territory when it comes to a patient that received the therapies he has so early in the course,” Conley said. “If we can get through to Monday with him remaining the same, or improving, better yet, then we will all take that final deep sigh of relief.”
After tweeting a video on Sunday that he was “getting great reports” from his doctors, Trump promised a little surprise for his supporters outside the hospital where he is being treated.
The president then briefly left Walter Reed in an armored SUV with Secret Service agents in tow to drive by a flag-waving, cheering crowd outside the hospital.
His decision to do a drive-around for supporters Sunday evening was condemned by one attending physician at Walter Reed as irresponsible.
Dr. James Phillips, who is also chief of disaster medicine at The George Washington University in Washington, tweeted that the special vehicle the president was riding in is sealed against chemical attack.
“The risk of COVID-19 transmission inside is as high as it gets outside of medical procedures. The irresponsibility is astounding. My thoughts are with the Secret Service forced to play,” said Phillips, referring to the driver and an accompanying agent in the front seat who appeared to be wearing masks, face shields and gowns.
“Appropriate precautions were taken in the execution of this movement to protect the president and all those supporting it, including PPE,” White House spokesman, Judd Deere, said. “The movement was cleared by the medical team as safe to do.”
On Monday Conley said the drive was only “for a short period of time,” and the agents in the vehicle with Trump were adequately protected.
Dr. Sean Conley, physician to President Donald Trump, center, and other doctors, walk out to talk with reporters at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., Oct. 5, 2020.
Earlier Sunday, the doctors treating the president revealed that their patient had earlier experienced “two episodes of transient drops in his oxygen saturation.”
Conley received word last Thursday evening that both Trump and first lady Melania Trump tested positive for the coronavirus after one of the president’s close aides, Hope Hicks, was confirmed to be ill with the infection.
The doctor declined again on Monday, when pressed by reporters, to answer when Trump last tested negative for COVID-19, something considered important for doing adequate contact tracing to try to limit the spread of the virus.
“I don’t want to go backwards,” the physician said. “The contact tracing, as I understand it, is being done. I’m not involved with it.”
A member of the cleaning staff, dressed in a protective suit, sprays the James Brady Briefing Room of the White House, Oct. 5, 2020.
Trump’s campaign on Friday put a hold on all previously announced events involving the president’s participation.
Vice President Mike Pence is making campaign appearances this week, as well as facing off Wednesday evening against Sen. Kamala Harris of California, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee.
“As far as travel goes, we’ll see,” Conley replied when asked how soon Trump could get back on the campaign trail with less than a month before the Nov. 3 presidential election.
President Donald Trump arrives back at the White House aboard Marine One, Oct. 5, 2020, after being treated for COVID-19 at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.
Doctors said it is important to ensure that the president is no longer shedding virus and that he is in good enough physical shape before getting medical permission to travel.
Trump and Biden were about 4 meters apart on a debate stage last Tuesday in Cleveland, Ohio. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests at least 2 meters for social distancing purposes.
Biden’s campaign said the former vice president tested negative Friday for the coronavirus. A test on Sunday was also negative.
The coronavirus has killed 210,000 people in the United States and infected nearly 7.5 million across the country, according to Johns Hopkins University data.
ALMATY – People protesting the results of a parliamentary election in Kyrgyzstan broke into government and security headquarters early Tuesday, as fires broke out and the opposition tried to take control of the capital, local news websites Akipress and 24.kg reported.
The thousands-strong protests broke out after two establishment parties, one of which is close to President Sooronbai Jeenbekov, swept Sunday’s vote, according to preliminary results.
Police had dispersed the rally late on Monday, but protesters returned to the central square of capital Bishkek hours later and broke into the building that houses both the president and parliament. The building known locally as the White House was on fire on Tuesday morning.
Protesters then broke into the headquarters of State Committee on National Security and freed former president Almazbek Atambayev, who was sentenced to a lengthy prison term this year on corruption charges after falling out with his successor, President Sooronbai Jeenbekov.
Jeenbekov said late on Monday he would meet on Tuesday with the leaders of all parties that had taken part in the election. Meanwhile, opposition groups appointed their own acting head of national security and named a commandant of Bishkek although it was unclear how much actual power they wielded.
The Central Asian country of 6.5 million, which is closely allied with Russia, has a history of political volatility. In the past 15 years, two of its presidents have been toppled by Revolts.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is holding talks Tuesday in Tokyo with his counterparts from Japan, Australia and India that are aimed at strengthening a regional initiative to counter China’s growing assertiveness.
The four top diplomats, including Japanese Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi, Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne and Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, India’s Minister of External Affairs — dubbed in diplomatic circles as the Quad, will discuss the impact of the coronavirus pandemic and the creation of a Free and Open Indo-Pacific Initiative (FOIP) focused on economic and security cooperation.
The four diplomats also will meet with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga as part of his first diplomatic effort since replacing Shinzo Abe last month, after Abe stepped down citing health issues.
Japan’s Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, right, and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo pose as they attend a meeting at the prime minister’s office in Tokyo, Oct. 6, 2020.
During a bilateral meeting with Motegi ahead of the Quad summit, Pompeo praised Prime Minister Suga as “a powerful force for good” serving as Abe’s chief spokesman and key ally during the former prime minister’s tenure, and he said Washington “has every reason to believe he will strengthen our enduring alliance in his new role.”
Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs David Stilwell briefed reporters by phone Friday on Pompeo’s upcoming trip. Stilwell said Pompeo’s first stop will be Tokyo and lauded the timing because Japan’s new Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga has just taken the helm.
China has denounced the Quad as an attempt to contain its development. The visit comes at a low point for U.S.-China relations, and Pompeo has been a forceful and outspoken critic of the Chinese Communist Party and what he views as Beijing’s aggressive foreign policy.
Tuesday’s quadrilateral meeting in Tokyo was to be Pompeo’s first stop on a three-nation tour of Asia that included Mongolia and South Korea, but those visits were canceled after President Donald Trump tested positive for COVID-19 last week and was briefly hospitalized.
STOCKHOLM – Three scientists won this year’s Nobel Prize in physics Tuesday for advancing our understanding of black holes.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said that Briton Roger Penrose will receive half of this year’s prize “for the discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity.”
Goran K. Hansson, the academy’s secretary-general, said German Reinhard Genzel and American Andrea Ghez will receive the second half of the prize “for the discovery of a supermassive compact object at the center of our galaxy.”
The prizes celebrate “one of the most exotic objects in the universe,” black holes, which have become a staple of science fiction and science fact and where time even seems to stand still, Nobel committee scientists said.
Penrose proved with mathematics that the formation of black holes was possible, based heavily on Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity. Genzel and Ghez looked at the dust-covered center of our Milky Way galaxy where something strange was going on, several stars moving around something they couldn’t see.
It was a black hole. Not just an ordinary black hole, but a supermassive black hole, 4 million times the mass of our sun.
Now scientists know that all galaxies have supermassive black holes.
It is common for several scientists who worked in related fields to share the prize. Last year’s prize went to Canadian-born cosmologist James Peebles for theoretical work about the early moments after the Big Bang, and Swiss astronomers Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz for discovering a planet outside our solar system.
The prestigious award comes with a gold medal and prize money of 10 million Swedish kronor (more than $1.1 million), courtesy of a bequest left 124 years ago by the prize’s creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel. The amount was increased recently to adjust for inflation.
On Monday, the Nobel Committee awarded the prize for physiology and medicine to Americans Harvey J. Alter and Charles M. Rice and British-born scientist Michael Houghton for discovering the liver-ravaging hepatitis C virus.
The other prizes, to be announced in the coming days, are for outstanding work in the fields of chemistry, literature, peace and economics.
WHITE HOUSE – U.S. President Donald Trump, infected with the coronavirus, declared from the White House on Tuesday that he is planning to show up for his second debate with Democratic Party presidential nominee Joe Biden.
“I am looking forward to the debate on the evening of Thursday, October 15th in Miami. It will be great!” the president said on Twitter.
Trump first tested positive for COVID-19 last Thursday and was hospitalized for 72 hours between Friday evening and Monday. Based on that timeline, his attendance at the event, during which they are to answer questions from voters, could pose a public health risk, based on guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which considers someone infected with the virus to be contagious 10 to 20 days from the onset of symptoms.
The Commission on Presidential Debates, the nonprofit group sponsoring the debates, has not yet commented on this matter.
Trump arrived back at the White House on Monday evening. His personal physician, Dr. Sean Conley, said in a statement Tuesday that the president had a “restful first night at home, and today, he reports no symptoms.”
FILE – U.S. Navy Commander Dr. Sean Conley, the White House physician, is flanked by other doctors as he speaks to the media at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, Oct. 4, 2020.
Monday morning on social media, Trump wrote that the coronavirus in most populations is “far less lethal” than seasonal influenza. Facebook deleted the message.
“We remove incorrect information about the severity of COVID-19 and have now removed this post,” said Andy Stone, a Facebook spokesman.
Twitter restricted Trump’s tweet, applying a warning label that noted it violates the social media platform’s guideline “about spreading misleading and potentially harmful information related to COVID-19.”
Trump urged Americans not to “be afraid” of COVID-19 after he returned to the White House.
In a show of fitness, he climbed the steps of the South Portico, standing on the Truman Balcony, where he removed his mask, gave a double thumbs-up gesture and saluted the Marine One helicopter as it prepared to take off from the South Lawn. Without putting his face mask back on, the president then walked into the White House where others were awaiting his arrival.
FILE – U.S. President Donald Trump salutes without a face mask on the Truman Balcony of the White House after returning from being hospitalized at Walter Reed Medical Center for coronavirus, in Washington, Oct. 5, 2020.
Earlier, as he walked out of the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, Trump said, “Thank you very much, everybody.”
Stepping off the helicopter and walking toward the White House residence, the president paused and turned to the cameras, waved and gave a thumbs-up. Asked by VOA how he was feeling, a muffled reply of “real good” could be heard.
Later in the evening, he tweeted out a recorded message about COVID19, saying ”Don’t let it dominate you. Don’t be afraid of it.”
“We’re going back, we’re going back to work. We’re going to be out front,” he said. “Don’t let it dominate your lives. Get out there, be careful,” he added.
Trump’s primary physician gave an update of his condition Monday afternoon before he was discharged from Walter Reed.
“Though he may not entirely be out of the woods yet, the team and I agree that all our evaluations, and most importantly, his clinical status, support his return home” to the White House, which has medical facilities and practitioners to monitor the president around the clock,” Conley told reporters.
“Every day a patient stays in the hospital unnecessarily is a risk to themselves,” he added. ”Right now, there’s nothing being done upstairs here that we can’t safely conduct down home.”
The White House is “taking every precaution necessary” to protect not just Trump and first lady Melania Trump, who also tested positive for the coronavirus, but “every staff member working on the complex” consistent with CDC guidelines and best practices, according to Judd Deere, a White House spokesman.
Deere said that physical access to Trump is being significantly limited, and appropriate protective equipment is being worn by those near him.
Several White House officials and other staff are known to be currently infected with the virus, including press secretary Kayleigh McEnany and presidential adviser Hope Hicks.
FILE – Kayleigh McEnany speaks after U.S. President Trump announced he tested positive for the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Washington.
Speaking with reporters at the hospital prior to Trump’s discharge, Conley, an osteopath and a commander in the U.S. Navy, declined to answer some questions, such as the condition of the president’s lungs, citing patient confidentiality.
The president has been taking a steroid, dexamethasone, which is typically not administered in mild or moderate cases of the coronavirus, along with a five-day course of remdesivir, an antiviral medication.
Trump’s campaign on Friday put a hold on all previously announced events involving the president’s participation.
Vice President Mike Pence is making campaign appearances this week, as well as facing off Wednesday evening against Sen. Kamala Harris of California, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee.
FILE – U.S. Vice President Mike Pence and his wife Karen arrive ahead of the vice presidential debate in Salt Lake City, Utah, Oct. 5, 2020.
“As far as travel goes, we’ll see,” Conley replied when asked how soon Trump could get back on the campaign trail with less than a month before the November 3 presidential election.
Doctors said it is important to ensure that the president is no longer shedding virus and that he is in good enough physical shape before getting medical permission to travel.
Trump and Biden were about 4 meters apart on a debate stage last Tuesday in Cleveland, Ohio. The CDC suggests at least 2 meters for social distancing purposes.
The coronavirus has killed 210,000 people in the United States and infected nearly 7.5 million across the country, according to Johns Hopkins University data.
