News in Brief
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) -- San Francisco declared a local emergency over the coronavirus on Tuesday, despite having no cases, as U.S. officials urged Americans to prepare for the spread of infections within their communities. California’s fourth-largest city said it made the move to boost its coronavirus preparedness and raise public awareness of risks the virus may spread to the city. "Although there are still zero confirmed cases in San Francisco residents, the global picture is changing rapidly, and we need to step-up preparedness,” Mayor London Breed said in a statement. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) told the United States on Tuesday to prepare for community spread after infections surfaced in several more countries. The 14 confirmed U.S. cases of coronavirus have been mostly travel related, with only two cases of person-to-person spread. There are also 39 cases among Americans evacuated from the Diamond Princess cruise ship in Tokyo and from Wuhan, China.
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MOSCOW (AP) — A former senior aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that Ukraine will never be able to regain control over the separatist-controlled east. Vladislav Surkov, who lost his job as Putin’s adviser on Ukraine earlier this month, said in remarks published Wednesday that he stepped down because of a shift in the Kremlin course on the Ukrainian conflict. He didn’t spell out specific reasons for his departure, saying only that it was due to a "change in context” on Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has made settling the conflict in eastern Ukraine his top priority. December’s summit of Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany failed to achieve a breakthrough, but the four leaders made a deal on a prisoner exchange and agreed on further moves toward settling the conflict in the east.
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LJUBLJANA (Reuters) -- Slovenian President Borut Pahor on Wednesday named a former prime minister Janez Jansa, the head of the largest party in parliament, as a candidate for a new prime minister and asked parliament to confirm him. The parliament is expected to confirm Jansa, head of the center-right Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS), next week. He will replace center-left Prime Minister Marjan Sarec who resigned last month. The nomination comes a day after the SDS agreed a majority coalition with the center-left Party of Modern Centre, the conservative New Slovenia and the pensioners’ party Desus. Jansa told a news conference that his government will focus on improving the inefficient national health system, cutting red tape and decentralizing the country.
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GENEVA (Reuters) -- China expects UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet to visit the country this year, including its restive Xinjiang region, its Geneva ambassador said on Wednesday. UN experts and activists say at least 1 million ethnic Uighurs and other Muslims are held in detention centers in Xinjiang. China describes them as training centers helping to stamp out terrorism and extremism and give people new skills. "We are looking forward to the visit of the High Commissioner, Mrs. Bachelet, to China including to Xinjiang this year, and we are working closely with her office on detailed arrangements for her visit,” Chen Xu told the UN Human Rights Council, where Germany and others raised concerns this week.
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ALMATY (Reuters) -- Gulnara Karimova, the imprisoned daughter of late Uzbek President Islam Karimov, has asked his successor to release her in exchange for facilitating the confiscation of her remaining assets, worth $686 million. Karimova, 47, was jailed in March 2019 for violating the terms of her house arrest after receiving a five-year sentence in 2015 on charges of embezzlement and extortion. In an open letter to President Shavkat Mirziyoyev published on Wednesday, she said she had not been told how long she was supposed to remain behind bars, but asked him to allow her release, citing ill health and an urgent need for surgery. In exchange, Karimova said she would stop legally contesting the Tashkent government’s efforts to confiscate from her $686 million in assets already frozen by authorities in Switzerland. Karimova, a powerful businesswoman before she fell out with her own father around 2014, said the Uzbek government has already confiscated $1.2 billion worth of her assets.
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NAIROBI (Reuters) -- The Burundi government said it had killed at least 22 "wrongdoers” in the hills overlooking the main city Bujumbura since last week, in what it described as violence linked to a presidential election scheduled for May. The authorities said two members of the police force were killed and six attackers were captured. The clashes erupted after local residents called the police to alert them to the presence of about a dozen gunmen hiding in coffee plantations in Nyabiraba district, a local administrator told Reuters on condition of anonymity. Police said fighting also spread to the neighboring Isare district. "Wrongdoers took advantage of this electoral period thinking people are distracted,” police spokesman Pierre Nkurikiye said on the state broadcaster RTNB. "The population should remain calm because security officers are ensuring its security.” Burundi, which has a similar ethnic composition to neighboring Rwanda, has suffered from decades of ethnic and political violence, including a 1993-2005 civil war in which 300,000 people died, mostly civilians.
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MOSCOW (AP) — A former senior aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that Ukraine will never be able to regain control over the separatist-controlled east. Vladislav Surkov, who lost his job as Putin’s adviser on Ukraine earlier this month, said in remarks published Wednesday that he stepped down because of a shift in the Kremlin course on the Ukrainian conflict. He didn’t spell out specific reasons for his departure, saying only that it was due to a "change in context” on Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has made settling the conflict in eastern Ukraine his top priority. December’s summit of Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany failed to achieve a breakthrough, but the four leaders made a deal on a prisoner exchange and agreed on further moves toward settling the conflict in the east.
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LJUBLJANA (Reuters) -- Slovenian President Borut Pahor on Wednesday named a former prime minister Janez Jansa, the head of the largest party in parliament, as a candidate for a new prime minister and asked parliament to confirm him. The parliament is expected to confirm Jansa, head of the center-right Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS), next week. He will replace center-left Prime Minister Marjan Sarec who resigned last month. The nomination comes a day after the SDS agreed a majority coalition with the center-left Party of Modern Centre, the conservative New Slovenia and the pensioners’ party Desus. Jansa told a news conference that his government will focus on improving the inefficient national health system, cutting red tape and decentralizing the country.
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GENEVA (Reuters) -- China expects UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet to visit the country this year, including its restive Xinjiang region, its Geneva ambassador said on Wednesday. UN experts and activists say at least 1 million ethnic Uighurs and other Muslims are held in detention centers in Xinjiang. China describes them as training centers helping to stamp out terrorism and extremism and give people new skills. "We are looking forward to the visit of the High Commissioner, Mrs. Bachelet, to China including to Xinjiang this year, and we are working closely with her office on detailed arrangements for her visit,” Chen Xu told the UN Human Rights Council, where Germany and others raised concerns this week.
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ALMATY (Reuters) -- Gulnara Karimova, the imprisoned daughter of late Uzbek President Islam Karimov, has asked his successor to release her in exchange for facilitating the confiscation of her remaining assets, worth $686 million. Karimova, 47, was jailed in March 2019 for violating the terms of her house arrest after receiving a five-year sentence in 2015 on charges of embezzlement and extortion. In an open letter to President Shavkat Mirziyoyev published on Wednesday, she said she had not been told how long she was supposed to remain behind bars, but asked him to allow her release, citing ill health and an urgent need for surgery. In exchange, Karimova said she would stop legally contesting the Tashkent government’s efforts to confiscate from her $686 million in assets already frozen by authorities in Switzerland. Karimova, a powerful businesswoman before she fell out with her own father around 2014, said the Uzbek government has already confiscated $1.2 billion worth of her assets.
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NAIROBI (Reuters) -- The Burundi government said it had killed at least 22 "wrongdoers” in the hills overlooking the main city Bujumbura since last week, in what it described as violence linked to a presidential election scheduled for May. The authorities said two members of the police force were killed and six attackers were captured. The clashes erupted after local residents called the police to alert them to the presence of about a dozen gunmen hiding in coffee plantations in Nyabiraba district, a local administrator told Reuters on condition of anonymity. Police said fighting also spread to the neighboring Isare district. "Wrongdoers took advantage of this electoral period thinking people are distracted,” police spokesman Pierre Nkurikiye said on the state broadcaster RTNB. "The population should remain calm because security officers are ensuring its security.” Burundi, which has a similar ethnic composition to neighboring Rwanda, has suffered from decades of ethnic and political violence, including a 1993-2005 civil war in which 300,000 people died, mostly civilians.