ГОЛОВНЕ

In Russia, countrywide celebrations have been held to mark the 350th anniversary of the national flag. Yet, only 50 percent of respondents polled in a recent survey could correctly name the sequence of the colors on the flag. Russia recently saw a surge of patriotic celebrations orchestrated by local and federal authorities. Yulia Savchenko has more from Moscow on the state-promoted events.
 

…

This week, on #VOAOurVoices: from afro beats and South Africa’s hypnotic gqom music, to the Ivorian sounds of Coupé-Decalé, African artists continue to reinvent the rhythms of Africa – and the world is taking note. This week, our hosts are joined by David Vandy, from VOA’s The African Beat. Together, they explore the global influence and reach of African music, and how that expansion benefits artists from the continent. In our #WomentoWatch segment, we highlight the women who are pushing the sounds of Africa to a new level, and feature a live performance from singer-songwriter ToluMiDe.

…

Police in Hong Kong have arrested three prominent pro-democracy activists, ahead of a major protest that had been planned for Saturday. The march had already been called off by organizers after an appeals board denied permission.

Joshua Wong, founder of political party Demosisto, was arrested Friday on suspicions of organizing an unauthorized protest on June 21, according to police.

“He was suddenly pushed into a private car on the street,” Demosisto, which advocates for greater democracy in Hong Kong, said on its official Twitter account.

Agnes Chow, also of Demosisto, was arrested at her home.

Police said Wong and Chow, both 22, are being investigated on suspicion of “organizing unorganized assembly” and “knowingly participating in unauthorized assembly.”

Wong was a prominent figure of Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement for full democracy during protests in 2014 that paralyzed parts of the city for 79 days. In June, he was released from jail after serving a five-week term for contempt of court.

On Thursday police also arrested Andy Chan, a founder of the pro-independence Hong Kong National Party, on suspicion of “participating in riots” and “attacking police” during a protest on July 13.

In an interview with VOA, Wong said protesters are “afraid of Beijing” and that China’s response to the current protests is much more intense than its approach to the Umbrella Movement.

“During the Umbrella Movement, the police fired 80 to 90 [rounds of] tear gas in Hong Kong. Now, they fired 2,000 [rounds of] tear gas in Hong Kong. So, we experienced a stronger crackdown on human rights,” he said.

Police have arrested about 900 protesters since the demonstrations, generally peaceful, began in June to stop a now-suspended extradition bill that would allow for sending criminal suspects to Mainland China for trial. 

The protests have evolved into a movement for democratic reforms, but have recently turned violent, with protesters clashing with police.

Beijing has positioned paramilitary forces at Hong Kong’s border as part of its campaign to suppress the protests. Wong declared the move “is not a solution to silence the voices of the protesters.” 

Wong warned it is “time for people to be aware that perhaps another Tiananmen Massacre may happen in Hong Kong,” a reference to the deadly 1989 student-led demonstrations in Beijing. “So the world’s leaders should support the Hong Kong people with [their] solidarity.”

Wong also told VOA his invitation to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping still stands.

“President Xi should come to Hong Kong and meet with the protesters, not only meeting with me. If he comes to the crowd of the protesters, I think the protesters will chat with him and express the voices of the Hong Kong people.”

…

A large scientific study into the biological basis of sexual behavior has confirmed there is no single “gay gene” but that a complex mix of genetics and environment affects whether a person has same-sex sexual partners. 

The research, which analyzed data on DNA and sexual experiences from almost half a million people, found there are thousands of genetic variants linked to same-sex sexual behavior, most with very small effects. 

Five of the genetic markers were “significantly” associated with same-sex behavior, the researchers said, but even these are far from being predictive of a person’s sexual preferences. 

“We scanned the entire human genome and found a handful — five, to be precise — of locations that are clearly associated with whether a person reports in engaging in same-sex sexual behavior,” said Andrea Ganna, a biologist at the Institute of Molecular Medicine in Finland who co-led the research. 

He said these have “a very small effect” and, combined, explain “considerably less than 1% of the variance in the self-reported same-sex sexual behavior.” 

Other factors

This means that nongenetic factors — such as environment, upbringing, personality, nurture — are far more significant in influencing a person’s choice of sexual partner, just as with most other personality, behavioral and physical human traits, the researchers said. 

The study, which was the largest of its kind, analyzed survey responses and performed analyses known as genome-wide association studies (GWAS) on data from more than 470,000 people who had given DNA samples and lifestyle information to the UK Biobank and to the U.S. genetics testing company 23andMeInc. 

Asked why they had wanted to conduct such research, the team 
told reporters on a teleconference that previous studies on this topic had mostly been too small to offer robust conclusions. 

“Previous studies were small and underpowered,” Ganna said. “So we decided to form a large international consortium and collected data for [almost] 500,000 people, [which] is approximately 100 times bigger than previous studies on this topic.” 

The results, published in the journal Science on Thursday, found no clear patterns among genetic variants that could be used to meaningfully predict or identify a person’s sexual behavior, the researchers said. 

‘A lot of diversity’

“We’ve clarified that there’s a lot of diversity out there,” said Benjamin Neale, a member at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard who worked with Ganna. “This moves our understanding [of same-sex sex] to a deeper and more nuanced place.” 

Sexual-rights campaigners welcomed the study, saying it “provides even more evidence that being gay or lesbian is a natural part of human life.” 

“This new research also reconfirms the long-established understanding that there is no conclusive degree to which nature or nurture influences how a gay or lesbian person behaves,” said Zeke Stokes of the U.S.-based LGBTQ rights group GLAAD. 

…

U.S. President Donald Trump’s national security adviser visited Belarus Thursday, receiving an enthusiastic welcome from its autocratic leader who has faced Western criticism over the nation’s democratic record.

John Bolton met with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who has ruled the nation of 10 million with an iron hand for a quarter century, showing little tolerance for dissent and independent media.

Lukashenko warmly greeted Bolton, saying that Belarus is ready to “turn a new page” in relations with Washington. “We haven’t seen such high-ranking figures here for a long time, which makes your visit historic,” he said.

The Belarusian leader asked Bolton to deliver presents to Trump and his wife — a navy officer’s dagger for the president and a linen tablecloth with napkins for the first lady. He added that he was a “fan” of Trump ahead of the 2016 election and was glad that he won.

Lukashenko also gave gifts to Bolton — a box of chocolate and a book about Belarusian folk art.

The U.S. and the European Union have continuously criticized Belarus for its crackdown on the opposition and flawed elections and introduced sanctions against Lukashenko’s government. Some of those penalties have been lifted in recent years as Lukashenko, who was once dubbed Europe’s last dictator, has sought to improve his nation’s rights record.

Speaking after the talks that lasted for three hours instead of a planned hour-long meeting, Bolton said it offered “an excellent opportunity to discuss several very important matters — regional security and bilateral cooperation.”

“History does not stand still,” Bolton said. “A fair amount of time has passed since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The geopolitical situation has changed. It is changing even as we are talking. Therefore, there is a regional agenda. There are also matters related to some faraway countries that also have an impact on the situation here.”

Russia is Belarus’ main sponsor and ally, but the two nations have a slew of trade disputes. Lukashenko has won concessions from Moscow in the past by raising the prospect of a shift toward the West, and a meeting with Bolton offered him a chance to use the same tactic.

Last fall, Russia introduced higher prices for its oil supplies, dealing a heavy blow to Belarus, which has been making hefty profits from the export of oil products made from cheap Russian crude. Lukashenko has criticized the price hike as part of Moscow’s efforts to persuade his country to abandon its independence.

Russia and Belarus signed a union treaty in 1997 that envisaged close ties, but stopped short of forming a single state. Some in Belarus fear that the Kremlin may now contemplate a full merger. Lukashenko has said that the two countries could more closely integrate their economies, but emphasized that Belarus would remain independent.

Asked about the possibility of Belarus’ merger with Russia, Bolton replied that Belarusians don’t want it.

“The question is what the people of Belarus want,” he told reporters. “I think they want independence.”

…

Democratic U.S. Senators Chris Coons and Chris Van Hollen last week endorsed taking action to head off a possible Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, lauded an innovative Ugandan approach to resettling war refugees, and called for greater political openness in Uganda.

The senators spoke to VOA after traveling to Uganda earlier this month.  The Aug. 12-15 trip occurred as Ebola was spreading in the neighboring DRC. During the last pandemic, Coons said, “we made a critical investment in protecting Liberia, West Africa and frankly the world, and we could and should do that again in the Democratic Republic of the Congo today.”

The two also met with refugees fleeing South Sudanese and Congolese conflicts, and Coons praised Uganda’s response to the refugee influx. Refugees in Uganda live in settlements resembling villages and are granted small land plots and the immediate right to work. They are also more deliberately integrated into local communities, which includes access to local schools. This is in contrast to most parts of the world, where refugees are housed in camps.

“This is a compelling model that reduces tensions between the refugees and the host communities,” Coons said of settlements he toured in Bidi Bidi and Lobule in northern Uganda. Such arrangements “make it possible for refugee families to grow and develop until there’s a time when their host countries are safe enough for them to return. And it’s a model that’s being made possible by some significant support from the United States.”

In between rain showers, Coons and Van Hollen toured the Lobule refugee settlement, where refugees were receiving cash vouchers through the World Food Program to be used in local markets. In its use of vouchers, increasingly employed as an alternative to the delivery of bulk food, the WFP has been building on a pilot program implemented in 2014 of providing cash vouchers to refugees. 

According to an email from Stephan Deutscher, a program policy officer for cash-based transfers at the WFP, as of this month, WFP Uganda was providing “monthly unconditional unrestricted cash transfers to more than 360,000 refugees in eight settlements across the country,” including Lobule, with the hope of reaching up to 500,000 refugees by the end of the year.

“The cash transfer value is equivalent to the value of the food basket refugees would otherwise receive in kind,” Deutscher wrote, currently 31,000 Ugandan shillings (about $8.40) per month.

With that money, refugees were able to immediately gain access to — and invest in buying and reselling of — produce in local markets. One group of women standing around a stand that sold fish and vegetables, several yards from where the cash vouchers were distributed, said that while the money was not enough, it helped.

Coons said he was encouraged at how the food assistance had developed even since he visited Uganda in 2017 with former Republican Senator Bob Corker.

Coons praised the program, calling it “a more flexible, more cost-effective, more sustainable model for delivering food assistance.”

In addition to meeting with refugees in the northern Ugandan settlements at Lobule and Bidi Bidi, one of the world’s largest refugee settlements, Coons and Van Hollen met with Ugandan Prime Minister Ruhakana Rugunda, raising the issue of criticism of President Yoweri Museveni, who has been widely criticized domestically and globally for overstaying his time in office and suppressing opposition.

Coons called the relationship with the Ugandan government, which works with Washington in the fight against al-Shabab, “complex.”

“There have been significant actions by the government, by President Museveni, who has been president for decades, to constrain civil society, to harass or threaten political opponents, to shut down news outlets, and to pass legislation that narrows the space for civil society in Uganda,” Coons said.

“While it certainly is not the most oppressive regime in Africa, it clearly needs to create more open political space in the country for dissenting voices and opposition views,” Van Hollen said. “I raised that issue with the prime minister, especially as it related to providing the growing youth population an opportunity to express themselves politically, and they have adopted this new law that says that people can engage in protests, but in order to do so, they have to get these government permits, and the government uses that device to suppress dissent.”

Earlier this month, the academic Stella Nyanzi was sentenced to jail for 18 months for “cyber harassing and offensive communication” for a poem she wrote and posted on Facebook last year, in which she wished that the president had burned up in his mother’s birth canal.

Pop star, minister of parliament and presidential hopeful Bobi Wine, whose real name is Robert Kyagulanyi, was charged this month with “annoying” the president after Wine and other opposition leaders allegedly stoned the president’s convoy in August 2018.

“I thought it was important that we met with Bobi Wine,” Van Hollen said of a brief meeting toward the beginning of the trip, “and not because the United States should take a position or support any particular candidate. We should not do that, but we should support a process that creates more political space and room for dissent within the democratic process.”

In a separate encounter later that week, Van Hollen added that while debarking in Nairobi on a flight from Uganda, he and Coons ran into Wine, who was in Kenya to record music.

“He was worried that the Ugandan authorities would crack down on the music studio if he tried to record it in Uganda,” Van Hollen said.

“That’s just another example of fear of government suppression, and it’s not without reason.”

…

Teenage environmental activist Greta Thunberg arrived in New York on Wednesday after crossing the Atlantic Ocean in a zero-emissions sailboat to attend a conference on global warming. 
 
The 16-year-old Swede set sail from Plymouth, England, on Aug. 14. At 4 a.m., she tweeted:

Land!! The lights of Long Island and New York City ahead. pic.twitter.com/OtDyQOWtF5

— Greta Thunberg (@GretaThunberg) August 28, 2019

Thunberg came to the U.S. for the U.N. climate summit and chose to sail rather than fly to avoid the greenhouse gas emissions that come with commercial jet travel. 
 
Thunberg said she first learned about climate change when she was 8 years old and became very concerned about the future of humanity.  
 
A few years later, she was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, obsessive-compulsive disorder and selective mutism.  “That basically means I only speak when I think it’s necessary,” she told the audience at a TED Talk last year. “Now is one of those moments.” 
 
In August 2018, Thunberg stopped attending school on Fridays and took to protesting alone outside the Swedish parliament. She called it a strike intended to draw attention to climate change.  
 
Thousands of students have since taken up her cause around the world, staying out of school on Fridays and demanding adults do something about climate change. 
 

The boat carrying Thunberg, the Malizia II, has the hashtag #FridaysForFuture under “UNITE BEHIND THE SCIENCE” inscribed on the sails.  
 
The sailboat’s onboard electronics are powered by solar panels and underwater turbines. It has no toilet or fixed shower aboard, no windows below deck and only a small gas cooker to heat up freeze-dried food. 

Thunberg’s boat was greeted by a flotilla of 17 sailboats representing each of the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goals on their sails.
 
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres welcomed Thunberg on Twitter: 

Welcome to New York, @gretathunberg!

The determination and perseverance shown during your journey should embolden all of us taking part in next month’s #ClimateAction Summit.

We must deliver on the demands of people around the world and address the global climate crisis. pic.twitter.com/dGUZr9fFQM

— António Guterres (@antonioguterres) August 28, 2019

Thunberg will speak at the U.N. Climate Action Summit next month and then attend a climate summit in Chile in December. She is taking a year off from school to pursue her activism.  

…