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The head of Zimbabwe’s Doctors Association has left the country for urgent medical treatment in South Africa after being held captivity, during which his medical team says he was poisoned.  Police tried to block his departure even though he had a court order allowing him to leave.  Columbus Mavhunga reports from Harare for VOA News.

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Losing a job is seldom a good thing.  Repeatedly losing that job on the same day sounds nightmarish. Get ready to feel sorry for a person who does not exist. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi plugs us in to an alternate reality created to help managers hone skills at performing an unpleasant but sometimes necessary task.

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A shallow tremor Thursday sent terrified residents of northeastern Pakistan onto the streets, days after a powerful quake killed 38 people and caused widespread damage in the area.

The tremor stretched already-frayed nerves in Mirpur, in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir, as fears of aftershocks from Tuesday’s quake sent hundreds into the streets and put local hospitals on alert.

The US Geological Survey put the quake at 4.7 magnitude and 10 kilometres (six miles) deep, adding that it had struck just four kilometres outside of Mirpur.

City residents huddled in streets following the quake, some still barefoot, while others recited verses from the Koran.

“It’s hell. I am running to save my life,” Mohammad Bilal told AFP moments after the tremor.

“I thought most of the building would have tumbled down,” said Sagheer Ahmad. “Allah is very kind to us.”

Dozens of patients were evacuated from the main government hospital in Mirpur, some in wheelchairs or on stretchers.

Dr Farooq Noor, the medical superintendent at the hospital, told AFP that 93 people were brought in after the tremor.

Most were swiftly discharged with minor wounds or shock, but some with head injuries and broken limbs were admitted, he added.

The city’s hospitals were already packed with hundreds injured by the quake earlier in the week.

‘Poor construction’

The tremor came as rescuers continued to pick through toppled buildings to reach victims from Tuesday’s earthquake.

“You can see we have no arrangements, we don’t have any place to live, have nothing to eat, we are pulling out rubble, and trying to restore electricity and water,” Muhammad Waqas Aslam, who lives in the village of Nakkah Kharak outside Mirpur, told AFP.

The village of Jatlan appeared to be one of the worst affected by Tuesday’s quake, while Mirpur was largely spared major damage.

In Jatlan, bridges, mobile-phone towers and electricity poles were badly damaged while its roads were ripped apart.

Pakistani geologists blamed the “poor construction of shanty houses in Jatlan” for some of the damage, as well as its location near a fault line and the shallowness of the quake.

Pakistan’s Kashmir information minister Mushtaq Minhas said at least 6,500 homes were destroyed by Tuesday’s quake, adding that officials had begun to distribute thousands of tents to affected residents.

Mirpur, a city known for its palatial houses, has strong ties to Britain and many of its population of 450,000 carry both British and Pakistani passports.

The city owes its prosperity to thousands of former residents who migrated to Britain in the 1960s, but retained their links to the area — repatriating money to buy land and build plush homes.

Tuesday’s quake also sent people in Lahore and Islamabad running into the streets, while tremors were felt as far as New Delhi.

Pakistan straddles the boundary where the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates meet, making the country susceptible to earthquakes.

In October 2015, a 7.5-magnitude quake in Pakistan and Afghanistan killed almost 400 people across rugged terrain that impeded relief efforts.

The country was also hit by a 7.6-magnitude quake on October 8, 2005, that killed more than 73,000 people and left about 3.5 million homeless, mainly in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir.

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The fate of Emmanuel Macron’s presidency of France may lie in the fate of his planned overhaul of the retirement system, which has already prompted strikes and protests.

Knowing that it’s not going to be the easiest of sells following the yellow vest movement that brought France to a near-standstill last winter, Macron is embarking Thursday on a “Tour de France” of meetings to try to convince skeptical workers that reform is exactly what France’s stretched and hugely complicated pension system needs to survive into the long-term.  
 
Here’s a look at the planned changes, and why they are generating debate:
 
France old-age pension system

The country’s retirement system has its roots in 1673 and the reign King Louis XIV. Initially for royal marines, the system swelled to include civil servants in the wake of the French Revolution at the end of the 18th century. Military personnel were added in 1831, followed by others over the decades to come, before employees in the private sector were finally added in 1930.
 
Now, all French retirees receive a state pension. The average French pension this year stands at 1,400 euros per month ($1,500 per month) once taxes are deducted. But that average masks an array of different pension regimes. In total, there are 42 pension regimes.
 
So many special regimes
 
The easy bit: Employees from the private sector are affiliated to the overall system. The account for around 7 of 10 workers.
 
The more complicated bit: many professions have a special pension regime. Some workers like train workers and air crews allow early retirements, others, like lawyers and doctors, pay less tax.
 
Civil servants also have a separate pension scheme.
 
Over the last three decades, governments have made changes but each reform has been met with massive demonstrations. None of the changes managed to simplify the system.    
 
Macron’s grand plan
 
Macron wants to simplify the system and replace it with a unified scheme, so that all French workers have the same pension rights.
 
He promises that the overhaul will make the system fairer.
 
He also wants to make the French pension system, which is projected to be in deficit in the coming years, more sustainable.
 
However, unions argue that the new system will require people to work longer and reduce pensions. Strikes have already taken place and more are expected over the coming months.
 
The government has promised the legal retirement age of 62 won’t change, but new financial conditions may encourage people to work longer.
 
Macron’s government said some specific measures would be maintained to allow military and police officers to retire earlier. Very arduous jobs would also be taken into account to allow workers to retire earlier.

What’s next?
 
The government has opened three-month talks with unions, employer groups and professional organizations. Ordinary citizens are also being invited to give their opinion on a dedicated website and in public meetings — the first one taking place in the southern town of Rodez Thursday in the presence of Macron.
 
The government says that what finally emerges will take into account the outcomes of the current debate.
 
The bill is expected to be debated by lawmakers next summer. The government has said that the changes will only apply on people born after 1963 and will enter progressively into force between 2025 and 2040.

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Israel’s president has asked Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to try to form a new government after last week’s deadlocked elections that have paralyzed the country.

The office of President Reuven Rivlin made the announcement after meeting Wednesday with Netanyahu and his primary challenger, Benny Gantz.

Rivlin has the responsibility of selecting the candidate he believes has the best chance of forming a coalition government after neither Netanyahu nor Gantz captured the required support of the parliamentary majority.

Rivlin mediated two previous meetings this week between the politicians, hoping to reach a deal between Netanyahu’s conservative Likud party and Gantz’s centrist and liberal Blue and White alliance.

The talks ended, though, because of disagreements over who should lead a new unity government.

Gantz has said he would not participate in a Netanyahu-led government because of the prime minister’s legal problems.

Netanyahu is desperate to remain as prime minister amid an ongoing corruption investigation against him. The country’s attorney general recommends charging Netanyahu fraud, bribery and breach of trust stemming from a number of scandals.

Netanyahu, who denies any wrongdoing, is scheduled to appear before the attorney general next week, after which a decision on the charges is expected.

Final election results announced Wednesday show the Blue and White won 33 seats in the 120-seat parliament, one more than the Likud’s 32 seats. Even with the support of other allies, both parties remain short of the required 61-seat majority.

Israeli law gives the president’s first choice to form a government six weeks to achieve the task. If he fails, the president can task another candidate. A second failure could enable a majority of parliament to nominate a third person as prime minister. Yet another failure would force Israel to hold its third election in less than a year.  

 

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VOA Burmese Service contributed to this report

The U.S. House of Representatives has passed legislation aimed at advancing efforts to hold senior Myanmar leaders accountable for crimes committed against Rohingya and other ethnic minorities.

The BURMA act was approved on Tuesday and now goes to the Senate for consideration.

“Journalists, activists and anyone who is willing to use their voice to call out wrong doing must be protected. That is why Congresswoman Ann Wagner and I introduced the Burma Political Prisoners Assistance Act, Rep. Andy Levin (D) said. “This bill calls for the release of political prisoners and prisoners of conscience in Burma and directs our State Department to bolster its works to achieve this act.”

Amnesty International urged the Senate to act on the legislation.

 “Over two years have passed since the world witnessed atrocities committed against Rohingya women, men, and children. Yet the U.S. Congress has so far failed to speak with a united voice on the issue. Further inaction by the U.S. sets a terrible precedent for other countries and risks emboldening the Myanmar military to continue committing crimes across the country,” Amnesty International USA’s Asia Pacific Advocacy Manger Francisco Bencosme said.

Last month, A U.N. fact-finding mission concluded that the Myanmar military intended to perpetrate genocide on ethnic Rohingya Muslims when it drove hundreds of thousands of them from the country in 2017.

More than 700,000 Rohingya fled Myanmar’s northern Rakhine state in August and September 2017, after attacks by Rohingya militants against state security forces led to military reprisals. They continue to seek shelter in a refugee camp in neighboring Bangladesh.

 

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A threat by Donald Trump to pull the United States out of the global postal system could lead to a “nightmare scenario” of mail going undelivered, packages piling up and American stamps no longer being recognized abroad, the U.N. postal agency said.

The Universal Postal Union (UPU) has been holding an emergency meeting in Geneva to persuade Washington not to follow through on a threat to quit the agency, which sets rules to ensure mail gets delivered around the globe.

The Trump administration says it wants to charge other countries more than UPU rules now permit to have letters and packages delivered in the United States. It has set a deadline of next month for rates to be raised or it will quit.

“It is really a nightmare scenario,” the UPU’s secretary-general, Bishar Hussein, told a news conference, noting that no country had ever left since the agency was founded nearly 150 years ago. It now has 192 members.

“If the United States leaves, you’ll get those piles, because somehow every country has to figure out how to send mail to the United States. … A major disruption is on the way if we don’t solve the problem today.”

Were the United States to quit the UPU, U.S. stamps would no longer be valid abroad, he said. He said he was “very optimistic” that a compromise could be reached.

‘Broken’ system

The UPU is one of the oldest international organizations, set up in 1874 to ensure that mail could be delivered anywhere on Earth. It establishes a system for calculating the fees, known as “terminal dues,” that countries collect from each other to deliver mail that arrives from abroad.

Washington says the fees are too low, which unfairly benefits exporters from countries such as China, who can send goods ordered online to U.S. customers while the U.S. Postal Service bears part of the cost of delivering them.

White House trade adviser Peter Navarro, who heads the U.S. delegation, called for fixing a system “that everyone in this room knows is broken.”

“The mission here today is to retool this system for the brave new world of e-commerce,” he told the three-day talks.

Navarro, speaking to journalists, said: “In an age of e-commerce, the United States is being forced to heavily subsidize small parcels coming into our country. Many are from China, but this is not strictly a China problem.”

He said the system meant the U.S. Postal Service was effectively spending $300 million to $500 million to subsidize the cost of delivering imports, including counterfeit goods and drugs mailed to the United States from China.

Other countries that receive more mail than they send, including Brazil, Canada, Norway and South Africa, were also being hit, he said. Countries should be allowed to set their own rates, which he said “might cause some very short-term disruptions” but was “the clearest, cleanest, fairest and quickest path to a reform that is long overdue.”

Massive disruptions?

Democrats Abroad, the arm of the Democratic Party for Americans overseas, has warned of chaos and urged members to lobby Congress against the proposal by the Republican administration to quit the body.

“If the withdrawal goes forward, postal mail service to the United States will be thrown into disarray and the USPS expects postal service to and from the States to be massively disrupted,” the group said in a statement.

Navarro said Washington could quit without problems.

“We have prepared for a seamless transition. There will be absolutely no disruption in military mail, election mail, or holiday mail,” he said.

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House and Senate leaders are reacting along party lines to Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s announcement of a Trump impeachment inquiry.

Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is accusing Democrats of having a “predetermined conclusion” about Trump’s guilt, calling Tuesday’s developments part of an “impeachment parade in search of a rationale.”

“It simply confirms that House Democrats’ priority is not making life better for the American people, but their nearly three-year-old fixation on impeachment.”

McConnell’s statement came just after he was part of the Senate’s unanimous consent agreement that the whistleblower’s complaint be immediately handed over to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees.

McConnell’s House counterpart, Republican Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, says Democrats are still bitter about losing the 2016 presidential election and have wanted to impeach Trump from “day one.”

But the Democratic chairman of the House Oversight Committee, Elijah Cummings, reminded Republicans that history will show they ignored their duty to the Constitution if they “close their eyes and put party over country.”

He called Trump’s alleged appeal to another government to interfere in a U.S. election “an affront to the Constitution and a grave breach of his oath of office.”

Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren has been calling for Trump’s impeachment for months because of his alleged obstruction of justice in the Russian election probe.

She tweeted that the “impeachment inquiry must move forward with the efficiency and seriousness the crisis demands.”

U.S. markets closed down Tuesday over the impeachment uncertainty before Pelosi spoke.

But experts say many investors do not expect the Republican-led Senate to ultimately convict Trump in any impeachment trial. The experts also do not think the House inquiry will have a big impact on stocks.

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