Month: April 2017

Italy Approves Measures to Accelerate Asylum Procedures

Posted on by SeeEU

Italy’s parliament approved on Tuesday measures to accelerate asylum procedures, cutting the number of possible appeals and speeding up deportations of rejected migrants.

Since 2014 the number of migrants reaching Italy’s shores has surged, with half a million arriving in the country, and under European Union law Italy has to set up so-called “hotspots” where migrants with the right of asylum are set apart from those without.

As a result, Italy’s asylum applications have jumped, burdening the national civil courts and with procedures further delayed by appeals that can take years.

Under the new rules the asylum ruling can be appealed only once, instead of twice, and the request has to be submitted within a month.

The law, named after Interior Minister Marco Minniti and Justice Minister Andrea Orlando, also creates 26 new sections in courts across the country, specialized in immigration.

It enables the Interior ministry to employ up to 250 people in the next two years to work in specialized state-run committees dealing with the asylum request.

Rights group Amnesty International said on Tuesday it was worried for the “significant reduction in the procedural guarantees for the asylum seekers” claiming that the new procedures could be unconstitutional and discriminatory.

“Faster decision are in the interest of those requesting asylum but they must not lead to a limitation of [the migrants’] rights,” the head of Amnesty International in Italy Antonio Marchesi said in a statement.

The new rules had already been adopted by Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni’s government at the beginning of February with an emergency decree on the grounds that the court backlog was stacking up quickly and asylum-seeker shelters were filling up.

Under Italian law, emergency decrees have to be converted into law by parliament within 60 days.

Italy has estimated that it will spend about 3.9 billion euros ($4.1 billion) this year on managing immigration, almost three times as much as in 2013. The annual bill could rise to 4.3 billion euros if arrivals increase, the equivalent to a quarter of the country’s annual spending on defense.

($1 = 0.9428 euros)
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Erdogan: Referendum Turnout Among Turks Abroad Jumps

Posted on by SeeEU

Turks living overseas are turning out in greater numbers to vote in a referendum on changing the constitution to create an executive presidency, President Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday, a development that pollsters say could benefit him.

Voters in Turkey will go to the polls on April 16 to decide on the referendum that would give Erdogan sweeping new powers.

Voting for expatriate Turks began as early as late March in some countries and is due to run until Sunday.

The referendum campaign has brought a rapid deterioration in relations with some of Turkey’s European allies over the banning of some rallies by Turkish ministers in the Netherlands and Germany on security grounds, something Erdogan has denounced as “Nazi-like” tactics.

A high turnout abroad is likely to boost Erdogan, pollsters say, citing past elections, but at home it could hurt him as opposition voters traditionally make up a bigger proportion of those who tend to shun the polls on an election day.

“There is an amazing explosion of votes abroad. Around 1.42 million votes have been cast,” Erdogan said at a ceremony in the southeastern city of Sanliurfa, calling on his supporters to flood the ballot box with “yes” votes in the referendum.

The figure Erdogan cited suggests a turnout of around 50 percent, based on the 2.88 million voters registered abroad in the last general election in November 2015, according to data from the High Electoral Board (YSK).

In that election the turnout was around 40 percent among expatriates, with 56 percent of those votes being cast for the AK Party, which Erdogan founded more than a decade ago.

Polls show a close race days before the referendum, putting the “yes” vote slightly ahead, but indicate that nearly half the country could reject the proposed constitutional changes.

Foreign vote results will be announced once the actual referendum is held on Sunday.

Bitterly Divided

One polling company, Mak Danismanlik, seen as close to Erdogan, said initial exit polls from abroad showed the “yes” vote at 62 percent. It said the only country where the “no” vote had prevailed was the United States. It did not say how many people it had polled or where the research was conducted.

Pollsters Gezici, whose research has tended to overestimate opposition support, forecast 82-83 percent voter participation domestically and a “yes” vote as high as 56 percent if the turnout is lower in Turkey.

The referendum has polarized the nation of 79 million.

Erdogan’s opponents fear increasing authoritarianism from a leader they see as bent on eroding modern Turkey’s democracy and secular foundations.

Erdogan argues that the proposed strengthening of the presidency will avert instability associated with coalition governments, at a time when Turkey faces security threats from Islamist and Kurdish militants.

It was not immediately clear what the turnout in specific countries was, but in the November 2015 election, around 40 percent of the Turks in Germany cast their votes while the figure was around 45 percent in the Netherlands.

Germany’s Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper said Turks living there had cast 696,863 votes for the referendum, bringing turnout in Germany to 48.73 percent.
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Research Reveals Huge Burden of Guinea Worm

Posted on by SeeAF

Guinea worm is on course to become the second human disease to be eradicated, after smallpox, thanks largely to intervention overseen by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter. Little was known about the infection for decades, as diseases like malaria took priority. However, previously unpublished research from the 1970s, released this month, shows the burden the disease has had on millions of people.

Watch: Jimmy Carter Leads Push to Eradicate Guinea Worrm

Guinea worm is contracted when people drink water contaminated with tiny crustaceans that contain the worm larvae. A year later, a meter-long female worm emerges through a painful blister, often disabling the infected person for months.

Professor Brian Greenwood, a British scientist, first came across Guinea worm in the 1970s when working in northern Nigeria. He says little was known about the disease, despite millions suffering from it across Africa and India.

“People were much more concerned with malaria, bilharzia and other tropical infections,” Greenwood said. “And part of the reason was that these people were so disabled they never got to the clinic or the hospital. So that if you looked in hospital records, you did not see this as a big problem.”

Greenwood spent four years studying the disease and trying to find out why sufferers often developed repeat infections, without developing immunity.

“We extracted some of the worms,” he said. “And the traditional way is winding them out on a matchstick, just gradually. And the problem is that if the worm then snapped inside, then they got a very severe reaction.”

Greenwood credits the Carter Center, a charitable foundation set up by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, for helping fight the disease to the brink of eradication.

There is no vaccine or treatment. Instead, community education programs teach people to filter drinking water and avoid entering water sources. 

Speaking in 2011, Carter described the initial difficulties.

“It was kind of an insult to say ‘this disease comes out of your pond,'” he said. “So we have had to do a lot of diplomacy and convincing the people there to take care of their own problems. Well, it has worked. And now almost every nation on earth has eradicated or eliminated Guinea worm.”

When the Carter Center first became involved in 1986, there were around 3.5 million cases in 21 countries; last year, 25 cases were recorded in only three countries — Chad, Ethiopia and South Sudan.

Greenwood’s early study of Guinea worm remained unpublished, as he was directed to focus on malaria and meningitis instead; but last year in London, he met Carter, who persuaded him to publish the research.

“I hope that we have been able to document what a horrible disease this was,” Greenwood said. “And it is really important that people realize that. And if we do get eradication in the next year or two, which I hope will be the case, that this will not just be seen as a minor thing, but to be a really very important public health triumph.”

The last few cases of Guinea worm remain because they are the most difficult to reach. Many are in conflict areas like South Sudan, but scientists are optimistic this ancient disease can be eradicated within the next few years.
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US Begins Delivery of Nonlethal Aid to CAR Army

Posted on by SeeAF

At a ceremony this month, the U.S. ambassador to the Central African Republic turned over the keys to four cargo trucks to the national army. It was the first installment of $8 million worth of nonlethal assistance that is expected to include 16 more trucks and communications equipment.

“Essentially, we want to help the various processes that will allow this country that has known some really difficult times to pull out of that crisis and move into something sustainable, something safer for the region and ultimately safer for the American people as well,” U.S. Ambassador Jeffrey Hawkins told VOA. “Because if there is glaring instability, even in a place that is remote like C.A.R., that does not serve American interests.”

A rebel coup in 2013 plunged the C.A.R. into chaos. In the countryside, armed militias continue to fight over mineral resources and trade routes. Bandits and other groups like the Lord’s Resistance Army also take advantage of the poor security situation.

The national army, known as the FACA, is being rebuilt from scratch with training from the European Union.

The FACA deputy chief of staff for planning, Lieutenant Colonel Ishmael Koagu, said the troops do not have the capacity to intervene directly and are in the process of training and increasing their strength.

The FACA has a limited supply of weapons as a result of an arms embargo by the U.N. Security Council. Analysts warn it may be years before the army is combat-ready and can take back control of the country.

U.N. peacekeepers

Meanwhile, there is the U.N. peacekeeping mission, MINUSCA, a force of about 12,000. The United States is the largest donor to MINUSCA. In Washington, the Trump administration has proposed cutting back U.S. funding for the  $8 billion U.N. peacekeeping budget.

In Bangui, Hawkins told VOA he wasn’t sure whether MINUSCA would be affected. “The president has made clear that he is interested in a U.N. that is more efficient, that performs optimally,” he said.

Advocacy groups warn that an abrupt drawdown of U.N. troops in the C.A.R. could endanger civilians.

The U.S. ambassador said he remained “very supportive” of MINUSCA, “but [we] do not want it to be a permanent mission. We want it to be a temporary one, and the way to make it a temporary one is to build in situations that can take care of security concerns.”

The United States has also announced it is withdrawing its troops from a regional task force hunting the Lord’s Resistance Army.

About 100 U.S. military members have been deployed to the C.A.R., South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda since 2011 to track the armed group and try to bring its leader, Joseph Kony, to justice.

Last month, the U.S. Africa Command chief called Kony and his troops “irrelevant.” AFRICOM said the LRA had been reduced to under 100 fighters.
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Mali President Keita Names Loyalist Cabinet Ahead of 2018 Elections

Posted on by SeeAF

Mali’s President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita announced a new government on Tuesday stocked with loyalists seen as helping him prepare for a re-election bid next year.

The government, announced in a presidential decree, includes 10 new ministers and 25 holdovers from the previous cabinet.

Tieman Hubert Coulibaly, a former defense minister and close Keita ally, was handed the crucial post of minister of territorial administration, charged with organizing presidential and parliamentary elections late next year.

The shake-up follows Keita’s nomination at the weekend of Adboulaye Idrissa Maiga, another close ally and the defense minister in the previous government, as prime minister.

Mali’s government is struggling to contain militancy in its north, where rival tribal militias frequently clash and Islamist groups launch attacks on civilians, Malian soldiers, U.N. peacekeepers and French forces there.

Islamist fighters, some linked to al-Qaida, seized northern Mali in 2012 before being driven out of major cities and towns by a French-led military intervention a year later.

Tiena Coulibaly, ambassador to the United States, was named the new defense minister.
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Trump Gives OK for Montenegro to Join NATO

Posted on by SeeEU

President Donald Trump gave his official approval Tuesday for Montenegro to join NATO, marking another step forward in the tiny Baltic country’s quest for NATO acceptance.

The White House says Trump looks forward to meeting with Montenegro and other NATO leaders next month in Brussels to welcome the 29th member of the alliance.

The White House statement said Montenegro’s accession will signal other countries seeking to join NATO that “the door to membership in the Euro-Atlantic community of nations remains open and that countries in the Western Balkans are free to choose their own future.”

The U.S. Senate voted overwhelmingly last month to support Montenegro’s NATO bid.

Trump is scheduled to meet Wednesday with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg at the White House.

As recently as January, Trump called NATO “obsolete” because it had not defended against terrorist attacks. He also complained other NATO countries are not paying their fair share for defense.

“A lot of these countries are not paying what they are supposed to be paying, which I think is very unfair to the United States,” Trump told The Times of London.  “With that being said, NATO is very important to me.  There are five countries that are paying what they are supposed to. Five. It is not much.”

Russia has described Montenegro’s NATO membership as a “provocation” due to the country’s geographical proximity to Russia. The Kremlin has long seen the Balkans as inside its “sphere of influence.”
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No Sanctions in Hand, Tillerson Heads to Moscow

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U.S. Secretary State Rex Tillerson is headed to Moscow with less ammunition than Washington and London had hoped he would have in his bid to convince Russia to abandon Syrian President Bashar al Assad.

 

G7 ministers meeting Tuesday in the Italian city of Lucca on failed to agree on targeted sanctions against the Russian and Syrian military, arguing that an investigation would first have to confirm who in Syria used chemical weapons against civilians in the country last week.

 

“We cannot let this happen again,” Tillerson told reporters as he prepared to go to Moscow, where he is to deliver an ultimatum. “We want to relieve the suffering of the Syrian people. Russia can be a part of that future and play an important role,” he said. “Or Russia can maintain its alliance with this group, which we believe is not going to serve Russia’s interests longer term.”

The chemical attack prompted a world outcry and a U.S. missile attack that marked a turning point in the Trump administration’s approach to the seven-year-old conflict.

U.S. President Donald Trump and British Prime Minister Theresa May had agreed to press Russia to distance itself from Assad following the chemical attack by imposing targeted sanctions, but Germany and Italy, both leading G-7 nations, disagreed.

Russian President Vladimir Putin “must not be pushed into a corner,” said Italian Foreign Minister Angelino Alfano said Tuesday.

 

The G7 ministers’ decision now means the prospect of sanctions is dim. The process of launching an investigation would be long and complex, requiring a U.N. resolution and an agreement by the Assad government for weapons inspectors to access sites in territory under Assad’s control before establishing who was responsible and whether there was Russian complicity.

As the ground rapidly shifted regarding the U.S. approach to Syria, Tillerson made it clear that Washington hopes Assad will not be part of Syria’s future. He told ministers in Lucca last week U.S. missile strikes were necessary as a matter of U.S. national security, and indicated the Trump administration may not be done with Assad.

 

“We do not want the regime’s uncontrolled stockpile of chemical weapons to fall into the hands of ISIS or other terrorist groups who could, and want, to attack the United States or our allies. Nor can we accept the normalization of the use of chemical weapons by other actors or countries in Syria or elsewhere,” Tillerson said.

 
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Democrats: Solid Opposition to Trump, But What Comes Next?

Posted on by SeeUS

President Donald Trump is a unifying force for Democrats, bringing together disparate factions in opposition to nearly every presidential move.

 

But solidarity – at least for now – doesn’t necessarily add up to a strategy that can help Democrats win more elections after a precipitous slide from power in Congress and around the country.

 

“We have been right and successful in saying ‘no’ when he wants to drive the Titanic into the iceberg,” said Washington Governor Jay Inslee. Now, Inslee said, “we have to take actions that show we can drive in forward and not in reverse.”

 

The biggest challenge, several party figures said in recent interviews, is translating their opposition to specific Republican policies – Trump’s immigration restrictions, nixing the Affordable Care Act, a promised tax overhaul and any changes to Social Security and Medicare – into a coherent explanation of what Democrats want to do for voters. The list ranges from anti-Trump protesters to the white working-class voters in the Rust Belt and other presidential battlegrounds.

 

“Trump has already betrayed a lot of the people who voted for him,” said Representative Tim Ryan, whose northeast Ohio congressional district is a traditionally Democratic enclave of union workers where Trump vastly outperformed recent Republican presidential nominees. “Those should be our people again.”

 

‘We can’t just expect it to come to us’

Losing those kinds of voters helps explain why Republicans hold a 237-193 majority House majority (241-194 before five vacancies). Republicans have a 52-48 Senate advantage, with friendly congressional lines and a Senate election slate that will force 10 Democratic senators to face re-election in states Trump won. And the GOP controls almost two-thirds of state legislatures and governor’s offices.

 

“We can’t just expect it to come to us,” Ryan said. “We have to have an affirmative agenda.”

 

To be clear, many Democrats praise how party leaders, particularly House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., have managed Trump’s opening months. “It’s inherently reactive” when Republicans set the agenda, noted Mark Longabaugh, a top adviser for Senator Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign.

 

“The biggest thing Trump and Republicans have put on the table collapsed in flames,” Longabaugh continued, referring to Speaker Paul Ryan’s failure to win a health overhaul. “It’s hard to imagine a bigger victory for us.”

 

Zac Petkanas, who recently departed from running the Democratic National Committee’s Trump war room, said the same standard applies to Democratic opposition to Trump’s nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, even though it resulted in Republicans changing Senate rules to get Gorsuch confirmed. “There is no electoral reason to give an inch,” Petkanas said. Backing a jurist “who doesn’t represent our values … would have been a betrayal to a base that is looking to fight Donald Trump,” he added.

 

Still, said Longabaugh, “there are large pieces of the party that don’t get it, who don’t realize the party has to address in a large scale way the economic inequalities in this country” with “our own policies.”

 

The question is how best to carry that message to places Democrats have struggled – basically anywhere outside large cities and in states between the East and West coasts.

‘Grassroots enthusiasm’ not enough

In Tim Ryan’s Ohio, where Trump topped Democrat Hillary Clinton by 8 percentage points, state Democratic Chairman David Pepper agreed that Pelosi’s and Schumer’s steadfast opposition helps generate “grassroots enthusiasm” that he needs in upcoming elections. But winning them, he said, will require Ohio candidates who can explain policies on the ground.

 

That means it’s not enough for new national Democratic Party Chairman Tom Perez to tell voters, as he did recently in New Jersey, that Trump and Republicans don’t care about them, or have Pelosi thank Republicans, almost sarcastically, for increasing the popularity of the Affordable Care Act by helping “people understand what it means to them and their lives.”

 

Democratic candidates across the country, Pepper said, have to explain to communities devastated by opioid addiction what the law means for treatment eligibility, how barring limits on lifetime insurance benefits helps cancer patients with no cash reserves, and how local hospitals benefit from expanding Medicaid government insurance.

 

Peppers said he’s also working with Democrats in eastern Ohio to explain that Trump’s budget proposal calls for scrapping the Appalachian Regional Commission and to champion Democratic proposals to spend even more on workforce training in the region affected by the decline of coal. And he wants to link Trump’s “trickle-down economics” to Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who is term-limited in 2018, and the Republicans who run the Ohio Legislature.

 

Democrats will have new chances to draw contrasts and, Ryan argues, reclaim more working-class voters when Congress return from spring recess and takes up debate on infrastructure and taxes.

 

“The Goldman Sachs administration,” Ryan quips, will likely offer tax proposals tilted heavily in favor of large corporations and the wealthiest households.

 

If they do, he said, Democrats around the country should grab another chance to be more than the opposition. “How we got to be the Limousine Liberals and the Latte Liberals is genius on the part of Republicans,” Ryan said. “But I never forget the working class, so let’s go reclaim the old brand.”
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Chicago, United Lambasted Over Man Dragged Off Plane

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Several minutes after a passenger recorded a video watched around the world that showed security officers dragging another passenger off an overbooked United Express flight at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, a smaller snippet of video showed an even more troubling scene.

There stood the passenger who had been dragged on his back to the front of the plane, appearing dazed as he spoke through bloody lips and blood that had spilled onto his chin.

 

“I want to go home, I want to go home,” he said.

 

The treatment of the passenger on Sunday night prompted outrage and scorn on social media, and anger among some of the passengers on the flight as the unidentified man was evicted.

 

The incident risks a backlash against United from passengers who could boycott the airline as the busy summer travel season is about to begin. For Chicago, it is another public relations nightmare, adding to its reputation as a city unable to curb a crime wave in some neighborhoods, which President Donald Trump has highlighted with critical tweets.

 

The embarrassing incident spiraled out of control from a common air travel issue – an overbooked flight. United was trying to make room for four employees of a partner airline, meaning four people had to get off the flight to Louisville.

 

At first, the airline asked for volunteers, offering $400 and then when that didn’t work, $800 per passenger to relinquish a seat. When no one voluntarily came forward, United selected four passengers at random.

 

Three deplaned but the fourth, a man who said he was a doctor and needed to get home to treat patients on Monday, refused.

 

Three men, identified later as city aviation department security officers, got on the plane. Two officers tried to reason with the man before a third came aboard and pointed at the man “basically saying, ‘Sir, you have to get off the plane,’ ” said Tyler Bridges, a passenger whose wife, Audra D. Bridges, posted a video on Facebook.

 

One of the security officers could be seen grabbing the screaming man from his window seat, across the armrest and dragging him down the aisle by his arms.

 

Other passengers on Flight 3411 are heard saying, “Please, my God,” “What are you doing?” “This is wrong,” “Look at what you did to him” and “Busted his lip.”

 

“We almost felt like we were being taken hostage,” said Tyler Bridges. “We were stuck there. You can’t do anything as a traveler. You’re relying on the airline.”

 

United Airlines’ parent company CEO Oscar Munoz late Monday issued a letter defending his employees, saying the passenger was being “disruptive and belligerent.”

 

While Munoz said he was “upset” to see and hear what happened, “our employees followed established procedures for dealing with situations like this.”

 

Chicago’s aviation department said the security officer who grabbed the passenger had been placed on leave.

 

“The incidence on United Flight 3411 was not in accordance with our standard operating procedure and the actions of the aviation security officer are obviously not condoned by the Department,” the department said in a statement.

 

After a three-hour delay, United Express Flight 3411 took off without the man aboard.

 

Airlines are allowed to sell more tickets than seats on the plane, and they routinely overbook flights because some people do not show up.

 

It’s not unusual for airlines to offer travel vouchers to encourage people to give up their seats, and there are no rules for the process. When an airline demands that a passenger give up a seat, the airline is required to pay double the passenger’s one-way fare, up to $675 provided the passenger is put on a flight that arrives within one to two hours of the original. The compensation rises to four times the ticket price, up to $1,350, for longer delays.

 

When they bump passengers, airlines are required to give those passengers a written description of their compensation rights.

 

Last year, United forced 3,765 people off oversold flights and another 62,895 United passengers volunteered to give up their seats, probably in exchange for travel vouchers. That’s out of more than 86 million people who boarded a United flight in 2016, according to government figures. United ranks in the middle of U.S. carriers when it comes to bumping passengers.

 

ExpressJet, which operates flights under the United Express, American Eagle and Delta Connection names, had the highest rate of bumping passengers last year. Among the largest carriers, Southwest Airlines had the highest rate, followed by JetBlue Airways.

 

___

 

Associated Press Writer David Koenig contributed to this report.

AP-WF-04-11-17 1128GMT
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Trump Jobs Demands Force Automakers into Political Conflict

Posted on by SeeUS

President Donald Trump’s relentless push for more manufacturing jobs has forced the auto industry into a delicate dance of contradictions in order to keep him happy, tell the truth, and avoid alienating customers in both red and blue states.

Toyota did the waltz with Monday’s announcement that it would spend $1.33 billion to retool its gigantic factory in Georgetown, Kentucky, an investment in the heart of Trump country that has been planned for years.

 

Trump wasn’t included in a company statement sent on Friday in advance of the announcement, but Kentucky’s governor and both of the state’s U.S. senators were quoted. In a paragraph added Sunday evening, Trump claimed credit for the investment, saying it is “further evidence that manufacturers are now confident that the economic climate has greatly improved under my administration.”

 

The company said the Trump quote was added at the administration’s request, but the White House said Toyota requested it and pointed to a poll of manufacturers showing record optimism. Later Monday, Toyota said that it had asked the White House for a Trump quote.

 

Either way, an investment of that size takes years to plan, and Toyota confirmed that it’s been in the works four or five years, long before Trump was elected. The company is switching its midsize Camry sedan, long the top-selling car in America, to new underpinnings that make it more modern and fun to drive. Although the investment doesn’t add jobs, it sustains 8,200 workers at the plant, which also manufactures the Toyota Avalon and Lexus ES 350 cars.

 

The dealings with Toyota show how businesses — especially automakers whose brands cater to both ends of the political spectrum — must tread carefully when dealing with Trump or other politicians. Depending on their response, they run the risk of angering a president who has authority to regulate their industry or alienating customers who are on both sides of the political divide.

 

“That’s kind of the reality of the situation you’re operating in,” said Joseph Holt, a University of Notre Dame associate professor who specializes in business ethics and leadership. “I think it’s a shame that they have to do this dance, but I understand why they’re doing it.”

 

All politicians play the same game as Trump, taking credit for accomplishments they had nothing to do with, said Erik Gordon, a business professor at the University of Michigan. What makes Trump unique is the demand for jobs announcements was done publicly rather than in private conversations, Gordon said.

 

Many CEOs grudgingly supported President Barack Obama’s health care plan even though they disagreed with it, Gordon said.

 

“With President Trump, the difference is the volume is up to 11 or 12 instead of at 10,” he said. “I don’t find him to be that different in terms of what he wants credit for, and putting the arm on people to get on his program, other than he does it publicly.”

 

Detroit automakers are in the most precarious position, Gordon said, because they are perceived as more American. Take General Motors. Its Chevrolet brand, with the top-selling Silverado pickup truck, caters largely to America’s mid-section, which largely voted for Trump. But GM’s Cadillac luxury brand wanted so much to distance itself from the Midwest that it moved its offices to Manhattan, which supported Democrat Hillary Clinton.

 

If GM either confronts Trump or is continually in his Twitter sights, that could upset the automaker’s lucrative customer base in the Midwest. If the company is too supportive, it could hurt GM’s efforts to grow Cadillac sales on the mostly blue coasts.

 

That’s why with few exceptions, GM, Ford and Fiat Chrysler have made jobs announcements that largely were in the works long ago, Gordon said.

 

Because the country is so politically polarized, a social-media fueled PR mistake for or against an issue could touch off a boycott that can quickly hurt a company, Gordon said.

 

“Now the companies are really under the magnifying glass,” he said. “Many customers want to know who you are and what you stand for before they even think about your product.”

 

Holt and others say companies shouldn’t allow such deception and would be better off in the long run by not playing politics.

 

While the Trump administration was showing a commitment to manufacturing with the announcement, it may send a different message to government regulators such as the Environmental Protection Agency or the Occupational Safety and Health Administration should there be any problems with a factory, said Robert Weissman, president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen.

 

“Do those agencies feel constrained from enforcing the law because the president has just associated himself with that company or investment?” Weissman asked. “It’s just on its face inappropriate.”

 
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AP Fact Check: Doubts Persisted on Syria Chemical Weapons

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In defending President Barack Obama’s decision not to enforce his chemical weapons “red line” against Syria in 2013, Obama and other former officials repeatedly pointed to a U.S.-Russia agreement to remove Syrian stockpiles as proof that the president got results without resorting to a military response.

 

While it’s true that some 1,300 tons of Syria’s declared chemical weapons and precursors were removed under the agreement, serious concerns always existed that not all such armaments or production facilities were declared and destroyed or otherwise made unusable.

 

Those concerns, aired publicly and privately by United Nations and other officials almost since the deal was struck in September 2013 in Geneva, gained credence last week when President Donald Trump ordered missile strikes on a Syrian air base in retaliation for the most recent chemical weapons attack blamed on the Syrian government.

 

Obama administration officials, starting with the president himself, often used nuanced words in declaring the 2013 deal a success. At times, they qualified their proclamations by referring only to the removal of Syria’s “declared” or “known” stocks. Other times they have been less careful, as was Obama in a “60 Minutes” interview just five days before he left office earlier this year.

 

Obama: “I think it was important for me as president of the United States to send a message that in fact there is something different about chemical weapons,” he told the CBS program when asked about criticism of his decision not to follow through with airstrikes he had threatened. Regardless of how that played in Washington, “what is true is Assad got rid of his chemical weapons.”

 

The Facts: Obama’s comments glossed over doubts expressed by his own national security team and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons that Syria had truly abandoned its stocks or ability to produce more. When that group announced in June 2014 that the program to eliminate the stockpiles had been completed, Secretary of State John Kerry lauded the result using a subtle caveat: “With this step, 100 percent of the declared chemicals are out of war-torn Syria.”

 

Kerry also noted the continued attacks with chlorine gas, which is not an internationally banned substance but isn’t supposed to be used in weapons. Chlorine was not included in the 2013 agreement. He added that “the international community has questions with regard to Syria’s declaration that must be adequately answered.”

 

Those questions were never addressed and Kerry’s caution was well founded. Less than three months later, Kerry issued another statement in response to chlorine attacks that pointed again to “deep concerns regarding the accuracy and completeness of Syria’s declaration.” This, he said, “raises especially troubling concerns that continued chemical attacks on the Syrian people by the regime could occur.”

 

And in February 2016, James R. Clapper Jr., the national intelligence director, told Congress that “we assess that Syria has not declared all the elements of its chemical weapons program.”

 

In an April 2016 report to Congress, the State Department went further, saying Syria was “in violation” of the Chemical Weapons Convention and “may retain chemical weapons as defined by the” treaty.

 

Even so, in a January 16 National Public Radio interview, Obama’s former national security adviser, Susan Rice, portrayed the 2013 agreement as a success. She said the Obama administration had found a solution “that actually removed the chemical weapons that were known from Syria, in a way that the use of force would never have accomplished.”

 

Between June 2014, when the destruction and removal program was completed and January 30 of this year, the U.N. Human Rights Council’s commission on Syria documented at least 13 instances of chemical weapons attacks in Syria, all believed to have used chlorine. Western experts say sarin, a nerve agent, was used in the attack last week that killed more than 80 people.
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Lawyer: Sweden Attack Suspect ‘Admits to Terrorist Crime’

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The lawyer for the main suspect in Friday’s truck attack that killed four people in Sweden says the man “admits to a terrorist crime” and accepts he will be arrested.

Johan Eriksson spoke Tuesday before a Stockholm court at hearing for 39-year-old Uzbek national Rakhmat Akilov.

Authorities say Akilov drove a stolen truck into a crowd at the Ahlens department store in Stockholm. In addition to the four people killed, the attack also injured 15 others. Akilov was arrested early Saturday.

He had been known to intelligence services since last year when he disappeared before he could be deported after his application for asylum was rejected. Authorities knew he had pro-extremist sympathies.

Police say they have arrested a second person in connection with the attack, but have given no further information.

Photos taken at the scene Friday showed the vehicle was a truck belonging to beer maker Spendrups, which said its truck had been hijacked earlier in the day.

Witnesses say the truck drove straight into the entrance of the Ahlens Department Store on Drottninggatan, the city’s biggest pedestrian street, sending shoppers screaming and running. Television footage showed smoke coming out of the store after the crash.
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8 Arrested in Connection With St. Petersburg bombing

Posted on by SeeEU

Eight members of extremist cells have been arrested in connection with last week’s deadly bombing on the subway in St. Petersburg, Russia’s intelligence chief said on Tuesday.

 

The suicide bombing on the subway in Russia’s second largest city killed 13 passengers and injured dozens.

 

Akbardzhon Dzhalilov, a 22-year old Kyrgyz-born Russian national, has been identified as the bomber. Russian authorities have not reported his possible links to extremist groups but an unidentified law enforcement official told the Tass news agency that investigators were checking information that Dzhalilov may have trained with the Islamic State group in Syria. Tass said he reportedly flew to Turkey in November 2015 and spent a long time abroad.

 

No one has claimed responsibility for Monday’s subway bombing, but Russian trains and planes long have been targeted in bombings by Islamist militants.

 

Alexander Bortnikov, chief of the FSB, the main successor to the KGB intelligence agency, said in comments carried by Russian news agencies on Tuesday that six members of terror cells were detained in St. Petersburg and two in Moscow in connection with the attack. Bortnikov said all of them hail from former Soviet Central Asian republics and that the police found a large amount of weapons and ammunition at their homes.

 

Bortnikov admitted that intelligence agencies failed.

 

“The investigation in the St. Petersburg subway attack showed that the operative work did not fully meet the threat from terrorist organizations,” Bortnikov was quoted as saying.

 

Russian-based extremist groups are mostly made up of migrant workers who come from Central Asia and recruit in the migrant community, Bortnikov said, calling for tighter restrictions on immigration.

 

The impoverished, predominantly Muslim countries in Central Asia are seen as fertile ground for Islamic extremists, and thousands of their citizens are believed to have joined the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq.

 

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said between 5,000 and 7,000 people from Russia and other former Soviet republics were fighting alongside Islamic State and other militants in Syria.
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Getting Up to Speed on Wells Fargo Sales Scandal

Posted on by SeeUS

The fraudulent account scandal at Wells Fargo has been making U.S. national headlines for months, with no end in sight. If you haven’t kept up with the story since the beginning, it’s worth backing up to get a fuller context for what has happened, and what is still to come.

 

How did this all start?

For years, Wells Fargo has been known in banking circles as a having an extremely aggressive sales culture. For years, the bank’s management would say it doesn’t have branches; it has “stores.” And up until this year, Wells Fargo management highlighted its so-called “cross-sell ratio,” which is the number of accounts or other services a Wells Fargo customer typically had at the bank. Wells was aiming for as many as eight financial “products” per household. In context, most big banks aim to have two to three per customer.

Early problems with Wells Fargo’s sales-focused culture date back to at least 2002, according to the board of directors’ report released Monday, much earlier than had been previously reported. The board found a branch in Colorado was issuing debit cards to customers without their consent, and branch management encouraged the behavior.

 

While the investigation found that Wells fired several employees at that branch, the sales problems did not stop, largely due to the intense sales pressure upper management placed on branch managers and employees to make their numbers each day.

How bad was it?

Since at least 2011, according to authorities, Wells Fargo employees opened as many as 2 million unauthorized checking and credit card accounts in nearly every state it does business. But most of the bad behavior happened in Sunbelt states like California, Arizona and Florida.  Employees also created fake email addresses for customers to sign them up for online banking, even if they did not want nor need it.

 

How did management react?

For a lack of a better description, management appeared to not care that employees were opening duplicate accounts or issuing products to customers that they did not want, as long as employees were making their numbers. Pam Conboy, who was the regional president for Wells Fargo’s Arizona business, actually encouraged duplicate accounts and that Carrie Tolstedt, the head of Wells Fargo’s entire consumer banking business, held Conboy as a model of success in the company.

 

As the problems with Wells’ sales culture ballooned, management still remained callous to the problems or even actively worked to hide it. The board did not know Wells had fired 5,300 employees for unethical sales practices until it came out in news reports.

 

In a statement, Tolstedt lawyers said they disagreed with the board’s conclusions that she was heavily responsible for the sales culture problems at Wells.

When did this story become national news?

An investigation by The Los Angeles Times in 2013 found that employees had been opening up multiple accounts for customers in order to make their sales goals. That investigation eventually led to the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office to file a lawsuit against Wells for its sales practices, which in turn caught the attention of federal authorities, most notably the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

The CFPB and OCC, as well as the LA Attorney’s Office, fined Wells Fargo $185 million and found the problems reported by the LA Times were actually a nationwide issue for Wells Fargo.

 

The news became an unmitigated crisis for Wells in the next few weeks. Then-CEO John Stumpf was dragged in front of both the Senate and House of Representatives to testify, where politicians on both sides of the aisle called for criminal charges to be brought against the bank and its executives. Stumpf stepped down in late October.

What has Wells done since the scandal broke?

Wells has gotten rid of sales goals and redid how it pays its employees to focus less on opening checking accounts and more on how those bank accounts are actually used. The board of directors has clawed back more than $180 million in pay and bonuses to former CEO John Stumpf, Tolstedt, current CEO Tim Sloan and others.

 

The bank has also been calling its tens of millions of customers to ask whether they authorized the creation of those accounts. It has been refunding fees that would have been paid on those accounts and, lastly, it is working to fix the credit scores of any customers who may have had a credit card opened in their name without authorization.

 

Oh, and the bank stopped referring to its branches as “stores.”

What comes next?

Wells Fargo has several outstanding investigations pending, including Congressional investigations, lawsuits by states and consumer groups, as wells as possibly the Department of Justice. There is a chance that the Justice Department could bring federal charges against Wells, but that is still not clear.

 

The Comptroller of the Currency’s Office is currently investigating the sales cultures at each of the large banks, with that investigation expected to last at least through the summer. The OCC’s goal is to see whether the problems at Wells were isolated.

 
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Blaze Ravages French Migrant Camp After Clash

Posted on by SeeEU

A huge blaze ravaged a migrant camp in northern France on Monday, destroying wooden shelters and forcing the evacuation of hundreds of migrants, hours after a clash involving up to 150 migrants, the prefecture of the region said.

Riot police moved into the camp outside the port city of Dunkirk to break up a clash that one migrant said pitted Afghans against Kurds. Five people were injured in the fight among 100 to 150 migrants, three of them hospitalized with knife wounds, the prefecture said.

Officials linked the fight with the fire that broke out hours later but stressed that an investigation is needed to determine the fire’s cause. Police refused all comment on the clash and the fire.

No injuries were immediately reported because of the blaze.

Documents lost in fire

Firefighters worked to contain the flames lapping the night sky and devouring the fragile shelters of migrants who were evacuated bit by bit to local gymnasiums. The prefect, or highest state official in the region, rushed to the scene.

“I lost all my documents,” said an Iraqi migrant who identified himself only as Albidani, standing outside the camp. “I just have only this paper that says I’m a refugee in France.”

 

He said Kurds and Afghans had clashed before the fire erupted. “We don’t know exactly for what they fight” but just look at what happened today, he said, speaking English.

 

“We are refugees here in France. We don’t have any place… We don’t know what to do. We lost everything,” Albidani said.

Up to 1,500 migrants were living in the over-populated camp, the prefecture estimated,

Clashes, fires have occurred before

The camp in the Dunkirk suburb of Grande-Synthe was set up a year ago by Doctors Without Borders. The neat rows of wooden shelters replaced a squalid makeshift tent camp nearby rife with traffickers preying on migrants.

Humanitarian groups said the original camp was filthier and more dangerous than a huge makeshift camp in Calais, about 30 kilometers to the west, that was dismantled by the state in October.

The population of the new Dunkirk camp swelled after the camp in Calais was torn down.

Clashes, as well as small fires, have occurred in the past in the La Liniere camp. French officials decided last month that the camp population must be reduced to 700 and security increased to keep out traffickers.

 

Authorities said the camp must be dismantled bit by bit with migrants housed in special centers, like the thousands of migrants evacuated from the Calais camp.

 
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Tillerson Heads to Russia as Relations Dip Over Syria Attacks

Posted on by SeeEU

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is heading to Moscow for talks Wednesday with Russian leaders amid a spike in tensions over attacks in Syria. 

Tillerson accused Moscow of complicity or incompetence in Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s alleged use of chemical weapons against civilians, while Russia called the U.S. response, a missile attack on a Syrian air base, an illegal act of aggression with negative consequences. 

Before his first visit to Russia as U.S. Secretary of State, Tillerson — in Italy for G7 meetings — attended a ceremony to mark a 1944 Nazi massacre of civilians. “We remember the events of Aug. 12, 1944. that occurred in Sant’Anna. And we rededicate ourselves to holding to account any and all who commit crimes against the innocents anywhere in the world,” he said. 

Tillerson’s pointed comment came just days after U.S. missile strikes on a Syrian air base allegedly used to launch gas attacks last Tuesday that killed up to 100 Syrian civilians.

The top U.S. diplomat has accused Russia of failing to prevent the attack and is urging the Kremlin to rethink its support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad — a call likely to be refused, say analysts.

“But, right now, off the U.S. strike, it would be very difficult for Moscow to change its support for Assad. Because any change as … any change can be perceived as something which is done under the U.S. pressure,” said the Russian International Affairs Council’s Andrei Kortunov.  

“The official Russian position is that it’s for Syrians to decide who will be the boss there,” said Victor Kremenyuk, of the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of USA and Canada Studies. “Indeed, the business of the Syrian people [is] to elect their own leader, be it Assad or somebody else.”

‘Dangerous development’

Damascus, and its Russian backers, deny any chemical weapons were used. Russia’s Ministry of Defense claims the poison gas was being stored by Syrian rebels and released after the warehouse was bombed. Russia accused the U.S. of illegal aggression with the Friday missile strikes on Syria.

Russia cut off Syrian air safety cooperation with the U.S., and a joint command center for Syrian operations run by Moscow, Tehran and Damascus threatened to respond to any further U.S. attacks. 

“That’s quite possible that American or coalition aircrafts and missiles in Syria would be attacked by Russian and, probably, Syrian or Iranian anti-aircraft defense or fighter bombers,” said Kremenyuk. “And that’s, indeed, a very dangerous development.”

‘Mistrust on both sides’

Despite tensions, and unlike his British counterparts, Tillerson’s Moscow visit was not canceled — a good sign, some say, for efforts to prevent a U.S.-Russia conflict.

“But, I think it’s clear that the starting position for these discussions are not that good,” said Kortunov.  “There is a lot of mistrust on both sides. And I’m sure that emotions will fly high at these meetings.”

The British Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, canceled his April 10 trip to Moscow after the poison gas attack. Johnson and Tillerson met Monday in Italy ahead of the G7 summit. 

Even if little progress can be made on Syria, say analysts, Tillerson and Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov have much to talk about.  

“Syria is not the only issue here,” Kremenyuk said. “[The] Korean peninsula, South China Sea, for instance, the so-called Islamic State, international terrorism, Ukraine, and so on.”

Tillerson’s Moscow meetings, say analysts, could set the tone for U.S.-Russia relations. 
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South Africa’s Zuma Accuses Protesters of Racism After Marches

Posted on by SeeAF

South African President Jacob Zuma on Monday accused some protesters of racism after marches last week that drew tens of thousands of people demanding his resignation, while the opposition announced plans for a new protest.

More than 60,000 people marched in South African cities on Friday in largely peaceful protests to demand Zuma quit after a cabinet reshuffle set off the latest crisis of his presidency.

Speaking at a memorial to commemorate the 24th anniversary of the assassination of anti-apartheid and Communist Party leader Chris Hani – whose murder led to nationwide riots – Zuma said South Africa had not yet built a non-racial society decades after white-minority rule ended in 1994.

In his first public response to the protests, Zuma said they “demonstrated that racism is real” in South Africa.

“Many placards and posters displayed beliefs that we thought had been buried in 1994, with some posters depicting black people as baboons,” the president said.

“It is clear that some of our white compatriots regard black people as being lesser human beings or sub-human.”

A mixed racial profile of people attended the rallies.

Police said about 60,000 people took part in the marches in the major cities.

Opposition leader Mmusi Maimane, head of the Democratic Alliance (DA), which has strong support among white people, had called for a march in Johannesburg, and held a rally of more than 10,000 people.

In the capital Pretoria, about 15,000 people gathered in a field outside the Union Buildings, the site of Zuma’s offices, in a march led by civil society group SaveSA. Other marches were held in Cape Town, Durban and other parts of the country.

Maimane’s spokesman Mabine Seabe said of Zuma’s comments: “He cannot argue based on policy and is trying to distract from the issues by using race as a scapegoat.”

Zuma’s spokesman Bongani Ngqulunga also said there were posters in Pretoria that depicted black people as baboons.

Ngqulunga sent a picture to Reuters that has been used on Twitter showing a Zuma caricature.

Some placards during the protests used vulgar language against Zuma, Reuters witnesses said.

“It’s been proven before that if you place a racial bombshell in a conversation it clouds the issues,” said Gwen Ngwenya, the chief operating officer of the South African Institute of Race Relations in Johannesburg.”It’s an effective spin strategy that’s very shrewd … because it plays on historical racial tensions in South Africa.”

New Protest

The DA, the ultra-left Economic Freedom Fighters and other smaller parties announced a new protest march dubbed “National Day of Action” on Wednesday at the Union Buildings, the seat of government, aimed at drumming up support for a no-confidence motion against the president in parliament on April 18.

The African National Congress, which has a commanding majority in parliament, has said its members would vote against the motion.

Zuma’s sacking of Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan in a cabinet reshuffle on March 31 has outraged allies and opponents alike, undermined his authority and caused rifts in the ANC, which has governed South Africa since the end of apartheid.

The rand has tumbled more than 11 percent since March 27, when Zuma ordered Gordhan to return home from overseas talks with investors, days before firing him.

Fitch on Friday followed S&P Global Ratings and downgraded South Africa to “junk”, citing Gordhan’s dismissal as one reason.

On Monday, Zuma said he had met Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba, the Governor of the South African Reserve Bank Lesetja Kganyago and Tom Moyane, the Commissioner of the South African Revenue Service, to discuss the impact of the credit rating downgrades and “how we should respond adequately.”

Zuma reiterated plans to transform the economy to include more black people, who, he said, were passed up for promotions and had lower salaries than white people doing the same jobs.

“The majority of black people are still economically disempowered. They are dissatisfied with the limited economic gains from liberation,” he said.

Black people make up 80 percent of the population, yet the lion’s share of the economy in terms of ownership of land and companies remains in the hands of white people, who make up about 8 percent of the population.
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Scientists Link El Nino to Increase in Cholera in Eastern Africa

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Researchers are reporting a link between a climate phenomenon know as El Nino and the number of cholera cases in eastern Africa. Predicting when there’s going to be an El Nino event could improve public health preparedness.

El Ninos are a global climate phenomenon that occurs at irregular times, approximately every two to seven years.

During an El Nino, surface ocean temperatures in the eastern Pacific off the coast of South America become warmer than usual. The warming trend begins around Christmas time.

The following year, in the fall, sea surface temperatures also warm, if somewhat less, in the western Pacific, leading to extreme weather events like flooding and droughts, conditions that are ripe for cholera outbreaks.

Approximately 177 million people reside in areas where the incidence of cholera increases during El Nino.

But there’s been scant evidence of El Nino’s health impact in Africa.

A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found the incidence of cholera increased in countries in East Africa.

“Because they can either lead to surface flooding that washes contamination into drinking water in areas where there’s open defecation,” said epidemiologist Sean Moore, who led the study. “It also can lead to overflowing of sewer systems in urban areas which again can lead to contamination of drinking water.”

There are approximately 150,000 cases of cholera per year, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa, according to Moore, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in Baltimore.

But during El Ninos, researchers found the incidence swelled by some 50,000 cholera cases in eastern Africa, although the overall number of cases on the continent did not change — for reasons that are not completely understood, said Moore.

Patterns of shift in the number of cholera cases were measured during El Ninos between the years 2000 and 2014. There also were 30,000 fewer cases reported in southern Africa during El Nino years compared to non-El Nino years, researchers found..

Scientists also saw a slight increase in the number of cholera cases in areas hit by drought due to El Nino.

Moore said that’s because when water becomes scarce, available drinking water can become contaminated by bacteria in human waste.

Without treatment, mortality rates from cholera can climb as high as 50 percent.

To the extent that the climate phenomenon can be predicted six to 12 months ahead of time, Moore said public health officials can prepare for outbreaks, which tend to occur early on.

“An advance warning could, even if it doesn’t prevent outbreak, it could at least prevent the deaths that tend to occur during the early part of an outbreak,” he said.

With oral rehydration therapy, Moore said the risk of death from cholera drops to 1 percent. He said there are now cheap cholera vaccines that could be used to prevent the disease when it’s known that an area is going to be hit by an El Nino.
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Ugandan Researcher Charged for Insulting President Over Sanitary Pads

Posted on by SeeAF

An Ugandan judge charged a university researcher Monday with offensive speech and cyber harassment against the country’s president. The root of this controversy is sanitary pads for schoolgirls.

According to the charge sheet, Stella Nyanzi used her computer in February to post to her Facebook page an insulting message about President Yoweri Museveni, allegedly calling him a “pair of buttocks,” among other things.

This is the third time Nyanzi has been detained in relation to these alleged postings, but it is the first time she has been charged with a crime. The state says she has willfully and repeatedly used electronic communication to post offensive online messages intended to disturb or attempt to disturb the peace.

 

Before the fully packed courtroom, state attorney Jonathan Muwaganya called for Nyanzi to undergo a mental health evaluation.

“Your Honor, if the order being sought through this application is not granted and it is established that the suspect is a psychiatrical case then it will lead to continued reputational damage of her victims and the general public,” said Muwaganya.

Her lawyer Semakadde Isaac dismissed the state’s accusations.

“The defense prays in submission that this court is pleased to ignore the application of the State for an inquiry into the insanity or other incapacities of the accused person as it was made under wrong law and that the court be further pleased to invoke the right law to hear the accused person on bail,” said Issac.

In February, Nyanzi took to Facebook to collect donations of sanitary products for schoolgirls after the first lady said the government could not afford to supply them. President Museveni had promised on the campaign trail last year to provide sanitary pads for girls in need.

Nyanzi has publicly and colorfully criticized the first family and the government over the issue.

As many as a third of girls in the country have to miss school because they cannot afford sanitary products, according to government statistics.

At the time of her arrest Friday, Nyanzi, who holds a PhD in medical and cultural anthropology, had just finished giving a talk on menstruation. She entered a plea of not guilty Monday.

“He makes promises of sanitary pads to girls. He goes against the promise. Yoweri Museveni is offending Ugandans and we are silent and those of us who dare to speak truth to power are called the offenders. I am happy to take on the mantle of insanity if this mantle is going to be the only time that the regime will be told about its offense to the people of Uganda and therefore I am not guilty of offensive communication,” she said.

The judge ordered Nyanzi to return in two weeks to apply for bail.
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Ethnic Killings in South Sudan Leave 16 Dead

Posted on by SeeAF

At least 16 people have been killed in South Sudan as militiamen targeted civilians based on their ethnicity.

Witnesses say the Dinka militiamen, aligned with South Sudan’s government, went house to house Monday in the town of Wau searching for people from the local Luo and Fertit ethnic groups.  Residents say streets were deserted Monday as families hid inside their homes.

The United Nations mission in South Sudan, or UNMISS, said its workers saw “the bodies of 16 civilians in a hospital. There were 10 people who had been injured.”

U.N. officials have repeatedly warned that South Sudan is at risk of genocide.

U.N. officials say the killings were in retaliation for a rebel attack on government forces in Wau state on Sunday that killed two officers.

UNMISS said about 3,000 people, mostly women and children, had fled to a Catholic Church in town. It said 84 people had sought protection in a civilian encampment protected by U.N. peacekeepers.  Residents told reporters that army soldiers were blocking the main road to the encampment, preventing most people from reaching the site.

South Sudan has been beset by violence for more than three years because of a political rivalry between the young country’s two leaders.

The power struggle between President Salva Kiir, an ethnic Dinka, and his former deputy, Riek Machar, a Nuer, broke out in December 2013, after the president accused Machar and 10 others of attempting a coup.

Fighting has split the country along ethnic lines, displaced more than two million people from their homes, and caused food shortages in many areas.
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Once Opposed to Intervention, Trump Says He Can Be Flexible

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In the aftermath of President Donald Trump’s surprise strikes on Syria, his allies and adversaries have searched for some broader meaning in his decision.

Is Trump now a humanitarian interventionist, willing to wield American military power when foreign governments threaten their own citizens? Is he a commander in chief who once warned against intervention in Syria but is now prepared to plunge the United States deeper into the conflict? Is he turning on Russia, one of Syria’s most important patrons, after months of flirting with closer U.S. ties with Moscow?

Trump would say he’s simply flexible, an emerging foreign policy doctrine that leaves room for evolution and uncertainty.

“I don’t have to have one specific way, and if the world changes, I go the same way, I don’t change,” Trump said Wednesday, a day after the chemical weapons attack in Syria that compelled him to order airstrikes against a government air base. “Well, I do change and I am flexible, and I’m proud of that flexibility.”

Action in Syria

Allies in the Middle East and Europe who panned Trump’s efforts to ban Syrian refugees from the United States cheered his decision to strike against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s military after viewing images of young children killed in the chemical attacks. Yet they did so without any clear guidance from Washington on the next steps in Syria.

Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, said the United States was willing to take more action against Assad, while White House officials cautioned that the strikes did not signal a broader shift in U.S. policy.

Mark Feierstein, who served in the National Security Council under President Barack Obama, said it’s difficult to glean a direction for U.S. policy from Trump’s actions in Syria because Trump “is not moored to any coherent ideology or set of ideas.”

But for some of Trump’s supporters, ideological elasticity is a virtue for a president who took office with no practical foreign policy experience. They say it gives the former real estate mogul breathing room to learn on the job and accept advice from more seasoned advisers.

“I think as time goes on, every day that has passed, he more and more has understood the gravity of U.S. leadership,” said GOP Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Trump ran for office as a Republican but has few ties to the party’s traditionally conservative philosophy. He often has relied on his flexibility as a way to reassure Americans that some of his more unconventional and controversial proposals were merely suggestions.

Yet on some issues, he has shown a willingness to follow through. He has ordered construction of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and signed executive orders banning entry to the U.S. for people from some majority Muslim countries, including Syria. Those travel orders have so far been blocked by the courts.

The angry reaction to the Syria strikes from some of his strongest campaign supporters showed that they expected him to fulfill promises to stay out of Syria.

“Those who wanted us meddling in the Middle East voted for other candidates,” Ann Coulter, the conservative commentator, wrote on Twitter.

As a candidate and private citizen, Trump cast Syria’s civil war as a quagmire from which the United States should steer clear. Until the chemical weapons attack, Trump mainly saw Syria as a hotbed for terrorists seeking to attack the U.S. He rarely spoke of the hundreds of thousands killed and the millions displaced during the six years of clashes between the Assad government, backed by Russia and Iran, and opposition groups.

“He seems to put great score in unpredictability, and that’s not such a bad thing in foreign relations if it has some kind of framework around it,” said Peter Romero, a top State Department official in the Clinton administration. But Romero said that if Trump is “being erratic, then it’ll have very little impact.”

Trump not alone

Trump is hardly the first president to change his approach to America’s role in the world. In 2011, President Barack Obama justified intervention in Libya by citing specific criteria, including the imminent slaughter of civilians. When most of the same guidelines appeared applicable in Syria, particularly after a deadly 2013 chemical weapons attack, Obama backed away from planned military strikes.

“There’s always a transformation that takes place from a person who wins the presidency, and then once he assumes office he necessarily sees the world from a different perspective,” said Edward Djerejian, a former U.S. ambassador to Syria and Israel who now directs Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. “Trump suddenly realizes he’s responsible for much of the world.”

Shift toward Russia

Another consequence of Trump’s shift on Syria has been a strikingly tougher tone from his administration on Russia. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, whose close ties to Russia raised questions during his confirmation hearings, slammed Moscow for either being “complicit” in the chemical weapons attack or “incompetent.”

Corker was among those who welcomed that shift. “The beginning thinking of the administration around Russia was somewhat unsettling, but you’ve seen that evolve,” he said.

But Trump’s flexibility means there are no guarantees that he’s prepared to fully abandon his efforts to forge a partnership with Russia on counterterrorism, nuclear proliferation and other issues.

Skeptics noted that a confrontation with Russia over Syria was well-timed for a president whose campaign is under investigation by the FBI and congressional committees for possible coordination with Moscow during the 2016 election. Also, Trump himself has yet to match the harsh criticism of Moscow that some of his advisers have levied.
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Congo Protests Fall Flat as Opposition to Kabila Sputters

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Opposition calls for mass protests against Democratic Republic of Congo President Joseph Kabila fell flat on Monday when only a handful of people showed up, undermining efforts to oust him after his refusal to quit on expiry of his mandate last year.

The sparse turnout in the capital Kinshasa and other major cities pointed to the opposition’s waning credibility and persistent difficulties convincing Congolese to risk frequently deadly crackdowns by security services.

The normally hectic streets of Kinshasa, a city of more than 10 million people, were nearly deserted on Monday as the police patrolled heavily and fearful residents stayed home.

“How was I supposed to march?” said Papy Kazadi, an opposition supporter on Kinshasa’s deserted Boulevard Triomphal, where the march was supposed to begin. “There is no one here.”

The demonstration’s prospects dimmed on Sunday when the main opposition leader, Felix Tshisekedi, flew to Ethiopia at the invitation of the African Union, just hours after holding a news conference to urge Congolese to take to the streets.

Deadly protests in September and December as well as worsening militia violence across the vast, flimsily governed country in recent months have raised fears of a backslide toward the civil wars of the turn of the century that killed millions.

But Kabila has successfully co-opted many opponents by negotiating the formation of a power-sharing government meant to organize a presidential election to replace him by year-end.

The country’s second city Lubumbashi and its eastern hub of Goma also remained calm, residents said, though police said they arrested about 10 demonstrators in Lubumbashi.

The United Nations human rights office in Congo said it had confirmed at least 40 arrests of people trying to demonstrate across the country.

“The precipitous departure of Felix Tshisekedi the day before the march was indeed discouraging,” Desire Kapangu, a resident of Kinshasa’s Kasavubu district, told Reuters.

The opposition has also been wracked by infighting since the February death of longtime standard bearer Etienne Tshisekedi.

Last Friday, Kabila named Bruno Tshibala, a former member of his Union for Democracy and Social Progress (UDPS), the largest opposition party, as the new prime minister.

The UDPS and its allies rejected his nomination, saying Kabila violated a December deal with them by not naming a candidate of the alliance’s choosing and accused him of maneuvering to hold onto power.

Kabila denies that charge. He says election delays are due to logistical and budgetary constraints.
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Man Forcibly Dragged From Overbooked United Flight

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Video of a man being dragged out of a United Airlines flight in Chicago has gone viral and has given the airline a huge public relations headache.

The Sunday flight from Chicago to Louisville was overbooked so the flight crew asked passengers to voluntarily take another flight, according to the airline. Airlines often offer free tickets or some financial compensation to such volunteers.

“Flight 3411 from Chicago to Louisville was overbooked. After our team looked for volunteers, one customer refused to leave the aircraft voluntarily and law enforcement was asked to come to the gate,” according to a statement from United to WHAS TV in Chicago. “We apologize for the overbook situation.”

No one volunteered, so the airline chose four people at random to leave the flight.

One passenger, Audra Bridges,who posted video of the incident, told the USA Today newspaper that the man in the video was “very upset” when he was chosen. He reportedly refused, saying he was a doctor who needed to get home that night so that he could see patients the next morning.

Bridges told the paper the man was warned that security would be called if he refused to leave. She said security then threw the man against the armrest and dragged him off the plane.He later came back on the plane and appeared bloody and disoriented, Bridges said.

As the man was dragged out, other passengers were noticeably upset.

“Everyone was shocked and appalled,” Bridges said. “There were several children on the flight as well that were very upset.”

The flight ended up being delayed by about two hours.

The CEO of United Airlines posted a statement on Twitter about the incident.

“This is an upsetting event to all of us here at United,” wrote CEO Oscar Munoz. “I apologize for having to re-accommodate these customers. Our team is moving with a sense of urgency to work with the authorities and conduct our own detailed review of what happened. We are also reaching out to this passenger to talk directly to him and further address and resolve this situation.”
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Pope Visit to Egypt to Go Ahead Despite Blasts but Security Big Concern

Posted on by SeeEA

Pope Francis’ trip to Egypt this month is expected to go ahead despite twin attacks on Christian churches that killed 44 people, Vatican officials said on Monday.

However, diplomats and Vatican sources cautioned that the trip could be put in jeopardy or parts of it changed if the security situation worsened.

The pope is due to spend about 27 hours in the Egyptian capital Cairo on April 28-29, meeting with President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, grand imam Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb and the country’s Coptic Pope Tawadros.

Archbishop Angelo Becciu, the Vatican deputy secretary of state, told Italy’s Corriere della Sera newspaper that the events on Sunday, however tragic, “could not impede the pope from carrying out his mission of peace.”

Tawadros was leading a congregation at Mass in Alexandria’s Saint Mark’s Cathedral when it was attacked. He was not hurt.

That blast in Egypt’s second-largest city came hours after a bomb struck a Coptic church in Tanta, a nearby city in the Nile Delta.

“There is no doubt that the pope will carry out his intention to go,” Becciu said.

The Vatican also sent several communiques about logistics to journalists due to accompany the pope on his plane, in another indication that the trip was still on.

However, a senior diplomatic source said “we will have to keep our finger on the pulse of the situation until the very last minute.”

In another indication of deepening worries about safety, there is no indication of the venue for a number of meetings by the pope in the latest program.

Both Vatican and diplomatic sources said a number of events might have to take place in one location, such as the presidential palace, so as to limit the number of times the pope would have to move around in the city.

Both of Sunday’s attacks were claimed by the Islamic State, which has waged a campaign against Egypt’s Christian minority, the largest in the Middle East.

Egypt’s cabinet said on Monday a state of emergency would remain in place for three months.
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