Month: August 2017

Rwanda’s Kagame Posts Overwhelming Lead in Early Vote Returns

Posted on by SeeAF

Rwandan President Paul Kagame led Friday’s presidential election with more than 99 percent support in early returns, the country’s election commission said.

In a nationally televised broadcast, the commission’s executive secretary said more than 80 percent of the country’s 6.9 million registered voters had cast ballots.

In July, Kagame told a political rally that “the day of the presidential elections will just be a formality.” The massive lead in the preliminary results set the stage for his third term in office.

“I’m very excited” about the initial results, said Kagame supporter Ester Kabaera, 55, a businesswoman. “Obviously, he is going to win. He’s the only president who can win, who can rule this country.”

At the national headquarters of Kagame’s Rwandan Patriotic Front party, political leaders, supporters and donors watched election results on televisions as they came in district by district.

“Tonight we are very, very, extremely happy because he accepted our request [to lead the country],” medical student Fred Namania, 30, said at the event. “And we are looking forward to a lot of things being done in the next seven years.”  

In power for nearly 20 years

Kagame has been in power for 17 years. A 2015 constitutional measure, approved by 98 percent of voters, could allow Kagame to remain in power until 2034.

“I feel like President Kagame should lead us for [more] decades,” Namania said.

Other Kagame supporters told VOA they weren’t looking for a president for life.

“At the end of the [new] seven-year term of his excellency, Paul Kagame, someone will continue after him,” Kagame supporter Joseph Zorondera said after casting his ballot at the Mbandazi Primary School outside Kigali. “We need a good leader in our country now to continue to secure the country, to help the people of Rwanda and to continue to develop the country for the next seven years,”

Voting was calm as people trickled into the school, nestled in the hilly outskirts of the sprawling capital.

Valerian Musengamana, the polling station chief, told VOA that people were “very happy with the activities of the election. They are really satisfied.”

The East African Community — a regional intergovernmental organization comprising Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda — sent international observers to monitor the polls. The European Union did not. Representatives of local observer missions told VOA they hadn’t encountered any significant issues and that the voting appeared to be progressing smoothly.

Opposition presidential candidate Frank Habineza of the Green Party told VOA that some of his party’s observers had been denied access to polling stations, but after the National Election Commission was informed of the problem, 95 percent of them were permitted to monitor the voting process.

Habineza was one of two challengers Kagame faced in his re-election bid. Independent Philippe Mpayimana was also on the ballot.

Few of their supporters would agree to be interviewed at the polls.

“I chose [the Green] Party simply because of its good platform,” said voter Charles Ndamage, with electoral commission officials watching nearby. “The manifesto presented by Habineza was very interesting to me — for instance, the fact that he wants to develop the country by reducing the step between rich people and poor people.”

IN PHOTOS: Rwanda’s election

Endorsements for Kagame

Nine of the 11 political parties permitted to register in Rwanda endorsed Kagame. Four other presidential hopefuls were disqualified by the electoral commission. The government and ruling party brushed off allegations from human rights groups that authorities restricted freedom of expression and stifled political opposition.

Kagame is widely credited with stabilizing the country after a 1994 genocide.

“They [the opposition candidates] are good but … I don’t think any of them will do better than Paul Kagame. Because we have seen for the last few years that he has been on, the changes. It’s really a big change. It’s obvious,” said voter Imelda Batamoliza.

Kagame’s supporters pointed to developments like improved roads, more community connections to clean water and recently built schools.

Government officials said they expected to announce final results over the weekend.
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Al-Shabab Militants Kill Provincial Governor in Mogadishu

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Al-Shabab militants have shot dead a provincial governor and his brother in the Somali capital, Mogadishu.

Mohamed Ali Elmi, the governor of Galgadud region in central Somalia, and his brother were gunned down in Mogadishu’s Yaaqshid neighborhood Friday night, witnesses said.

The governor was visiting relatives when gunmen who trailed him opened fire. Witnesses said the gunmen fled before security forces arrived.

“Our mujahedeen unit carried [out] an operation to kill the governor,” al-Shabab said in a statement posted on a website affiliated with the group.

The incident occurred less than three hours after a car packed with explosives blew up in the center of the capital, killing at least three civilians.

​Al-Shabab retakes town

Early Friday, al-Shabab militants retook a strategic town in Lower Shabelle, after African Union (AU) forces stationed there retreated. The militants entered Leego town, 120 kilometers from Mogadishu, minutes after AU convoys left.

The governor of Lower Shabelle region, Ibrahim Adam Najah, confirmed the fall of Leego to VOA Somali.

“I can confirm to you that the anti-peace element, the enemy of Somalia, has taken over the town without a fight, and that AMISOM troops have withdrawn,” he said.

Najah said militants using five battle wagons entered the town from different directions.

Leego is 30 kilometers west of Ballidogle airport, where U.S. advisers and instructors have been training several hundred elite Somali commandos.

Najah said he was disappointed that AU troops left town without informing his administration.

“I have contacted AMISOM on why they had to suddenly withdraw from an area so strategic,” Najah said.

AMISOM has yet to comment on the Leego withdrawal.

Mogadishu cut off

Al-Shabab’s capture of Leego effectively cuts off Mogadishu from these regions, making air travel the only means to get there.

Najah said he wants either government troops or other AMISOM troops to retake Leego from al-Shabab.

The withdrawal came five days after al-Shabab carried out one of the deadliest ambushes on Ugandan troops. The attack on a supply convoy in Golweyn village July 30 killed as many as 23 Ugandan soldiers, according to Somali government officials. Uganda said it lost 12 soldiers.

Military sources told VOA Somali that the troops who were pulled from Leego Friday would be deployed at Golweyn village to secure the southern route linking Mogadishu to the port town of Barawe.

Al-Shabab, which is allied with al-Qaida, has been fighting since 2006 to overthrow the Somali government and turn the country into a strict Islamic state.
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Islamic State Intensifies Efforts to Prevent Civilian Escape From Hawija

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As the U.S.-backed Iraqi forces and Shiite militias make preparations to attack the Islamic State (IS) in its last Kirkuk stronghold of Hawija, the terror group has increased checkpoints and landmines around the town to prevent residents from fleeing. VOA’s Dilshad Anwar reports.
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Hezbollah to Join Attack on IS Along Syrian Border

Posted on by SeeEA

The leader of Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, said the Shi’ite group would fight in the coming assault on Islamic State on the country’s border with Syria, which he said would begin within days.

The Lebanese army will attack a pocket of Islamic State fighters from the Lebanese side of the border, while Hezbollah and the Syrian army will simultaneously attack it from the Syrian side, Nasrallah said in a speech broadcast live on television.

“The Syrian front line against Daesh will be opened, and the Syrian army and Hezbollah will be there,” he said.

He said Islamic State fighters in the enclave, who hold Lebanese captives, still had a door open for negotiations and could avoid a battle.

Hezbollah has been a key ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad during the six-year conflict, fighting alongside the Syrian army against rebels including hard-line Sunni Islamists.

A Hezbollah offensive last month forced Nusra Front militants in an adjacent enclave on the border to depart under an evacuation deal for a rebel-held area in northwest Syria.

The Lebanese army did not take part in that offensive, but has been widely expected to lead the attack against the Islamic State pocket. Nasrallah emphasized that the assault inside Lebanon will be the army’s responsibility.

The presence of the militant enclaves on its border has represented the biggest military spillover of Syria’s civil war into Lebanon.

More than a million Syrians have also sought refuge in Lebanon, putting strains on the economy and services, and in his speech Nasrallah said it was time for Beirut to discuss their situation with Damascus.

Thousands of refugees traveled to rebel-held northwest Syria alongside the Nusra fighters who left the border area after Hezbollah’s assault.
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UN Receives US’ Formal Withdrawal From Paris Climate Agreement

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The United Nations confirms it has received notification from the United States about its intention to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, “unless it identifies suitable terms for re-engagement.”

Stephane Dujarric, a spokesman for Secretary General Antonio Guterres, said in a statement that the secretary general “welcomes any effort to re-engage in the Paris Agreement by the United States.”

US to participate in talks

The U.S. State Department said Friday that it will continue to participate in international climate change negotiations during the withdrawal process, which is expected to take at least three years.

It said in a statement, the U.S. participation in the negotiations will “protect U.S. interests and ensure all future policy options remain open to the administration.”

“The United States supports a balanced approach to climate policy that lowers emissions while promoting economic growth and ensuring energy security,” it said.

The department said President Donald Trump is “open to re-engaging in the Paris Agreement if the United States can identify terms that are more favorable to it, its businesses, its workers, its people, and its taxpayers.”

Trump decision

Trump announced his decision to withdrawal from the climate accord in June, saying the deal was “very unfair at the highest level to the American people.” He argued the deal would have cost trillions of dollars as well as hurt American businesses and jobs in the energy and manufacturing sectors.

Guterres said in June that the U.S. decision was “a major disappointment for global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and promote global security.” The secretary general said it was “crucial” for the U.S. to remain “a leader on climate and sustainable development.”

News of the decision was greeted with strong protests from the environmental community, and the mayors of some of the largest U.S. cities vowed to remain faithful to the accord, regardless of what the Trump administration does.

The United States agreed to the 2015 climate agreement under former President Barack Obama. Under the deal, the United States pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025.
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Offshoot of Russian Orthodox Church Thrives in Alaska

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Alaska is the biggest – yet one of the least populated American states. There are just over 741,000 people living there – oil industry workers, adventurers from all over the U.S., Native Alaskans, immigrants. Within this complex cultural mosaic there is a group known as Russian Old believers. Nearly 50 years ago, they established a village called Nikolaevsk on Alaska’s Kenai peninsula. VOA’s Natasha Mozgovaya reports from there.
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Police Raid Offices of Kenya Opposition, Days Before Election

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Police raided the offices of Kenya’s opposition alliance Friday evening, an opposition spokesman said, four days before a national election.

Dennis Onyango, a spokesman for veteran opposition leader Raila Odinga, said the purpose of the raid on the party offices in the capital was unclear.

Kenyan television reported that police at the scene said the raid was carried out because the opposition was running a “parallel vote tallying center.”

Kenyan election law stipulates that only the country’s election board can tally and announce election results. The country’s last two elections have been marred by problems.

In 2013 electronic voting equipment suffered widespread failure, and in 2007 a winner was declared while tallying — which was never completed — was still under way.

Odinga ran in both elections, lost both, and each time blamed fraud. This time he had said that his party intended to keep their own track of the vote tallies.

Odinga is running against President Uhuru Kenyatta in the Aug. 8 polls, when Kenyans will also chose their next lawmakers and local representatives.
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Yemenis, Iranians Sue US State Department, Want Visas Processed

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Dozens of Yemenis and Iranians who won the chance to immigrate to the United States sued the U.S. State Department on Friday for not processing their visa applications after President Donald Trump’s temporary travel ban was reinstated.

The ban, which was blocked by lower courts before being partially reinstated by the Supreme Court in June, temporarily bars citizens of Yemen, Iran and four other Muslim-majority countries with no “bona fide” U.S. connections from traveling to the United States.

The Supreme Court ruling sharply limited the number of people affected by the ban. However, thousands of citizens of the six countries who won a randomized U.S. government lottery last year to apply for a green card — granting them permanent residence in the United States — were left in limbo.

A recent email from the U.S. government to lottery winners still awaiting their visas warned “it is plausible that your case will not be issuable” because of the 90-day travel ban.

‘This isn’t right’

In the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., more than 90 Yemeni and Iranian lottery winners said the U.S. government was refusing to issue their visas — won under the “diversity visa” program — because of the travel ban.

“This isn’t right, fair or lawful, and we are willing to do what it takes — including going to court — to fight for the rights of our clients,” said Esther Sung, an attorney at National Immigration Law Center, one of the organizations representing the lottery winners.

The U.S. State Department declined to comment on pending litigation.

In the lawsuit, the winners asked the government to process their visa applications before September 30, which is when their eligibility for green cards expires.

“A winning lottery spot is a rare and precious thing. If our clients do not receive their visas by September 30, they lose what may be their only chance at becoming Americans,” said Omar Jadwat, a director at the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU is another of the groups that brought the suit on behalf of the winners.

The “diversity visa” program, which attracts about 14 million applicants each year, was passed in its current form by Congress in 1990 to provide a path to U.S. residency for citizens from a range of countries with historically low rates of immigration to the United States.
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Nigerian Man Charged in US Phishing Scam

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A Nigerian man who overstayed his U.S. visa has been arrested in connection with a phishing scam and charged with fraud and identity theft.

Police in North Carolina arrested Daniel Adekunle Ojo for his role in a cybercrime that sought the tax information of 1,600 school district workers in Glastonbury, Connecticut.

Prosecutors said Ojo sent a bogus email to a school district employee, which appeared to be sent from another Glastonbury employee requesting the W-2 tax information of all employees. That employee then forwarded the information, which was used to file 122 false tax returns.

Officials said the Internal Revenue Service processed several of the fake returns and deposited nearly $37,000 in various bank accounts.

Prosecutors said they believe Ojo was also involved in similar email phishing schemes targeting school districts in Groton, Connecticut, and Bloomington, Minnesota.

A judge ordered Ojo to be detained and transferred from his home in North Carolina to Connecticut.

Officials said Ojo entered the United States in May 2016 on a visitor’s visa and failed to leave the country the following month as required.
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In the Ruins of an Iraqi City, Memories of Agatha Christie

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Agatha Christie lived here once, but only memories remain of the time the world’s best-selling fiction writer spent among the ruins of the ancient Iraqi city of Nimrud.

The mud-brick house where the British author of Murder on the Orient Express once stayed is long gone. If she were alive today, she would probably be shocked by what has befallen the Assyrian city where she worked alongside her archaeologist husband five decades ago.

Islamic State attacked Nimrud with bulldozers, jackhammers and dynamite three years ago as part of their general assault on Iraq’s cultural heritage.

Iraqi military forces retook the site early in their campaign to drive the jihadists out of Mosul, which lies about 30 km (20 miles) north.

The house where Christie lived on site was knocked down some years before that, and the people who knew her have all died.

But her name still stirs recognition among locals, although most do not know what she is famous for.

 

“We just know that she was British,” said Abu Ammar, who lives in the closest village to the ruins.

Famed for her detectives — Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot — Christie is listed by Guinness World Records as the best-selling fiction author of all time. Her 78 crime novels have sold 2 billion copies in 44 languages.

Christie first visited Iraq before it gained independence from Britain in 1932 and met the man she would marry on an archaeological dig in the south.

The couple spent time in Mosul, and eventually moved to Nimrud.

“What a beautiful spot it was,” she wrote. “The Tigris was just a mile away, and on the great mound of the Acropolis, big stone Assyrian heads poked out of the soil. It was a spectacular stretch of country — peaceful, romantic and impregnated with the past.”

That description stands in contrast to the present.

The mound on which the ruins are situated has a fresh crown of razor wire to keep looters out, and until recently, corpses floated down the river Tigris from battlefields upstream.

Winged bull statues

Colossal winged bull statues — or lamassus — that stood guard at the entrance to a palace lie dismembered in a heap.

“Look, there’s a foot,” said Iraqi army Captain Ali Adnan, pointing out a giant talon carved from a slab of stone. Feathers and cuneiform letters are chiseled into other fragments.

Much of it was unearthed during the 1950s by Christie’s husband, Max Mallowan, who wrote the book Nimrud and its Remains.

Christie’s own interest in archaeology is evident in Death on the Nile and Murder in Mesopotamia.

Christie began writing her autobiography in Nimrud. However, she spent most of her time there documenting Mallowan’s work in photographs, and cleaning ivories dug up from the ruins, using her own face cream to coax dirt out of the crevices.

Mohammed Saeed is too young to have met Christie, but he is familiar with her legend.

A local man, he has worked on excavations at Nimrud since 1996, and used to show tourists around in less turbulent times.

“Here was Agatha Christie’s room,” he said, standing on a nondescript patch of scorched ground at the edge of the mound. “Now nothing is left.”

Bulldozers, destruction

Saeed was present when Islamic State took over and remained as a guard at the site until he started receiving threats from the militants.

Over the following months, he saw bulldozers at work on the mound, and at night, cars came and went. He suspected they were traders inspecting what could be sold to fill Islamic State’s coffers. A year later, the militants blew up the site.

“I can’t describe how I felt. My brothers thought I was going to die,” said Saeed. “The ruins are a symbol — a civilization. They represent this nation.”

It is a feeling he believes Christie would have shared: “She probably would have collapsed,” he said.

There is hope, however. Saeed said there were plans to begin excavating the southern palace next spring.

As Christie prepared to leave Nimrud, she wrote: “Now Nimrud sleeps. We have scarred it with our bulldozers. Its yawning pits have been filled in with raw earth. One day its wounds will have healed, and it will bloom once again with early spring flowers. … Who shall disturb it next? We do not know.”
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Flynn Files New Financial Form Reporting Ties to Data Firm

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President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, is revealing a brief advisory role with a firm related to a controversial data analysis company that aided the Trump campaign, The Associated Press has learned.

The disclosure of Flynn’s link to Cambridge Analytica will come in an amended public financial filing in which the retired U.S. Army lieutenant general also discloses income that includes payments from the Trump transition team, according to a person close to Flynn who spoke to AP on condition of anonymity Thursday to describe details of the filing made to the White House.

The amended disclosure shows that just before the end of the campaign, Flynn entered into a consulting agreement with SCL Group, a Virginia-based company related to Cambridge Analytica, the data mining and analysis firm that worked with Trump’s campaign.

The person said Flynn didn’t perform work or accept payment as part of the agreement with SCL Group. The details of Flynn’s role with SCL weren’t fully laid out, the person said, noting that Flynn terminated his involvement shortly after Trump won the presidency.

Cambridge Analytica was heavily funded by the family of Robert Mercer, a hedge fund manager who also backed the campaign and other conservative candidates and causes. Cambridge Analytica also worked for the successful pro-Brexit campaign in 2016 to pull Britain out of the European Union. Trump administration chief strategist Steve Bannon was a vice president of Cambridge Analytica before he joined the Trump campaign.

Democratic lawmakers and Trump critics have seized on Cambridge Analytica’s role as they’ve pushed congressional investigators to scrutinize the Trump campaign’s data operation as part of probes into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.

Flynn’s previous filing, submitted to the White House and Office of Government Ethics in March, listed at least $1.3 million in earnings, including between $50,000 and $100,000 from his consulting company, Flynn Intel Group Inc. The latest filing lists at least $1.8 million in income.

Flynn’s amended filing comes some six months after he was ousted from the White House for misleading the vice president about conversations he had with the then-Russian ambassador to the U.S. It also comes as Special Counsel Robert Mueller and congressional committees are scrutinizing Flynn’s business deals and foreign connections.

The person close to Flynn said he is disclosing the information in an amended filing to make sure the “public record is accurate and transparent.” The person noted that Flynn and his legal team have spent months piecing together the information necessary for the filing without the assistance of the White House counsel’s office or the Office of Government Ethics.

In the filing, Flynn reports earning about $28,000 from the Trump presidential transition and more than $5,000 as a consultant to an aborted plan to build nuclear power plants across the Middle East. The consulting connection with a group of companies involved in the power plant proposal had been disclosed in Flynn’s previous filing, but it had not indicated that he had received payment.

Flynn’s new filing also provided more details about his consulting work for NJK Holding Corporation, a firm headed by Iranian-American multi-millionaire Nasser Kazeminy. The filing shows that Flynn was paid more than $140,000 for his roles as adviser and consultant to Minneapolis-based NJK.

Flynn also served as vice chairman at GreenZone Systems, a tech firm funded by NJK and headed by Bijan Kian, who was Flynn’s business partner in Flynn Intel Group, a consulting firm that was active last year but is now defunct. Flynn Intel is now under scrutiny by federal authorities and congressional investigators for its role in research and lobbying work for a Turkish businessman tied to the government of Turkey.

In a statement to the AP, NJK said Flynn “played an advisory role to NJK Holding relative to its investment interests in security.” The firm added that in his roles with NJK and GreenZone, Flynn “provided his counsel and guidance on public sector business opportunities for secure communications technology within the U.S. Department of Defense” and with other agencies.

NJK said Kian has no current involvement with NJK or GreenZone.

Earlier Thursday, Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., the ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, asked Kian for documents detailing Flynn’s foreign business contacts and travel. Flynn listed Kian as a personal reference in 2016 during his effort to renew his military security clearance. Kian told military investigators that Flynn had several foreign business contacts, but Flynn did not provide any of those contacts to investigators, Cummings said.
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Trump Visits Federal Agency for Briefing on Hurricane Season

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U.S. President Donald Trump visits the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Friday for a briefing on how the agency has prepared for the hurricane season.

The hurricane season historically has begun in August in the Atlantic.

There already have been five tropical storms in the Atlantic so far this season. The storms did not affect land.

FEMA is responsible for coordinating responses to disasters such as hurricanes.
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Prey to Violence, Vulnerable Nigerian Women Struggle on Italian Streets

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Italian outreach workers say there has been a significant shift in the migration pattern from Africa with many more young Nigerian women coming. And they add that many, if not most, of the young Nigerians arriving on Italian shores know they will be expected to engage in sex work.

But the women have little idea how harsh their living conditions will be and how long it will take for them to pay off the debts they owe the traffickers who recruited them and got them to Italy.

Few of them break free from the work, according to Appiah, a 37-year-old Ghanaian migrant. “I know of four women in the last few years,” he says forlornly. “Two of them had been working for years and managed to pay back what they owed the traffickers; the other two were young and fled to Germany.”

For the last few years Appiah has been working for an Italian charity in Castel Volturno, a decaying seaside town north of Naples that’s become home to thousands of his fellow countrymen and migrant women from Nigeria. Another charity in the area says that since 2010 about one hundred Nigerian women have sought its help to break free from sex work.

Italian and European authorities estimate as many as 16,000 Nigerian women, some as young as 16 or 17-years-old, have been trafficked into Italy in the past two years by Nigerian racketeers and crime gangs, the most notorious a syndicate known as Black Axe.

The number of unaccompanied Nigerian women sailing to Italy from Libya has risen each year from 1,454 in 2014 to more than 11,000 last year and the International Organization for Migration estimates as many as 80 percent of them work once they arrive as street prostitutes for traffickers often in brutal conditions and for little pay.

Like the Italian authorities, IOM argues the Nigerian women are forced unwillingly into prostitution, tricked by traffickers, who charge the women as much as 35,000 euros for the trip to Europe. The traffickers terrify the women into submission, using violence, voodoo religious rites and threats to harm the women’s families back in Nigeria, say authorities.

Threat of violence

But the picture is more complicated, according to charity workers and migrants themselves, who suspect most of the Nigerian women who’ve arrived in the past two years — and the ones setting out now to complete a highly dangerous journey through strife-torn Niger and Libya — were not tricked by unscrupulous recruiters but knew they’d be engaged in sex work in Italy.

They say the women, most in their teens or early twenties, don’t understand how harsh their conditions will be and how vulnerable they will be, prey to violence and manipulation in a culture they struggle to understand. Breaking free isn’t easy — the voodoo blood oaths traffickers make them take back in Nigeria weigh heavily on many of the women, the threat of violence is ever present and some fear their families will be harmed.

“The reality is that some of them, I would say most of them, know they will be involved in prostitution,” says Pescara-based Fabio Sorgoni, an official with the Italian charity On the Road, which helps prostitutes get out of sex work. “Some of them think they’ll be working in factories or cleaning. But a large proportion of them know they’re coming to do sex work,” he adds.

Anti-migrant rage

With anti-migrant rage mounting in Italy and populist parties demanding tough action to halt the record influx of asylum-seekers, charity and outreach workers fear speaking too openly about the motives and backgrounds of the Nigerian women arriving in Italy. They don’t want to erode what’s left of public compassion for asylum-seekers.

“The pattern has changed a lot,” says Maureen, a Nigerian migrant who arrived in Italy 20 years ago, starting life here as a housemaid. Working her way through school, she’s now a case officer for the charity Associazione Jerry Masslo.

“A few years ago, yes, the women were duped by the traffickers’ and expected ordinary jobs. But those days are over…the position has changed.” Partly so, she says, because of the effectiveness of outreach programs in Nigeria warning women of the dangers.

She says many of the recently arrived Nigerian women were sex workers before in Nigeria. “Some families, often mothers, sisters and aunts urge them to make the trip, arguing it’ll just be for a few months and then they’ll be rich,” she explains.

Motivated by poverty

Poverty and the lack of job opportunities in Nigeria led them into sex work in the first place, she argues. “And they don’t understand how bad it will be for them in Italy,” she says.

Says Sorgoni: “The women don’t understand 35,000 euros is lot of money. When they get here they have to stay on the streets for 14 hours a day and they get something like five or 10 euros for sex. They then realize they’ll have to be on the streets for years — forced to go with everyone, forced to have sex without a condom because many clients here demand that.”

He adds: “Many are very young, they come from rural areas and are unschooled. They don’t understand their own bodies or the infections they can get and they think all they have to do is pray, or ward off sickness with voodoo rites.”

In Castel Volturno, local doctors say nearly a quarter of the Nigerian women they treat have sexually transmitted diseases. “They fear they’ll be arrested when they arrive at the hospital,” says Dr. Beniamino Schiavone, director of Clinica Pineta Grande, a cutting-edge private hospital the government subsidizes to provide care for migrants in the area. “So they wait until their problem is terribly serious.”
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Observatory: Syrian Cease-Fire Lasts 10 Hours

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A Syrian watchdog says a cease-fire in areas of Homs province in central Syria held for at least ten hours before regime forces and militant factions began exchanging gunfire. 

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Friday gunfire erupted in Homs’ northern countryside in the towns of Farhaniyah, Teir Maalah, Um Sharshuh, and the outskirts of the al-Houla area. 

The Observatory said the militant factions initiated gunfire in the villages of Hos Tasnin and Javvurn and “other places controlled by the regime forces” in Homs. There was no immediate word about casualties. 

The cease-fire that began in central Syria Thursday at noon local time was intended to give residents a chance to start pulling their lives back together. 

Reporters on the ground said fruit and vegetable markets reopened and children were back on the streets in the city of Homs.

The quiet was also meant to give humanitarian workers the chance to bring in badly-needed aid.

Russian defense officials and representatives of the Syrian rebels worked out the details of the cease-fire in northern Homs last week in Cairo.

Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said the truce would affect an area that has a population of more than 147,000 people.

The truce was the third of four truces reached during negotiations in Kazakhstan when Russia, Iran, and Turkey agreed to establish what they called “de-escalation” zones in some of the most violent areas of Syria.

Cease-fires also went into effect in parts of southern Syria and an area outside Damascus. The fourth area in Idlib province has yet to be established.

Like other cease-fire deals during the Syrian conflict, this one does not cover Islamic State fighters or those from al-Qaida-linked groups.
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Grand Juries Demystified: My 5 Weeks on a Panel

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Reports this week say that Special Counsel Robert Mueller has convened a grand jury in Washington to further his investigation into allegations of Russian interference in last year’s U.S. presidential election and possible collusion by the Trump campaign. But just what is a grand jury and how does it work?

They are among the most mysterious and secretive of U.S. judicial institutions, little understood by most Americans, much less citizens of other countries. But I gained a rare insight into their inner workings three years ago when I was randomly chosen to serve for five weeks on a 23-person grand jury in Washington, D.C.

Grand juries date from 12th century England, where they were established to protect commoners from overzealous prosecution by the king. In the United States, that right is enshrined in the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution, which provides that “No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury.”

Authority over grand juries rests with the 50 individual states, and the rules vary from state to state with activities ranging from indicting serious crimes to investigating criminal activity and the conduct of public officials.

Unlike trial juries, which meet in open court and decide whether a person charged with a crime is guilty or innocent, grand juries only hear evidence presented by a prosecuting attorney. Charges are brought if the jury determines there is “probable cause” that a crime was committed and that a specific person or persons may have committed it.

During grand jury proceedings, neither the judge nor the person suspected of committing the crime is present. Proceedings are held in secret to protect reputations of the innocent.

My own 23-person grand jury served every day for five weeks, just like an eight-hour workday, with breaks built in for coffee and lunch.

But as at any job, people call in sick or cannot show up for other reasons. So the rules require that just 16 grand jurors — known as a quorum — need to be present in order for the jury to review evidence, hear witness testimony and participate in deliberations.

After the prosecutor has presented all of the state’s evidence, he asks the jury to issue an indictment and leaves the room. Grand jurors then vote by a show of hands on each of the charges under consideration. For our jury, 12 “yes” votes were needed for a suspect to be indicted.

I am not allowed to divulge details of the more than 70 cases we heard during my five-week stint. But the jury I served on reviewed evidence for homicides and other major crimes such as attempted murder, armed robbery, assault, and domestic violence. We listened to and questioned witnesses, crime victims, police officers and occasionally criminals in prison jumpsuits.

Many of the cases centered on a demographic defined by poverty, unemployment and poor education.

Not every case we heard ended with an indictment. In fact, fewer than half of them did, leaving the others to be reviewed by subsequent grand juries.

The five weeks I spent with prosecutors, witnesses, police detectives and my fellow jurors gave me an insider’s look into the criminal justice system of the United States.

The experience made me sympathize with the faceless victims who make up the sometimes numbing crime statistics, and respect those who make sure the accused face charges grounded in truth and fact as opposed to rumor and innuendo.

*Amanda Scott is a former VOA newsroom reporter who served on a Grand Jury during her time at the Voice of America
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A Year After France Attacks, De-radicalization Efforts Are Trial and Error

Posted on by SeeEU

An idyllic country manor set among the vineyards of the Loire River Valley, known for producing some of the world’s finest wines, is where France sought to pioneer its efforts to combat the radicalization of Muslim youth.

The efforts were late in coming, compared with other European nations. Britain launched its campaign shortly after the 2005 London attacks. Denmark has had largely successful programs in place for years.

France’s first efforts were in 2013, when it started an online campaign and a telephone hotline where relatives and teachers could report teenagers showing changes in behavior that pointed to radicalization.

Watch: A Year After France Attacks, De-radicalization Efforts Are a Trial and Error Exercise

​France is late to the game

But it was the 2015 Islamic State group attacks, including one at the Bataclan theater where scores of people were gunned down, that prompted France to start an official, hands-on campaign that involved reaching out and dealing directly with radicalized youth by removing them from their environments and de-programming them.

The efforts drew further public support in 2016 when a shocked nation searched for solutions after attacks in Nice and Normandy.

“It was quite a sense of both denial and panic at the same time,” Muriel Domenach, general secretary of the French government’s Inter-ministerial Committee for the Prevention of Delinquency and Radicalization, told VOA. “Some people would say there’s no such thing as radicalization. It’s just a matter of lack of equal opportunities, social economic challenges. Others would say it has all to do with Islam,” she added.

The government’s plan was to open reintegration centers where young Muslims at risk were to come, sing the French national anthem and be immersed in the secular principles that underpin the French republic.

The first was at the Pontourney manor, near Beaumont-en-Véron. In principle, the town welcomed the idea, but only initially.

“Most people were of a spirit to say, ‘Why not, let’s try to do something,’ said Bernard Chateau, the mayor of Beaumont-en-Véron. “Today we see that it did not work. It was a failure.”

Poor attendance and neighbors were scared

Attendance was voluntary, and only a handful of young Muslims came. Those who did frightened the neighbors. Some residents formed an association to protest.

“The association is not against dealing with de-radicalization but simply one has judged that in this location that is Beaumont-en-Véron in the middle of an inhabited place is not the place for de-radicalization,” said Catherine Bideau,” an association spokeswoman whose home looks across a field to the Pontourney manor.

“One had a Fiche S,” meaning the person had been flagged by French authorities as a threat to national security. “We had a person with psychiatric problems. We had a person who belonged to one of the most dangerous jihadist groups in France, the Strasbourg network, and links to one of the Bataclan attackers. So we had figures who really raised the question about a danger that was evident,” Bideau said.

The neighbors’ concerns point to underlying social attitudes in France that make de-radicalization a difficult subject to raise in a once Catholic nation where secularism, since the French Revolution, has been sacred.

“The problem arises as to why France reacted so belatedly, institutionally speaking, towards jihadism in comparison to other societies, other European countries,” said Farhad Khosrokhavar, a sociologist at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris. “One of the major obstacles was laicité, the ideology that the state, the government should not interfere with religion which is a private matter,” Farhad said.

​France now looking at younger Muslims

Government officials call de-radicalization a process of trial and error, and are now examining ways to reach marginalized Muslims at a younger age, an approach supported by peace activist Latifa Ibn Ziaten, who was originally from Morocco. Ibn Ziaten’s son, a French paratrooper, was killed in a 2012 terrorist attack. She now lectures school groups.

“One must look at that youth as the future of France. That is important. And that is what is lacking much because today a young person should be followed from nursery school to middle school,” Ibn Ziaten said after a lecture in the Paris suburb of St-Denis. “What is happening is the opposite. We are focusing on the middle school youngsters and by then it is a bit too late,” she said.

Analysts say Muslims make up 7.5 percent of France’s population, the highest, percentage in Western Europe. With more than 1,700 French nationals joining the Islamic State group, the country is one of the highest contributors of recruits to the terror group.

According to the government’s initial plan, centers like Pontourney were to be set up in every region of France, but that will not happen. At the end of July, officials said Pontourney is closing.

Now, the government under new president Emmanuel Macron seeks to draw from the lessons of failure and search for a new way while upholding France’s values of openness, diversity and secularism.

“We will have to sort of rethink the whole process and see if this third way between what we call the open background and individual follow-up and prison should be further developed and how,” Domenach said. “This was one of the lessons learned from our previous experiments that disengagement is actually proving very difficult.”
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A Year After France Attacks, De-radicalization Efforts Are a Trial and Error Exercise

Posted on by SeeEU

Analysts estimate 1,700 French nationals have joined the Islamic State, responsible for attacks in France that have killed more than 200 people in the last two years. France has Europe’s largest Muslim population and a long history of extremist attacks, but it was only two years ago that it launched an effort to stop the radicalization of Muslim youth, much later than other European nations. France’s project is off to a slow, troubled start. VOA Europe correspondent Luis Ramirez explores why.
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Electricity Back On, NC Islands Ready for Tourists

Posted on by SeeUS

Businesses on two North Carolina islands are gearing up for the return of tourists after a weeklong power outage that struck at the height of summer tourism season.

 

Visitors will be allowed to return to Hatteras and Ocracoke islands at noon Friday.

 

Power was cut to both islands a week ago during a construction accident. Workers building a new bridge drove a steel casing into underground transmission lines.

 

An estimated 50,000 tourists were ordered to leave the islands. Power was restored Thursday.

 

The summer is a make-or-break season for local businesses and many close during the cold-weather months.

 

Robin Jennette is a manager at Conner’s Supermarket in Buxton on Hatteras Island. She says the grocery store is stocked and ready for tourists to return.
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Young Netanyahu in Spotlight; Father Under Investigation

Posted on by SeeEA

Since becoming an adult, the eldest son of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly drawn media criticism for what has been portrayed as a life of privilege at taxpayers’ expense.

 

Yair Netanyahu, 26, has been described as someone who hobnobs with world leaders and enjoys a state-funded bodyguard, while living at the prime minister’s official residence.

 

But his recent behavior has now drawn public rebuke from the children of a former Israeli leader, along with threats of a libel suit. It has also revived criticism of the Netanyahu family’s perceived hedonism and sense of entitlement, at a time when the prime minister faces multiple corruption allegations.

Israeli police disclosed Thursday that Netanyahu is suspected of fraud, breach of trust and bribes in a pair of cases, just as his son was being pilloried in the press.

 

Younger Netanyahu in the tabloids

The younger Netanyahu hit the tabloids last weekend when a neighbor posted an account of how he refused to pick up after the Netanyahu family dog at a public park and then, when confronted, gave the neighbor the finger. 

 

Yair Netanyahu lashed out on Facebook at a website run by a liberal think tank that detailed what it said was his lavish lifestyle at taxpayers’ expense.

 

In the post, Netanyahu alleged the site is funded by what he claimed are foreign interests, referring indirectly to the dovish New Israel Fund, which he renamed the “Israel Destruction Fund.” He signed the post with emojis of a middle finger and a pile of excrement.

The Times of Israel said Thursday that the Molad organization that runs the site served the younger Netanyahu with a notice of intent to sue. The notice reportedly said that his posts “had no iota of truth to them.” 

 

But perhaps the harshest reactions came from some of the other targets of his post, in which he claimed the children of former Israeli leaders Shimon Peres, Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert did not come under such scrutiny.

 

It included an insinuation that one of Olmert’s sons had an “interesting relationship with a Palestinian man” that affected national security.

 

Olmert’s son Ariel fired back on Facebook, denying he was gay, dismissing the claims as a fabrication and accusing the younger Netanyahu of “racism and homophobia.”

 

Ariel Olmert added that he works for a living, never slept in the prime minister’s residence and “on principle, try to pick up my dog’s doody.”

 

His older brother Shaul then chimed in, calling Yair Netanyahu a fascist thug.

 

Questioned in scandal

Yair Netanyahu has also been questioned, though not as a suspect, about a corruption scandal in which his father was asked by police “under caution” about ties to executives in media, international business and Hollywood.

 

Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife, Sara, are said to have received more than $100,000 worth of cigars and liquor from Hollywood producer Arnon Milchan, who reportedly asked Netanyahu to press the U.S. secretary of state in a visa matter. 

 

Australian billionaire James Packer has reportedly lavished Yair with gifts that included extended stays at luxury hotels in Tel Aviv, New York and Aspen, Colorado, as well as the use of his private jet and dozens of tickets for concerts by Packer’s former fiancee, Mariah Carey.

 

Police are trying to determine whether these constitute bribes, since Packer is reportedly seeking Israeli residency status for tax purposes.

 

The prime minister has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, portraying the accusations as a witch hunt against him and his family by a hostile media.
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Wildfires Spread in Albania, Greece and Corsica 

Posted on by SeeEU

Three firefighters have been hurt battling a large brush fire south of the Greek capital, Athens.

Authorities have ordered the evacuation of dozens of homes in two communities in Lagonissi, a coastal area 30 kilometers from Athens, after several homes and cars were destroyed in the fire.

Dozens of firefighters and fire engines are taking part in the operation.

Winds up to 60 kilometers per hour were hampering the firefighting effort, while temperatures in the area reached 35 degrees Celsius (95 Fahrenheit).

Albanian fires

In Albania about 300 firefighters and military personnel are working to keep under control about 25 wildfires that have broken out in the last 24 hours. About 20 of the fires are threatening residential areas in the capital, Tirana, as well as in the cities of Vlora, Dibar, Elbasan and Berat, where vast areas of forest are burning.

Albanian authorities have asked neighboring Greece and Italy, as well as the European Union, for assistance in controlling the fires near Tirana and along the country’s Riviera.

Two airplanes are expected to arrive in Albania from the Greek island of Corfu and from Puglia, Italy, to assist the civil emergency units on the ground.

Corsica winds, heat

Wildfires are also taking a toll on the French Mediterranean island of Corsica, approaching the famous hikers’ route known as the GR20.

Authorities have issued warnings about soaring temperatures expected in Corsica and the southern French mainland, and the added threat of high winds.
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Senate Blocks Trump from Making Appointments During August Break

Posted on by SeeUS

The U.S. Senate has effectively blocked President Donald Trump from making any appointments while the lawmakers are on their August break.

The politicians have agreed to a procedural quirk known as pro forma sessions — a series of brief meetings that will technically keep the Senate in session.

Senators took the action after Trump’s recent criticism of Attorney General Jeff Sessions sparked speculation that he might fire Sessions during the recess.

Trump’s anger

The Washington Post said that Trump has mused with aides about replacing Sessions when Congress took its annual recess in August, in order to avoid a protracted Senate confirmation hearing over a new attorney general. The White House had called the report “more fake news.”

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham told NBC News recently there will be “holy hell” to pay if Trump fires Sessions, who was a senator until Trump tapped him to become attorney general.

Trump has vented his anger at Sessions, an early supporter of his presidential campaign, for removing himself from oversight of the Justice Department’s investigation of Russia’s interference in last year’s presidential election.

That in turn led Sessions’ deputy to name a special prosecutor, former Federal Bureau of Investigation chief Robert Mueller, to conduct an investigation of possible Trump campaign collusion with Moscow aimed at helping Trump win. The probe has consumed the early months of Trump’s White House tenure, even as Trump has branded the investigation a “witch hunt” and an excuse by Democrats to explain his upset victory over his Democratic challenger, former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

​Senators weigh in

Graham said that “any effort [by Trump] to go after Mueller could be the beginning of the end of the Trump presidency unless Mueller did something wrong. Right now I have no reason to believe Mueller is compromised.”

Democratic Senator Charles Schumer, the Senate minority leader, has noted Sessions’ political support of the president when Trump was an underdog in last year’s race for the Republican presidential nomination. Sessions was the first senator to endorse Trump’s candidacy.

“I would say to my fellow Americans, Democrat, Republican, liberal, conservative, every American should be troubled by the character of a person who humiliates and turns his back on a close friend after only six months,” Schumer said.

“All Americans should be wondering: Why is the president publicly, publicly demeaning and humiliating such a close friend and supporter, a member of his own Cabinet?” Schumer said recently. “They should wonder if the president is trying to pry open the office of attorney general to appoint someone during the August recess who will fire special counsel Mueller and shut down the Russia investigation. Let me say, if such a situation arises, Democrats would use every tool in our toolbox to stymie such a recess appointment.”

Attacks via Twitter

Trump has lobbed attacks at Sessions, a highly unusual public spat in Washington between a president and a member of his Cabinet. Trump publicly has said he is “disappointed” with Sessions, while calling him “VERY weak” and “beleaguered” in comments via Twitter.

Associates of Sessions have told the White House that Sessions has no intention of quitting his post at the U.S. Justice Department, and so far Trump has not fired him.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders has said that even though Trump is “disappointed” in Sessions, the president wants him to continue to run the Justice Department and focus on controlling illegal immigration and investigating leaks of classified government material to journalists.
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Under Erdoğan, Turkey’s Secular Traditions Recede

Posted on by SeeEU

Turkey, once considered the model of an open, secular democracy in the Muslim world, now seems to be stuck in reverse. The government is cracking down on dissidents and erasing the line between religion and state in a country that has served as the bridge between East and West.

Founded nearly a century ago, the overwhelmingly Muslim republic incorporated Western thought and philosophy and focused on science. It became an early member of NATO and aimed for European Union membership.

But President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, riding a wave of domestic conservatism, is turning toward increasingly authoritarian rule. The once-vibrant news media have been the target of mass arrests since a failed coup attempt a year ago, with journalists joining opposition legislators in jail on terrorism charges.

Thousands of workers have been culled from the civil service and school system. The education curriculum was revamped to eliminate the theory of evolution from most classrooms. Proposed legislation would allow local religious leaders to register and conduct marriages.

Fears of extremism

Critics inside and outside the country see a steady assault on the secular system, along with marginalization of minorities, which they fear could feed extremism.

“Basically, President Erdoğan is destroying Turkey’s secular education system,” said Soner Cagaptay, Turkey program director at the Washington Institute policy organization. “That is the key reason why Turkey worked as a democratic society, which did not produce violent jihadist radicalization.

“The replacement of secular education with a nonsecular curriculum will inevitably expose Turkey to jihadist recruitment as well as radicalization efforts by groups such as ISIS and al-Qaida, both of which thrive across Turkey’s border in Iraq and Syria.”

The Education Ministry announced July 18 that the new national curriculum dropped the theory of evolution and added the concept of jihad. The ministry said evolution is above the level of students and was not directly relevant. It also said jihad was an element of Islam and had to be taught correctly.

​Mustafa Balbay, of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), questioned the changes.

“We have to look at this issue as a whole,” Balbay said. “If you do that, you will see that new steps by the government will move our students away from science and scientific knowledge. Science is the basis of the modern Turkish republic. An 18-year-old person is old enough to be elected to public office, but you tell him he can’t understand the theory of evolution. It makes no sense.”

But the change mirrors the sentiments of much of Erdogan’s conservative supporters.

“Evolution is monkey theory. I don’t believe in monkey theory. Allah created us,” said Kemal, a cab driver in Erzurum. “In Turkey, we as a society have to become more religious. I support the government’s moves. I am a Muslim. I want our country to produce more religious and more ethical generations.”

Rushed legislation

The proposal to open the marriage system to clerics emerged from the Cabinet Erdoğan installed after a recent referendum. Opposition and women’s rights groups say the changes could open the door to underage marriages and could be used to force Islamic traditions on other religions.

They don’t see the need to rush the legislation through, pointing out there are higher priorities, given that the current civil marriage bureaus aren’t overworked.

“It is not a surprise that the first action undertaken by the Cabinet … is an initiative that will inflict another blow to secularism,” said Candan Yuceer, deputy chair of parliament’s committee on gender equality and a member of the opposition CHP. “This is not a regulation that emerged out of need, but instead is the government’s arbitrariness.”

Parliament lost much of its clout in the referendum, which despite a clearly split electorate, gave Erdoğan the ability to revamp the judiciary and other government organizations to suit his agenda. More regressive legislation is in the works, and there has been talk of restoring the death penalty, which has drawn protests from Germany and other European nations.

The CHP says it will try to stop the marriage bill in parliament, although opponents are finding themselves off balance in fighting the government’s moves. Last year’s attempted coup has significantly weakened the opposition. The government has shackled most of the media and critics of Erdogan’s more conservative policies find themselves labeled as terrorists.

Reporters Kasim Cindemir in Washington and Yildiz Yazicioglu in Ankara contributed to this report.
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Facebook to Step up Fact-Checking in Fight against Fake News

Posted on by SeeUS

Facebook is to send more potential hoax articles to third-party fact checkers and show their findings below the original post, the world’s largest online social network said on Thursday as it tries to fight so-called fake news.

The company said in a statement on its website it will start using updated machine learning to detect possible hoaxes and send them to fact checkers, potentially showing fact-checking results under the original article.

Facebook has been criticized as being one of the main distribution points for so-called fake news, which many think influenced the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

The issue has also become a big political topic in Europe, with French voters deluged with false stories ahead of the presidential election in May and Germany backing a plan to fine social media networks if they fail to remove hateful postings promptly, ahead of elections there in September.

On Thursday Facebook said in a separate statement in German that a test of the new fact-checking feature was being launched in the United States, France, the Netherlands and Germany.

“In addition to seeing which stories are disputed by third-party fact checkers, people want more context to make informed decisions about what they read and share,” said Sara Su, Facebook news feed product manager, in a blog.

She added that Facebook would keep testing its “related article” feature and work on other changes to its news feed to cut down on false news.
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Kenyan Activist Dons New Hat as Political Candidate

Posted on by SeeAF

You can expect some fresh faces on the ballots in Kenya in August. The political newcomers include a rapper seeking a seat in parliament, a businessman running for president, and a prominent activist who has decided to try to improve the system from within. For VOA, Lenny Ruvaga joined Boniface Mwangi on the campaign trail in Nairobi and has this report.
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