February 2019 - Page 10 of 24

The Five Candidates Running in Senegal’s Presidential Election

Posted on 02/18/2019 by SeeAF

Senegal, the most stable democracy in West Africa, is preparing for an election on Sunday with President Macky Sall facing off against four other candidates. Sall is widely expected to win a second term, after the country’s two best-known opposition figures were barred from running because of corruption allegations, in moves critics said represented a worrying crackdown on dissent.

Below is a look at the five candidates competing in the Feb. 24 ballot:

The incumbent: Macky Sall

Favorite to win the upcoming vote, the Senegalese president first came to power in 2012, after beating former president and mentor Abdoulaye Wade in the second round.

Sall, 57, started in politics as a member of Wade’s Senegalese Democratic Party (PDS) and served as his prime minister between 2004 and 2007. Internal disputes led Sall to split with Wade in 2008 and form his own party, Alliance for the Republic (APR).

As president, Sall launched an ambitious development and reform programme aimed at transforming Senegal into an emerging economy by 2035. The plan includes an array of big ticket infrastructure projects, including a rail project, power generation and a futuristic new city on the outskirts of Dakar.

But the barring of his main rivals, Khalifa Sall, who is in jail for corruption, and Karim Wade, son of the former president, also previously jailed for graft, has raised eyebrows among voters.

Heavy-handed crackdowns by security forces on some protests have also prompted accusations that President Sall has an authoritarian streak.

The twice-defeated: Idrissa Seck

Like Sall, Idrissa Seck, 60, served as Wade’s prime minister in the 2000s, but his subsequent bids for the presidency have been unsuccessful.

Seck was sacked as prime minister in 2004 over embezzlement allegations and spent some months in jail before his case was dismissed. In 2006, he founded the party Rewmi (“The Country,” in the Wolof language) and ran against Wade in 2007, finishing second.

He ran again in 2012 but did not make it to the second round. He is one of Sall’s main challengers, but a widely-cited survey in November showed him trailing the incumbent with little over eight percent support.

The newcomer: Ousmane Sonko

At 45 years old, Sonko is the youngest contestant in the race and a newcomer to the political scene. His relative youth plays to his advantage in Senegal, where more than 60 percent of the population is under 25 and anxious for change.

The tax inspector made a name for himself in 2016 when he became a whistleblower, denouncing corrupt practices in the Senegalese elite.

He was sacked over the activism, but his new-found prominence led to his election as a lawmaker in 2017, representing his own party: the Patriots of Senegal for Work, Ethics and Fraternity (PASTEF).

He is Sall’s other main challenger with 15 percent support, according to the November survey, which was conducted before the candidates list was finalized. Official opinion polls are banned ahead of elections.

The academic: Issa Sall

The 63-year-old IT professor represents the Party of Unity and Assembly (PUR). His party is affiliated with the Moustarchidine religious movement, part of a leading Sufi brotherhood in Senegal.

Founder of a private university in Dakar, Issa Sall launched his political career in the late 1990s. He is one of only three representatives of his party in the national assembly.

The outsider: Madicke Niang

Madicke Niang, 66, is seen as having the least chance of winning the upcoming vote.

A long-time member of the PDS, Niang was a loyal supporter of former president Wade and served as a minister in his government for many years. His decision last year to run for president led to his banishment from the party, as Wade wanted his son Karim to represent PDS in the race.
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Ukraine Pitches for More EU Aid for Southeast as Elections Near

Posted on 02/18/2019 by SeeEU

Ukraine’s foreign minister asked the European Union on Monday for hundreds of millions of euros in loans and aid for infrastructure and businesses in its troubled east and south, regions he said Russia was trying to “suffocate.”

EU foreign ministers were discussing increasing support for Ukraine, which holds a presidential election next month in tough conditions. Russia annexed its Crimea peninsula in 2014 and backs armed separatists in its eastern industrial Donbas region.

The EU is also moving to put more Russians under sanctions over Moscow’s standoff with Kiev in the Azov Sea, to the southeast of Ukraine.

“We need targeted… support for the Ukrainian south, to work with us on infrastructure… Further Russian attempts to destabilize Ukraine’s south would be very detrimental for European security,” Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin told reporters in Brussels.

“[There is] an attempt to suffocate the whole Ukrainian Donbas… We need infrastructure, it’s about roads and railways. And to support people… help them to launch new small and medium businesses because we need to fundamentally reshuffle the whole economic model there,” he added.

President Petro Poroshenko, elected amid high hopes for change in Ukraine after street protests ousted his pro-Russian predecessor in 2014, is in an uphill battle for re-election after his popularity plunged over graft and sliding living standards.

Klimkin accused Russia of turning the Donbas region – which remains outside the control of the Kiev government – into a “big [money] laundering machine”. He also said Kiev could “under no circumstances” allow Russians to be part of an OSCE election monitoring mission.

The EU’s top diplomat, Federica Mogherini, who chaired Monday’s ministerial meeting, stressed the bloc’s “unwavering support for Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty” but also urged Kiev to press on with economic and political reforms.

Despite Western pressure, Moscow has vowed never to return Crimea to Ukraine. A peace plan for eastern Ukraine, sponsored by Germany and France, has helped put an end to heavy fighting there but has since largely stalled.

Relations between the EU and Russia plunged to fresh lows last year over the poisoning of a former Russian double agent in Britain. But the EU is divided over how hard to punish Moscow – or how far to support Kiev – as some would prefer to prioritize business ties with Russia.
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South Sudan to Deduct from Civil Servants’ Salaries — But Salaries Aren’t Being Paid

Posted on 02/18/2019 by SeeAF

The government of South Sudan says that beginning in March, it will deduct one day’s salary from civil servants’ paychecks each month to help pay for implementation of the peace deal aimed at ending the country’s civil war.

Some observers are skeptical about how that will work, however. Most civil servants haven’t been paid for months.

Garang De Mabior Garang, a senior member of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement in Opposition (SPLM IO), a group that signed the peace deal, says the government’s announcement mocks the public’s intelligence.

“As we all know, workers are not paid on time as the situation currently stands, with government workers going more than six months without salaries and many of our foreign missions facing eviction. It begs the question; what salaries does the regime intend to cut?” Mabior asked in a statement.

Plan to last for months

South Sudan Information Minister Michael Makuei announced the salary deduction plan last week in Juba. He said the monthly deductions, due to last through June, should raise about one billion South Sudanese pounds, about $38 million.

The money would be used for the training and supply of a unified national army, among other activities.

Makuei said the government made the decision because the international community has not come through with promised funds. He called on citizens to “own” the peace agreement by contributing to its implementation.

But public servants told VOA’s South Sudan in Focus that they have doubts about the plan. Some declined to be identified for reasons of safety or protecting their jobs.

One man, who wanted to be identified only as Losik, said, “It is a good idea but where is the salary? People are staying for months without salary and the civil servants [are owed] by the government … But also our salary itself is not enough, so the government should look for other alternatives,” he said.

Susan Pita, a civil servant in the capital, Juba, also objected to the government taking part of a salary that is already small — when it is paid.

“If we deduct this money, what will be remaining for them? Because even those particular workers who are receiving salaries, even this salary is not enough. If we are going down to market, this salary is nothing,” Pita told VOA.

Another public servant, Solomon, said he has no problem contributing money to support efforts to restore peace in the country — but worries that any money deducted will end up in politicians’ pockets.

“It should not be a means of making other people’s pockets swell; it should really go to what it is intended to. This is a general fear that everybody fears,” he said. “Whether used in the right or wrong way, I am ready to contribute, it is a good decision,” he said.

In support of deductions

Civil servant John Donito welcomes the deduction but hopes the money will actually be used to implement the deal.

“The idea is not bad, but it shouldn’t be only civil servants; other people should also be included like the politicians and also the traders in the market,” Donito told South Sudan in Focus.

Makuiei said the government will approach people in the private sector for contributions as well, adding the government needs about 44 billion South Sudanese pounds to implement the revitalized peace agreement signed last year.

South Sudan recently resumed oil production, which is expected to bring in billions of dollars to the government over the next few years.

Awow Daniel Chuang, the oil ministry’s director-general, told the Associated Press in August last year that, “The goal of resuming oil production in Unity State is to help increase South Sudan’s total output of 130,000 barrels per day to almost 300,000, which could bring in about $5 billion over the next five years.”
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Twin Bombings Leave 15 Dead in Syria – Monitor

Posted on 02/18/2019 by SeeEA

A double bombing in the Syrian city of Idlib has left at least 13 people, mostly civilians, dead, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Monday.

The Britain-based human rights monitor said blasts in the Qusour neighborhood during rush hour Monday also injured 25 people. The first explosive device had been installed under a parked car, and a second went off when ambulances arrived at the scene, the monitor said.

The northwestern region of Idlib is the last major part of Syria outside the control of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Al-Qaida-linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham has controlled the region since last month when it overpowered smaller Turkey-backed factions.

Last week, the leaders of Russia, Iran and Turkey met in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi to discuss the Syrian conflict for the first time since the United States announced its troop withdrawal.

Russia is keen to help Assad retain power, while Turkey has pushed for the longtime leader to step down.

The war, currently in its eighth year, has left more than 360,000 dead.
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Potential Repatriation of Jihadis Raises Concern About Children

Posted on 02/18/2019 by SeeEA

In northern France, Lydie and Patrice Maninchedda have been waging an uphill battle, sustained by local media, to repatriate their three grandchildren from Syria. They have never met the children, ranging from one to five years. Nor has the couple seen their daughter, Julie, since she left with her then-husband to join the Islamic State group in 2014.

Then came an anonymous message last month that Julie was dead — and the grandchildren, now orphans, were detained in a Kurdish camp for internally displaced people.

“It is overwhelming to find them,” Patrice Maninchedda told France Bleu radio, of the three, who are considered by law to be French nationals. “Like all grandparents, we want to see our grandchildren. They need to be reintegrated into a normal life and family.”

The Maninchedda’s hopes may be realized sooner rather than later. The planned U.S. troop withdrawal from Syria prompted the French government to announce it was considering repatriating dozens of citizens now detained by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in the northeastern part of the country.

While some are hardened jihadists or their wives, roughly three-quarters are children under the age of seven, according to French Justice Minister Nicole Belloubet.

With the Islamic State group all but territorially vanquished in Syria, U.S. President Donald Trump urged European nations to repatriate captured fighters and put them on trial at home — a demand rejected for now by the French government, while Germany said doing so would be difficult.

“At this stage France is not responding to the demands” of Trump, Belloubet told France 2 television, saying Paris would consider repatriating French IS fighters on a case-by-case basis. But reports suggest French officials have agreed to repatriate French orphans now in Syria, although those children who are still with their parents are more problematic, and would need parental consent to be separated.

Similar dilemmas are faced elsewhere in Western Europe, from which nearly 6,000 nationals left to join IS ranks, according to the International Centre for the Study of Radicalization, at King’s College London. Many died in battle, and more than 1,700 have returned, it estimates.

Repatriating both the fighters and their children is politically explosive. Critics worry it will be difficult to prove in court crimes committed on the battlefields of Iraq and Syria, and that the children raised under Islamic State occupation could grow into dangerous adults.

Shaping public opinion too are the 2015 Paris attacks, which involved some returnee fighters.

“The question is whether to repatriate jihadists who left France, burned their French passports, and headed off to associate with Islamist fundamentalists, to become barbarians and strike our country,” said far-right leader Marine Le Pen in an interview.

“And the answer is no,” she added of the adults. “They should be judged in the places where they committed the atrocities. It’s the very least one can do, out of respect for the victims.”

Le Pen did not offer an opinion on the fate of the minors, describing them simply as “instrumentalized.”

Yet by not taking action, others argue, France risks having jihadis and their families disappear into a turmoil-torn region, posing a potentially serious security threat later on.

Even for children, the challenges of repatriation are massive, experts say. While some may have been sheltered from the fighting, many others are likely brainwashed by jihadi ideology. Still others may have witnessed or participated in horrific acts. Their background may come to haunt them — and France — later on.

“They are children, they aren’t guilty of crimes committed by their parents. And from a humanitarian point of view we must welcome and take care of them,” said sociologist Gerald Brunner, of the Jean Jaures Foundation — even as he warned that dealing with the returnees would be “difficult.”

‘We’d be right to imagine the worst, that they could commit a terrorist act on our territory,” Brunner said, adding, “authorities cannot avoid posing this question.”

Until recently, the preferred option was to do very little for the minors — unless their families pressed French authorities for action, said Farhad Khosrokhavar, a sociologist and expert on radical Islam.

“The French government—and one can generalize this to most of the Europeans—they don’t want them back,” Khosrokhavar said, in an interview last year. “Because they are afraid of them, and they know there will be problems.”

Today, repatriation claims involving children are growing, adding to the pressure. In Britain, 19-year-old Shamima Begum is asking to return home with her newborn, four years after joining Islamic State in Syria as a schoolgirl.

In neighboring Belgium, a court ordered the government in December to repatriate half-a-dozen children and their mothers detained by Kurdish fighters in northern Syria.

In France, fewer than 70 children had returned as of a year ago out of up to 700 in Iraq and Syria, according to different estimates. Most are under the responsibility of a court outside Paris. Some are placed in foster care; others taken in by their families. Those over 13 who participated in fighting can be detained, according to media reports.

Now, as France is pressed to bring back the rest, experts say there is no easy answer or blueprint to deal with them.

“The ideal would be to give them the opportunity to live with their mother and of course follow them psychologically and institutionally in order to deradicalize the mother,” said Khosrokhavar, the Islamist expert. But so far, there seems little appetite for repatriating parents en masse.

Sociologist Brunner suggests applying other examples of indoctrination — including children brainwashed by religious cults — in dealing with the IS minors.

“Nobody is ready for this kind of situation,” he said. “Nobody knows exactly what to do. The only we know is we can’t do nothing.”
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Saudi Crown Prince Concludes Landmark Pakistan visit

Posted on 02/18/2019 by SeeEA

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has concluded a landmark two-day visit to Pakistan where he oversaw the signing of unprecedented investment deals worth $20 billion and ordered the release of more than 2,000 Pakistanis from Saudi prisons.

Pakistani President Arif Alvi bestowed the country’s highest civilian honor on the Saudi crown prince, also known as MBS, at the end of official meetings.

“What we did in Pakistan is just the beginning,” MBS said in a nationally televised remarks before boarding the aircraft to leave Pakistan.

Bin Salman is on his first tour of South Asian nations and China since becoming the Saudi leader in 2017. The crown prince arrived in Islamabad Sunday evening where Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan and senior civil and military leaders received him at an Air Force base. The Saudi leader was accompanied by a large delegation of ministers, members of the royal family and businessmen.

Khan personally drove MBS to the palatial prime minister’s complex in the capital where the two leaders held formal talks and oversaw the signing of seven major agreements between their two delegations.

Speaking at the end of the late night ceremony, bin Salman noted his delegation signed “$20 billion” worth of memorandum of understandings.

“It’s big for phase one and definitely it’s going to grow every month, every year in bigger numbers and will be beneficial for both countries,” he said.

The agreements signed Sunday included a deal for a $10 billion oil refinery in Gwadar, where China has built and activated a major seaport.

Pakistani officials say the facility will be in place in next “3-5 years” in Gwadar and will meet the country’s needs of refined oil products currently being imported. The surplus will be exported to regional countries.

The unprecedented Saudi investment is being viewed by Prime Minister Khan’s nascent government as a major boost for Pakistan, which is facing an economic crisis and balance of payments pressure.

Khan welcomed Saudi investment in areas of oil refining, petrochemicals, energy and other sectors.

“We have CPEC (China-Pakistan Economic Corridor), we have links with China. We have very close connectivity with probably what is the biggest market in the world, which is China. So we welcome Saudi Arabia to participate with us. It’s an exciting future,” the Pakistani prime minister said.

CPEC is a package of infrastructure, energy and port-building projects Beijing is funding in Pakistan as part of its global Road and Belt Initiative. China has already invested $19 billion over the past five years and plans to invest billions more to construct industrial zones.

During the nationally televised conversation with MBS, Khan asked him to look into the plight of Pakistani prisoners in Saudi jails and ensure better treatment for nearly 2.5 million Pakistanis working in Saudi Arabia. There are about 3,000 Pakistanis, mostly laborers, languishing in Saudi prisons and facing charges ranging mainly from illegal entry and visa violations.

MBS promised to look into both the issues and told Khan: “Consider me ambassador of Pakistan in Saudi Arabia. His delegation informed Pakistani negotiators Monday morning that more than 2,100 prisoners are being released from Saudi jails.

The Saudi Kingdom hosts more than 2.5 million Pakistani expatriates in all, and is a key source of oil supplies for Islamabad. It allows Pakistan to make deferred payments, and offers cash grants to help Pakistan’s often ailing economy.

Prime Minister Khan was one of the few international leaders who participated in an investment conference that Saudi Arabia hosted in October. The event was organized just days after the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist, at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. Many foreign participants boycotted the conference to protest Khashoggi’s killing.
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Driver’s Licenses for Undocumented: Benefit for Some or All?

Posted on 02/18/2019 by SeeUS

Each weekday morning, 19-year-old Eri Torres of Morristown, New Jersey, catches the 6:45 a.m. public bus to the County College of Morris.

Class begins promptly at 8 a.m. but her shuttle bus only operates every hour-and-a-half, so running late is not an option. If it doesn’t stop at all, she’s out of luck.

Torres has no option but the bus. She cannot drive herself to school because obtaining a driver’s license is not possible as an undocumented immigrant in New Jersey. Nor will her parents drive her. She rarely gets into a car with them.

Originally from Quimbaya, Colombia, the teenager and her parents have lived in the shadows since they arrived three years ago and overstayed their visas.

Their status means they cannot risk doing anything like driving without a license that might bring them to the attention of immigration authorities. Without a valid driver’s license, many drivers do not obtain insurance. Without insurance, they are breaking New Jersey law.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is known to target undocumented immigrants who have broken the law – even if the offenses are minor traffic violations and put them in deportation proceedings. In some reported cases police departments have worked with ICE to turn in offenders.

According to ICE data, the agency made nearly 159,000 arrests in fiscal year 2018, a 44 percent increase from fiscal year 2016.

About half of those arrests, 76,204, were the result of traffic offenses, charged or convicted, an 11 percent increase from the previous year.

Super scary’

On one occasion, Torres was being driven by her mother late one evening when they were signaled to pull over. Waving flashlights, a line of police were searching cars.

Her mother, behind the wheel, held her emotions steady. Torres, the family’s sole English-speaker, explained to the officer that her mother only had a driver’s license from Colombia, and showed it to him. He and three other officers inspected the car.

“You better get a New Jersey license,” the policeman told Torres’ mother finally. “Good luck.”

He let them off with a warning. Shaken, Torres’ mother cried inconsolably all the way home.

Since then, Torres seldom rides in the family car. If her mother or father is caught driving without a license, the thinking goes, at least she may be safe from deportation.

“It’s super scary,” Torres says of routine grocery runs and hospital visits where public transportation options are limited. “You feel like nothing.”

12 states and counting

If the New Jersey legislature changes requirements to obtain a driver’s license, the Torres family’s luck could change, as it has for hundreds of thousands more across the country.

To date, 2013 was the biggest year for the nation’s undocumented driving-age population. Eight states plus the District of Columbia passed legislation allowing residents to obtain a driver’s license or card, regardless of legal status. Two more states followed suit in 2015.

There are 12 today — each with its own set of restrictions. A grouping of them is across the American Southwest; a scattering along the Atlantic coast.

Following the 2018 elections, Maine and New York joined three other states, New Jersey, Oregon and Rhode Island, in which Democrats dominate all three branches of state government and as is often said, elections change things, in this case potentially for undocumented drivers.

Controlling the governorship, with majorities in the state senate and house, Democrats in at least two of those states are considering providing expanded access to driver’s licenses: New Jersey and neighboring New York.

If enacted, proposals in both states could impact more than 1.2 million driving-age undocumented immigrants who currently do not qualify, and who — like the Torres family — have scrupulously avoided run-ins with the police in their communities by always looking over their shoulders.

The new legislation would amount to more drivers on the road who are tested, insured, and licensed, creating safer roads, according to Erika Nava, policy analyst at the New Jersey Policy Perspective (NJPP).

“California has seen a decrease in hit-and-run accidents, so they’re not fleeing the scene as much now that they have a license,” Nava told VOA. “They don’t fear that ICE might get them, so there’s more accountability.”

Ideological opposition

In New Jersey, public opinion favors a change in legislation. Across party lines, registered and likely New Jersey voters support the proposed law by a nearly 2-1 margin — including 62 percent of registered Democrats and 47 percent of registered Republicans — according to a poll conducted by Clarity Campaign Labs.

Apart from safety concerns, those in favor have an economic argument. According to NJPP, annual insurance premium payments would increase by roughly $223 million a year as a result of increased coverage, while the state would collect $11.7 million in license fees, plus recurring fees.

New York state, if legislation were passed there, would collect an estimated $57 million annually in combined vehicle registration fee and tax revenue, according to a report from the Fiscal Policy Institute.

Similar proposals have been introduced elsewhere, including in Virginia, though it is unlikely to be approved by that state’s divided government.

Opponents everywhere say the measure sends the wrong message: that undocumented immigrants are welcome, when they are not.

In the Garden State, a near 20,000-signature petition circulated by Republican lawmakers labeled the proposed democratic legislation a “foolish quest to turn New Jersey into a sanctuary state.”

“As a legal citizen and taxpayer of [New Jersey], I oppose giving illegals driver’s licenses. I have to show six points of ID just to renew mine,” Derek Freyberger commented on the forum, adding: “just [because] they have a license doesn’t mean they will get insurance.”

“They have fundamentally broken the law and as such are criminals and should be treated as such,” New Jersey resident Linda Salmons wrote.

Others have expressed concern that non-English speakers might have difficulty reading road signs or that a relaxed identification process could lead to an increase in fraud.

Desire to do the right thing’

Similar to laws in 12 other states, two license categories would exist under New Jersey’s proposed legislation: a limited, standard driver’s license — barring entry into federal buildings or boarding an airplane — and a federally compliant REAL ID license, which would require proof of lawful presence in the country.

Aside from New Jersey’s undocumented residents, the state’s homeless and formerly incarcerated population, along with low-income families and victims of domestic abuse — vulnerable residents who may lack access to certain documents — would benefit from a wider range of accepted forms of identification.

Lacking a driver’s license, “you’re walking a tightrope,” stuck on the fringes of society, said Jamal Brown, a once-homeless, once-incarcerated New Jersey resident and member of the nonprofit Camden Coalition’s Community Advisory Committee.

“They all know how to drive, and they all have the desire to do the right thing,” Brown said.
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‘Digital Gangsters’: UK Wants Tougher Rules for Facebook

Posted on 02/18/2019 by SeeEU

British lawmakers issued a scathing report Monday that calls for tougher rules on Facebook to keep it from acting like “digital gangsters” and intentionally violating data privacy and competition laws.

The report on fake news and disinformation on social media sites followed an 18-month investigation by Parliament’s influential media committee. The committee recommended that social media sites should have to follow a mandatory code of ethics overseen by an independent regulator to better control harmful or illegal content.

The report called out Facebook in particular, saying that the site’s structure seems to be designed to “conceal knowledge of and responsibility for specific decisions.”

“It is evident that Facebook intentionally and knowingly violated both data privacy and anti-competition laws,” the report states. It also accuses CEO Mark Zuckerberg of showing contempt for the U.K. Parliament by declining numerous invitations to appear before the committee.

“Companies like Facebook should not be allowed to behave like ‘digital gangsters’ in the online world, considering themselves to be ahead of and beyond the law,” the report added.

U.K. parliamentary committee reports are intended to influence government policy, but are not binding. The committee said it hopes its conclusions will be considered when the government reviews its competition powers in April.

And while the U.K. is part of the 28-country European Union, it is due to leave the bloc in late March, so it is unclear whether any regulatory decisions it takes could influence those of the EU.

Facebook said it shared “the committee’s concerns about false news and election integrity” and was open to “meaningful regulation.”

“While we still have more to do, we are not the same company we were a year ago,” said Facebook’s U.K. public policy manager, Karim Palant.

“We have tripled the size of the team working to detect and protect users from bad content to 30,000 people and invested heavily in machine learning, artificial intelligence and computer vision technology to help prevent this type of abuse.”

Facebook and other internet companies have been facing increased scrutiny over how they handle user data and have come under fire for not doing enough to stop misuse of their platforms by groups trying to sway elections.

The report echoes and expands upon an interim report with similar findings issued by the committee in July . And in December , a trove of documents released by the committee offered evidence that the social network had used its enormous trove of user data as a competitive weapon, often in ways designed to keep its users in the dark.

Facebook faced its biggest privacy scandal last year when Cambridge Analytica, a now-defunct British political data-mining firm that worked for the 2016 Donald Trump campaign, accessed the private information of up to 87 million users.

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Barred from Venezuela, European Lawmakers Call for Action

Posted on 02/18/2019 by SeeEU

Conservative European lawmakers who were barred from entering Venezuela this weekend are urging the European Union’s top diplomat to suspend contacts with Nicolas Maduro’s government.

Esteban Gonzalez Pons, the head of the European Popular Party parliamentary group, is also calling for European sanctions against Venezuela’s foreign minister, Jorge Arreaza, who had ordered that the lawmakers should be barred on the grounds that they were conspiring against the government.

The five visitors were invited by the opposition-led congress led by Juan Guaido, whom the European Parliament and a majority of the EU’s members recognize as Venezuela’s interim leader.

Speaking to reporters in Madrid on Monday after returning from Caracas, Gonzalez Pons said that the EU’s foreign affairs commissioner, Federica Mogherini, should cancel the International Group of Contact that seeks talks in Venezuela.

He also called for the bloc’s members to oust Maduro’s ambassadors, and he vowed to return to Venezuela on Saturday.
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The Role of Washington-Beijing Ties on Northeast Asia

Posted on 02/18/2019 by SeeUS

Should Washington and Beijing reach an agreement on the current tariff impasse, that may not be enough to avert what many experts speaking at the Chey Institute for Advanced Studies called a “new Cold War” between the countries.

Yoon Young-kwan, former South Korean Minister of Public Affairs said, “We are now entering to a more unstable and dangerous era of international relations.”

He was not alone in that assessment.

“The foundations for a constructive U.S.-China relationship are more fragile than at any time in recent decades,” said Stapleton Roy, former U.S. Ambassador to China during the George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations and the founding director of the Kissinger Institute on China and the U.S.

He said the hostile rivalry between China and the United States will continue to adversely affect the interests of East Asian nations.

“If Washington and Beijing cannot reconcile their respective interests and ambitions in the western Pacific,” Roy added, “This will increase the possibility of military confrontations, divert resources from economic development to a dangerous and costly the arms race, and enhance the likelihood of nuclear proliferation and increased pressures on the countries in East Asia to choose sides.”

Former Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs under the Obama and Trump administrations Daniel Russel also noted, “The deterioration of U.S.-China relations has implications for Northeast Asia that go well beyond North Korea. All countries are going to resist being forced to line up behind one side or another in a new Cold War.”

Furthermore, Executive Director at Nanjing University’s China Center for Collaborative Studies of the South China Sea, Zhu Feng, says Beijing is still “grappling” with the shift in Washington’s policy on China during the first two years of the Trump administration.

Zhu said China is “shocked” over the range and speed of how the bilateral relations have changed so quickly and that the current tariff dispute was a “wake-up call” for Beijing.

Ultimately Roy surmised, “No country will benefit from such an outcome [of a Cold War], least of all China and the United States.”

Repairing ties

The experts speaking at the Chey Institute for Advanced Studies inagural U.S.-China-South Korea trilateral conference were unsure how Beijing and Washington might resolve their current fractured relationship.

“I think the political atmosphere on China-U.S. relations in Washington is much worse than in Beijing,” said Jia Qingguo, a professor at Peking University.

He says that many are focusing more on the negative side of U.S.-China relations at the expense of ignoring the positive side of the of the relationship.

“We have a lot of shared interests between the two countries,” he adds, “The two sides have a lot of cooperation on global governance issues, immigration, corruption, anti-corruption, money laundering, [and] even cyber to some extent.”

He asserts that by taking into consideration the “shared interests and aspirations” of Beijing and Washington, a mutually beneficial relationship between the two can be created and managed.

Ajou University professor Kim Heungkyu also suggested that in order to balance, or mediate competition in the region, it may also become necessary for “middle powers” to play a greater role in the fostering of better ties between the U.S. and China.

Impact on Asia

Russel says that may be difficult because the geopolitical situation in the Asia Pacific region has been fundamentally altered.

“The whiplash that these countries in Asia feel from the reversal of U.S. policy from Obama to Trump from Trump to the next [president], has so undermined the confidence in sustained character and the dependability of U.S. policy, that countries in the Asia Pacific feel compelled to diversify [and] to reduce their dependence on the United States.

Another impact the tense relationship between China and the U.S has. on the region, says Jia, is Beijing’s role on denuclearizing North Korea.

He says that in China, some view the denuclearization of North Korea as a “U.S. problem” and Beijing should not be involved. Others, Jia says, view it as a “Chinese problem,” and it should work with Washington to bring about a solution.

However, because of increased U.S.-China tension, “These people will say, ‘You know, now China-U.S. [relations] is so bad, why should we help the U.S.?’”

He further states that if the United States and China were to become “enemies,” then some feel it would be in Beijing’s best interest not to apply pressure to North Korea, thus creating more problems for Washington.

How the United States and China resolve their current issues will have an impact on Beijing’s foreign policy, said Jia.

U.S. President Donald Trump is scheduled to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Hanoi, Vietnam February 27-28 for a second denuclearization summit.

In addition, on Sunday, the president touted “big progress” was being made in trade talks with China.
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Sex Abuse Survivors to Meet with Vatican Summit Organizers

Posted on 02/18/2019 by SeeEU

Organizers of Pope Francis’ summit on preventing clergy sex abuse will meet this week with a dozen survivor-activists who have come to Rome to protest the Catholic Church’s response to date and demand an end to decades of cover-up by church leaders.

These survivors will not be addressing the summit of church leaders itself. Rather, they will meet Wednesday with the four-member organizing committee to convey their complaints. The larger summit of 180 presidents of bishops conferences from around the world begins Thursday.

Chilean survivor Juan Carlos Cruz, who is coordinating the survivor meeting, told The Associated Press he hopes for a “constructive and open dialogue” and for summit committee members to convey the survivors’ demand that bishops stop pleading ignorance about abuse.

“This has to stop,” Cruz said. “Raping a child or a vulnerable person and abusing them has been wrong since the 1st century, the Middle Ages and now.”

Francis called the summit in September after he himself discredited Cruz and other Chilean victims of a notorious predator priest. Francis was subsequently implicated in the cover-up of Theodore McCarrick, the onetime powerful American cardinal who just last week was defrocked for sexually abusing minors as well as adults.

Francis appointed a four-member organizing committee headed by the Vatican’s top sex crimes investigator, Maltese Archbishop Charles Scicluna, Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich, Mumbai Cardinal Osvald Gracias and the Rev. Hans Zollner, a member of Francis’ sex abuse advisory commission.

They had urged participants to meet with victims before they came to Rome, to both familiarize themselves with victims’ pain and trauma and debunk the widely held idea that clergy sex abuse only happens in some parts of the world, Cupich told AP last week. Survivors will be represented at the summit itself via some video testimony, he said.

Cruz said the key message for the bishops to take away from the summit is that they must enforce true “zero tolerance” or face the consequences.

“There are enforceable laws in the church to punish not only those who commit the abuse but those who cover it up,” he told AP. “No matter what rank they have in the church, they should pay.”
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Zimbabwe Opposition Official Convicted of False Declaration

Posted on 02/18/2019 by SeeAF

A Zimbabwean court has convicted prominent opposition politician Tendai Biti for announcing that his party’s leader won disputed elections held in July.

Biti was on trial for “unofficial and false declaration of results.” Magistrate Gloria Takundwa fined him $200 for the offense.

Biti, also a leading human rights lawyer, fled the country to neighboring Zambia in August citing threats to his life. He was deported back to Zimbabwe days later and arrested for allegedly violating the electoral law.

Main opposition leader Nelson Chamisa and his party, the Movement for Democratic Change, have rejected the election results, claiming the electoral agency rigged the vote to ensure a win for President Emmerson Mnangagwa.

Zimbabwe has sunk deeper into political turmoil and economic decline since the elections, the first to be held without former longtime ruler Robert Mugabe. At one time the elections were viewed by both local and the international community as key to turning the country around after decades of repression.
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Baring Vostok Senior Partners Take Charge After its Founder Arrest

Posted on 02/18/2019 by SeeUS

Moscow-based private-equity firm Baring Vostok Capital Partners announced Monday that senior partner Elena Ivashentseva and co-founder Alexei Kalinin are in charge of the company after its founder and senior partner Michael Calvey, was arrested Saturday on suspicion of embezzlement.

Moscow Basmanny court judge Artur Karpov ordered Calvey, the founder of the firm and one of the country’s longest-standing and most prominent American investors, held in custody until at least April 13, arguing that the seriousness of criminal charges makes him a flight risk.

Calvey’s lawyer said the investor maintains his innocence and will appeal. Four other defendants in the case have been ordered to remain in pretrial custody for two months.

A spokeswoman for the Moscow district court on Friday announced that Calvey had been detained along with other members of the firm on Thursday, on suspicion of stealing $37.5 million (2.5 billion rubles), a charge that carries of a sentence of up to 10 years in prison.

Calvey, 51, is a senior partner who founded Baring Vostok in 1994. According to the firm’s website, the private equity group holds more than $3.5 billion in committed capital and is a controlling shareholder in Russia’s Vostochny Bank, which focuses on Siberian and Far Eastern markets

A statement on the Baring Vostok website said the company “believes that the detention of its employees and the charges that have been brought are a result of a conflict with shareholders of Vostochniy [sic] Bank. We have full confidence in the legality of our employees’ actions and will vigorously defend their rights. Baring Vostok’s activities in the Russian Federation are fully compliant with all applicable laws.”

Before launching Baring Vostok, Calvey worked for the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and Salomon Brothers. Since arriving in Moscow in the mid-1990s, he’s become a prominent and highly visible member of the Moscow investment community. He is a board member of the Washington-based Atlantic Council.

The announcement of Calvey’s detention sent shockwaves through the international investment community, prompting numerous pleas for his immediate release.

Herman Gref, head of Sberbank, Russia’s biggest state bank, issued a statement calling Calvey a “decent, honest man,” while Kirill Dmitriev, the head of Russia’s $10 billion sovereign wealth fund and a close contact of Russian President Vladimir Putin, described Calvey as “committed to the highest ethical standards accepted in the investment community.”

Kremlin officials on Friday said Putin wasn’t aware of the charges being brought against Calvey.

A State Department spokesperson said Friday, “We are aware that a U.S. citizen was arrested on February 14, 2019, in Russia. We have no higher priority than the protection of U.S. citizens abroad. Due to privacy considerations, we do not have any additional information at this time.”

Calvey is the third Westerner to face prosecution in Russia since December 31, when American citizen Paul Whelan, a former Marine, was jailed on accusations of spying. Last week a Russian court sentenced Dennis Christensen, a Danish adherent of the Jehovah’s Witnesses religion, to six years in prison for “organizing the activity of an extremist organization.”

Although Russia has jailed foreign investors who were vocal opponents of the Kremlin, Calvey has no such record of public political opinions.

Russia is “a do-it-yourself market,” Calvey told The Washington Post in 2011. “You can’t rely on outside service providers.”

In that same interview, Calvey said his group operates with 20 investors, four full-time lawyers and three government relations managers, along with a host of accountants and administrative support. At that time, all 10 of his partners were Russian nationals.

“International firms aren’t equipped for Russia,” he told the Post. “And they usually have a low-tolerance threshold for uncertainty and no sense of humor for Russian surprises,” which he described as surprise audits, seizure of assets for back taxes, and sudden, sometimes seemingly arbitrary, business license reviews.

Vocal Kremlin critic and Hermitage Capital co-founder Bill Browder was denied entry into Russia in 2005 after his lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, began investigating governmental misconduct and corruption in response to suspicious tax evasion charges brought against Hermitage by Russia’s Interior Ministry.

Magnitsky died under suspicious circumstances in Russian custody in 2009.

“The arrest of Mike Calvey in Moscow should be the final straw that Russia is an entirely corrupt and [uninvestable] country,” Browder said in a tweet on Friday. “Of all the people I knew in Moscow, Mike played by their rules, kept his head down and never criticized the government.”

Pete Cobus is VOA’s acting Moscow correspondent. State Department correspondent Nike Ching contributed reporting from Washington. Some information is from Reuters.
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The Invisible Street Children of Mogadishu

Posted on 02/18/2019 by SeeAF

The prolonged civil rest in Somalia has taken the lives of many parents whose children are now left fending for themselves. Many live on the streets of Mogadishu, vulnerable to violence, drugs, crime and exploitation. Mohamed Sheikh Nor reports on the street children of Mogadishu who spend their days sniffing glue to escape a grim life.
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IS Gunmen Hide Among Civilians in Last Syria Holdout

Posted on 02/17/2019 by SeeEA

From a self-proclaimed caliphate that once spread across much of Syria and Iraq, the Islamic State group has been knocked back to a speck of land on the countries’ shared border. In that tiny patch on the banks of the Euphrates River, hundreds of militants are hiding among civilians under the shadow of a small hill — encircled by forces waiting to declare the territorial defeat of the extremist group.

A spokesman for the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces fighting the militants said Sunday that the group is preventing civilians from leaving the area, closing a corridor from which nearly 40,000 residents have managed to escape since December.

“They are taking their last breath,” said Dino, an SDF fighter deployed at a base near the front line in the village of Baghouz, about 2 kilometers (1¼ miles) from the militants’ last spot.

An Associated Press team visited the base Sunday, escorted by the SDF, driving past mostly one-story rural houses that were destroyed, a reminder of the cost of the battle. Occasional airstrikes and artillery rounds by the U.S.-led coalition supporting the SDF, meant to clear land mines for the advance, could be seen in the distance.

The road to the base passes through a number of villages and towns from which IS were uprooted in recent weeks.

In Hajin, a major center for the militants that fell to the SDF in December, some residents have begun to return but the town remains battered by the fighting and airstrikes. Small shops selling tools and construction material have sprung up.

For weeks, the militants fought desperately for their shrinking territory. Once in control of about a third of Syria and Iraq, they now are down to what SDF officials describe as a small tented village atop a network of tunnels and caves. But they are holding on to hundreds of civilians — some of them possibly hostages — taking cover among them at the edge of Baghouz, the village in eastern Deir el-Zour province.

“Regrettably, Daesh have closed all the roads,” preventing civilians from leaving, said Mustafa Bali, a spokesman for the Kurdish-led SDF, referring to IS by its Arabic acronym.

The extremists may include high-level commanders, and the presence of possible captives could explains the slow final push, they added.

As civilians trickled out of the enclave in recent weeks, the SDF and coalition officials screened them. Women and children were transferred to camps miles away; men suspected of links to the militant group were taken into custody at other facilities.

SDF commanders said some of the hostages taken from their force have been freed in recent days. Fighters at the base said one of their colleagues was set free in the last two days.

Khatib Othman, an SDF fighter, came back from the front line a few days ago to take a break. His brother, also an SDF fighter, was taken hostage by IS in the last weeks of fighting. He is now believed to be held in Iraq as a suspected militant and negotiations are underway to free him.

“We want to take revenge. We will not let the blood of our martyrs go to waste,” Othman said. “We are waiting for the civilians to go out, and we will go in and attack. It is a matter of days. They are under siege, no food and no water. They are encircled from four sides. They have to give up.”

He added that the militants are running out of ammunition.

The capture of the last pocket of IS territory in either Syria or Iraq would mark the end of a four-year global campaign to crush the extremist group’s so-called caliphate. It has been a long and destructive battle. In decline since 2016, the militant group was stripped of its self-declared capital of Raqqa, in Syria, in the summer of 2017, leaving behind a destroyed city whose residents are still struggling to return.

In Deir el-Zour, the SDF and the coalition have battled to uproot the militants from villages and towns on the eastern banks of the Euphrates since September.

Battle-hardened militants, including some of the group’s leading fighters and foreign commanders, had taken refuge in the area between Syria and Iraq. They fought back, dispatching suicide bombers from underground tunnels, deploying female fighters and launching counteroffensives that reclaimed many of the villages for weeks. Nearly 700 SDF fighters were killed in fighting that left at least 1,300 militants and over 400 civilians dead, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

“We will very soon bring good news to the whole world,” Ciya Furat, an SDF commander, said Saturday at a news conference at the al-Omar Oil Field Base, miles from Baghouz.

But experts and U.S. defense officials warn that IS still poses a major threat and could regroup within six months if pressure is not kept up.

Thousands of IS fighters and their families have emerged in the past few months from the group’s last enclave. The SDF is holding 900 foreign fighters in lockups and camps in northern Syria, and their fate is a major concern, particularly as U.S. troops prepare to withdraw from Syria. In a tweet Sunday, U.S. President Donald Trump called on Britain, France and Germany and other European countries to take back their militants and put them on trial at home.

“The Caliphate is ready to fall,” Trump said. He suggested the alternative would be that the U.S. would be forced to release them.

“We do so much, and spend so much – Time for others to step up and do the job that they are so capable of doing. We are pulling back after 100% Caliphate victory!” he added.

The Kurdish forces and officials have said the same in recent weeks, appealing to countries to take back their militants.

Bali, the SDF spokesman, declined to comment on Trump’s statement.

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IS Gunmen Hide Among Civilians in Last Syria Holdout

Posted on 02/17/2019 by SeeEA

“They are taking their last breath,” said Dino, an SDF fighter deployed at a base near the front line in the village of Baghouz, about 2 kilometers (1¼ miles) from the militants’ last spot.

The road to the base passes through a number of villages and towns from which IS were uprooted in recent weeks.

“Regrettably, Daesh have closed all the roads,” preventing civilians from leaving, said Mustafa Bali, a spokesman for the Kurdish-led SDF, referring to IS by its Arabic acronym.

The extremists may include high-level commanders, and the presence of possible captives could explains the slow final push, they added.

SDF commanders said some of the hostages taken from their force have been freed in recent days. Fighters at the base said one of their colleagues was set free in the last two days.

He added that the militants are running out of ammunition.

In Deir el-Zour, the SDF and the coalition have battled to uproot the militants from villages and towns on the eastern banks of the Euphrates since September.

“We will very soon bring good news to the whole world,” Ciya Furat, an SDF commander, said Saturday at a news conference at the al-Omar Oil Field Base, miles from Baghouz.

But experts and U.S. defense officials warn that IS still poses a major threat and could regroup within six months if pressure is not kept up.

“The Caliphate is ready to fall,” Trump said. He suggested the alternative would be that the U.S. would be forced to release them.

“We do so much, and spend so much – Time for others to step up and do the job that they are so capable of doing. We are pulling back after 100% Caliphate victory!” he added.

The Kurdish forces and officials have said the same in recent weeks, appealing to countries to take back their militants.

Bali, the SDF spokesman, declined to comment on Trump’s statement.

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Polish PM Cancels Israel Visit Amid new Holocaust Tensions

Posted on 02/17/2019 by SeeEA

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki canceled his plans to attend a meeting of central European leaders in Israel starting Monday amid new tensions over how Polish behavior during the Holocaust is remembered and characterized.

Morawiecki informed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s of his decision by phone Sunday, Michal Dworczyk, who heads the prime minister’s chancellery, said. Poland’s foreign minister, Jacek Czaputowicz, plans to attend instead, he said.

It “is a signal that the historical truth is a fundamental issue for Poland, and the defense of the good name of Poland is and always will be decisive,” Deputy Foreign Minister Szymon Szynkowski vel Sek explained.

Netanyahu said Thursday during a Middle East conference hosted by the United States and Poland that “Poles cooperated with the Nazis” – wording suggesting that some Poles participated in killing Jews during the German occupation of Poland.

He was initially quoted by some Israeli media outlets as saying not “Poles” but “The Poles” cooperated, phrasing which could be taken as blaming the entire Polish nation.

Netanyahu’s office said he was misquoted. The Polish government summoned the Israeli ambassador on Friday and later said it was not satisfied with the explanation of the Israeli leader being quoted incorrectly.

Netanyahu was supposed to meet with the leaders of the four central European countries known as the Visegrad Group — Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia — during the two-day meeting in Israel.

This incident follows a major spat that Warsaw and Jerusalem had last year over a new Polish law that makes it illegal to blame the Polish nation for collaboration in the Holocaust.

At the height of the crisis, Morawiecki at one point equated Polish perpetrators of the Holocaust to supposed “Jewish perpetrators.”

Now, with general and European elections later this year, Morawiecki bowed out of the Jerusalem trip because he “has to think about the far-right and anti-Semitic electorate,” said Tomasz Lis, the editor of the Polish edition of Newsweek and a critic of the government.

Germany occupied Poland in 1939, annexing part of it to Germany and directly governing the rest. Unlike other countries occupied by Germany, Poland did not have a collaborationist government.

The prewar Polish government and military fled into exile, and an underground resistance army fought the Nazis inside the country and tried to warn a deaf world about the Holocaust. Thousands of Poles also risked their own lives to help Jews.

Because of that history, Poles find references to Polish “collaboration” to be unfair and hurtful.

However, individual Poles did take part in killing Jews during and after the war. Many Holocaust survivors and their relatives carry painful memories of persecution at Polish hands. In Israel, there has been anger at what many there perceive to be Polish attempts today to whitewash that history.

The dispute last sparked an explosion of anti-Semitic hate speech in Poland, and there were signs of another spike in recent days.

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Polish PM Cancels Israel Visit Amid new Holocaust Tensions

Posted on 02/17/2019 by SeeEA

He was initially quoted by some Israeli media outlets as saying not “Poles” but “The Poles” cooperated, phrasing which could be taken as blaming the entire Polish nation.

This incident follows a major spat that Warsaw and Jerusalem had last year over a new Polish law that makes it illegal to blame the Polish nation for collaboration in the Holocaust.

At the height of the crisis, Morawiecki at one point equated Polish perpetrators of the Holocaust to supposed “Jewish perpetrators.”

Germany occupied Poland in 1939, annexing part of it to Germany and directly governing the rest. Unlike other countries occupied by Germany, Poland did not have a collaborationist government.

Because of that history, Poles find references to Polish “collaboration” to be unfair and hurtful.

The dispute last sparked an explosion of anti-Semitic hate speech in Poland, and there were signs of another spike in recent days.

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Somalia Moves to Calm Diplomatic Tensions With Kenya

Posted on 02/17/2019 by SeeAF

The Somali government has moved to calm diplomatic tensions following Kenya’s decision to recall its ambassador to Mogadishu and instruct Somalia’s ambassador to leave Nairobi.

The two counties are embroiled in a maritime dispute.

In a statement issued on Sunday evening, the Somali government said it has not offered any blocks in the disputed area to external bidders. Somalia says it has no plans to do so until the maritime dispute case between the countries is decided by the International Court (ICJ) of Justice in The Hague.

Somalia has also assured Kenya that it will not take any unilateral activities in the area before the court’s judgement.

Kenya has called its Ambassador to Mogadishu Lucas Tumbo back to Nairobi for “urgent consultations” on Saturday. Kenya said the move is the consequence of the “most regretful and egregious decision” by the federal government to “auction off” oil and gas blocks in Kenya territory.

Kenya has also instructed the Somali Ambassador to Kenya Mohamud Ahmed Nur to depart to Somalia for “consultation”. The statement posted by Kenya on its Twitter account incorrectly gave Somali Ambassador’s name as “Mohammed Muhamud Nur”.

The Somali government said it “regrets” Kenya’s decision to instruct the Ambassador to leave Kenya “without prior consultation” with the government of Somalia.

The Somalia-Kenya maritime boundary dispute is before the ICJ. Somalia filed a complaint in August 2014 after all diplomatic negotiations were “exhausted” according to the government. The disputed area is estimated to be 100,000 square kilometers.

Kenya had filed a preliminary objection challenging the ICJ’s jurisdiction over the case but in February 2017 the ICJ ruled that it has jurisdiction. The court has since asked the countries to submit written arguments and counter arguments before a day is set for the hearing of the case.

Kenya has several thousand troops serving in Somalia as part of the African Union Mission to fight against al-Shabab.

The Somali government says it’s committed to working with Kenya to address issues facing both nations.
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Yemenis, Houthis Agree to Pullback Forces from Key Port of Hodeidah

Posted on 02/17/2019 by SeeEA

Yemeni officials and Houthi rebels have agreed on phase 1 of a mutual pullback of forces from the key city of Hodeidah, U.N. negotiators announced Sunday.

Without giving any details of the agreement, U.N. officials call it important progress.

A pullback from Hodeidah was part of December’s ceasefire between Iranian-backed Houthi rebels and the Saudi-supported Yemeni forces.

The ceasefire has generally held despite numerous skirmishes.

Under phase 1, forces from both sides with withdraw from the ports of Hodeidah, Saleef, and Ras Issa.

U.N. negotiators say both sides have also agreed in principle to phase 2, which would be a total redeployment of all fighters in Hodeidah state.

The port of Hodeidah had been under rebel control. It is the Yemen’s main entry point for desperately-needed food, medicine, and other aid for starving and suffering civilians. The fighting in the city and impasse have been making it nearly impossible for humanitarian workers to offload aid and get it to those who need it.

Yemeni officials have accused Iran of supplying arms to the rebels through the port — a charge Iran has denied.

Houthis seized the Yemeni capital of Sana’a more than four years ago. Saudi-led coalition airstrikes aimed at the rebels have killed thousands and wiped out entire civilian neighborhoods.

Many experts see the fighting in Yemen as a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

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US-Taliban Meeting in Pakistan Cancelled

Posted on 02/17/2019 by SeeUS

An upcoming meeting in Pakistan between a delegation of the United States and Taliban representatives has been cancelled, according to information coming from both sides.

A Taliban leader confirmed, on condition of anonymity, that the meeting was cancelled, “by the Americans.” A Taliban statement issued later in the day said the talks were postponed because many members of its 14 person negotiating team were unable to go overseas since they are on “the US and UN blacklist.” Several of them are on the U.N. Security Council sanctions list which bars them from international travel.

Meanwhile, a U.S. official said Zalmay Khalilzad, who was supposed to lead the American delegation, is not planning to visit Islamabad this week.

The U.S. said it had not received an official invitation from the government of Pakistan for this meeting which was first announced by Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid a couple of days ago.

Mujahid’s statement had set February 18 as the date of the talks and said a formal invitation had been issued by Pakistan. In addition, he said, the Taliban delegation would also meet the Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan.

A day later, Pakistan’s information minister Fawad Chaudhry confirmed the talks during a press conference, calling it a “game changer.”

“The next round of negotiations with the Taliban will be in Pakistan, and as a result of these negotiations, there is a chance of stability in Afghanistan,” he said.

Afghanistan’s Foreign Ministry reacted strongly to the announcement of a meeting in Islamabad, saying it was in violation of a United Nations Security Council resolution.

“#Afghanistan complains to #UNSecurityCouncil on #Pakistan’s engagements with the Taliban on which #Afg Govenrment is not consulted,” Tweeted Sibghatullah Admadi, a spokesman for the Afghan foreign office.

Previously, Afghanistan launched a similar complaint against Russia for allowing Taliban members to travel to Moscow for a conference in which nearly 50 Afghans, including various political leaders, former jihadi commanders, and civil society activists were invited. However, the Afghan government was not invited to that conference because the Taliban have so far refused to engage with the Kabul administration despite pressure from the U.S., Saudi Arabia, and others.

President Ashraf Ghani lashed out at those attending the conference saying they had no “executive authority” to make any agreements.

“Let hundreds of such meetings be held,” he said.

Some analysts say Ghani’s statements indicated his frustration at being left out of the negotiations between the Americans and the Taliban that first started last Summer. Since then, the two sides have held several rounds of talks.

The last meeting in Doha early January lasted for six days and Khalilzad said the two sides had agreed “in principle” to a withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan in return for guarantees that Afghan soil will not be used by any terrorist groups or individuals.

Speaking in a public event at Washington based United States Institute of Peace, Khalilzad said the Taliban do not want to “sit with the government alone” because they did not want to give President Ghani an advantage in the presidential elections scheduled in July.

“There are indications that they will be willing to sit with the government in a multi-party arrangement,” he said.
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Army: 5 Boko Haram, 4 Soldiers Killed in NE Nigeria

Posted on 02/17/2019 by SeeAF

Five Boko Haram fighters and four soldiers were killed in fighting in northeast Nigeria, the military said on Sunday, in the latest clashes between troops and jihadists.

Army spokesman Sagir Musa said five rebel fighters “met their Waterloo” as they attempted to overrun a military base in Buni Yadi, in Yobe state, at about 6:00 pm (1700 GMT) on Saturday.

“An officer and three soldiers have lost their lives during the encounter. While five soldiers were wounded are stable and receiving treatment in the Brigade Field Ambulance,” he added.

Musa said the heavily armed militants were in four gun trucks and two armored vehicles. Troops seized weapons and ammunition, he added.

The military base in Buni Yadi has been targeted before in the conflict.

In January, two military sources told AFP the Islamic State-allied faction of Boko Haram killed four soldiers and were repelled after air support was called in.

In recent months there have been a wave of attacks in the buni Yadi area, which is near the border with Borno state — the epicenter of fighting since 2009.

Most of the attacks on military positions and troops have been blamed on or claimed by the self-styled Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) faction.

Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari, who was elected in 2015 on a promise to defeat the Islamist militants, maintains the group is “technically defeated”.

Buni Yadi was the scene of one of Boko Haram’s most notorious attacks, when fighters loyal to long-time leader Abubakar Shekau stormed a boys’ boarding school in February 2014.

More than 40 students were killed as they slept.
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White House Defends Trump’s National Emergency Declaration

Posted on 02/17/2019 by SeeUS

The White House on Sunday defended President Donald Trump’s declaration of a national emergency to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border to thwart illegal immigration even though he said he didn’t need to do it.

“He could choose to ignore this crisis, but he chose not to,” Trump adviser Stephen Miller, an immigration hardliner, told Fox News Sunday.

Miller assailed former Republican President George W. Bush for an “astonishing betrayal” of the U.S. nearly two decades ago when four times as many illegal migrants were entering the United States as now. But Miller said the “bottom line” is that “you cannot conceive of a strong nation without a secure border.”

He said Trump’s action is “defending our own borders.” He illegal immigration “is a threat in our country.”

Miller said Trump’s actions were justified under a 1976 law giving presidents authority to declare national emergencies, although none of the 59 declared since then has involved instances when a president has attempted to override congressional refusal to approve funding for a specific proposal.

Trump declared the national emergency on Friday to circumvent Congress, which had refused his request for $5.7 billion in wall funding, even as it approved $1.375 billion for barriers along about 90 kilometers of the 3,200-kilometer border. Trump plans to tap more than $8 billion in government funds authorized for other projects the build the wall, although lawsuits challenging the action are already being filed to block his transfer of money.

Miller said more than 320 kilometers of the border wall would be built by the end of September 2020, just weeks before Trump stands for re-election to a second four-year term.

Acting U.S. Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan said he thinks he has “a lot of discretion” in deciding which funds previously allocated for defense needs can instead be used to build a border wall. “You can trust the numbers in terms of the potential. Then you gotta marry it up with where the money would be spent.” But he said money designated for military housing would not be spent on the wall.

Trump said he declared the national emergency because he was unhappy with the amount of money Congress authorized.

“I want to do it faster,” he said. “I could do the wall over a longer period of time. I didn’t need to do this. But I’d rather do it much faster.”

Trump’s staunchest critics, including Democrats who have announced they are running against him next year and other lawmakers, have attacked his national emergency declaration as an end-run around the constitutional provision that U.S. funding authorization lies with Congress and noted that he said that he did not need to take action.

Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, told CNN, “If we give away, if we surrender the power of the purse… there will be little check and no balance left. It’ll not be a separation of powers anymore, just a separation of parties.”

Journalist Bob Woodward, who chronicled the first year of the Trump presidency in a best-selling book called “Fear,” told Fox News he believes Trump made the national emergency declaration because “he looks strong. He looks tough to lots of people.”

Trump centered much of his successful 2016 campaign for the White House on a vow to build the wall and make Mexico pay for it. He long since abandoned direct payment from Mexico, when its leaders rejected the idea, and instead sought congressional approval of the U.S. taxpayer funding.
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Sudan: Fruit Vendor Dies After Tear Gas Fired at Protesters

Posted on 02/17/2019 by SeeAF

A Sudanese fruit vendor died in Khartoum Sunday from inhaling tear gas fired at protesters.

Medics and the vendor’s family said the 62-year-old resident of Bahari, a northern suburb of the Sudanese capital, died in the hospital after choking on tear gas. The tear gas was fired at scores of protesters quickly after they took to the streets Sunday.

Protests in Sudan began on December 19, when the government increased the price of bread threefold. Since then, demonstrations, and subsequent violent clashes between protesters and riot police, have continued and ballooned into wider calls for long-time president Omar al-Bashir to step down.

Sudan’s government says 31 people have died in protest-related violence since December, but international watchdog Human Rights Watch puts the death toll at 51.

Sudan is slated to hold presidential elections in 2020, and Bashir is considering running for a third elected term. Bashir has ruled the country since 1993, when he declared himself president after a coup d’etat.
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