The junta that seized control of Mali in a coup two weeks ago will hold transition talks this weekend with political parties and civic groups, including the June 5 Movement that launched a protest movement that eventually led to President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita’s resignation.A junta spokesman said the talks Saturday and Sunday are aimed at producing a blueprint for the transition.A delegation from the 15-nation Economic Community of West African States recently rejected the coup leaders’ plan for a three-year transition.The bloc is demanding immediate civilian transition and elections within a year.Mali’s junta spokesman said a second round of talks will be held next Thursday through Saturday in Bamako, Mali’s capital.On Thursday, the head of Mali’s new junta visited Keita in a Bamako hospital, where he was admitted Tuesday for a condition that could lead to a stroke.The junta says Keita is free to seek additional medical treatment abroad.
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Month: September 2020
String of High-Level Foreign Visits Boosts Diplomatic Visibility for an Isolated Taiwan
A flurry of high-level visits from foreign officials and legislators has pushed Taiwan’s international visibility to a new peak, despite chronic opposition from China, analysts in Taipei say, and the boost has raised people’s confidence that their normally isolated island is getting international respect.Scholars caution, though, that the run of encounters will not give Taiwan additional, formal diplomatic recognition nor earn it a seat in international bodies.A 90-member parliamentary delegation from the Czech Republic is visiting Taiwan this week through Friday. Delegation head and Czech Senate President Milos Vystrcil met Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen and told legislators in Taipei that he was “Taiwanese.”Last month, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar became Washington’s highest-ranking official visitor to Taiwan since the 1970s. A Japanese legislative group led by former Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori came just after Azar’s trip.International visibilityVisits such as these have special meaning in Taiwan because China urges its more than 170 diplomatic allies worldwide to avoid relations with the island. China sees Taiwan as part of its territory, subject to eventual unification despite widespread opposition among Taiwanese. The two sides have been separately ruled since the Chinese civil war of the 1940s, when Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists lost to the Communists and rebased their government in Taiwan.“Certainly, Taiwan’s international visibility has been raised and we have received a lot of empathy if not solid support coming from Washington, but also from European capitals, and I don’t think it will turn into a war [with China] across the Taiwan Strait as a result,” said Lin Chong-pin, a retired strategic studies professor in Taiwan. “So, it adds to the sense that Taiwan is a sovereign country.”The recent visitors lauded Taiwan’s containment of COVID-19, with cases now at a cumulative 489. Taiwan throttled the outbreak early in the year through border closures, contact tracing and checks on flights from the disease origin in China.Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs Thursday called results of the Czech delegation’s trip “fruitful” and said relations would become more “diverse and comprehensive.”Overseas attention to Taiwan has stoked confidence among ordinary Taiwanese, who are used to Chinese officials urging that foreign officials avoid Taiwan – and getting their way because of China’s global economic clout. Taiwan has added to the diplomatic momentum over the past two months by announcing the reopening of a representative office in Guam and plans for a new one in France.China has raised questions in parts of the world this year over perceptions it fumbled the world’s first COVID-19 outbreak and that its maritime expansion violates international law. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi warned that the Czech delegation leader would pay a “heavy price” for his Taiwan trip.“In addition to the Czech Republic, I think many countries in the world that were once economically dependent on China are now rethinking their relationship with China, and China is gradually not favored,” said Bernie Huang, 31, a Taipei high school teacher.“The disfavor of China in the world is beneficial for Taiwan to maintain foreign relations,” Huang said, reflecting the view of many citizens.“The Taiwanese government should definitely seize this promising opportunity,” he said.’Makes me proud’Officials in Taiwan will get a boost in trust from citizens via the foreign visits, said Huang Kwei-bo, vice dean of the international affairs college at National Chengchi University in Taipei.“Taiwanese people will think, look, people have come from the U.S., the Czech Republic and Japan, so I think it helps Taiwanese people’s confidence in the government of Tsai Ing-wen,” he said.Ruby Liu, 30, who works for a magazine publisher in Taipei, said the number of foreign visitors interested in learning about Taiwan’s disease prevention “makes me proud.”“In the past, Taiwan is isolated by the world,” Liu, 30, said.“We should grasp the opportunities to evaluate our international status,” she added.The recent visits, however, signal no “substantive” change in Taiwan’s foreign relations, Huang Kwei-bo said.Taiwan, for example, still has just 15 formal diplomatic allies, mostly small, impoverished countries in the Americas and South Pacific. Japan, the Czech Republic and the United States all formally recognize China.Recognition for Taiwan’s COVID-19 control by the World Health Organization cannot get Taiwan into the WHO itself, said Chao Chien-min, dean of social sciences at Chinese Culture University in Taipei. China blocks Taiwan’s annual bids to participate.“This year Taiwan has been one of the best countries in terms of disease prevention. It could be called a model student,” Chao said. “All countries including the WHO have approved of what Taiwan’s doing but Taiwan has no way of participating in the WHO.”Brisker arms sales to Taiwan may emerge from stronger Taipei-Washington relations, Chao said, but improvements in that two-way relationship will stop there. Japanese officials are trying to strengthen their own ties with China despite the parliamentary delegation’s visit, he added. Taiwan, he said, needs better relations with China to bolster its diplomacy worldwide.Tsai’s government rejects Beijing’s dialogue condition that both sides identify as part of China. The two sides have not talked formally since Tsai took office in 2016.
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Russia Is Trying to Undermine Confidence in Mail-in Voting, Homeland Security Warns
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is warning that Russia is trying to undermine Americans’ confidence in the security and validity of mail-in voting.In a bulletin labeled “For official use only” circulated Thursday, the DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis said Russia was “likely to continue amplifying criticism of vote by mail and shifting voting processes amidst the COVID-19 pandemic to undermine public trust in the electoral process.”The bulletin said that in mid-August, Russian state media outlets and proxy websites published criticism of widespread mail-in voting, “claiming ineligible voters could receive ballots due to out-of-date voter rolls, leaving a vast amount of ballots unaccounted for and vulnerable to tampering.”It said that since March, Russian outlets also sought to undermine confidence in mail-in voting processes, alleging that they provide “vast opportunities for voter fraud.”The bulletin said Russia is likely to step up trolling by promoting allegations of U.S. election system corruption, failures and “foreign malign interference” to undermine public trust in U.S. elections. It noted that following the Iowa caucuses earlier this year, Russian outlets claimed that the result was “fixed in favor of establishment candidates” and that voting system problems had resulted in “ballot manipulation.”The Department of Homeland Security had no immediate comment. Russia has denied interfering in U.S. elections.Adam Schiff, the Democrat who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, said the bulletin validated his concern that Russia is seeking to “sow distrust in our democratic process.”By attacking U.S. mail-in ballot integrity, Schiff said, “Russia is echoing destructive and false narratives around vote by mail that President [Donald] Trump and his enablers, including Attorney General [William] Barr, have been aggressively promoting.”Trump has repeatedly criticized mail-in voting, saying in one July 30 Tweet: “With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history.”
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Trump Denies Report That He Spoke Disparagingly of US War Dead
President Donald Trump strongly denied on Thursday a magazine report saying he had spoken disparagingly about fallen U.S. military personnel buried in Europe and declined to visit an American cemetery during a trip to France because he thought it unimportant.The Atlantic reported that Trump, a Republican who is running for reelection and who has touted his record helping U.S. veterans, had referred to Marines buried in an American cemetery near Paris as “losers” and declined to visit in 2018 because of concern that the rain that day would mess up his hair.Trump told reporters on Thursday the story was false.”To think that I would make statements negative to our military and fallen heroes when nobody has done what I’ve done,” for the U.S. armed forces, Trump said. “It’s a total lie … It’s a disgrace.”The president said he did not go to the cemetery because weather prevented a helicopter flight. The alternative, a long drive, would have meant going through very busy areas of Paris and the Secret Service objected, he said.”The Secret Service told me, ‘You can’t do it.’ I said, ‘I have to do it. I want to be there.’ They said, ‘You can’t do it,'” Trump said.The Atlantic did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment outside regular business hours.Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, who is leading Trump in national polls ahead of the November 3 election, emphasized his own commitment to helping members of the military in a response to the report.”If the revelations in today’s Atlantic article are true, then they are yet another marker of how deeply President Trump and I disagree about the role of the President of the United States,” Biden said in a statement released by his campaign.”And if I have the honor of serving as the next commander in chief, I will ensure that our American heroes know that I will have their back and honor their sacrifice — always.”As a presidential candidate, Trump made negative comments about now-deceased Sen. John McCain for having been captured during the Vietnam War.“He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured,” Trump said in 2015 when he was running for the Republican presidential nomination.Trump said on Thursday he disagreed with McCain but still respected him.”I was never a fan. I will admit that openly,” Trump said.”I disagreed with John McCain. But I still respected him.”
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Nigerian Man Tried to Cut Off Woman’s Breast for Ritual, Police Say
A 41-year-old man Nigerian man is under arrest for allegedly attempting to kill a woman during a bizarre knife attack.Police say Ogbonna Nwankwo stabbed the victim in the stomach inside a motel in Orumba South on Thursday before attempting to cut off one of her breasts for alleged ritual purposes.Police say a motel manager came to her rescue after hearing her cry out. The victim was treated at a local hospital, but her condition was not immediately made public.Nwankwo was also treated at the hospital after he was attacked by a group of bystanders apparently angered over his alleged attack.Police are continuing their investigation into the circumstances of the attack.
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‘Follow Your Vote,’ Trump Tells Mail-in Ballot Voters
President Donald Trump has introduced more confusion into what already stands to be America’s most difficult presidential election in modern times by suggesting — and then partly backing away from — a legally dubious scheme in which his supporters would try to vote twice in order to test voting safeguards.“Let them send it in and let them go vote,” Trump said in an interview on Wednesday with WECT-TV in Wilmington, North Carolina. “And if the system is as good as they say it is, then obviously they won’t be able to vote” in person.On Thursday in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, Trump seemingly amended his remarks to say his followers should only vote a second time if their first vote was not counted.“Sign your mail-in ballot … and send it in,” Trump told a crowd of invited supporters in a Latrobe airport hangar. “And then you have to follow it. And if on Election Day or early voting, that if it is not tabulated or counted, you go vote.”The president added, “You have to make sure your vote counts.”FILE – A person drops applications for mail-in-ballots into a mailbox in Omaha, Neb., Aug. 18, 2020.State election officials are preparing for a record number of mailed-in ballots in the November 3 election because of the coronavirus pandemic. The president has repeatedly claimed, without evidence, the opposition Democrats will “harvest” tens of millions of mailed ballots in order to attempt “the greatest scam in the history of politics.”On Wednesday in North Carolina, Trump first urged his supporters to vote twice to ensure their votes are counted, comments that have sown confusion over his intended message and caused Facebook to label his claims as misleading and Twitter to slap a warning on a pair of his Thursday tweets.“This video violates our policies prohibiting voter fraud and we will remove it unless it is shared to correct the record,” Facebook said in a statement about his North Carolina recorded comments. In tweets earlier Thursday, the president repeated the message.“On Election Day, or Early Voting, go to your Polling Place to see whether or not your Mail In Vote has been Tabulated (Counted). If it has you will not be able to Vote & the Mail In System worked properly. If it has not been Counted, VOTE (which is a citizen’s right to do),” said Trump on his personal (@realDonaldTrump) Twitter account.Twitter deemed the Trump tweets a violation of its rules about civic integrity and elections.“The laws regarding the invalidation of mail-in ballots when individuals choose to vote in person are complex and vary significantly by state. Our goal is to prevent people from sharing advice about voting twice, which may be illegal,” Twitter said in a tweet.We placed a public interest notice on two Tweets in this thread for violating our Civic Integrity Policy, specifically for encouraging people to potentially vote twice. https://t.co/UU9kJfqptz— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) September 3, 2020“The president does not condone unlawful voting,” White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany replied repeatedly when pressed at a briefing Thursday on whether she would acknowledge it is illegal in the United States to vote twice in the same election.The press secretary accused the media of taking out of context Trump’s comments.“The president wants enfranchisement, not disenfranchisement,” McEnany added.“It is illegal in all 50 states and under federal law to vote twice,” Ellen Weintraub, a commissioner and former chair of the Federal Election Commission, said.Weintraub, a Democratic Party appointee, also said on Twitter “there’s still no basis for the conspiracy theory” that postal balloting will lead to a rigged election, as Trump has repeatedly asserted. There are 61 days until Election Day. It is illegal in all 50 states and under federal law to vote twice. As any federal officeholder or law-enforcement official should know.And there’s still no basis for the conspiracy theory that #VoteByMail will lead to a rigged election. https://t.co/u1E0zmfvRa— Ellen L 😷 Weintraub (@EllenLWeintraub) September 3, 2020North Carolina’s election board also responded swiftly in a statement posted to Twitter.“It is illegal to vote twice in an election,” the board’s executive director, Karen Brinson Bell, said. “There are numerous checks in place in North Carolina that prevent people from double voting.”Bell’s statement explains that election pollbooks at every early voting site contain information about who has already voted. On Election Day, voters who have cast absentee ballots are removed from the pollbooks, which are updated before actual in-person voting begins.“Because absentee ballots and early ballots are retrievable, if someone tries to get around the system, their ballots can be retrieved and not counted, so it will not affect the outcome of an election,” Bell added.Michigan officials, Attorney General Dana Nessel and Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, both Democrats, issued a reminder to voters in that state Thursday that “intentionally voting twice is illegal and will be prosecuted.” The Democratic Party nominee, Joe Biden, challenging Trump in November’s election, accuses the incumbent of “trying to delegitimize” the process.“The way to overcome this is to vote. Vote, vote, vote,” the former vice president told Atlanta’s WSB-TV in an interview Wednesday. “And there’s not a shred of evidence, not a shred of evidence that mail-in voting is fraudulent.” National Security Correspondent Jeff Seldin contributed to this story.
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Police Kill Suspect in Fatal Portland Shooting During Arrest, Report Says
A suspect in the fatal shooting of a supporter of the Patriot Prayer group in Portland was killed on Thursday night when authorities moved to arrest him, The New York Times reported, citing officials familiar with the investigation.The suspect, Michael Reinoehl, was killed during an encounter in Lacey, Washington, southwest of Seattle, according to the report.The Oregonian newspaper reported Reinoehl was under investigation in the killing that took place after Aaron Danielson, one of the supporters of President Donald Trump who came into downtown Portland and clashed with protesters demonstrating against racial injustice and police brutality.“Why aren’t the Portland Police ARRESTING the cold blooded killer of Aaron “Jay” Danielson,” Trump tweeted on Thursday regarding the issue.
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Paris Attacks Trial Unfolds in Shadow of COVID
As France revisits its deadly 2015 wave of jihadist strikes with a major terrorism trial that opened this week, the threat of future attacks remains a clear and present danger here and across the European Union, experts say, even as the region focuses on a very different crisis in COVID-19.On the eve of Wednesday’s opening of the Charlie Hebdo trial, Interior Minister Gerard Darmanin warned that France’s threat level remained “extremely high.”Meanwhile, the EU law enforcement agency Europol described the changing, complex and still potent nature of jihadist and other threats, with coronavirus potentially feeding extremist action.“Groups try to make use of the COVID situation either to enforce their ideology or to call for action,” Europol’s deputy executive director, Wil van Gemert, said in an interview, noting Islamists as well as right-wing groups are profiting from the health crisis.“Our worry is for the future, when we come out of this COVID period with many more people [filling public spaces],” and rising questions and dissatisfaction with government handling of the crisis, van Gemert said.All of this, he added, could lead “to more violence, extremism and potential terrorism.”Laurent Sourisseau, chief editor of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, leaves the courtroom during a break on the opening day of the trial of the 2015 Paris attacks, at Paris courthouse, France, Sept. 2, 2020.Competing headlinesYet in some ways, the kickoff of the January 2015 Paris terrorist attacks trial seemed a throwback to another era.Its arrival jostled against headlines of French schools reopening amid a worrying rise in coronavirus cases and of the government’s $118 billion stimulus plan to reboot France’s COVID-battered economy.Adding to the sense of a page turned, all of the perpetrators of the 2015 attacks on France’s satirical Charlie Hebdo newspaper and a kosher supermarket are dead. Instead, 14 people — four in absentia — face charges of providing logistical support in the nearly back-to-back strikes that killed 17 people.FILE – An injured person is transported to an ambulance after a shooting, at the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo’s office, in Paris, Jan. 7, 2015.The 10-week proceedings will also be filmed, a first for a terrorism trial in France, underscoring its historical significance.In November, France will mark the five-year anniversary of the Bataclan attacks that killed 130 people in and around Paris. Only one of the suspected assailants remains alive, Salah Abdeslam, 30, with another trial coming up at an unscheduled date.“I think the population’s main worry is COVID-19. Everybody speaks about it, everybody is concerned,” said Guillaume Denoix de Saint Marc, director of the French Association of Terrorist Victims, AfVT.“But terrorism is still here,” he added. “Terrorism is still a very big threat.”Moving onFor many ordinary French, events have moved on. There are fears of another COVID lockdown, with the country reporting some of its highest daily cases in months, including more than 7,300 Wednesday alone.A health worker prepares to collect a nasal swab from a person at a COVID-19 testing site in front of the city-hall in Paris, France, Sept. 2, 2020.Debates over race and colonialism are again bubbling over, not only from the spillover of the U.S. Black Lives Matter protests, but also after an article in a right-wing magazine portrayed a Black, African-born lawmaker as a slave. Police are again out in force on the streets, not guarding against potential terrorists or yellow-vest protesters but enforcing compulsory mask requirements.While Europe has reinforced its law enforcement capacity and cooperation against terrorism — seen in strong numbers of thwarted attacks — there is always a chance the pandemic could reprioritize funds and capacity, Europol’s van Gemert said.”We have seen an increase in activities you could call extremist” during the pandemic, he added. “I’m not saying it’s directly linked to terrorism, but there are an extreme field of actors who could turn to violent activities. “And in general, a weaker economy means a stronger criminal economy,” he added of another coronavirus fallout.Attacks down, but threat remainsStill, the number of attacks is down. Last year, EU member states reported just more than half the number of attempted, foiled or failed attacks, at 119, as in 2015, according to Europol, which publishes annual terrorism assessment reports. Ten people died from terrorist strikes across the region in 2019, compared with 360 four years prior.The Islamic State group and al-Qaida, which claimed various degrees of responsibility in the multiple 2015 Paris attacks, are weakened and splintered, losing former strongholds in Syria and Iraq. Today’s threats are increasingly coming from individual “lone wolves” or small cells, Europol says.FILE – Police officers storm the kosher market where a gunman held several hostages in Paris, France, Jan. 9, 2015.“We know that it will be difficult to organize something like November 13 [Bataclan attacks] — something very organized with many jihadists,” said Denoix de Saint Marc, of AfVT. “But every day we are preventing a new terrorist attack from somewhere.”Both the Islamic State and al-Qaida have also evolved and spread, including southward from the Sahel, where France’s 5,000-plus-man Barkhane anti-terrorist force is stationed. Last month, six French aid workers were killed by armed gunmen in Niger, although responsibility for the attacks remains unclear.Lawyers and security officers arrive at the Paris courthouse for the second day of the 2015 attacks trial in Paris, France, Sept. 3, 2020.On Monday, Interior Minister Darmanin noted more than half of terrorist attacks thwarted since 2013 took place over the last three years, while French anti-terrorist prosecutor Jean-Francois Ricard estimated a half-dozen had been foiled in recent months alone.“The level of terrorism risk is still high,” Ricard told France-Info radio, noting it came from a mix of sources, including former Islamic State fighters and local threats.France counted among Europe’s biggest exporters of Islamic State fighters, including some believed to be involved in the 2015 attacks.Many are dead, but several dozen are still believed to be in Iraq and Syria, along with their spouses and children. Among them, experts believe, is Hayat Boumedienne, the girlfriend of one of assailants in the January 2015 Paris attacks, and a defendant in the current trial.
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Turkey: Top IS Militant Suspected of Planning Attack on Hagia Sophia Arrested
The Turkish police said they have arrested Mahmut Ozden, a major Islamic State (IS) figure in Turkey suspected of planning an attack on the newly converted Hagia Sophia mosque in Istanbul.“Daesh’s so-called emir of Turkey had been caught and remanded in custody with important plans,” Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said in announcing the arrest on Twitter Tuesday, using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State.Ozden and three others were detained in southern Adana province on August 20. An Istanbul court ordered his official arrest on Monday.According to Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency, Ozden’s arrest came as a result of an operation last month by Istanbul Police Department based on some intelligence that the IS was planning an attack on the Hagia Sophia and several other institutions. During the August 18 operation, police captured a suspected IS member, Huseyin Sagir, in a hotel in Istanbul with an AK-47 and five cartridges.Turkish officials said information discovered during Sagir’s investigation led police to Ozden, who had received orders from high-ranking IS militants through encrypted messaging apps.Interior Minister Soylu said that several digital materials seized by the police during Ozden’s house search indicated that he was planning to carry out his attacks through groups of 10 to 12 people.“Police also seized plans to kidnap politicians and statesmen to take them to Syria and for acts against groups that could harm the Turkish economy,” Soylu said to reporters Tuesday during inspection in Giresun, a city in the Black Sea region recently hit by deadly floods.‘Turkey emir’Turkish local media reported that since 2017 Ozden has been detained at least three times on different charges. He allegedly identified himself as Turkey’s southern province of Adana “emir,” an Islamic title used by IS to refer to its top leaders.Dogu Eroglu, the author of “ISIS Networks: Radicalisation, Organisation, Logistics in Turkey,” said that despite the Turkish government’s claim that Ozden was an IS emir, it remains uncertain whether the title can be applied to the suspected militant.“I can say that the term has been used wrongly in most instances because being the Turkey emir of the Islamic State definitely means some sort of network, hierarchy and a chain of a command structure,” Eroglu said, adding that the group in the past has labeled the entirety of Turkey as a “wilayat” or province with no reference to Adana.In a propaganda video released by Islamic State’s al-Furqan media in April 2019, the terror group’s then-leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi appeared holding notes referring to Turkey as a “wilayat.” In another propaganda video in July 2019, the group showed a group of militants from “Turkey wilayat” pledging allegiance to al-Baghdadi.“Do not think that the swords of the soldiers of the caliphate are far from you or from those who stand on your side,” an IS militant identified as Abu Qatada al-Turki threatened Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, according to a translation by the SITE Intelligence Group.In a report released in June, the International Crisis Group reported that the 16 attacks perpetrated by the IS terror group in Turkey between 2014 and 2017 killed nearly 300 civilians.FILE – Muslims offer their evening prayers outside the Byzantine-era Hagia Sophia, one of Istanbul’s main tourist attractions in the historic Sultanahmet district of Istanbul, July 10, 2020.The group only claimed the 2017 New Year’s shooting attack at Istanbul’s Reina nightclub that killed 39.Berkay Mandiraci, a Turkey analyst with the International Crisis Group, told VOA that security measures by Turkish authorities following the 2017 shooting have prevented the militant group from conducting any successful attacks in recent years.“It seems that what is left of ISIS networks now is that they are getting organized in smaller groups of five or six people who may not be connected to each other even,” Mandiraci said, adding that the networks consist mostly of IS Turkish and foreign members who crossed the border from Syria and Iraq.“It is different groups that are in Turkey, and that makes it also very challenging for the security forces because it’s such a large pool of people that they need to track and keep under check,” he said.In a report released by the U.S. Defense Department’s Lead Inspector General last month, U.S. European Command (USEUCOM) called Turkey a major facilitation hub for IS, and a target for high-profile IS attacks. The report said Turkish security forces have increased their counter-IS operations while improving their presence along the border with Syria and Iraq.However, USEUCOM warned that safeguarding the Turkish borders with Iraq and Syria was difficult, allowing IS fighters to continue to move supporters and family members.
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Protesters Block UN Mission in Bor for 2nd Day
Dozens of former employees of PANCROP, a contractor of the United Nations Mission in South Sudan, blocked the entrance Thursday to the UNMISS compound in Bor for a second straight day.The former workers are protesting what they say is their mistreatment and unfair dismissal. An UNMISS official confirmed that more than 60 protesters have been blocking the UNMISS gates for two days, interrupting the mission’s normal operations.Former PANCROP contractor Moses Ayuen said he and his colleagues worked for UNMISS for about five years, until earlier this year, when PANCROP handed them what he says were unfair contracts.When the contractors complained about a lack of sick leave and other benefits, PANCROP laid off 62 contractors, according to Ayuen. He said the protesters will continue to block the UNMISS gates until PANCROP offers them better terms of service under revised contracts.FILE – A South Sudanese government soldier carries supplies at the airport in Bor, Jonglei State, South Sudan, Jan. 19, 2014.“We have already locked [the gates] because we need to see if the contracts they promised for 62 staff are available or not. There is no movement in or out. And if they are not doing it today it will be continuous,” said Ayuen.The former employees say they want PANCROP to reinstate them or pay their benefits.Protester Malueth Makoy told South Sudan in Focus that when he and other workers took their case to Jonglei state labor authorities last month, PANCROP promised to reinstate them. Until that happens, Makoy said he, too, will stand in front of the UNMISS gates.“We are not doing something bad. What we want is our rights. If the Mission (is) here for peace and development, it should take its position and tell the company that is mistreating the citizens of this country to do what is right,” said Makoy.Jonglei state labor director, Marial Achol, said PANCROP and its employees agreed in his office last month to address their dispute amicably.PANCROP’s Operation Manager Pierre Colomb declined to comment on the protest, telling South Sudan in Focus to “speak to UNMISS in this regard.”In an email response, Isidore Boutchue, acting head of the UNMISS field office in Bor, said there has been no movement in or out of the compound since Wednesday morning, adding that the strike interrupted flights that staff had scheduled and UNMISS operations in the area. UNMISS has asked local authorities to help resolve the dispute, according to Boutchue.Jonglei state police commissioner Major General Joseph Mayen Akoon told South Sudan in Focus he would dispatch forces to the area only if there is an imminent threat. “I see there are no threats up to now,” he added.Akoon urged the protesters to ask for their rights in a peaceful manner.PANCROP was contracted by UNMISS to perform camp management services that include cleaning, gardening, laundry, and waste management work. On its website, PANCROP identifies itself as a level 2 United Nations registered and active vendor, specializing in import, export and supply-chain management.
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Biden Meets Relatives of Black Man Shot by Police in Wisconsin
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden visited Kenosha, Wisconsin, Thursday, holding a community meeting in the wake of civil unrest spawned by the shooting of a Black man by a white police officer.Before arriving in the 100,000-resident Midwestern city along Lake Michigan, the former vice president met at the nearby Milwaukee airport with relatives of Jacob Blake, the Black man shot seven times in the back on August 23 as police attempted to arrest him in a domestic dispute.In this image taken from a motorcade, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden exits a building after meeting with relatives of Jacob Blake at General Mitchell International Airport, Sept. 3, 2020, in Milwaukee.Biden’s visit came two days after his opponent in the November 3 election, Republican President Donald Trump, visited Kenosha and voiced support for law enforcement officials and their efforts to quell disturbances that erupted after Blake was left partially paralyzed in the confrontation with police. Trump did not meet with Blake’s family while he was in Kenosha.Biden’s campaign said he and his wife, Jill Biden, met with Blake’s parents and other family members, some of whom took part by phone, for an hour. It said three members of Blake’s legal team were also either present or took part by phone.“The family was grateful for the meeting and was very impressed that the Bidens were so engaged and willing to really listen. Jacob’s mother led them all in prayer for Jacob’s recovery,” Ben Crump, the family’s attorney, said. “It was very obvious that Vice President Biden cared, as he extended to Jacob Jr. a sense of humanity, treating him as a person worthy of consideration and prayer.”Crump said Biden spoke about racial injustices in policing and changes he felt are needed in law enforcement to address systemic racism.’We’ve got to heal’Ahead of the visit, Biden said Wednesday that he hoped “to bring together Americans to heal and address the challenges we face.””What we want to do is — we’ve got to heal,” Biden said. “We’ve got to put things together. Bring people together.”Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden speaks as he meets with members of the community at Grace Lutheran Church in Kenosha, Wis., Sept. 3, 2020.Biden’s visit underscores how he and Trump are trying to gain a political edge on the sensitive U.S. reckoning over racial issues and police treatment of minorities. The issue came to the forefront when a Black man, George Floyd, died in late May while in police custody in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and spiraled into coast-to-coast protests over Floyd’s death and similar, subsequent incidents.Trump marked his visit to Kenosha with vocal support for law enforcement, saying, “You have to be decisive, and you have to be tough, and you have to be strong, and you have to be willing to bring people in,” such as National Guard troops, to quell violence.Biden has criticized the U.S. leader for failing to condemn all violence from the political left and right, while at the same time refusing to criticize a teenager accused of killing two people and wounding another during protests prompted by the shooting of Blake.“This president keeps throwing gasoline on the fire,” Biden said at his news conference. He added, “I didn’t hear him say much” about Blake being shot seven times. “The fact is he’s not acting very responsibly,” Biden said of Trump.Biden’s visit was the first stop in Wisconsin by a Democratic presidential candidate in eight years. In 2016, the state looked safe for Democrats, and the party’s candidate, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, skipped campaigning there. But Trump narrowly won Wisconsin, along with two other normally Democratic states, Pennsylvania and Michigan, to capture a four-year term in the White House.Convention plan scrappedDemocrats had been scheduled to hold their national convention last month in Milwaukee, Wisconsin’s biggest city, but abandoned those plans in favor of a virtual convention for fear of spreading coronavirus infections if thousands of convention delegates jammed into a basketball arena, as had been scheduled.FILE – President Donald Trump tours an area on Sept. 1, 2020, damaged during demonstrations after a police officer shot Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wis.During his visit to Kenosha, Trump said of urban protests, “You have anarchists, and you have the looters, and you have the rioters. You have all types. You have agitators.”Trump attacked “reckless, far-left politicians,” adding, “We must give far greater support to our law enforcement.”Trump said that in Kenosha, “Violent mobs demolished or damaged at least 25 businesses, burned down public buildings and threw bricks at police officers, which your police officers won’t stand for.”’Domestic terror’“And they didn’t stand for it,” Trump said. “These are not acts of peaceful protests but really domestic terror.”Biden this week accused Trump of “rooting for chaos and violence” during the election season because he sees it as “a political lifeline.”Biden said at his Wednesday news conference that “burning and looting is wrong, and that person should be held accountable.”Authorities have charged Kyle Rittenhouse, 17, a white teenager from Illinois, with five felonies in connection with the shootings of three people during the August 25 protests. Rittenhouse claimed to be in Kenosha in order to protect businesses during the civil unrest.
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Security Crisis in Rural Nigeria Prompts Calls for Action
It was dusk on July 24 when Emmanuel Ali said he heard the gunshots. A group of armed men entered his village in Nigeria’s Kaduna state, he said, and began setting fire to homes. Ali fled to the bush with his family and then returned to rescue his paralyzed mother, who was trapped inside her burning home. “The fire was almost catching her,” Ali told VOA’s French to Africa service. “I removed my window, that’s where I entered, and picked her out from the window.” In Nigeria’s isolated northern villages, nightfall is fraught with terror as bandits terrorize residents. According to a new report by Amnesty International, bandits are operating with near impunity in the region. At least 1,126 villagers were killed by armed groups between January and June of 2020, FILE – Burned ruins of a house in Kurmin Masara village after a predawn raid, Aug. 6. 2020. (Timothy Obiezu/VOA)“When people’s homes are raided, the men are targeted and then they are shot at,” Osai Ojigho, Amnesty International’s Nigeria country director, told VOA. “They used machetes and cutlasses in order to inflict very serious wounds. And there have been cases of children, even as young as babies, being shot at and killed in the attacks that ensued. So, it really is quite shocking, the violence that they’ve experienced, even when they are not armed.”
In recent years, Nigeria’s security forces have focused on attacks by the extremist group Boko Haram in the far northeast of the country, Ojigho said. This has left a security vacuum in the rural parts of Kaduna, Katsina, Niger, Plateau, Sokoto, Taraba and Zamfara states in the central and northwest of the country. The violence has prompted an estimated 78,000 people to flee their homes. “The armed mercenaries seem to want to inflict as much pain and brutality as possible,” she said. “And some of the communities are quite shocked by this experience because they weren’t expecting it to escalate to this level. And that’s why they have this sense of abandonment, like our government has forgotten about us because we are in the villages.” The motives for the violence are complex.Some attackers are bandits, stealing goods. Some are kidnapping people for ransom. There is also an ethnic and religious dimension. In Kaduna state, the Christian population lives mostly in the south and are predominantly farmers, and the Muslims are cattle herders and live in the north. They clash over limited fertile land for grazing and planting. FILE – Herders graze a field with their livestocks on the outskirt of Zaria in Nigeria’s northern state of Kaduna, Nov. 15, 2016.
“It’s nothing else but land,” said Jonathan Asaké, president of the Southern Kaduna Peoples Union (SOKAPU). “The indigenous people of these lands have been pushed out gradually and the Fulani militia bring in Fulanis from God knows where to occupy these places.”Kaduna Governor Nasir Ahmad el-Rufai said it is often a conflict between individuals or small groups that escalates into something far worse. “It usually starts with a quarrel between a person from one ethnic group and another,” Rufai said. “The individual conflict, instead of being resolved peacefully by going to traditional leaders or religious leaders or other lawful authorities, tends to expand into an ethnic conflict.”The violence is now getting wider attention and has prompted large protests in Kaduna and other major cities.FILE – People gather to protest the incessant killings in southern Kaduna and insecurities in Nigeria, at the U.S. Embassy in Abuja, Nigeria, Aug. 15, 2020.The Nigerian military created a special task force, code-named Operation Safe Haven, with the mission of bringing peace back to Kaduna and Plateau states. On August 10, the task force arrested eight suspects in connection with killings in the area. Edward Kallon, the U.N. resident coordinator in Nigeria, said he discussed the issue when he led a delegation to meet President Muhammadu Buhari recently. He believes a multifaceted peace effort is needed. “I told Mr. President that, in addition to the military efforts, there is a need to complement that with some enhanced dialogue and a political process in search of a durable solution to the crisis,” Kallon said during a briefing with reporters after the meeting. “So we think that various approaches have to be used to find a solution.” Amnesty International’s Ojigho said the cycle of violence will stop only when attackers see the consequences of their actions. “One of the reasons why the violence has probably escalated to this point is because of impunity,” she said. “If people are not brought to justice, then they know they can get away with it. They will keep perpetuating it. So this needs to change.” French to Africa service’s Millimono Gilbert Tamba contributed to this report from Abuja.
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Uganda Refugee Aid Groups Cry Foul Over Government Suspensions
Refugee aid groups in Uganda are crying foul after the government suspended more than 200 of them, three quarters of the total, for non-compliance with rules and permits. A U.N. special advisor on gender and displacement welcomed the suspensions as a move toward better transparency and regulation. But some activists worry the suspensions could impact 1.4 million refugees who reside in Uganda. Uganda’s minister for Refugees and Disaster Preparedness, in mid-August, released a list of 208 organizations said to be operating illegally in the country’s refugee camps and settlements. According to the letter, these groups lack either permits or memorandums of understanding required to operate. The International Rescue Committee in Uganda was placed under category three on the list — organizations that have valid MOU’s but are operating with expired permits.Elijah Okeyo, country director of the IRC, says the list was wrong.“Their system was not cleaned,” Okeyo said. “So, even IRC is there, but we have a valid permit until 2022. So, we have already corrected our information in their system. If they run another report, the result will be much more, maybe credible.”FILE – A refugee from South Sudan transports food she received from the World Food Program (WFP) in Palorinya settlement camp for distribution, in Moyo district northern Uganda.Action Aid Uganda falls under category six of the minister’s list — groups that have neither MOU’s nor permits and are therefore not authorized to operate. Henry Ogwal, the Action Aid International Director of Programs and Policy, also says the list was in error.“We signed a new MOU on the 4th of March this year. Which means it expires on the 4th March 2023. So, we think that that is an error which should be corrected,” said Ogwal.Julius Mucunguzi, the spokesperson for the Office of the Prime Minister, says mistakes on the list are easy to fix. “Let them come out publicly to denounce the list,” said Mucunguzi. “If any NGO, any partner has an issue with that list, on where they have been placed, they know the procedure they need to follow to rectify the situation. Either to get themselves right, or to get themselves off that list.”Victor Ochen, the global advisor to the U.N. Human Rights Commission for Refugees on Gender, Forced Displacement and Protection, praised the government’s move, which he said could reduce overlap between refugee aid groups. “In a way I am happy that the government is coming clean about who is working. There is a lot of duplication, there’s a lot of pronouncements about invisible work which is happening in the community,” said Ochen. “I credit the government on their move to be transparent about their partners on the ground when it comes to this humanitarian response.”However, activists insist this kind of publication could jeopardize services at a time when the government needs all the help it can get to support refugees in Uganda.
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Inner Mongolians Boycott Classes to Protest Chinese Language Policy
Tuesday marked the first day of school in China’s northern Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, but a boycott of classes left many classrooms and playgrounds empty. Hundreds of ethnic Mongolian students, parents and teachers are protesting a new bilingual education policy they say will endanger Mongolian language and culture.The policy, announced before the start of the fall semester, requires schools to use national textbooks in Mandarin starting in the first grade of primary schools and in middle schools, replacing the current Mongolian textbooks. The Mandarin instruction is expected to expand to politics and morality courses and history classes over the next two years.Over the past few days, protests by Mongolian students, parents, teachers and ordinary herders have taken place in many cities in Inner Mongolia, all opposing the “bilingual teaching” policy implemented by the Inner Mongolia Education Department.Videos provided by the South Mongolia Human Rights Information Center show hundreds of middle school students in school uniforms chanting, “Defend Mongolian culture and language,” while some of them, with the help of parents and citizens, are seen breaking through a closed gate and leaving school.Many others are not choosing to make public demonstrations against the policy, fearing possible violent retaliation by Chinese authorities. Dagula, a mother of an elementary student, told VOA she was keeping her child at home.’Just stay at home'”Now everyone is saying, ‘Don’t march on the streets or anything, just stay at home. As long as you don’t send your kids to school, everything will be fine,’ ” she said.Like other parents of Mongolian students, Dagula worries that if Mandarin replaces Mongolian in classrooms, it may lead to the disappearance of their language.The Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region government’s interpretation of the policy published on August 31 says “the textbooks reflect the will of the Party and the State” and “inherit the advanced achievements of Chinese excellent culture and human civilization.” The moves are being promoted as a major reform initiative that has popular support.Mongolians protest at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Ulaanbaatar against China’s plan to introduce Mandarin-only classes at schools in the neighboring Chinese province of Inner Mongolia, Aug. 31, 2020.Yilalatu, another parent, disagrees. He told VOA that the younger generations are already heavily influenced by Mandarin culture and the new policy will further marginalize Mongolian language and culture, which will cause the younger generations to lose their Mongolian identity.”I’m worried that if children learn Mandarin from first grade, they will forget their mother tongue,” he said. “This has happened. The father and mother are Mongolian, the child who learned Mandarin since primary school has become Han and doesn’t know anything [in Mongolian]. He can’t read or speak Mongolian, even doesn’t know how to say eating or drinking in Mongolian.”He said teachers, students and parents in Mongolian schools are simply asking the authorities to withdraw their new policies, resume their previous practices and start Mandarin classes in the third grade of primary school. They argue that starting later won’t affect their Mandarin skills. He explained that was what his own child did. Now a college graduate, his child’s Mandarin is better than Mongolian.Dagula said she agrees, noting that parents can accept teaching solely in Mongolian in primary school and switching to Mandarin in middle school. She said that when she was in middle school, she was one of the best students at Mandarin. She said she thought that mastering Mandarin would be of great help to her children’s future development, but that the descendants of the Mongolian people must first learn their own language and culture.Deadline for home-schoolersChinese authorities appear to be planning consequences for parents who are not sending their children to school.According to sources who asked not to be named to avoid retribution, Mongolians who work for the government or who are Communist Party members were given a deadline of Thursday to send their children back to school. Otherwise, they have been told, they could lose their jobs or be expelled from the party. The government also threatened to take away social benefits of those who disobey.Dagula said she had received phone calls from her boss at work asking her to set an example by taking her child to school.In the face of rising protests, the government also is proposing new security measures.During a tour in the region this week, China’s Minister of Public Security Zhao Kezhi ordered the police to “severely clamp down on domestic and foreign forces that carry out infiltration and sabotage” and to promote “the fight against separatism” in the ethnic minority region.Police deployedEyewitnesses report seeing armed police deployed on standby in protest locations. Videos circulating on the internet show hundreds of heavily armed riot police guarding Xinhua Square, the largest square in Hohhot, the capital of Inner Mongolia, and some of the protesters being taken away by police.According to the South China Morning Post, authorities are using a facial recognition system to identify and then arrest the protesters.Chinese authorities are also controlling the channels of expression of public opinion. The WeChat accounts of groups that expressed opposition to the new policy have been blockedBut Dagula said Mongolians were willing to pay the price to protect their language.”In order to protect the Mongolian language, everyone will pay the price, and we will certainly pay the price,” she said. “There must be a solution. That’s what I’m looking forward to right now.”Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report.
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US Court Clears Path for Fast-Track Citizenship for Foreign-Born Military Service Members
For nearly the past 80 years, the United States has offered a path to citizenship for foreigners who volunteer to serve in the American military. Under the Nationality Act of 1940, foreign-born military service members whose superior officers certify that they are serving with honor can use an expedited process to seek U.S. citizenship. That FILE – Army members hold the U.S. flag as they attend an annual Memorial Day ceremony at the Intrepid Museum in New York, May 29, 2017.Last month, a federal judge ruled that policy was unlawful, clearing the way for the fast-track citizenship process to resume. FILE – In this image provided by the U.S. Army, recent Army basic combat training graduates have their temperatures, taken as a precaution during the coronavirus pandemic, as they arrive at Fort Lee, Va., March 31, 2020.Margaret Stock, a retired Army lieutenant colonel and immigration lawyer, said the ruling affects “thousands” of people, most of them green card holders and people from American Samoa, Swains Island, the Federated States of Micronesia, the Republic of Palau, and the Republic of the Marshall Islands. Stock called it shameful that it took three years for the courts to reverse Miller’s 2017 memo. “Thousands of military members suffered delayed naturalization as a result of the memo. The memo also hurt military recruiting because it made it faster for green card holders to naturalize as civilians than as members of the military,” she said. Stock created the Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest program (MAVNI) in 2008. MAVNI brought visa holders in legal status with medical or language skills into the armed services and allowed foreign-born military recruits to earn a fast-track path to American citizenship. In 2016, citing national security concerns, the government stopped recruiting nonimmigrant visa holders to service the military. Application rate falls According to court documents, from October 1, 2001, through fiscal year 2018, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has naturalized 129,587 members of the military. Since the Trump administration announced the new requirements in 2017, the government reported a 72 percent drop in military service members’ naturalization applications from pre-policy levels. As one of the applicants whose application has been held up by the 2017 ruling, Hussain is still waiting for his turn. “I passed the [citizenship] test,” said Hussain. “I did the interview and the [officer] gave me a form and said, ‘You passed the test. … Congratulations, we approved your citizenship,’ but later on he called me and said, ‘We need more evidence.’ ” Hussain said he has gone through basic training, applied for expedited naturalization, and in one month, he will have officially served one year in the military. He hopes that with last month’s ruling, his superior officers will certify his good standing in the military, clearing the way for him, as a U.S. citizen, to go see his family again.
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Pelosi, Mnuchin Agree on Plan to Avoid Government Shutdown
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Trump administration have informally agreed to keep a stopgap government-wide funding bill — needed to avert a shutdown at the end of this month — free of controversy or conflict. The accord is aimed at keeping any possibility of a government shutdown off the table despite ongoing battles over COVID-19 relief legislation, while sidestepping the potential for other shutdown drama in the run-up to the November election. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi speaks during a news conference in San Francisco, Sept. 2, 2020.That’s according to Democratic and GOP aides on Capitol Hill who have been briefed on a Tuesday conversation between Pelosi, D-Calif., and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. They required anonymity to characterize an exchange they were informed of but not directly party to. “House Democrats are for a clean continuing resolution,” said Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammil. The definition of “clean” tends to vary among those steeped in Capitol Hill jargon, but it would not necessarily rule out noncontroversial add-ons like routine extensions of programs like federal flood insurance or authority to spend money for highway programs. Some lawmakers are sure to seek substantive legislation and even COVID-related items if consensus could somehow evolve. “We do believe that we’ll be able to get funding to avoid a shutdown,” White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Thursday. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Sept. 1, 2020.The duration of the temporary funding measure or what noncontroversial items might ride along haven’t been settled, aides say, and the Pelosi spokesman declined to further characterize the agreement. The government faces a Sept. 30 deadline to avoid a shutdown like the 2018-2019 shutdown sparked by Trump’s insistence on more funding to construct his U.S.-Mexico border wall. There is sentiment among some Democrats for the stopgap legislation to extend into next year, but December appears to be the administration’s preference and a more likely result. The development comes as lawmakers are absent from Washington but are preparing to return for a brief pre-election session that’s likely to involve battling over COVID relief legislation. But the chances of another rescue bill have ebbed as the summer is nearing an end. The Mnuchin-Pelosi agreement on preventing a shutdown appears aimed at ensuring that the consequences of gridlock on the COVID relief front do not include a politically-freighted partial shutdown. Monica Crowley, a spokeswoman for Mnuchin, said Treasury would decline to comment.
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Hong Kong Media Magnate Jimmy Lai Found Not Guilty in 2017 Case
A Hong Kong court Thursday found the media tycoon Jimmy Lai not guilty of criminal intimidation, closing one of several cases pending against the outspoken critic of Beijing.The acquittal pertains to a 2017 case against Lai, who allegedly used foul language against a reporter from the pro-Beijing newspaper Oriental Daily — a rival media outlet to Lai’s Apple Daily. Police did not press charges against Lai until February of this year.Media mogul Jimmy Lai Chee-ying, founder of Apple Daily, arrives at West Kowloon Magistrates’ Courts, in Hong Kong, Sept. 3, 2020.Prosecutors say Lai’s use of language, which was caught on video, amounted to intimidation against the reporter, who was granted anonymity by the court. Lai pleaded not guilty.The magistrate, May Chung, said that Lai seemed to have temporarily lost his temper, rather than made a calculated attempt to instill fear in the journalist.The ruling comes after multiple arrests of Lai, who has several charges pending against him relating to the mass pro-democracy movement last year. The 71-year-old faces a number of accusations of organizing or inciting people to protest illegally.In a separate incident, Lai was arrested again last month for suspected collusion with foreign forces under the national security laws imposed on Hong Kong by Beijing, in part due to his visit to the United States last year. The Apple Daily newsroom was raided by hundreds of police officers early last month.The visit to Washington, when the media mogul met with Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, resulted in Beijing’s labeling Lai as a “traitor.”
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US Sanctions Companies for Allegedly Supporting Iranian Petrochemical Company
The United States has sanctioned several companies for allegedly allowing the shipment and sale of Iranian petrochemicals.Six companies headquartered in Iran, China and the United Arab Emirates were sanctioned for supporting Triliance Petrochemical Co., Ltd., a Hong Kong-based dealer with operations in Iran, China, the UAE and Germany, the Treasury Department announced Thursday.The U.S. blacklisted Triliance Petrochemical in January.The Treasury Department alleged the Iran-based companies supported Triliance’s “continued involvement in the sale of Iranian petrochemical products, including efforts by Triliance to hide or otherwise obscure its involvement in sales contracts.”The agency said Iranian petrochemical sales are still an important revenue source for Iran and helps it “finance its destabilizing support to corrupt regimes and terrorist groups throughout the Middle East and, more recently, Venezuela.”The companies sanctioned by Treasury were Iran-based Zagros Petrochemical, Hong Kong-based Dinrin, Dynapex Energy and Jingho Technology, and UAE-based Petrotech FZE and Trio Energy DMCC.Separately, the U.S. State Department said Thursday it placed sanctions on five entities and three individuals for allegedly participating in transactions linked to Iran’s petroleum and petrochemical industry.The Iranian government did not respond immediately to the sanctions.
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AP Explains: Novichok That Sickened Navalny a Cold War Relic
Novichok, a deadly nerve agent that has left Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny in a coma and nearly killed a former Russian spy and his daughter in 2018, was the product of a highly secretive Soviet chemical weapons program. Here is a look at the agent and the history of its development. How lethal is Novichok? Novichok, the nerve agent used in the attack that nearly killed former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, in the English city of Salisbury on March 4, 2018, has been described as much deadlier than any U.S. equivalents. FILE – The forensic tent, covering the bench where Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found, is repositioned by officials in protective suits in the center of Salisbury, Britain, March 8, 2018.Just a few milligrams of the odorless liquid — the weight of a snowflake — are enough to kill a person within minutes. The agent could be diluted to the desired concentration and added to food or drink, or applied to surfaces or clothes. Scientists say the nerve agent could remain deadly for a long time — even if a few tiny drops are left in a syringe or impregnated into wood or fabric. In the Salisbury attack, it was sprayed on the front door of Skripal’s house after being smuggled into Britain in a counterfeit Nina Ricci perfume bottle. The Skripals spent weeks in critical condition before recovering, and a local woman died after being exposed to the bottle, which was found by her boyfriend. What do the Russians say about Novichok poisonings?Russia fiercely denied British accusations over the Skripals’ poisoning, accusing London and other Western nations of using the incident to fan an anti-Russian campaign. It has followed the same path of denial in this summer’s Navalny poisoning. German Chancellor Angela Merkel speaks to media during a statement about latest developments in the case of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny at the chancellery in Berlin, Germany, Sept. 2, 2020.German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday called Navalny’s poisoning an attempted murder that aimed to silence one of Putin’s fiercest critics and called for a full investigation, saying “there are very serious questions now that only the Russian government can answer, and must answer.” Russia, however, has demanded that Germany share its data backing up its conclusion that Navalny was poisoned and has called for a joint investigation effort. President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, insisted Thursday that “there is no reason to accuse the Russian state” over the poisoning. He said Moscow expects Berlin to provide information that would help a Russian probe into the cause of Navalny’s illness, and that Russia doctors in Siberia, where Navalny was taken after he fell ill on Aug. 20, found no evidence of poisoning. Sergei Naryshkin, the head of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, even claimed it can’t be excluded that Navalny’s poisoning was a provocation of Western intelligence agencies. When was Novichok designed?The Soviet program to design a new generation of chemical weapons began in the 1970s to counter the latest U.S. chemical weapons. Soviet leaders wanted the equivalent of U.S. binary weapons — agents made up of relatively harmless components that turn deadly when mixed, making them easier to operate than regular chemical weapons. While Novichok class poisons were highly lethal, the program was only partly successful, as some of the components were as toxic as the military-grade nerve agents. The Soviet leadership eventually lost interest in chemical weapons. Novichok-class agents only were manufactured in lab quantities. Vladimir Uglev, a top scientist in the program, has estimated about 100 kilograms (220 pounds) were made. Is it possible to trace Novichok’s source?Russian experts who have worked on the Novichok class of agents have warned it may never be possible to determine the nerve agent’s origin. FILE – German army emergency personnel load into their ambulance the stretcher that was used to transport Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny on at Berlin’s Charite hospital, Aug. 22, 2020.To determine what specific lab produced a given sample of Novichok, it’s necessary to find an identical specimen from the same batch — an impossible task. Facing accusations for the Skripals’s poisoning, Russia has charged that the U.S., Britain and other Western countries had acquired the expertise to make the nerve agent and that the Novichok used in that attack could have come from them. Could it fall into the wrong hands? The main Soviet research center that designed the Novichok-class agents was in Shikhany, a town in southwestern Russia. It was one of the “closed cities” isolated by the KGB. The sprawling facility also housed chemical depots and a military firing range, where nerve agents were tested throughout the Cold War. Some Novichok-related research also was conducted at a main Moscow research center, which shared samples with other labs across the Soviet Union. Despite the U.S. oversight to dismantle Russia’s chemical arsenals after the Soviet collapse, scientists involved in the program said they couldn’t exclude that some lab workers might have been tempted to sell toxic substances amid the economic and political turmoil in the 1990s. Murky status Moscow said in 2017 it completed the destruction of 40,000 metric tons of chemical weapons left over from the Soviet era, an effort that spanned two decades under close international oversight. The Novichok-class agents weren’t originally mentioned in the Chemical Weapons Convention, an international document that outlawed chemical weapons. Last year, however, they were added to the list of chemicals that require special verification measures under the treaty’s provisions. The move came after the 2018 Salisbury attack and marked the first time the list had been updated.
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Top Stars at Venice Film Fest Praise Gender-Neutral Prizes
Two stars at the Venice Film Festival, Cate Blanchett and Tilda Swinton, have praised the decision by the Berlin festival to award gender-neutral prizes, with Swinton predicting other award ceremonies will follow suit.
Organizers of the Berlin International Film Festival announced last month that they would stop awarding separate acting prizes to men and women starting next year. The best actor and actress Silver Bear prizes will now be replaced by best leading performance and best supporting performance awards.
Swinton, who received a Golden Lion Lifetime Achievement award at the Venice festival’s opening ceremony, said divisions by gender were a “waste of life.”
“And so I’m really happy to hear that about Berlin,” she told reporters Thursday. “And I think it’s pretty much inevitable that everybody will follow, because it’s just obvious to me.”
Blanchett, president of the Venice jury this year, said she instinctively calls herself an “actor.” She said it’s hard enough “to sit in judgment of other people’s work” and then even harder to break it down further along gender lines.
“I’m of a generation where the word “actress” was used always in a pejorative sense. So I think I claim the other space,” she said. “I think good performances are good performances, no matter the sexual orientation of the performers who are making them.”
The Venice festival has long been criticized for the lack of female directors in its in-competition films, with only four films made by women in the 62 films competing for the Golden Lion award between 2017 and 2019.
This year, the gender parity has improved, with 44% of the in-competition films directed by women.
Swinton was also in Venice to present a short film directed by Pedro Almodovar, “The Human Voice,” about a woman’s emotional response to being left by her lover over the phone.
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Civilians Accuse Military of Brutality in Cameroon’s Anglophone Regions
Cameroon’s military has detained hundreds of people in the country’s troubled northwest as they search for separatists following the killing of a police officer this week. Locals accuse the military of carrying out revenge attacks, including looting and burning shops, in the English-speaking region — a charge the military denies.
Thirty-four-year old fish seller Ernestine Sahmo says she has decided to temporarily leave the English-speaking northwestern town of Bamenda due to what she says is military brutality. Sahmo says she was forced out of her shop by armed soldiers who detained 80 other women at a police station for three days. “The military entered the whole market and was removing everybody,” she said. “They will break into your store and then start brutalizing you, asking you to go out. They succeeded to remove everybody from the food market to the mobile police station. We were being asked to sit on the ground. Some women were collapsing. The way they terrorized us, we never knew we would come back alive.” Sahmo says store owners’ goods were either looted or torched by the military. Last Monday, the government said separatist fighters in Bamenda killed a policeman in active service. The military was then deployed to hunt for the killers.Residents said troops started arresting people indiscriminately, forcing some either to undress or to sit on the floor for several hours. Scared civilians escaped to neighboring villages and French-speaking towns including Mbouda and Bafoussam. The government said at least two civilians were killed but did not say if separatists or troops were responsible. General Valere Nka, the commander of government troops fighting the separatists in the English-speaking northwest regions, says the military has not committed any atrocities. He says his troops have remained professional. He says his troops fully obey instructions given by the military hierarchy for civilians to be protected and their human rights respected. Nka says he expects civilians who have been assured of total protection by the military to denounce all suspected separatist fighters in their localities. Mka pledged to kill all fighters who do not drop their weapons and seek forgiveness.
Rights groups and opposition political parties have condemned the military for what they say are excesses and torture of civilians in handling the crisis. Prince Ekosso, president of the opposition United Socialist Party, says civilians are scared of the military. He says some of the abuses inflicted by troops on civilians are unbearable. “These are the things that we have decried for too long,” he said. “The people of the northwest and the southwest region cannot continue to suffer like this. You don’t go and punish innocent people for the crimes of another person. The military continues to terrorize the people.” Last week, a Cameroonian rights group, the Center for Human Rights and Democracy in Africa, released what it said is a list of atrocities committed in the English-speaking regions between May and August. The group accused the military of atrocities including extra-judicial executions, arbitrary arrests, unlawful detention, looting and extortion, poor prison conditions, and inhumane and degrading treatment of detainees. The human rights body called for an investigation to be carried out and those found guilty to be punished. Unrest broke out in Cameroon’s English-speaking regions in 2016, when teachers and lawyers protested the dominance of the French language and French-speaking officials. FILE – An image taken from a video shot Oct. 1, 2017, shows protesters waving Ambazonian flags in Bamenda, Cameroon.Rebels took up arms a year later, demanding a separate English-speaking state they call “Ambazonia.”
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US Claims for Unemployment Benefits Ease
The U.S. Labor Department reported Thursday that 881,000 workers filed for unemployment compensation last week, only the second time the weekly figure has dropped below a million claims since the coronavirus pandemic wreaked havoc on the American economy starting in March.Millions of workers remain unemployed in the United States, although economists are predicting that the jobless rate for August could dip slightly below 10% when it is announced Friday, a steady improvement from the April unemployment rate of 14.7%, but still well above the country’s five-decade low of 3.5% recorded in February.U.S. employers have called back millions of workers who were laid off during mandatory business shutdowns earlier this year, yet some hard-hit businesses have been slow to ramp up their operations again or have closed permanently, leaving workers idled or searching for new employment.Until the end of July, the national government sent an extra $600 a week to unemployed workers on top of less generous state jobless benefits. With Trump administration negotiators and opposition Democratic lawmakers unable to reach an agreement on how long to extend the federal benefit and for how much, President Donald Trump signed an executive order calling for $400 a week in extra payments for a few weeks.But only a handful of state governments have started delivering the reduced payments to jobless workers, although 41 of the 50 states have said they will do so in the coming weeks.Congress and the White House remain at odds on how much to spend on a new coronavirus relief package for unemployed workers, hard-hit businesses and financially burdened state and local governments. The Trump administration is calling for a $1.3 trillion package, while the Democrats want $2.2 trillion.The unchecked coronavirus pandemic has now killed more than 185,000 people in the U.S., according to Johns Hopkins University figures, and caused the economy to plummet.On Wednesday, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office reported that the amount of debt held by the U.S. government by the end of 2020 will roughly equal the size of the American economy and will surpass it in 2021.The CBO said the fiscal imbalance has not been seen in the United States since the end of World War II.By the end of this year, the congressional analysts said the amount of debt owed by the U.S. will amount to 98% of the nation’s gross domestic product of about $19 trillion and surpass the U.S. economy’s size next year.The reason is simple: vast government aid to businesses, most U.S. households and unemployed workers impacted by the coronavirus pandemic has ballooned the government’s spending deficit.The U.S added 1.8 million jobs in July, fewer than the job gains in May and June, an indication that hiring had slowed as a second wave of coronavirus infections in the U.S. surged in June and more than doubled by mid-July, forcing employers to close their businesses again.Economists say that the U.S. possibly added about 1.3 million new jobs in August, but it was a figure that was inflated temporarily by the Census Bureau’s hiring of about 240,000 workers to help conduct the once-a-decade count of the U.S. population.
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Теперь – всё: Беларусь для обиженного карлика пукина превращается в проблему
Теперь – всё: Беларусь для обиженного карлика пукина превращается в проблему.
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Теперь Беларусь для обиженного карлика пукина, как осетрина по Воланду. Она утратила свой товарный вид в глазах диктатора. Она все больше превращается из желанного приобретения в проблему, ради которой не стоит рисковать
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“Дна достигли – конец стратегий”: Берлин передал неприятное послание карлику пукину
“Дна достигли – конец стратегий”: Берлин передал неприятное послание карлику пукину.
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Мутация сознания: почему Меркель и Макрон вдруг вспомнили о преступлениях путляндии…
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