Burundi’s government says 38 prisoners were killed in a fire Tuesday morning in Gitega, the country’s political capital.
Vice President Prosper Bazombanza announced the deaths. More than 60 other people have been injured and the death toll could rise.
The prison in Gitega is overcrowded with more than 1,500 inmates in cells designed to hold 400, according to local reports.
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A Zimbabwe court has dropped a case against investigative journalist and government critic Hopewell Chin’ono, charged with inciting public violence last year for supporting banned demonstrations on Twitter.
The outspoken, award-winning journalist has been detained three times and spent two months in prison since he backed anti-government protests in July 2020, when he was first arrested and charged.
Two tweets landed him back in jail in November and January, for allegedly obstructing justice and publishing false information.
A high court in the capital Harare dropped the first charge on Monday, citing inexact wording in the charge sheet.
“The evident contradiction between the charge sheet and the state outline vitiates the charge sheet and renders it a nullity,” ruled Judge Siyabona Musithu.
The same court had cleared Chin’ono of publishing false information in April.
“It means my arrest was & my case were trumped up as I have always argued!” Chin’ono tweeted after the ruling.
“I spent the past 15 months in jails and courts for something that I didn’t do! It was cruel and tragic!”
Chin’ono still faces trial for alleged obstruction of public justice for posting a Tweet ahead of a judicial decision in November last year.
He has been freed on bail and banned from using his Twitter account to post anything that might incite the public to revolt against the government.
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U.S. President Joe Biden and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin are holding a high-stakes virtual summit on Tuesday, with Moscow’s massing of troops along the Ukrainian border for a possible invasion at the forefront of their discussions.
The White House says Biden is ready to warn Putin that Russia would face tough economic sanctions if it invades the former Soviet state after it already annexed Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula in 2014. Moscow has positioned 70,000 troops along Ukraine’s eastern border, with U.S. officials suspecting an invasion is possible in early 2022.
WATCH: US and Russia leaders to meet
White House officials said the U.S. would exact “a very real cost” against the Kremlin if it launches the invasion. Putin, in turn, wants the U.S. to guarantee that the post-World War II NATO military alliance will never expand to include Ukraine, a demand the Americans and their 29 allies will not accept.
In advance of the meeting, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Monday, “We’ve consulted significantly with our allies and believe we have a path forward that would impose significant and severe harm on the Russian economy,” in the event of a Russian invasion of Ukraine.
“You can call that a threat,” she said. “You can call that a fact. You can call that preparation. You can call it whatever you want to call it.”
Administration officials say Moscow has launched a massive cyberspace disinformation campaign against Ukraine’s government in Kyiv that echoes Russia’s 2014 invasion and annexation of Crimea. At the time, the U.S. administration of former president Barack Obama, with Biden as vice president, condemned the invasion but did not respond militarily.
At Tuesday’s summit, Biden will be speaking from the Situation Room at the White House and Putin from his retreat in Sochi.
Ahead of the talks, Kyiv contended that Russia is sending tanks and snipers to war-torn eastern Ukraine to “provoke return fire.” Ukraine’s Defense Ministry accused Russia of holding “training camps under the leadership of regular servicemen of the Russian armed forces.” Moscow has not commented on the allegations.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke Monday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. A State Department spokesman said the top U.S. diplomat assured him of the “the United States’ unwavering support for Ukraine’s sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity in the face of Russian aggression.”
U.S. intelligence has not determined whether Putin has made a final decision to invade. But a senior administration official who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity said Biden intends to make clear to the Russian leader that there will be a “very real cost” should Russia proceed with a military invasion, although it was not immediately clear what economic sanctions the U.S. and its allies might impose.
Putin has been at a loss to curb NATO expansion. Numerous former Soviet-satellite states have been added to the 72-year-old alliance, including Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic in 1999.
There is little prospect that Ukraine would be invited into NATO anytime soon, but the U.S. and its allies have not ruled it out. No outsider, such as Russia, has membership veto power.
Biden’s talks with Putin come as opposition Republican lawmakers have increasingly criticized his performance on the world stage. They contend the Democratic president has done little to curb Iran’s nuclear weapons development program even though Tehran claims it is for peaceful purposes or limit China’s military strength in the Indo-Pacific region.
“Fellow authoritarians in Beijing and Tehran will be watching how the free world responds,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said of the Biden-Putin talks. “And President Biden has an opportunity to set the tone when he speaks with Putin.”
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Tyson Nuthu works in the outdoors industry in Nairobi and sees the presence of China everywhere.
“Just look at all the construction projects, from Ngong Road to the western bypass. Everywhere you look, China is active here in Kenya,” he said.
Kenya is along the path of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative, which is financing infrastructure projects and developing trade routes linking China to the world.
Africa is increasingly being seen as a technology hub that is getting the attention of the world’s superpowers, including China and the United States.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken made his inaugural visit to the African continent in mid-November. He started his tour in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, an American ally deeply indebted to China. His four-day tour also included visits to Senegal and Nigeria.
US-China competition
A study by the Brookings Institution, a nonprofit public policy organization based in Washington, described the trade relationship between the U.S. and sub-Saharan Africa as “underdeveloped,” despite the U.S. prioritization of sub-Saharan African exports under the Generalized System of Preferences.
According to the China Africa Research Initiative at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, annual U.S. foreign direct investment (FDI) flows have been declining since 2010.
The first Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), which was held in Beijing in November of 2006, welcomed the adoption of a declaration and action plan for a “new type of strategic partnership.” Since then, Chinese foreign direct investment (FDI) flow to Africa grew significantly, exceeding that of the United States since 2013.
African views of China’s presence
But how do those on the African continent view this inflow of Chinese investment?
In an interview with VOA, John Calabrese, the director of American University’s Middle East-Asia Project, said discernment between government and society is critical.
“African perceptions of Chinese investment vary greatly,” he said. Chinese companies have imported laborers and inundated markets with cheap items, which has “bred some resentment at the societal level,” especially among small and local African businesses.
“Wide reporting –– and to some extent, the exaggeration of cases –– of Chinese ‘debt trap diplomacy’ have created something of a backlash,” Calabrese said in an email. “To repair the reputational damage as well as to protect and further advance its economic penetration on the continent, Beijing has attempted to ‘revise’ its lending practices.”
African views of US presence
Josh Maiyo, a lecturer at United States International University specializing in China-Africa political ecology, said in the aftermath of the war on terror, the U.S. has given up on the democratization process. Its primary focus now is on the security of the African continent.
“The rest of Africa has essentially been forgotten,” Maiyo said in a phone interview with VOA. “From the African perspective, the U.S. has been countering Chinese advancement more than anything else. It’s only been token engagements with no concrete programs to offer or coordinated, structural approaches.”
Sincerity is paramount for the U.S. to have successful relations with African nations, said Gustavo de Carvalho, a senior researcher at the South Africa-based Institute for Security Studies. When interviewed last month by the United States Institute of Peace, Carvalho said the African continent as a whole has too much experience with “the conditionality of engagements that reduce African voices to mere aid recipients rather than equal counterparts.”
“The U.S. should … equally engage on how its approaches are conducted and perceived by local and national actors,” Carvalho said. “Africans see very clearly that the United States is inconsistent in promoting transparency and anti-corruption policies — a principle it dilutes in its relationship with Saudi Arabia, for example. This can leave Africans feeling that the U.S. is condescending in its relations to them.”
“U.S. attention to Africa has waxed and waned over the years,” American University’s Calabrese noted.
Although commitments to global health threats such as HIV/AIDS, malaria and ebola have been instrumental, Calabrese’s concern about continuity persists.
“U.S.-Africa policy might amount to a collection of ad-hoc initiatives and not a coherent strategy,” he said.
US response
“As the United States and our partners further develop and implement the Build Back Better World initiative, we recognize that robust, meaningful partnerships will be critical to ensure that Build Back Better World delivers infrastructure that meets the needs of middle and lower-income countries,” a senior White House official said in a written statement to VOA.
In a November 19 speech in Nigeria, Blinken said his trip reflected “the breadth and depth of our partnerships in Africa – how we’re working together to find innovative solutions to new challenges, and how we’re investing in long-term sources of strength, rather than short-term fixes.”
In response to VOA’s inquiry, the U.S. State Department referred to Blinken’s November 21 interview with the BBC, where he said, “our Africa policy is about Africa, not about China…it’s premised on this basic reality Everything that we seek to do in the world to make progress for our own people cannot be done without Africa.”
“We’re delighted to have the U.S. back supporting the multilateral system,” said Geoffrey Onyeama, Nigeria’s foreign minister, in a press conference with Blinken.
“Our engagement in Africa, with Africa, our partnership with Nigeria, with many other countries is not about China or any other third parties. It’s about Africa. It’s about working together to make the investments in Africa, make the investments in its people,” Blinken said at a press conference in Nigeria.
Perception on the ground
The perception and popularity of the U.S. in Africa has been lukewarm by some, Maiyo said. “Traditionally, when the American secretary of state visited Africa, there was a lot of anticipation. This time it barely caused a stir.”
In contrast, analysts and people on the ground are much more aware of China’s presence as an investor in Africa.
“[China] has a shock effect that creates a sense of awareness,” Maiyo said. “In terms of project scale, U.S. investment in infrastructure is not nearly as visible.”
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Yunusa Bawa rolled his motorcycle away from the health care clinic where he works in Kuje, southwest of Nigeria’s capital of Abuja, and secured a black box of COVID-19 vaccine for the rough ride ahead.
The rocky and rugged pathway — Bawa described it as a road that “will make you tired” — was the least of his worries. Kidnapping along the route by armed gangs is rampant, he added.
But such trips are essential if Africa’s most populous country is to reach its ambitious goal of fully vaccinating 55 million of its 206 million people in the next two months.
As the emergence of the omicron variant underscores the importance of inoculating more people to prevent new mutations of the coronavirus, Nigeria also is facing a difficult path: Only 3.78 million are fully vaccinated.
Going directly to the villagers is one way to overcome any hesitancy they might have in getting the shots, said Bawa, 39.
“When you meet them in their home, there is no problem,” he added. “Everybody will take (the vaccine).”
On Dec. 1, Nigeria began requiring government employees to be vaccinated or show a negative test for the virus in the past 72 hours. Although authorities emphasize the country is capable of getting the Western-manufactured vaccines to everyone, health care workers in rural areas are struggling, mostly because of delayed government funding.
At the Sabo health center in Kuje, a town of about 300,000 people near Abuja’s international airport, Bawa and three colleagues work in dilapidated buildings with worn-out office equipment. In the past three months, only two of them have received compensation from the government, getting about 10,000 Nigerian naira (about $24).
That’s barely enough to cover the gas for Bawa’s personal motorcycle — “the one we are using to move around and inform them that we are coming on specific dates,” he said as he held the hand of 75-year-old Aminu Baodo before giving him a shot.
On a good day, he can get to about 20 people, but usually it is five or fewer. Many rural residents are poor and spend most of their time on farms scattered across the countryside, rather than in their homes in the village.
That often means a long day for Bawa and his coworkers, in addition to the risk of violence and waiting weeks for paltry compensation. He said he is unsure when he’ll next be paid by the government for his efforts or how long his personal finances will hold out.
A 20-year-old colleague, Yusuf Nasiru, said he hasn’t been paid or reimbursed for expenses since starting the job in November.
“If you should work on weekends, you should be paid,” said Dr. Ndaeyo Iwot, executive secretary of Abuja’s primary health care agency, which oversees vaccinations in the capital. He added that government workers who go out on mobile teams should have logistical support.
Armed groups in northwestern and central parts of Nigeria have killed hundreds of people this year and kidnapped thousands, seeking ransoms.
In areas not beset by violence, delayed payments to workers who transport and administer the vaccine remains “a big challenge for us,” said Dr. Rilwanu Mohammed, the top government official leading vaccination efforts in Bauchi state in Nigeria’s northeast.
“They won’t pay the money until when the people have finished the work, and there is no money for movement from one point to another,” Mohammed said, noting that he had to find funds himself to pay workers’ expenses.
Others criticize the government for not adequately funding a campaign to inform people about the coronavirus and the need for vaccination.
“Nobody around here knows anything about the vaccine to be frank,” said Omorogbe Omorogiuwa, who lives in Adamawa state, which borders the country of Chad in northeastern Nigeria. “Nobody is saying you should go and take it. In fact, it is assumed that (the pandemic) is over.”
In an interview with The Associated Press, Dr. Faisal Shuaib, executive director of Nigeria’s National Primary Health Care Development Agency that oversees the vaccination program, blamed “poor planning (and) poor coordination that results in difficulties or challenges in making sure that the vaccines actually get to rural areas.”
Officials also have to battle skepticism about the vaccine in many parts of Nigeria, a deeply religious country where some religious leaders spread misinformation about the virus and the vaccine to their millions of followers.
In addition to false information spread on social media, some in northern Nigeria remember the 1996 deaths of several children from meningitis during a Pfizer clinical trial for an oral antibiotic, resulting in a legal battle with the pharmaceutical giant that won payouts for some families.
Authorities have been engaging with traditional and religious leaders to get the truth about the vaccine to their followers, Shuaib said.
“But clearly, a lot of work still needs to be done by some states in ensuring that these vaccines get to the communities,” he added, noting that Nigeria has 30 million doses on hand, with many more arriving in the coming months.
Adewunmi Emoruwa, the lead strategist at Gatefield, an Abuja-based consultancy group, said the government should be more focused on “promoting vaccine safety and efficacy,” rather than implementing a mandate for state employees. Public servants will spread the word about the vaccine if they are “convinced” it will work, he added.
Musa Ahmed, an immunization officer in Kuje, said “social mobilization has not been taken place … and that is (why) some people are still doubting the vaccine.”
That has left a large part of Nigeria’s population unvaccinated and at “very great” risk of exposure, said Dr. Richard Mihigo, immunization and vaccines development program coordinator for the World Health Organization’s Africa regional office.
“As much as we give the opportunity to the virus to continue to circulate in a naive population, we give the virus the opportunity to mutate,” Mihigo said in an online briefing.
On Dec. 1, the Nigeria Center for Disease Control said the omicron variant was found in three travelers who arrived in the country late November — the first in West Africa to have recorded the omicron variant since scientists in southern Africa detected and reported it.
In Kaduna state, which neighbors the capital region, Bitrus Maiyaki is another health care worker taking the risk to carry vaccines to rural communities beset by violence.
“In order to support the activities of the government, we have surrendered (our lives),” Maiyaki, 41, told AP in a telephone interview from Jama’a, where he oversees vaccinations. “And we want to save lives. … We have taken an oath to serve our fatherland. We just take the bull by the horns.”
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Angela Merkel was assured of a place in the history books as soon as she became Germany’s first female chancellor on Nov. 22, 2005.
Over the next 16 years, she was credited with raising Germany’s profile and influence, working to hold a fractious European Union together, managing a string of crises and being a role model for women.
Now that near-record tenure is ending with her leaving office at age 67 to praise from abroad and enduring popularity at home. Her designated successor, Olaf Scholz, is expected to take office Wednesday.
Merkel, a former scientist who grew up in communist East Germany, is bowing out about a week short of the record for longevity held by her one-time mentor, Helmut Kohl, who reunited Germany during his 1982-1998 tenure.
While Merkel perhaps lacks a spectacular signature achievement, the center-right Christian Democrat came to be viewed as an indispensable crisis manager and defender of Western values in turbulent times.
She served alongside four U.S. presidents, four French presidents, five British prime ministers and eight Italian premiers. Her chancellorship was marked by four major challenges: the global financial crisis, Europe’s debt crisis, the 2015-16 influx of refugees to Europe and the coronavirus pandemic.
“It’s undeniable that she’s given Germany a lot of soft power,” said Sudha David-Wilp, the deputy director of the German Marshall Fund of the United States’ Berlin office. “Undoubtedly she’s elevated Germany’s image in the world.”
“When she first came onto the scene in 2005, a lot of people underestimated her, but she grew in stature along with Germany’s role in the world,” David-Wilp added. Others in Europe and beyond “want more of an active Germany to play a role in the world — that may not have been the case before she was in office, necessarily.”
In a video message at Merkel’s final EU summit in October, former U.S. President Barack Obama thanked her for “taking the high ground for so many years.”
“Thanks to you, the center has held through many storms,” he said.
Merkel was a driving force behind EU sanctions against Russia over its annexation of Crimea and backing of separatists in eastern Ukraine, and also spearheaded so-far-unfinished efforts to bring about a diplomatic solution there. She was regarded as being “able to have a dialogue with (Russian President Vladimir) Putin on behalf of the West,” David-Wilp said.
She was steadfast in pursuing multilateral solutions to the world’s problems, a principle she set out at a military parade in her honor last week.
The global financial crisis and the migrant influx “made clear how much we depend on cooperation beyond national borders and how indispensable international institutions and multilateral instruments are to be able to cope with the big challenges of our time,” Merkel said, identifying those as climate change, digitization and migration.
That stance was a strong counterpoint to former U.S. President Donald Trump, with whom she had a difficult relationship. At their first meeting in the White House in March 2017, when photographers shouted for them to shake hands, she quietly asked Trump “do you want to have a handshake?” but there was no response from the president, who looked ahead.
Merkel dismissed being labeled as “leader of the free world” during that period, saying leadership is never up to one person or country.
Still, she was viewed as a crucial leader in the unwieldy 27-nation EU, famed for her stamina in coaxing agreements in marathon negotiating sessions.
“Ms. Merkel was a compromise machine,” Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel said recently. When negotiations were blocked, she “mostly found something that unites us to move things along.”
That was on display in July 2020, when EU leaders clinched a deal on an unprecedented 1.8 trillion-euro ($2 trillion) budget and coronavirus recovery fund after a quarrelsome four-day summit.
At her 107th and last EU summit, European Council President Charles Michel told Merkel: “You are a monument.” A summit without her would be like “Rome without the Vatican or Paris without the Eiffel Tower,” he added.
The appreciation from her counterparts was genuine, although there was plenty of friction over the years. Merkel always sought to keep the EU as tightly knit as possible but strongly defended Germany’s interests, clashing with Greece during the debt crisis and disagreeing with Hungary, Poland and others over their refusal — unlike Germany — to host migrants arriving in Europe.
Merkel said she was bowing out of the EU “in a situation that definitely gives me cause for concern as well.”
“We have been able to overcome many crises in a spirit of respect, in an effort always to find common solutions” she said. “But we also have a series of unresolved problems, and there are big unfinished tasks for my successor.”
That’s also true at home, where her record — dominated by the crises she addressed and including a pandemic that is flaring anew as she steps down — is a mixed bag. She leaves Germany with lower unemployment and healthier finances, but also with well-documented shortcomings in digitization — many health offices resorted to fax machines to transmit data in the pandemic — and what critics say was a lack of investment in infrastructure.
She made progress in promoting renewable energy, but also drew criticism for moving too slowly on climate change. After announcing in 2018 that she wouldn’t seek a fifth term, she failed to secure a smooth transition of power in her own party, which slumped to defeat in Germany’s September election.
The incoming governing coalition under Scholz says it wants to “venture more progress” for Germany after years of stagnation.
But Germans’ overall verdict appears to remain favorable. During the election campaign, from which she largely was absent, Merkel’s popularity ratings outstripped those of her three would-be successors. Unlike her seven predecessors in postwar Germany, she is leaving office at a time of her choosing.
Merkel’s body language and facial expressions sometimes offered a glimpse of her reactions that went beyond words. She once lamented that she couldn’t put on a poker face: “I’ve given up. I can’t do it.”
She wasn’t intimidated by Putin’s style. The Russian president once brought his Labrador to a 2007 meeting with Merkel, who later said she had a “certain concern” about dogs after having once been bitten by one.
She was never the most glamorous of political operators, but that was part of her appeal – the chancellor continued to take unglamorous walking holidays, was occasionally seen shopping at the supermarket and lived in the same Berlin apartment as she did before taking the top job.
Named “The World’s Most Powerful Woman” by Forbes magazine for the past 10 years in a row, Merkel steps down with a legacy of breaking through the glass ceiling of male dominance in politics — although she also has faced criticism for not pushing harder for more gender equality.
Obama said that “so many people, girls and boys, men and women, have had a role model who they could look up to through challenging times.”
Former President George W. Bush, whose relationship with Merkel’s predecessor, Gerhard Schroeder, soured over the latter’s opposition to the U.S.-led war in Iraq, said that “Angela came in and changed that completely.”
“Angela Merkel brought class and dignity to a very important position and made very hard decisions … and did so based upon principle,” Bush told German broadcaster Deutsche Welle in July. He described her as “a compassionate leader, a woman who was not afraid to lead.”
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U.S. President Joe Biden will speak Tuesday with Russian President Vladimir Putin via video call, amid what appears to be a Russian troop buildup along the Ukrainian border, raising fears of a Russian invasion. VOA’s Anita Powell reports from the White House.
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U.S. President Joe Biden will hold a high-stakes virtual summit with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin Tuesday amid a massive buildup of Russian troops along the Ukrainian border.
President Biden is expected to make a series of diplomatic overtures to President Putin in an effort to de-escalate the situation, along with clear warnings of likely sanctions if Russian troops invade its smaller neighbor and former Soviet republic.
WATCH: US and Russia leaders to meet
Administration officials say Moscow has launched a massive cyberspace disinformation campaign against Ukraine’s government that echoes Russia’s 2014 invasion and annexation of Crimea. The U.S. intelligence community released a document last week that concluded that Putin is planning to deploy as many 175,000 troops along the Ukrainian border as soon as January as part of a multifront invasion.
Putin is expected to issue an oft-repeated demand that Ukraine never be allowed to join NATO, the seven decade-old military alliance between the United States and the nations of Western Europe, which Biden will likely reject. For his part, Biden is expected to threaten to cut Russia off from SWIFT, the international financial payments system.
The U.S. has provided a vast array of military support to Ukraine, but administration officials say the U.S. will not deploy combat troops to Ukraine in the event of a Russian invasion.
Biden hosted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy at the White House in September, and assured him that the U.S. was “firmly committed to Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity in the face of Russian aggression.”
On Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy visited troops in the eastern Donetsk region and said his forces were capable of fending off a Russian offensive.
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Gambian police fired tear gas on Monday to disperse supporters of losing presidential candidate Ousainou Darboe as they took to the streets outside the capital Banjul to contest the re-election of President Adama Barrow.
Hundreds of protesters had gathered in the community of Serekunda, 12 kilometers (7 miles) from Banjul, the day after Darboe and two other candidates said they would not accept Barrow’s resounding win in Saturday’s peaceful voting.
Police intervened with tear gas when the crowd started scuffling with supporters of Barrow, according to a Reuters reporter at the scene.
Later on, Monday, police broke up another protest of Darboe supporters near his house in Serekunda using tear gas. A witness saw some police beating protesters, before the crowd dispersed.
The office of the Inspector General of Police said it was concerned about gatherings turning violent.
“Without restraint, any form of post-electoral violence will jeopardize our legacy for tolerance, maturity and peacefulness. This Office therefore, strongly urges all Gambians to remain calm,” a police statement said.
The election is a test of stability and democratic progress in the tiny West African country of 2.5 million people. They hope it will help draw a line under the oppressive 22-year rule of former president Yahya Jammeh, who lost to Barrow in 2016 and was forced into exile.
Earlier on Monday, Essa Mbye Faal accepted defeat, backtracking from his earlier announcement that he would reject the results because of alleged problems at polling stations and other issues.
“I have called Adama Barrow for his electoral victory,” he said, without explaining his change of heart. “I told my supporters that we have lost the elections and we should accept the will of God.”
The two remaining hold-out candidates have not said how they will proceed. They have cited allegations of problems at polling stations and other issues and said on Sunday that “all actions are on the table.”
Election observers from the African Union said the election was conducted in line with international standards, while EU observers praised the transparency of the voting and counting process.
However, in its statement, the EU observer mission criticized the Independent Electoral Commission, saying its pre-election candidate acceptance process was overly opaque.
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The British government suspended visa applications from Nigeria on Monday in a move sparked by the omicron variant of the coronavirus.
London’s travel ban on Nigeria took effect at 4 a.m. Monday, according to a statement from the UK’s Nigeria country office. UK authorities said the ban was deemed essential after 21 cases of the new variant were reported in travelers from Nigeria.
UK citizens and residents traveling from Nigeria will be allowed re-entry but must isolate in a government-managed facility, the statement said.
During a television interview on Sunday, Nigeria’s health minister Osagie Ehanire criticized the travel ban.
He noted that the move contradicted the World Health Organization’s position that countries must collaborate and not shut their borders as a result of the new variant.
“The rationale for being so hasty in putting countries on a red list is not something that is very helpful,” Ehanire said. “It’s going to disrupt commerce, family reunions, goods and services, particularly at this time of the year towards the Christmas festivities.”
Nigeria announced three cases of the omicron variant last Wednesday, but the UK’s discovery of more cases in Nigerian travelers raised concerns about the possibility of undetected transmission in the country.
However, Ehanire says that does not warrant a travel ban just yet.
“We regularly get travelers coming in from the UK who are covid positive,” he said. “In fact, within the last two weeks, the COVID-positive arrivals that we had were 50 percent from the UK. There’s genetic sequencing going on, we shall have the result soon. We don’t know how many of them are necessarily omicron variant.”
The omicron variant has spread to nearly 50 countries, and experts say the variant spreads more than twice as quickly as the delta variant. But scientists are not sure of omicron’s impact, and whether it causes the same numbers of hospitalizations and deaths.
Nigerian Justin Chukwemeka, who was scheduled to fly to the UK this week to reunite with his family, says the new travel ban is devastating.
“This whole development is new and it’s actually going to cause a lot of discomfort in different areas, financially, mentally and all that. I’m just hoping and believing that this doesn’t last long,” he said.
UK authorities say the ban will stay in place for three weeks before they review whether the measures are necessary.
Thousands of Sudanese demonstrators rallied in the capital, Khartoum, and other parts of the country Monday to protest the country’s October military coup.
Demonstrators said police fired tear gas to disperse protesters marching near the presidential palace.
The Associated Press reported that protests also took place Monday in cities outside the capital, including Kassala, Sennar and Port Sudan.
Sudan’s military took power on October 25, arresting dozens of officials in the country’s transitional government. It was the second coup in the country since a popular uprising in April 2019 forced the removal of longtime leader Omar al-Bashir.
Sudan’s top general, Abdel Fattah Burhan, initially detained Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok but was forced to reinstate him in November following mass protests and international condemnation of the coup.
Sudan’s pro-democracy movement has rejected the deal that put Hamdok back in the prime minister seat, saying a fully civilian government should be in power.
Protest organizers said Monday they were demonstrating with the slogan “No negotiations, no compromise, no power-sharing” with the military.
In other developments Monday, the Sudan Doctors Committee said the death toll from fighting over the weekend in Sudan’s western Darfur region climbed to 48. The tribal violence took place in the Kreinik area. Darfur has seen decades of instability and rebellion.
Some information in this report came from The Associated Press and Agence France-Presse.
The U.S. Justice Department said Monday it is ending its investigation into the 1955 lynching of Emmett Till, the Black teenager from Chicago who was abducted, tortured and killed after witnesses said he whistled at a white woman in Mississippi.
The announcement came after the head of the department’s civil rights division and other officials met with several of Till’s relatives.
Till’s family members said they were disappointed there will continue to be no accountability for the infamous killing, with no charges being filed against Carolyn Bryant Donham, the woman accused of lying about whether Till ever touched her.
“Today is a day we will never forget,” Till’s cousin, the Rev. Wheeler Parker, said during a news conference in Chicago. “For 66 years we have suffered pain. … I suffered tremendously.”
The killing galvanized the civil rights movement after Till’s mother insisted on an open casket, and Jet magazine published photos of his brutalized body.
The Justice Department reopened the investigation after a 2017 book quoted Donham as saying she lied when she claimed that 14-year-old Till grabbed her, whistled and made sexual advances while she was working in a store in the small community of Money. Relatives have publicly denied that Donham, who is in her 80s, recanted her allegations about Till.
Donham told the FBI she had never recanted her accusations and there is “insufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that she lied to the FBI,” the Justice Department said in a news release Monday. Officials also said that historian Timothy B. Tyson, the author of 2017’s “The Blood of Emmett Till,” was unable to produce any recordings or transcripts in which Donham allegedly admitted to lying about her encounter with the teen.
“In closing this matter without prosecution, the government does not take the position that the state court testimony the woman gave in 1955 was truthful or accurate,” the Justice Department release said. “There remains considerable doubt as to the credibility of her version of events, which is contradicted by others who were with Till at the time, including the account of a living witness.”
Tyson did not immediately respond to an email from The Associated Press seeking comment Monday.
Thelma Wright Edwards, one of Till’s cousins, said she was heartbroken but not surprised that no new charges are being brought.
“I have no hate in my heart, but I had hoped that we could get an apology, but that didn’t happen,” Edwards said Monday in Chicago. “Nothing was settled. The case is closed, and we have to go on from here.”
Days after Till was killed, his body was pulled from the Tallahatchie River, where it had been tossed after being weighted down with a cotton gin fan.
Two white men, Roy Bryant and his half-brother J.W. Milam, were tried on murder charges about a month after Till was killed, but an all-white Mississippi jury acquitted them. Months later, they confessed in a paid interview with Look magazine. Bryant was married to Donham in 1955.
The Justice Department in 2004 opened an investigation of Till’s killing after it received inquiries about whether charges could be brought against anyone still living. The department said the statute of limitations had run out on any potential federal crime, but the FBI worked with state investigators to determine if state charges could be brought. In February 2007, a Mississippi grand jury declined to indict anyone, and the Justice Department announced it wasclosing the case.
Bryant and Milam were not brought to trial again, and they are now both dead. Donham has been living in Raleigh, North Carolina.
The FBI in 2006 began a cold case initiative to investigate racially motivated killings from decades earlier. A federal law named after Till allows a review of killings that had not been solved or prosecuted to the point of a conviction.
The Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act requires the Justice Department to make an annual report to Congress. No report was filed in 2020, but a report filed in June of this year indicated that the department was still investigating the abduction and killing of Till.
The FBI investigation included a talk with Parker, who previously told the AP in an interview that he heard his cousin whistle at the woman in a store in Money, Mississippi, but that the teen did nothing to warrant being killed.
Three 2021 Nobel Prize laureates said Monday that climate change is the biggest threat facing the world — yet they remain optimistic — as this year’s winners began receiving their awards at scaled-down local ceremonies adapted for pandemic times.
For a second year, COVID-19 has scuttled the traditional formal banquet in Stockholm attended by winners of the prizes in chemistry, physics, medicine, literature and economics, which were announced in October. The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded separately in Oslo, Norway.
Literature laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah was first to get his prize in a lunchtime ceremony Monday at the Swedish ambassador’s grand Georgian residence in central London.
Ambassador Mikaela Kumlin Granit said the U.K.-based Tanzanian author had been awarded the Nobel Prize in literature for his “uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents.”
“Customarily you would receive the prize from the hands of His Majesty, the king of Sweden,” she told Gurnah at the ceremony attended by friends, family and colleagues. “However, this year you will be celebrated with a distance forced upon us because of the pandemic.”
Gurnah, who grew up on the island of Zanzibar and arrived in England as an 18-year-old refugee in the 1960s, has drawn on his experiences for 10 novels, including “Memory of Departure,” “Pilgrims Way,” “Afterlives” and “Paradise.” He has said migration is “not just my story — it’s a phenomenon of our times.”
Italian physics laureate Giorgio Parisi was receiving his prize at a ceremony in Rome. U.S.-based physics laureate Syukuro Manabe, chemistry laureate David W.C. MacMillan and economic sciences laureate Joshua D. Angrist will be given their medals and diplomas in Washington.
MacMillan, German physics prize winner Klaus Hasselmann and economics prize winner Guido Imbens, who is Dutch but lives in the United States, had a joint virtual news conference Monday where they were asked what they consider the biggest problem facing humanity and what they worry about most. All three answered climate change, with Imbens calling it the world’s “overarching problem.”
“Climate change is something which is clearly going to have a large impact on society,” MacMillan said. “But at the same time given the science, given the call to arms amongst scientists, I really feel more optimism. And I feel there’s a real moment happening with scientists moving towards trying to solve this problem.”
“I would bet on that fact that we would solve this problem,” MacMillan said.
Hasselmann, whose work on climate change won him the prize, said he’s more hopeful because the world’s youth and movements like Fridays for the Future “have picked up the challenge and are getting across the message to the public that we have to act and respond to the problem.”
Hasselmann said he’s more optimistic now about climate change than 20 or 30 years ago.
Imbens said he also is disturbed that misinformation, especially about COVID-19 and vaccines, is splitting society apart. He recalled growing up in the Netherlands and nearly everyone agreed on the need for the polio vaccine.
“And yet, here we don’t seem to have found a way of making these decisions that we can all live with,” Imbens said. “And that’s clearly made it much harder to deal with the pandemic.”
More ceremonies will be held throughout the week in Germany and the United States. On Friday — the anniversary of the death of prize founder Albert Nobel — there will be a celebratory ceremony at Stockholm City Hall for a local audience, including King Carl XVI Gustav and senior Swedish royals.
A Nobel Prize comes with a diploma, a gold medal and a $1.5 million (10-million krona) cash award, which is shared if there are multiple winners.
The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded in Oslo because Nobel wanted it that way, for reasons he kept to himself. A ceremony is due to be held there Friday for the winners — journalists Maria Ressa of the Philippines and Dmitry Muratov of Russia.
The Norwegian news agency NTB said the festivities would be scaled down, with fewer guests and participants required to wear face masks. Norway has seen an uptick in cases of the new omicron variant, and a spokesman for the Norwegian Nobel Committee told NTB it was “in constant contact with the health authorities in Oslo.”
“December 7, 1941 — a date which will live in infamy,” is how then-U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt described the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the American naval base near Honolulu, Hawaii.
Tuesday marks the 80th anniversary of the surprise strike on the U.S. Pacific Fleet that killed more than 2,400 service members and civilians, wounded about 1,000 people, and damaged or destroyed almost 20 ships and more than 300 aircraft in less than two hours.
The next day, Roosevelt asked Congress to declare war on Japan, and the lawmakers approved the move.
Just three days later, Germany and Italy, Japan’s allies, declared war on the U.S. The U.S. reciprocated, entering World War II, which had been raging in Europe for more than two years.
Approximately 150 World War II veterans, including about 40 survivors of the attack on Pearl Harbor, are attending a ceremony of remembrance Tuesday at the Pearl Harbor National Memorial in Hawaii. The 80th National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day Commemoration will include a moment of silence at 7:55 a.m., the exact time the attack began.
It will be held in person for the first time since 2019. Last year’s event was virtual because of the coronavirus pandemic. This year’s event will also be livestreamed.
Survivors of the Pearl Harbor attack are now in their late 90s or older.
Many of the veterans arrived in Hawaii on Friday from Dallas, Texas, on a plane chartered for the occasion. The ABC News affiliate in Dallas, WFAA, spoke to the veterans at the airport in the city.
Navy veteran Lieutenant Commander Cass Phillips, a 101-year-old Pearl Harbor survivor, told the outlet, “I was 21 at that time.”
John Pildner said that he was in the Army before he could even vote, from 1944 to 1946. “If I could do it again, I would,” he added.
Also on Tuesday, the U.S. military is reburying the remains of service personnel killed when the USS Oklahoma was attacked in Pearl Harbor, following a yearslong project to identify their remains. The burials will be in Honolulu’s National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific.
The Pentagon project identified nearly 400 service members from the ship with the help of DNA technology and dental records, leaving the remains of only 33 people from the ship not individually identified, according to a report in The Washington Post.
The Oklahoma was sunk during the attack, which was carried out by a Japanese force that included 353 aircraft, 35 submarines, two battleships and 11 destroyers, according to a U.S. census report.
“I encourage all Americans to reflect on the courage shown by our brave warriors that day and remember their sacrifices,” U.S. President Joe Biden said earlier this month in a National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day proclamation. “I ask us all to give sincere thanks and appreciation to the survivors of that unthinkable day.”
Ebrahim Ismail Ebrahim, a former anti-apartheid fighter who, like the greats of the struggle he encountered, spent part of his life in Robben Island penitentiary in South Africa, died Monday at the age of 84.
He died of a long illness at his home in Johannesburg, the ruling African National Congress said in a statement.
The party hailed “a longtime ANC member, a patriot who has served his country in many capacities with humility, dedication and distinction.”
Born on July 1, 1937, the activist of Indian origin had a journey similar to that of the big names in the fight against the white racist regime in South Africa.
Switched from nonviolent protest to armed struggle under apartheid, he was arrested in 1963 for sabotage and sent to Robben Island for 15 years. He was released in 1979.
At the end of the 1980s, when he joined the ANC in exile and multiplied the missions, he was kidnapped by apartheid agents in neighboring Swaziland (now Eswatini), tortured, then sentenced for “treason” and sent back to Robben Island.
In prison, he studied with Nelson Mandela and shared a cell with Jacob Zuma, who like Mandela was a future president of South Africa.
Ebrahim was finally free in 1991. The first multiparty elections were held in South Africa three years later.
He joined the government in 2009 as deputy foreign minister, a post he held for six years.
“I am saddened by the death of a comrade and distinguished advisor who has dedicated his life to the liberation of our country and the resolution of conflicts in the world,” South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said in a statement, welcoming a “sweet revolutionary.”
When Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin meet virtually on Tuesday, the two presidents will have to negotiate a history of mutual suspicion as they take up the urgent issue of a major Russian military buildup on the Ukraine border.
The key question hanging over the talks — and the subject of keen debate among analysts and political leaders — is whether Putin might actually launch a cross-border offensive, or whether he is using the troops to pressure Biden for guarantees ex-Soviet Ukraine will never become a NATO launchpad.
The two have a daunting list of other differences to air, from Russia’s harsh treatment of dissidents to the presence of ransomware hackers on Russian soil to Moscow’s support for the repressive regime in Syria.
But the magnitude of the Russian buildup near Ukraine — the Kremlin may be planning an offensive early in 2022 involving up to 175,000 troops, according to U.S. intelligence obtained by The Washington Post and other outlets — has raised red flags in Washington and across Europe.
Many analysts doubt that Putin would carry through with an invasion — which would inevitably prompt international condemnation and probably new sanctions — but at least some take a darker view.
“Putin has sharply raised the stakes. He is no longer bluffing,” said Tatiana Stanovaya, founder of the political consultancy R.Politik Center and a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Moscow Center.
“He’s ready to take a desperate step,” she told Agence France-Presse on Sunday.
The looming crisis could pose the sternest test yet of the foreign policy savvy and clout of the 78-year-old U.S. president.
Biden and Putin — who are expected to speak Tuesday around midday Washington time — have a history together.
They first met in person in the Kremlin in 2011. Then-Vice President Biden later said he told the Russian leader, “I don’t think you have a soul” to which, Biden says, Putin responded, “We understand one another.”
They met again in 2014 in Geneva to deal with the now familiar issue of Russian military pressure on Ukraine.
And they met in Geneva on June 16 of this year for the first time with Biden as president.
Contacts have continued since, as have tensions, with Putin seen as eager to pressure Biden into another in-person summit as a way to project parity on the world stage.
On Friday, Biden vowed to make it “very, very difficult” for Russia to launch an invasion but did not say how.
Putin has warned the West and Kyiv against crossing the Kremlin’s “red lines,” including building up weaponry in Ukraine.
Biden later responded, “I won’t accept anybody’s red line.”
Some analysts said Russia, deeply concerned with Ukraine’s warming ties to NATO, is applying pressure to cut that movement short.
Following Putin’s lead, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov last week called on U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to provide “security guarantees” that NATO would not come closer to Russia’s border.
Stanovaya said this might be Putin’s bottom line: “Either NATO provides guarantees or Russia invades Ukraine,” she said.
Russia has continued to deny any bellicose intentions, instead accusing the West of provocations in the Black Sea.
NATO recognized Kyiv in June 2020 as one of a handful of so-called “enhanced opportunity partners,” potentially a step toward membership.
Heather Conley, a former assistant U.S. secretary of state for European affairs, said she believes Putin is willing to apply “enormous pressure” in the Ukraine standoff.
He is set on another in-person summit with Biden, said Conley, who is with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. And he wants to loosen Western ties to Ukraine, which she said some see as “a sort of NATO aircraft carrier.”
Fyodor Lukyanov, a prominent political analyst close to the Kremlin, said he doubts Biden and Putin will agree on anything concrete on Tuesday, but he does not expect hostilities to break out if the talks fail.
“No, this is hysteria whipped up by the West,” he told AFP on Sunday. “Wars begin suddenly. If it begins, it will begin differently.”
Moscow seized Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and has since backed the separatist forces fighting Kyiv. The conflict has left more than 13,000 dead.
What if the virtual meeting between the rival leaders goes poorly on Tuesday?
If Russia fails to obtain the accommodations it seeks, and all efforts at diplomacy fail, said Conley, her sense is that “Mr. Putin would then use military means to achieve his political objective.”
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President Joe Biden is set to consult by phone with European allies on Monday about Russia’s troop buildup on the Ukraine border, one day ahead of Biden’s highly anticipated video meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Officials from other leading NATO nations — the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Italy — were expected to be on Monday’s call with Biden, who is looking to coordinate messaging and potential economic sanctions against Russia in response to the Ukraine situation.
Ukraine is likely to be the central focus of the Biden-Putin conversation, but the two also are expected to address cybersecurity, Iran’s nuclear program and other issues of mutual concern.
U.S. intelligence officials have determined that Russia has massed about 70,000 troops near its border with Ukraine and has begun planning for a possible invasion as soon as early next year, according to a Biden administration official who was not authorized to discuss that finding publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
A second administration official underscored that the U.S. has not determined whether Putin has made a final decision on a possible invasion. Still, Biden in Tuesday’s call intends to make clear to the Russian leader that there will be a “very real cost” should Russia choose to proceed with military action, the official said.
Potential U.S. countermeasures include stiff economic sanctions, increased support for the Ukrainian military and bolstering of the military capability of NATO allies in the region, the official said.
Biden also is scheduled to speak with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in the coming days after his call with Putin, the administration official said.
The Kremlin said last week that Putin would seek binding guarantees from Biden precluding NATO’s expansion to Ukraine. Biden and aides have indicated no such guarantee is likely.
The risks for Putin of going through with an invasion could be significant.
U.S. officials and former American diplomats say Ukraine’s military is better armed and prepared today than in the past, and that sanctions threatened by the West would do serious damage to the Russian economy.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, during his daily conference call with reporters, said Monday that U.S.-Russian relations are in “a rather dire state” but that the Kremlin looks forward to hearing what Biden has to say.
“I think President Putin will hear these proposals with great interest. And we will be able to see how much these (proposals) would be able to defuse tensions,” Peskov told Russia’s state TV station Channel One later on Monday.
Programming shifts at Slovenia’s public broadcaster could curb critical journalism and benefit the center-right government in next year’s elections, say journalists and free press advocates who sense politics behind the moves.
The changes, adopted by the program council of RTV Slovenia on November 29, shorten or abolish some main news programs, while others move to a less-prominent second channel. TV Slovenia is a part of RTV Slovenia, which also includes a public radio channel. The radio channel will also undergo some changes, but those are not being disputed.
The new management of RTV Slovenia claims the changes, to be phased in by the end of March 2022, are designed to improve the ratings. Skeptics say that’s not the whole story.
“Whether or not the proposed reforms are designed to curb critical political journalism, their concrete impact would be to reduce RTV’s ability to inform the public and scrutinize the government,” Laurens C. Hueting, senior advocacy officer of the European Center for Press and Media Freedom, told VOA.
Most journalists of TV Slovenia news programs agree. More than nine in 10 signed a petition in opposition.
“This plan presents a big change, which we believe does not bring any possibilities to increase quality of reporting,” senior TV Slovenia anchor Igor Evgen Bergant told VOA.
“We want changes; we want a better work organization … but the adopted plan will disperse news reporting to several channels and thus reduce the interest of people in our news. So, our relevance will decrease,” Bergant maintained.
He is an anchor of the prominent evening news show Odmevi, which is due to be shortened to 25 minutes from 30 minutes at present. But other programs will be more affected.
The management did not disclose changes in detail, but TV journalists told VOA that all political debates ahead of the April 24 parliamentary election move to the second channel, while the main evening news show Dnevnik will be shortened by almost a third to 20 minutes.
A weekly show, Politicno, which analyzes interior politics, will be abolished. Weekly shows Utrip, which examines events in the country, and Zrcalo tedna, which focuses on global events, will be moved to the second channel, along with many others.
The journalists’ petition gained public support of a number of universities, academics, Slovenian diplomats, trade unions, business chambers and public institutes.
Still, the management of RTV Slovenia stands by the changes. The management did not respond to VOA’s detailed questions but sent a statement saying TV Slovenia is in a “serious crisis. ”
“The viewership of most shows has been falling for years, only Dnevnik and Odmevi have since 2003 lost 250,000 or about half of once faithful viewers. That is why we are introducing changes in the news program,” the statement said.
Bergant said the viewership figures fail to include those who follow the shows on mobile phones and after a time delay, and that ratings are falling in other countries, as well.
Although the government has no direct influence on TV Slovenia production, many believe the changes benefit the government of Prime Minister Janez Jansa ahead of the April vote.
“It is hard to prove whether the incumbent government is behind these decisions,” said Marko Milosavljevic, a professor of journalism at the Ljubljana University. “However, such marginalization of the information program can surely benefit this government, especially before the election, as the abolishment of analytical and potentially critical shows and reports could ease the media position and image of this government.”
The broadcaster receives most of its income from an obligatory RTV subscription paid by most households. It is run by a 29-member Program Council mandated to act independently. However, a majority of the council members, 21, are appointed by the parliament.
TV Slovenia runs a 24-7 operation and is one of the most popular TV channels in the country. It competes with several private channels. Its largest competitor is owned by international investment group PPF that is based in the Czech Republic. Another competitor, Nova24TV, was established in 2016 by members and supporters of Jansa’s Slovenian Democratic Party.
The Ministry of Culture, which oversees media, did not respond to VOA’s questions about government influence over TV Slovenia. In September, the ministry denied exerting any political pressure on the leadership of TV Slovenia.
The RTV’s new chief executive, Andrej Grah Whatmough, who took over last April after being appointed by the Program Council, had rejected rumors that his appointment was political and denied being under any pressure.
In August, however, he dismissed the director of TV Slovenia. The new director then appointed a new managing editor of TV’s news programs after the previous editor, Manica Janezic Ambrozic, resigned in October because of the planned program changes.
Opposition parties say Jansa’s government is trying to control the broadcaster through the Program Council to get favorable coverage.
“It is obvious that (the government parties) want to take control of the public medium and change it … into a pro-government mouthpiece,” Nika Vrhovnik, a spokeswoman of the largest opposition party, the center-left List of Marjan Sarec, told VOA.
Since taking power in March 2020, Jansa’s government has been criticized by local and international institutions for its media policies. They include a decision to stop paying the national news agency, STA, which normally gets half of its income from the government.
That happened after Jansa said on Twitter the agency was biased and “a national shame.”
Government payments to the STA resumed in November after a new CEO was appointed following a September resignation of predecessor Bojan Veselinovic over his inability to reach a financing deal with the government.
Several TV journalists told VOA they feel more pressure since Jansa took power. Last year, Jansa used Twitter to accuse TV Slovenia of spreading falsehoods.
On December 3, Jansa shared a tweet that accused a TV Slovenia journalist of lying when she compared the government’s spending on the health system to military spending.
Analysts said that Slovenian journalists are still able to produce independent news — for now.
Said Hueting: “Against a background of increasing intimidation and threats against RTV’s journalists, it is important to support the broadcaster and its staff so they can continue to deliver a high standard of news reporting.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi reaffirmed their ties at a New Delhi summit that aimed to reboot a relationship that has stagnated in recent years as India moves closer to the United States and Russia to China.
The Russian leader on Monday called India “a great power, a friendly nation, and a time-tested friend,” while Modi said that despite the emergence of different geopolitical equations in the last few decades, “the friendship of India and Russia has been constant.”
Although the altered geopolitical landscape poses challenges in maintaining close ties, a strong defense partnership that goes back to the Cold War years is a key pillar binding the two countries. New Delhi has diversified its defense procurement in recent decades, but Russia is still India’s largest arms supplier with more than two-thirds of its military equipment being of Russian origin.
Defense ties topped the agenda with Indian Defense Minister Rajnath Singh calling for increased military cooperation with Russia.
The bilateral agreements signed included one for India to procure more than 600,000 AK-203 assault rifles from Russia and another to extend their military technology cooperation over the next decade.
Indian officials said Russia has begun deliveries of the S-400 air defense missile systems that India is buying from Moscow – their biggest military deal was clinched by New Delhi in 2018 despite the threat of sanctions from its close strategic partner, the United States.
Washington has often warned New Delhi that the purchase of five long-range surface-to-air missile systems from Russia runs counter to U.S. legislation passed in 2017, whose aims include deterring countries from buying Russian military equipment.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told a news conference in the Indian capital that the deal was being implemented despite what he said were U.S. efforts to undermine the accord.
India has told American officials that it needed the missile defense system – one of the most sophisticated in the world — to build its military capacities as it faces a hostile China along its northern borders. It is hoping for a presidential waiver from sanctions.
The Indian and Russian defense and foreign ministers of the two countries, who also held a strategic dialogue in the Indian capital, emphasized the importance of their relationship. With an eye on boosting trade, both sides signed 28 investment pacts in areas such as energy and shipbuilding.
The situation in Afghanistan was also on the agenda of both countries that remain wary of the potential for terrorism from the Taliban-ruled country.
Putin said that the “fight against terrorism, drug trafficking and organized crime” were key challenges for both countries.
India also hopes its ties with Russia will help it regain some ground in the country where Pakistan and China have emerged as key players.
Key differences as the two countries build new alliances will test ties going ahead, say analysts. Russia opposes the creation of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, also known as the Quad, saying it is against security blocs in the Asian region. India has embraced the alliance of which it is a part and that is aimed at counterbalancing China in the Indo-Pacific region. Besides India, the Quad includes Australia, Japan and the United States.
Analysts point out that despite India’s growing strategic convergence with the U.S., both New Delhi and Moscow want to give momentum to their own ties.
“The summit’s key takeaway is that both nations are not willing to abandon each other,” according to Harsh Pant, director of research and head of the Strategic Studies Program at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi.
“Their interests might be diverging, but the fact that Putin has come for his first bilateral visit to India since the pandemic, that India is buying the S-400 system despite the threat of U.S. sanctions, shows they see some value in each other as partners and want to invest in that relationship,” Pant said.
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Inter-communal clashes between Arabs and non-Arabs left at least 30 people dead and 40 others injured in Sudan’s West Darfur state on Sunday, according to eyewitnesses and officials.
Local militia supported by a paramilitary group, the Rapid Support Forces, attacked internally displaced persons in Kreinik camp and torched their houses, witnesses said.
The latest wave of fighting, which has been going on for weeks, stemmed from a dispute late Saturday between a customer and the owner of a cell phone store who was shot dead.
Arab fighters known as Janjaweed attacked the camp early Sunday morning after the murder.
Thirty bodies were brought to Kreinik Hospital and more than 40 others who were wounded were treated there, Mustafa Mohammed Zain, a medical assistant at Kirenik Hospital, told VOA’s South Sudan in Focus on Monday.
“Up to now we are still receiving wounded people even though the fighting stopped at around five a.m. this morning,” he said. “Some of them are in critical condition and some might die within the coming one or two hours.”
The hospital lacks basic medical equipment and does not have enough medical workers to respond to the wounded, Zain said. He called on state and national health authorities to urgently intervene.
“This is a big, rural hospital and it cannot be managed only by medical officers,” Zain said. “The government is supposed to send us doctors to help the situation.”
The hospital has run out of supplies like gauze and cotton, Zain said.
“We used all the reserve stock,” he said. “Medical workers are not safe and cannot go to the nearest location to get more medical supplies.”
The United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Sudan said an estimated 4,300 people have been displaced from the Jebel Moon area of West Darfur state in the last week due to fighting.
Mohammed Issa Alieu, the acting regional governor for Darfur, last week called the humanitarian situation in Jebel Moon “horrific” and appealed to aid agencies to quickly intervene.
Thousands of displaced families have fled to eastern Chad and are exposed to bad weather, Alieu said.
Adam Rijal, spokesman for the General Coordination for Refugees and Displaced in Darfur, a local advocacy group for IDP’s, told South Sudan in Focus that some political leaders in Sudan’s transitional government are behind what he calls “systematic” attacks on indigenous civilians in Darfur.
Renewed clashes erupted between different groups across the Darfur region shortly after the joint United Nations and African Union peacekeeping mission ended its mandate a year ago.
Rijal blames the United Nations Security Council for what he calls a unilateral decision to withdraw from the area without consulting the affected population in Darfur.
“We are supposed to have a voice on this decision because we are the ones facing the pain of the situation more than any other people,” he said.
Despite a peace agreement signed between the government and armed groups in Darfur more than a year ago, the area has seen repeated clashes between different ethnic communities.
A land dispute last month between communities in the Jebel Moon area led to clashes that left at least 17 people dead.
Under the Juba Peace Agreement, various forces were supposed to deploy a 12,000-strong presence in Darfur within 90 days to secure the area and provide protection for civilians.
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Taiwan will take part in a virtual U.S. Summit for Democracy this week after countries like China and Russia failed to make the list of attendees in another sign of American support for the East Asian democracy.
Hsiao Bi-khim, Taiwan’s de facto ambassador to the United States, and Digital Minister Audrey Tang, will represent Taiwan at the meeting on Thursday and Friday alongside representatives from more than 100 countries and global institutions.
“This democracy summit is the White House sending a signal that democratic countries should support each other and to work together to enhance the human rights, freedom and democracy,” said Wang Ting-yu, a member of Taiwan’s legislature who sits on its Foreign Affairs & National Defense Committee.
Wang said Taiwan’s invitation to the summit was a “clear signal to Beijing” that Taiwan is a close ally and should be treated as a country, although its government is only recognized by 15 countries and the Holy See.
Despite its international exclusion, Taiwan regularly tops democracy rankings and placed first in East Asia and 11th globally in the Economist Intelligence Unit’s 2020 Democracy Index.
The United States and Taiwan do not have formal diplomatic relations but nevertheless the U.S. has been a major ally. Under the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, the U.S. has pledged to help Taiwan defend itself from external threats.
The recent show of U.S. support comes at a difficult time in Taiwan-China relations. In October, China ramped up air incursions into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone, prompting Taiwan’s defense minister, Chiu Kuo-cheng, to say at the time that tensions were at their worst in 40 years.
In response to this threat, the U.S. has become more vocally supportive of Taiwan, which has included a recent statement from U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken that China would face “terrible consequences” if it attacked Taiwan.
Beijing regards Taiwan, a democracy of 23 million people, as a wayward province and has not ruled out the use of force to unify it with the mainland.
Events like the U.S. Summit for Democracy are also an important way for Taiwan to maintain international visibility as it is locked out of most major organizations like the United Nations, said Yao-Yuan Yeh, the chair of the Department of International Studies and Modern Languages at the University of St. Thomas in Texas.
“The U.S. is likely to invite Taiwan to sit at the table whenever it can, but before a complete decoupling with China, the U.S. would still be cautious about such moves to avoid misperceptions from China,” he said.
Since taking office in January, U.S. President Joe Biden has attempted to reverse a course set by predecessor Donald J. Trump that saw the U.S. withdraw from many of its international obligations.
Biden has shifted toward a values-based foreign policy that portrays the world as a competition between democracies and authoritarian governments – a posture that appears to have struck a nerve with Beijing’s Communist Party.
After protesting its exclusion from the talks, China hosted a parallel democracy summit over the weekend and released two reports about what it called the state of democracy in China, comparing it to the United States.
China is an authoritarian country whose government is controlled by the Chinese Communist Party. However, officials argue they are implementing “socialist democracy” which they say is a core value of China’s Communist Party. Despite the claim, Beijing ranks far below liberal democracies on measure of political freedom. China ranked 151 in the Economist Intelligence Unit’s 2020 democracy Index, placing it on par with Bahrain, Iran and Sudan.
China’s State Council white paper “China: Democracy That Works,” however, has been heavily promoted on Twitter by state media and government accounts since its release on Saturday.
A Twitter video produced by the State Council Information Office says, “China did not follow the established path of Western countries in its modernization drive. Similarly, China did not duplicate Western models of democracy, but created its own.”
As part of the messaging campaign, the state-backed Global Times newspaper shared a graphic unfavorably comparing lower voter participation rates in the United States to the claimed 90% turnout in China.
Both should be taken as part of China’s greater effort to” promote its version of democracy and in challenge of what liberal democracies put out,” said Adam Ni, who publishes the newsletter China Neican about Chinese governance issues.
“It goes into this idea well why should democracy be something that only Western countries say is a democracy (but) people take democracy to mean different things.”
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New York City is imposing a coronavirus vaccine mandate on all its private employers starting December 27, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Monday, in an edict that will affect thousands of workers and would be the most sweeping yet to take effect in the United States. The move comes with less than a month to go before his mayoral term ends.
De Blasio told MSNBC that his order was necessary as a preemptive move against the virus, with the New York City area already identifying seven cases of the new and highly transmissible omicron variant. The mandate will affect about 184,000 businesses.
“We’ve got omicron as a new factor. We’ve got the colder weather, which is really going to create additional challenges with the delta variant. We’ve got holiday gatherings,” de Blasio told the news network. “We in New York City have decided to use a preemptive strike to really do something bold to stop the further growth of COVID and the dangers it’s causing to all of us.”
COVID-19 cases are increasing in New York, with the city health department reporting more than 1,500 new cases daily on average.
“New York City will not give a single inch in the fight against COVID-19. Vaccination is the way out of this pandemic,” de Blasio said in a separate statement.
The mayor said the city will also require proof of vaccination for children ages 5 to 11 for indoor dining, entertainment and fitness establishments. Last week, he imposed a December 20 vaccine mandate on Jewish yeshivas, Catholic schools and other private educational institutions in the city, affecting about 930 schools that have 56,000 employees.
It was not immediately clear how the biggest U.S. city plans to enforce the new private worker or school mandates, a task that will almost entirely fall to incoming mayor Eric Adams, a former city police officer who takes office on New Year’s Day.
But de Blasio voiced optimism about compliance.
“We are going to work with the business community,” he told MSNBC. “We’ve seen a lot of cooperation so far when we put in place our mandate, for example, for restaurants, indoor entertainment, indoor fitness; we actually got a lot of cooperation. There were a few times where we had to penalize people, but it was rare.”
U.S. President Joe Biden has imposed a vaccine mandate on U.S. businesses with 100 employees or more. The mandate affects 84 million workers and is set to take effect January 4.
The Democratic president’s order, however, is mired in court challenges from Republican state governors who oppose vaccine mandates as an overreach in the national government’s authority and an intrusion on the individual freedom of Americans.
One federal appellate court ruling blocked Biden’s mandate, but more challenges remain, and the issue could eventually end up at the Supreme Court for a final decision.
Biden also imposed a vaccine mandate on 4 million U.S. military personnel and civilian workers in the federal government.
The majority have complied, but even the small percentage who have not still leaves tens of thousands of government-paid personnel unvaccinated.
The government is in the early stages of enforcing the rule, which could lead to the firing of federal workers or dismissal from the military, actions the government has largely delayed to the early weeks of 2022. Federal officials are also in the process of considering requests for medical and religious exemptions from the mandates.
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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan starts a two-day visit to close ally Qatar on Monday. Afghanistan and economic support for Turkey’s crisis-ridden economy are expected to be on the agenda of talks between the two countries’ leaders.
Turkish and Qatari officials say President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s two-day visit to Qatar aims to further deepen bilateral cooperation.
Erdogan will chair Tuesday’s meeting of the Turkey-Qatar Supreme Strategic Committee with Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani in Doha. The two leaders have developed a close relationship built around mutual interests, says former Turkish ambassador to Qatar Mithat Rende.
“Turkish-Qatari relations are important for both countries; the cooperation between the two countries to modernize the armed forces of Qatar and to train the Qatar armed forces by Turkey that provided a kind of security umbrella for the Qataris. This, in turn of course, benefited Turkey because Qatar invested heavily in Turkey also,” he said.
Security ties were further strengthened by the construction of a Turkish military base in Qatar. Analysts say such support was vital to Doha to resisting Saudi Arabian pressure, which at times has been intense. In 2017, Riyadh imposed a four-year blockade on Qatar.
Erdogan’s visit comes as Turkey faces severe economic strains and the Turkish leader is expected seek financial support from the energy-rich emirate.
This year, the Turkish currency has lost nearly 50% of its value as international investors fled over Erdogan’s unorthodox economic policies.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, speaking in Doha Monday, said Turkey is not seeking a specific amount of money from Qatar, but rather to improve overall economic ties.
Huseyin Bagci, head of the Ankara-based Foreign Policy Institute says Erdogan will likely be looking to Qatar to add to its twenty billion dollars of investments in Turkey.
“Every foreign investment is important for Turkey. Qatar remains for Turkey as the substitute source of international investment,” he said.
Qatar has remained a loyal ally to Turkey at a time when Ankara’s relations with its traditional Western allies have deteriorated.
The two countries share similar goals and they will, on this visit, seek to expand on those.
Ankara and Doha back the Egyptian opposition while also cooperating in Libya.
Foreign policy analyst Bagci says these talks in Qatar will focus on Afghanistan, where the two countries are working to reopen Kabul’s international airport.
“Qatar has the money, and Turkey has the technicians. Turkey has already sent a lot of technicians for the airport in Afghanistan and Kabul airport will be in operation soon internationally,” he said.
Aid groups see the reopening of the Kabul international airport as vital in alleviating Afghanistan’s unfolding humanitarian crisis.
In the shadows of the coronavirus pandemic, violence against women has been on the rise around the world, including in South Africa, where half of the country’s women report at least one incident of violence in their lifetime. Now, a local tech company has developed an alarm system to help stop the abuse. For VOA, Linda Givetash reports from Johannesburg. Camera – Zaheer Cassim.
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