Month: August 2022

FBI Search of Trump Resort Sparks Uptick in Online Violent Rhetoric

Posted on by SeeUS

The FBI’s search this week of former President Donald Trump’s Florida resort has led to a sharp spike in online extremist rhetoric, raising concerns about a fresh wave of political violence.

As FBI agents executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago, the former president took to his Truth Social platform to announce that “my beautiful home, Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, is currently under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents.”

“Nothing like this has ever happened to a President of the United States before,” Trump wrote. “The lawlessness, political persecution, and Witch Hunt must be exposed and stopped.”

The backlash among his fans was swift.

“Lock and load,” a user named HughJasske penned on patriots.win, a popular pro-Trump forum, in response to Trump’s comment.

The widely reported comment was soon removed, but other users on the site continued to echo the sentiment.

“Locked and loaded … still no targets in sight but in full-on condition red,” a user named Cutter wrote.

As Trump tore into the FBI for the “horrible thing” that took place at Mar-a-Lago, his supporters ratcheted up their vitriol, much of their ire directed at law enforcement.

“Kill all feds,” user monkeylovebanana wrote.

Referring to Attorney General Merrick Garland, another commenter wrote, “I’m just going to say it. Garland needs to be assassinated. Simple as that.”

Also targeted was the federal judge who signed the search warrant.

“I see a rope around his neck,” Dckman, a known user on the site, wrote on a post showing a photo of the judge.

Some of the commenters on patriots.win are well-known users, according to Advance Democracy, a nonprofit research group that has studied them.

One has been identified as Tyler Welsh Slaeker, a Trump supporter who has pleaded guilty to breaching the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

In response to the “lock and load” comment, Slaeker, using the online persona bananaguard62, wrote, “Are we not in a cold civil war at this point?”

The administrators of patriots.win say they do not allow users to post violent threats and that no “violent incident” has been attributed to a poster on the site.

But extremism researchers say the site, previously known as TheDonald.win, served as a planning and mobilization platform for the attack of Jan. 6, 2021, on the U.S. Capitol.

Daniel Jones, president of Advance Democracy, noted that users on the TheDonald.win floated the idea of building a gallows outside the Capitol on Jan. 6 and targeting former Vice President Mike Pence for refusing to certify Trump winner of the 2020 election.

“There is no doubt that the users have been involved in January 6 and are involved in making threats related to Mar-A-Lago,” Jones told VOA.

Patriots.win is not the only fringe platform that has seen a spike in violent rhetoric. Many Trump supporters have turned to Telegram, Rumble, Gabb, Gettr, TikTok and Twitter to vent their anger, said Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism.

“From my own monitoring, it’s been a deluge, and the only real discussion that’s going on in a lot of these sites is about the FBI raid,” Beirich said. “There are definitely explicit calls for violence.”

What is more alarming, extremism experts say, is that the attack on law enforcement is coming from influential mainstream supporters of the former president.

“These people are attacking the FBI, calling the Department of Justice corrupt, saying this entire thing was political, and that is filtering out into the ecosystem where people support Trump,” Beirich said.

In an attempt to calm the furor, the Justice Department on Thursday asked a federal judge to unseal the Trump search warrant and related documents.

Top law enforcement officials pushed back against the Republican criticism that the Justice Department and the FBI have become “weaponized.”

Garland, a former federal judge and Supreme Court nominee, called the attacks unfounded.

“I will not stand by silently when their integrity is unfairly attacked,” Garland said in a televised statement. “The men and women of the FBI and the Justice Department are dedicated, patriotic public servants.”

In a written statement, FBI Director Christopher Wray said violence and threats of violence against the FBI are “dangerous and should be deeply concerning to all Americans.”

“Every day I see the men and women of the FBI doing their jobs professionally and with rigor, objectivity, and a fierce commitment to our mission of protecting the American people and upholding the Constitution,” Wray said. 
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US Gas Prices Lowest in 5 Months

Posted on by SeeUS

Gasoline prices have dipped to their lowest in more than five months — good news for consumers who are struggling with high prices for many other essentials.

AAA said the national average for a liter of regular was $1.05 on Thursday, down from the mid-June record of $1.37. However, that’s still about 21 cents higher than the average a year ago.

Energy is a key factor in the cost of many goods and services, and falling prices for gas, airline tickets and clothes are giving consumers a bit of relief, although inflation is still close to a four-decade high.

Glen Smith, a for-hire driver, sized up the price — $1.01 a liter — while waiting between rides at a gas station in Kenner, Louisiana.

“I’m not tickled pink, but I’m happier it’s less than what it was,” Smith said. “There for a while, every two days I put $50 of gas in my car. It’s $12 to run from the airport to drop off in the city — $12 a trip!”

Oil prices began rising in mid-2020 as economies recovered from the initial shock of the pandemic. They rose again when the U.S. and allies announced sanctions against Russian oil over the country’s war against Ukraine.

Recently, however, oil prices have dropped on concern about slowing economic growth around the world. U.S. benchmark crude oil has recently dipped close to $90 a barrel from over $120 a barrel in June.

It is unclear whether gasoline prices got so high that consumers cut back on their driving. Some experts believe that is true, although they acknowledge that the evidence is largely anecdotal.

“I don’t know that $5 ($1.32 per liter) was the magic amount. I think it was the amount of increase in a short period of time,” said Peter Schwarz, an expert on energy pricing and an economics professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. “People were starting to watch their driving.”

Schwarz expects oil prices to remain relatively stable at least for the next month or so, particularly after OPEC and partners including Russia agreed to only a small oil production increase in September, which won’t be enough to drive prices lower.

Christian vom Lehn, an economics professor at Brigham Young University, said the price of oil is the key factor for gasoline, but that seasonal trends could also keep prices from surging again.

“We are coming to the end of summer, and summer is a peak travel season, so demand is naturally going to fall,” he said. “That is certainly contributing to the most recent decline” in gas prices.

The average gas price has dropped 58 straight days, but that streak will end soon, predicted Tom Kloza, head of energy analysis at the Oil Price Information Service. He said the industry will face challenges to meet gasoline demand for the rest of the year.

Kloza noted that it’s still early in the hurricane season, which in the past has shut down some of the nation’s biggest refineries that sit in hurricane-prone areas of the Gulf Coast; the Gulf of Mexico is speckled with oil-producing platforms. Also, he said, “refinery runs will come down because of a lot of delayed maintenance that can’t be delayed indefinitely.”

Prices at the pump are likely to be a major issue heading into the mid-term elections in November.

Republicans blame President Joe Biden for the high gasoline prices, seizing on his decisions to cancel a permit for a major pipeline and suspend new oil and gas leases on federal lands.

Biden has previously targeted the oil companies, accusing them of not producing as much energy as they could while posting huge profits. “Exxon made more money than God this year,” he said in June.

Exxon said it has increased oil production. The CEO of Chevron said Biden was trying to vilify his industry.

Biden has also ordered the release of oil from the nation’s strategic petroleum reserve this year. While not large enough to account for the drop in gasoline prices, the extra supply from reserves might have helped stem the rise in pump prices, according to analysts.

The nationwide average for gas hasn’t been under $1.05 per liter since early March. Prices topped out at $1.32 per liter on June 14, according to AAA. They declined slowly the rest of June, then began dropping more rapidly. The shopping app GasBuddy reported that the national average dropped under $1.05 per liter on Tuesday.

Motorists in California and Hawaii are still paying above $1.32 per liter, and other states in the West are paying close to that. The cheapest gas is in Texas and several other states in the South and Midwest.

A year ago, the nationwide average price was just under 84 cents per liter, according to AAA. After a long climb, that price has dropped steadily this summer, falling 4 cents per liter in the past week and 18 cents in the last month.

“If you talk to people who are not economists, gas prices always go up faster than they come down,” said Schwarz, the energy-pricing expert. “These are still high gas prices.” 
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Ukraine Cyber Chief Visits ‘Black Hat’ Hacker Meeting in Las Vegas

Posted on by SeeEU

Ukraine’s top cyber official addressed a room full of security experts at a hackers convention following a two-day trip from Kyiv to a casino in Las Vegas.

During his unannounced visit, Victor Zhora, deputy head of Ukraine’s State Special Communications Service, told the so-called Black Hat convention Wednesday that the number of cyber incidents that have hit Ukraine tripled in the months following Russia’s invasion of his country in late February.

“This is perhaps the biggest challenge since World War II for the world, and it continues to be completely new in cyberspace,” Zhora told an audience at the annual conference.

Ukraine faced a number of “huge incidents” in cyberspace from the end of March to the beginning of April, Zhora said, including the discovery of the “Industroyer2” malware that could manipulate equipment in electrical utilities to control the flow of power.

Russian hackers also hit Ukraine at the onset of the war though a cyberattack that took down regional satellite internet service.

Since the beginning of the year, Ukraine had detected over 1,600 “major cyber incidents,” Zhora said.

Zhora told Reuters in an interview that Microsoft, Amazon and Google had offered pro bono cloud computing services to the Ukrainian government as it moves its data out of the country, away from the destruction wreaked by Russian bombs and missiles.

Some of Ukraine’s data archives are being held within data centers across “multiple [European] countries,” he added, without elaborating.

Zhora said his trip to Las Vegas took two days. He traveled to neighboring Poland to stay a night before flying to the United States.

Zhora said he would not waste time on the slot machines at the sprawling Mandalay Bay casino, where the Black Hat conference is being held: “It would be inappropriate for me to gamble here while Ukrainian soldiers are defending our land.” 
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Swiss Mountain Pass Ice to Melt Completely Within Weeks

Posted on by SeeEU

The thick layer of ice that has covered a Swiss mountain pass for centuries will have melted away completely within a few weeks, a ski resort said Thursday.

Following a dry winter, the summer heatwaves hitting Europe have been catastrophic for the Alpine glaciers, which have been melting at an accelerated rate.

The pass between the Scex Rouge and Tsanfleuron glaciers has been iced over since at least the Roman era.

But as both glaciers have retreated, the bare rock of the ridge between the two is beginning to emerge and will be completely ice-free before the summer is out.

“The pass will be entirely in the open air in a few weeks,” the Glacier 3000 ski resort said in a statement.

While the ice measured about 15 meters thick in 2012, the ground underneath “will have completely resurfaced by the end of September.”

The ridge is at an altitude of 2,800 meters in the Glacier 3000 ski domain and effectively marks the border between the Vaud and Wallis cantons in western Switzerland.

Skiers could glide over the top from one glacier to the other. But now a strip of rock between them has emerged, with just the last remaining bit of ice left.

“No one has set foot here for over 2,000 years; that’s very moving,” said Glacier 3000 chief executive Bernhard Tschannen.

The Scex Rouge glacier is likely to turn into a lake within the next 10 to 15 years. It should be about 10 meters deep with a volume of 250,000 cubic meters.

Covers have been put on sections of the Tsanfleuron glacier by the pass to protect them from the sun’s melting rays.

Glaciologist Mauro Fischer, a researcher at Bern University, said the loss of thickness of the glaciers in the region will be on average three times higher this year compared with the past 10 summers. 
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Blinken Stresses ‘True Partnership’ on Tour of Africa

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U.S. Secretary State Antony Blinken visited Rwanda on Thursday, the third and final leg of an Africa tour. At each stop, Blinken stressed that the United States is is not trying to dictate with whom African nations should form alliances. VOA Senior Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports.
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Nigerian Authorities Say Airstrikes Kill 55 Members of Kidnapping Gangs

Posted on by SeeAF

Nigeria’s air force said airstrikes this week killed 55 members of criminal gangs who were involved in abduction-for-ransom operations. An air force spokesman said after the airstrikes, the militants released people they were holding hostage.

Nigeria’s government has come under heavy criticism for failing to stop mass abductions and Islamist militant attacks.

The Nigerian Air Force said airstrikes in north central Kaduna state on Tuesday killed 28 members of a kidnapping-for-ransom gang, including a gang leader. It said many others were injured.

Air Force Public Relations Director Gabriel Gabkwet told reporters that authorities had received intelligence that the bandits were gathering in the area. He said the success of the raid led to the release of captives they held.

Gabkwet said other airstrikes in northwestern Katsina state this week killed 27 bandits.

He did not take calls from VOA for further comment.

The airstrikes come a week after Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari presided over a national security meeting and said he had given security forces the full freedom to deal with terrorists.

Darlington Abdullahi, president of the alumni association of Nigeria’s National Defense College, said Buhari’s words were a morale booster for troops.

“This kind of thing should not come as a surprise, all you need is political will to guide the action of the forces,” Abdullahi said. “I think they’re getting probably that support that is required to deal with the situation from the utterances of Mr. President.”

But Gabkwet said the military has also been conducting air operations targeting insurgents in northeastern Borno state. He said that included an August 6 raid in the village of Gazuwa that followed intelligence that terrorists from Boko Haram and splinter group Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) were fighting each other.

Nigeria has been fighting an Islamist insurgency in the northeast for more than 12 years.

Authorities have been heavily criticized for failing to address general insecurity that stems from the insurgency and rampant kidnapping.

Abduallahi said the military must stay on the offensive.

“As long as this continues, I think the military still has the upper hand to take on them before they organize themselves properly,” he said. “I think the security agencies really have to continue with the efforts to deal with the situation decisively.”

Earlier this week, police said they had arrested four suspects connected to a church attack in the southwest state of Ondo that killed 40 worshippers.

But security analyst Senator Iroegbu said authorities have shown a lack of political will to address the problem.

“The challenge we’re having is that the political will is not there, especially from the presidency,” Iroegbu said. “There’s no clear-cut directive on what to do. Any time you hear … he’s sounding frustrated. They keep on pushing the blame to others not taking responsibility.”

In July, Islamic State West Africa Province claimed responsibility for a jailbreak in Buja that freed over 400 inmates, including high-profile terrorism detainees. Only a few of the prisoners have since been recaptured.
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Justice Department Seeks to Unseal Trump Search Warrant

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WASHINGTON — The Justice Department has asked a court to unseal the search warrant the FBI received before searching the Florida estate of former President Donald Trump, Attorney General Merrick Garland said Thursday.

Garland cited the “substantial public interest in this matter” in announcing the request at a Justice Department news conference.

Garland also said that he personally approved the search warrant, which was part of an ongoing Justice Department investigation into the discovery of classified White House records recovered from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach, Florida, earlier this year.

It was not immediately clear if or when the unsealing request, filed in federal court in Miami, might be granted or when the documents could be released.
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Bipartisan Bill Could Help Afghan Evacuees Obtain Green Cards

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Bipartisan legislation that would allow eligible Afghans to apply for lawful permanent residence in the United States was introduced in both chambers of Congress, days before the first anniversary of the U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The Afghan Adjustment Act, introduced Tuesday, would establish a path to U.S. citizenship for Afghans whose immigration status will be uncertain when their temporary humanitarian parole expires.

“Today we can see that Congress has listened and this bill is written proof of that obligation and action. The introduction of this bill is a victory for every veteran and front-line civilian who had been affected by the Afghan withdrawal,” said Chris Purdy, director of Veterans for American Ideals and Outreach at U.S.-based Human Rights First. He made his comments during a press conference where other military veterans, refugee advocates, and Afghan evacuees spoke to reporters on Wednesday.

More than 76,000 Afghans were admitted to the U.S. on temporary immigration status following the military withdrawal from Afghanistan.

If passed, the proposal would expand eligibility for Special Immigrant Visas (SIVs) to include more Afghans. Women, who served in special counterterrorism teams, and others who worked with U.S. forces as commandos and air force personnel, could be eligible for the SIV program.

The SIV is a decade-old immigrant visa program that helps military interpreters and others who worked for the U.S. government to move to the United States in a direct pathway to a permanent resident card, also known as green card.

The newly introduced legislation would require applicants to submit to additional background checks. 

Susannah Cunningham, advocacy manager at Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, said that a year after Afghans lost so much, this legislation represents a future in which America is their safe harbor and their home.

“And veterans show us yet again that they will not have their story written for them, or a promise they made to an ally or a loved one broken. The introduction of this Democrat- and Republican-sponsored bill brings the U.S. a step closer to keeping their own promises to allies and to veterans alike,” Cunningham said during the press conference.

Those who meet the proposed legislation requirements must show they were admitted to the United States prior to the act’s possible enactment date and have been paroled into the United States between July 30, 2021 and the enactment date. Also, their travel to the U.S. needs to have been facilitated by the government. If arriving in the U.S. after the bill goes into effect, applicants need to prove they supported the U.S. mission in Afghanistan.

Uncertain status

The tens of thousands of Afghan evacuees who made it to the United States entered an extraordinary system with very different benefits.

After the evacuation, the government embraced those with Special Immigrant Visa status and granted assistance with housing, food, and clothing to lining up employment and qualifying for health care.

They are mostly the Afghans and their families who worked as interpreters or guides for the U.S. military or were employed by the U.S. government or on its behalf in Afghanistan during the 20-year war. The SIV program leads to permanent residence and a path to  naturalization. 

As of July 18, Biden administration officials said there were 74,274 principal applicants in the SIV pipeline, a number that does not include spouses and children. Of those principal applicants, 10,096 have received chief of mission approval, a crucial step in the SIV application process. Including the family members of those who received that approval, a senior government official said they estimate 45,000 to 50,000 SIV recipients.

Those who arrived without a visa or any proper documentation had to file for humanitarian parole, which is usually granted because of an emergency or urgent humanitarian reason. The time limit for parole status is one year. U.S. immigration officials, however, can extend it by another 12 months.

Afghans under the humanitarian parole designation are temporarily protected from deportation and allowed to apply for authorization to work. Parole does not confer immigration status, or public benefits or constitute a path to U.S. citizenship.

Generally, those Afghans who can’t gain permanent residence can apply for asylum, but immigration courts have a backlog of 1.6 million cases of asylum and other immigration applications. The wait time for a hearing on an immigrant’s asylum claim is about five years. 

Other temporary status

Six months after the withdrawal, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) designated Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Afghanistan, which provides 18 months of protection from deportation for Afghans who have been living in the U.S. since March 15, 2022, and meet other requirements.

TPS does not lead to lawful permanent residence or a pathway to U.S. citizenship.

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham and two Republican colleagues joined three Democrats in introducing the proposal in the Senate, which could increase the bill’s chance of congressional approval.

On the House side, Representatives Zoe Lofgren and Earl Blumenauer, both Democrats, joined with Republicans Peter Meijer and Adam Kinzinger and another five lawmakers as sponsors of the bill.

According to a report from the Reuters news agency, the measure likely will face “resistance” from anti-immigration Republicans per a congressional aide speaking on condition of anonymity.

Yet, Purdy, of Human Rights First, said the bill “lights the torch of welcome” and gives hope to those still waiting to be evacuated from Afghanistan.

“I want to say that we have not forgotten you. We will not forget you. And we will spend every day to make sure that this bill becomes law and America gives you the promised welcome that you deserve,” he said.
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Wildfires Rage Across Europe

Posted on by SeeEU

Wildfires continued to spread through France, Spain and Portugal on Thursday as record-breaking heat waves plague Europe, prompting the head of the European Space Agency to demand immediate action on climate change. 

A “monster” wildfire has destroyed thousands of hectares in the Gironde area of southwestern France just two weeks after another fire tore through the same region. 

More than 1,000 firefighters have struggled to bring the conflagration, which has forced about 10,000 people from their homes, under control. 

About 79% of the 250,000 firefighters in France are volunteers, according to data from the French Fire Fighter Service. And 10,000 of them are deployed across the country to battle wildfires, including the Gironde blaze, which has been exacerbated by drastic heat waves and fierce winds. 

Similar to France, firefighters in Portugal are on their sixth day of fighting a wildfire that has destroyed about 10,500 hectares in the central Covilha region, as well as part of the Serra da Estrela national park. 

Extreme weather and climate change are widely blamed for the increasingly common heat waves, melting glaciers, and flooding. 

The head of the European Space Agency, Josef Aschbacher, reported that these extreme climatological events have begun taking a toll on agriculture and other vital industries. 

“It’s pretty bad. We have seen extremes that have not been observed before,” Aschbacher said to Reuters. 

Extreme drought conditions have also taken a toll elsewhere in the European Union, with France and Germany feeling the effects through slow agricultural production and water shortages. 

 
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Guinea’s Military-appointed Government Dissolves Opposition Group 

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Guinea’s military-appointed government this week announced the dissolution of the main opposition group, the National Front for the Defense of the Constitution, or FNDC.

The decree Monday cited alleged violence and threats to national unity and peace. Critics and rights groups said the move threatened Guinea’s return to democratic rule.

The decision to dissolve the FNDC came just hours after it had called for nationwide peaceful demonstrations to demand dialogue among the military, opposing parties and civil society groups.

A report by Human Rights Watch called the government’s allegations vague and said the FNDC was not given the opportunity to defend itself before an independent judicial body.

Dissolution of the FNDC comes 11 months after it led demonstrations against then-President Alpha Conde, who was ultimately ousted in a military coup last September.

Democratic values ‘jeapordized’

Ilaria Allegrozzi, a senior Africa researcher with Human Rights Watch, said the coup was already a major blow to democracy and human rights in Guinea.

“And this recent decision to dissolve the main opposition coalition is yet another indication that democratic values in Guinea are being jeopardized,” Allegrozzi said. “Human rights defenders, political activists and political opponents are at risk.” 

The FNDC was composed of civil society groups and opposition parties that accused Guinea’s transitional government of authoritarian behavior.

Guinea is one of several West African countries that have experienced coups over the last two years. The unrest has been driven by the growth of a jihadist insurgency and an increase in unconstitutional third-term bids.

Allegrozzi said Guinea’s actions send a negative message to other countries in the region that are struggling to transition to democracy.

“Regional political volatility is becoming entrenched in West Africa and Central Africa, and that should be countered,” Allegrozzi said.

Allegrozzi called on the African Union and the West African economic bloc ECOWAS to increase pressure on Guinea to reestablish democratic rule.

In 2010, Conde became Guinea’s first democratically elected president, but accusations of corruption and authoritarian behavior mounted throughout his time in office. Last September, after winning what critics said was an illegal third term, he was overthrown.

Pledge of civilian rule again

Guinea’s interim president, Colonel Mamady Doumbouya, a former special forces commander, pledged to return the country to civilian rule within three years. However, ECOWAS and the FNDC argue three years is far too long.

Amadou Barry, a Guinean Canadian professor of philosophy specializing in international relations at the Cegep de Saint-Hyacinthe in Quebec, Canada, told VOA from Conakry that since Conde’s ouster, Guineans have clung to the hope that they would see peace. Instead, they have witnessed the same conflict repeating itself.

“This hope is falling down,” he said, “because now we are seeing that we are not able to organize society around democratic principles and the rule of law. It is important to ask, ‘Why aren’t we able to have a political regime that is democratic?’ ”

Barry said constructive dialogue around the issue of collective power is the only way forward.
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McDonald’s To Reopen Some Ukraine Restaurants

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The McDonald’s corporation announced Thursday it plans to begin reopening some of its restaurants in Ukraine, after closing them due to Russia’s invasion of that country in February.

In a statement to the company’s employees, the senior vice president of international operated markets, Paul Pomroy, said the decision was made “after extensive consultation and discussion with Ukrainian officials, suppliers, and security specialists.”

He said McDonald’s also considered the “strong desire” to return to work expressed by the company’s more than 10,000 employees in Ukraine.

The statement said McDonald’s will, over the next few months, institute a phased plan to “reopen some restaurants in Kyiv and western Ukraine, where other businesses have safely reopened.”

The statement noted that McDonald’s has continued to pay the salaries of its Ukrainian employees and established an employee assistance fund to support them and help aid the relief efforts.

The Associated Press reports other multinational companies have resumed operating in Ukraine in areas away from fighting. Western businesses like Nike, KFC and Spanish clothing retailer Mango are open in Kyiv.

AP also reports Ukraine’s economy has been severely damaged by the war and restarting businesses like McDonald’s restaurants, even in a limited capacity, would help. The International Monetary Fund expects Ukraine’s economy to shrink 35 percent this year.
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Latvian Parliament Declares Russia State Sponsor of Terror

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Latvia’s parliament declared Russia a state sponsor of terror Thursday for its targeted military attacks against civilians and public places

Lativia’s unicameral parliament, known as the Saeima, approved a resolution noting that Russia has supported and financed terrorist regimes and organizations for years.

The Saeima used as examples Moscow’s support for the Assad government in Syria shooting down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine in 2014 and the poisoning of British intelligence agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter in 2018.

The Saeima statement said Russia has now used “similarly ruthless, immoral, and illegal tactics in Ukraine, as it uses imprecise and internationally banned weapons and ammunition” on civilians. It also cites reports from human rights groups and international observers, which have documented atrocities committed by Russian forces against Ukrainian civilians, “including torture, rape, killings, and mass detentions of civilians.”

Latvian lawmakers said Russia uses “suffering and intimidation as tools in its attempts to demoralize the Ukrainian people.” They recognize these acts against civilians “committed in pursuit of political aims as terrorism and Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism and calls on other like-minded countries to express the same view.”

They also called on the European Union and the West to “urgently intensify and implement comprehensive sanctions against Russia, as well as call on European Union member states to immediately suspend the issuance of tourist visas and restrict the issuance of entry visas to citizens of the Russian Federation and Belarus, among other measures.”

Latvia shares borders with both Russia and Belarus.

Russia insists it does not deliberately target civilians in what it calls its “special military operation” aimed at safeguarding Russia’s security and protecting Russian speakers in Ukraine.

Reuters news service reports Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, expressed his gratitude for the Latvian parliament’s resolution.

Some information for this report was provided by the Reuters news agency.
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Nebraska Woman Charged With Helping Daughter Have Abortion

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A Nebraska woman has been charged with helping her teenage daughter end her pregnancy at about 24 weeks after investigators obtained Facebook messages in which the two discussed using medication to induce an abortion and plans to burn the fetus afterward.

The prosecutor handling the case said it’s the first time he has charged anyone for illegally performing an abortion after 20 weeks, a restriction that was passed in 2010. Before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, states weren’t allowed to enforce abortion bans until the point at which a fetus is considered viable outside the womb, at roughly 24 weeks.

In one of the Facebook messages, Jessica Burgess, 41, tells her then-17-year-old daughter that she has obtained abortion pills for her and gives her instructions on how to take them to end the pregnancy.

The daughter, meanwhile, “talks about how she can’t wait to get the ‘thing’ out of her body,” a detective wrote in court documents. “I will finally be able to wear jeans,” she says in one of the messages. Law enforcement authorities obtained the messages with a search warrant, and detailed some of them in court documents.

In early June, the mother and daughter were only charged with a single felony for removing, concealing or abandoning a body, and two misdemeanors: concealing the death of another person and false reporting. It wasn’t until about a month later, after investigators reviewed the private Facebook messages, that they added the felony abortion-related charges against the mother. The daughter, who is now 18, is being charged as an adult at prosecutors’ request.

Burgess’ attorney didn’t immediately respond to a message Tuesday, and the public defender representing the daughter declined to comment.

When first interviewed, the two told investigators that the teen had unexpectedly given birth to a stillborn baby in the shower in the early morning hours of April 22. They said they put the fetus in a bag, placed it in a box in the back of their van, and later drove several miles north of town, where they buried the body with the help of a 22-year-old man.

The man, whom The Associated Press is not identifying because he has only been charged with a misdemeanor, has pleaded no contest to helping bury the fetus on rural land his parents own north of Norfolk in northeast Nebraska. He’s set to be sentenced later this month.

In court documents, the detective said the fetus showed signs of “thermal wounds” and that the man told investigators the mother and daughter did burn it. He also wrote that the daughter confirmed in the Facebook exchange with her mother that the two would “burn the evidence afterward.” Based on medical records, the fetus was more than 23 weeks old, the detective wrote.

Burgess later admitted to investigators to buying the abortion pills “for the purpose of instigating a miscarriage.”

At first, both mother and daughter said they didn’t remember the date when the stillbirth happened, but according to the detective, the daughter later confirmed the date by consulting her Facebook messages. After that he sought the warrant, he said.

Madison County Attorney Joseph Smith told the Lincoln Journal Star newspaper that he’s never filed charges like this related to performing an abortion illegally in his 32 years as the county prosecutor. He didn’t immediately respond to a message from the AP on Tuesday.

The group National Advocates for Pregnant Women, which supports abortion rights, found 1,331 arrests or detentions of women for crimes related to their pregnancy from 2006 to 2020.

In addition to its current 20-week abortion ban, Nebraska tried — but failed — earlier this year to pass a so-called trigger law that would have banned all abortions when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone defended the way the company handled authorities’ request for information in this case after a gag order about it was lifted Tuesday.

“Nothing in the valid warrants we received from local law enforcement in early June, prior to the Supreme Court decision, mentioned abortion,” Stone said. “The warrants concerned charges related to a criminal investigation and court documents indicate that police at the time were investigating the case of a stillborn baby who was burned and buried, not a decision to have an abortion.”

Facebook has said that officials at the social media giant “always scrutinize every government request we receive to make sure it is legally valid.”

Facebook says it will fight back against requests that it thinks are invalid or too broad, but the company said it gave investigators information in about 88% of the 59,996 times when the government requested data in the second half of last year.
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Satellite Pictures Show Devastation at Russian Air Base in Crimea

Posted on by SeeEU

Satellite pictures released Thursday showed devastation at a Russian air base in Crimea, hit days earlier in an attack that suggested Kyiv may have obtained new long-range strike capability with potential to change the course of the war.

Pictures released by independent satellite firm Planet Labs showed three near-identical craters that had precisely struck buildings at Russia’s Saki air base. The base, on the southwest coast of Crimea had suffered extensive fire damage with the burnt-out husks of at least eight destroyed warplanes clearly visible.

Russia has denied aircraft were damaged and said explosions seen at the base on Tuesday were accidental.

Ukraine has not publicly claimed responsibility for the attack or said exactly how it was carried out.

“Officially, we are not confirming or denying anything; there are numerous scenarios for what might have happened… bearing in mind that there were several epicenters of explosions at exactly the same time,” Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak told Reuters in a message.

Western military experts said the scale of the damage and the apparent precision of the strike suggested a powerful new capability with potentially important implications.

Russia, which annexed Crimea in 2014, uses the peninsula as the base for its Black Sea fleet and as the main supply route for its invasion forces occupying southern Ukraine, where Kyiv is planning a counter-offensive in coming weeks.

“I’m not an intel analyst, but it doesn’t look good,” Mark Hertling, a former commander of U.S. ground forces in Europe, wrote on Twitter, linking to an image of the devastation at the Russian base.

“I am. It’s very good,” replied his fellow retired four-star American general, Michael Hayden, former head of the CIA and National Security Agency.

Exactly how the attack was carried out remains a mystery. Some Ukrainian officials have been quoted suggesting it may have been sabotage by infiltrators. But the near identical impact craters and simultaneous explosions appear to indicate it was hit by a volley of new long-range weapons, capable of evading Russian defenses.

The base is well beyond the range of advanced rockets that Western countries acknowledge sending to Ukraine so far, but within the range of more powerful versions that Kyiv has sought. Ukraine also has its own surface-to-ship missiles which could theoretically be used to hit targets on land.

New phase

The war in Ukraine is expected to enter a new phase in coming weeks. Ukraine drove Russian forces back from the capital, Kyiv, in March and from the outskirts of the second-largest city, Kharkiv, in May. Russia captured more territory in the east in huge battles that killed thousands of troops on both sides in June.

Since then, front lines have been largely static, but Kyiv says it is preparing a big push to recapture the southern regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, the main slice of territory captured since the Feb. 24 invasion held by Moscow.

Russia has reinforced those regions, but its defense depends on being able to control supply lines to stock its troops with the thousands of shells a day that its artillery-heavy forces are accustomed to firing.

Kyiv hopes the arrival last month of U.S. rocket systems capable of hitting Russian targets behind the front line could tip the balance in its favor. But so far, the West had held off on providing longer-range rockets that could strike deep in Russia itself or hit Moscow’s many bases in annexed Crimea.

Russia says its “special military operation” is going to plan, to protect Russian speakers in the south and east, where it recognizes separatists as independent. Ukraine and its Western allies say the invasion failed in an initial bid to overthrow the government in Kyiv, and Moscow now aims to solidify its grip on as much territory as possible with the ultimate goal of extinguishing Ukraine as an independent nation.

Tens of thousands of people have died; millions have fled and cities have been destroyed since Russia invaded on Feb. 24.

Bombardment

Although there have been few major advances on either side in recent weeks, intense skirmishes are still under way.

Ukraine reported Russian bombardment along the entire front line, from the area around Kharkiv in the northeast, across eastern Donetsk province, and on the banks of the wide Dnipro River in Zaporizhzhia, Kherson and adjacent provinces.

Dnipropetrovsk regional governor Valentyn Reznychenko said three people were killed and seven wounded by shelling in Nikopol on the right bank of the Dnipro, which was hit by 120 Grad rockets.

“The enemy is concentrating its efforts on establishing full control over the territories of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions,” Ukraine’s General Staff said in an early Thursday report, citing more than 60 settlements and military targets.

Russian-backed separatists claimed to have captured Pisky, a small town on the outskirts of separatist-held Donetsk city, which has seen fighting in recent days.

“It’s hot in Pisky. The town is ours but there remain scattered pockets of resistance in its north and west,” separatist official Danil Bezsonov said on Telegram.

Ukrainian officials denied that the town had fallen. Reuters was unable to verify the battlefield accounts.

Oleksiy Arestovych, a Ukrainian presidential adviser, said in an interview posted on YouTube that Russian “movement into Pisky” had been “without success.”

Ukraine accused Russia on Wednesday of killing at least 13 people and wounding 10 with rockets fired from the vicinity of Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, in the knowledge it would be risky for Ukrainian forces to return fire.

“The cowardly Russians can’t do anything more, so they strike towns ignobly hiding at the Zaporizhzhia atomic power station,” Andriy Yermak, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, said on social media.

Ukraine says about 500 Russian troops are at the plant, where Ukrainian technicians continue to work. The Group of Seven major industrialized countries on Wednesday told Russia to hand back the plant to Ukraine, after the U.N. atomic energy watchdog sounded the alarm over the possibility of a nuclear disaster.
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Blinken in Rwanda to Discuss Congo Tensions, Human Rights

Posted on by SeeUS

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is in Rwanda, the last stop on his three-nation tour of Africa where he has articulated Washington’s new strategy for engaging with sub-Saharan African nations as “equal partners.”

Blinken comes to Rwanda at a particularly difficult time for Africa’s Great Lakes region, with the small central African nation at odds with vast neighbor Congo over allegations that both governments support rebels opposed to each other.

In a meeting Thursday with Rwandan President Paul Kagame, Blinken is expected to discuss efforts to ease the tensions. Rwanda is rejecting a new report by United Nations experts saying they have “solid evidence” that members of Rwanda’s armed forces are conducting operations in eastern Congo in support of the M23 rebel group.

Blinken has said reports of Rwanda’s support for M23 appeared “credible.” After meeting with authorities in Congo on Tuesday, he said the U.S. will support African-led efforts to end the fighting.

Rwandan authorities in turn accuse Congo of giving refuge to ethnic Hutu fighters who played roles in Rwanda’s 1994 genocide that killed ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus. There have long been tensions between the countries. In the late 1990s, Rwanda twice sent its forces deep into Congo, joining forces with rebel leader Laurent Kabila to depose the country’s longtime dictator Mobutu Sese Seko.

Both Rwanda and Congo deny the charges of backing rebel groups, and Rwandan authorities have rejected the latest report by U.N. experts as a move “to distract from real issues.” Rwanda also asserts that its security needs cannot be met while armed fugitives from the genocide continue to operate from inside Congolese territory.

A meeting between Kagame and Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi in Angola on July 6 produced a statement calling for a return to normal diplomatic relations, a cessation of hostilities and the “immediate and unconditional withdrawal” of the M23 from its positions in eastern Congo.

But M23, which comprises mostly ethnic Tutsis from Congo, continues to hold its positions near the border with Uganda, keeping the spotlight on Rwanda.

The chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee in a letter to Blinken last month called for a comprehensive review of U.S. policy toward Rwanda and noted his concern that Washington’s support for Rwanda, widely described by human right groups as authoritarian and repressive, is not in line with U.S. values.

The State Department said Blinken in Rwanda also will raise democracy and human rights concerns, including transnational repression and the limited space for the opposition.

Paul Rusesabagina, a permanent resident of the U.S. who is jailed in Rwanda after his conviction last year on terror-related charges, also is on the agenda. Rusesabagina, who achieved fame with the film “Hotel Rwanda” for sheltering ethnic Tutsis during the genocide, was a recipient of the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom.

In a statement ahead of Blinken’s visit, Rwanda’s government said it “looks forward to a robust exchange of views on governance and human rights, as has always been the case in the Rwanda-U.S. bilateral relationship.” It acknowledged the talks would include Rusesabagina’s situation.

Blinken on this trip also visited South Africa, where he described a strategy “rooted in the recognition that sub-Saharan Africa is a major geopolitical force.”
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British IS ‘Beatle’ Suspect Arrested on Return to UK, Media Says

Posted on by SeeEU

A British man accused of being part of an Islamic State (IS) kidnap-and-murder cell known as the “Beatles” was arrested Wednesday when he returned to the UK, media reports said.

Aine Davis, 38, was arrested after landing at Luton airport on a flight from Turkey, where he had been serving a prison sentence for terrorism offenses, according to BBC News and other U.K. outlets.

He is suspected to be a member of the IS cell, which held dozens of foreign hostages in Syria between 2012 and 2015 and was known to their captives as the “Beatles” because of their British accents.

The Metropolitan Police, which leads anti-terror investigations in the U.K., said in a statement that officers had arrested a man at Luton airport.

But the London force, which does not name suspects until they are charged with a crime, did not name the person being held.

“The 38-year-old man was arrested this evening after he arrived into the UK on a flight from Turkey,” the statement said.

The Met said the man was arrested under several different sections of British anti-terrorism laws and taken to a south London police station “where he currently remains in police custody.”

The interior ministry said in a statement that a British national had been deported from Turkey to the U.K.

“It would be inappropriate to comment further while police enquiries are ongoing,” it added.

The four members of the “Beatles” are accused of abducting at least 27 journalists and relief workers from the United States, Britain, Europe, New Zealand, Russia and Japan.

They were all allegedly involved in the murder of American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, as well as aid workers Peter Kassig and Kayla Mueller.

The quartet allegedly tortured and killed the four American victims, including by beheading, and IS released videos of the murders for propaganda purposes.

Alexanda Kotey, a 38-year-old former British national extradited from the U.K. to the U.S. in 2020 to face charges there, pleaded guilty to his role in the deaths last September and was sentenced to life in prison in April.

El Shafee Elsheikh, 34, another former British national also extradited to the U.S. at the same time, was found guilty of all charges in April, and will be sentenced next week.

The fourth “Beatle,” Mohamed Emwazi, was killed by a U.S. drone in Syria in 2015.

Elsheikh and Kotey were captured in January 2018 by a Kurdish militia in Syria and turned over to U.S. forces in Iraq before being sent to Britain.

They were eventually flown to Virginia in 2020 to face charges of hostage-taking, conspiracy to murder U.S. citizens and supporting a foreign terrorist organization.

Davis served a 7½-year sentence in Turkey for membership in the terrorist group, according to reports.

In 2014, his wife, Amal El-Wahabi, became the first person in Britain to be convicted of funding IS jihadists after trying to send 20,000 euros, worth $25,000 at the time, to him in Syria.

She was jailed for 28 months following a trial in which Davis was described as a drug dealer before he went to Syria to fight with IS.
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Facebook Use Plunges Among US Teens, Survey Finds

Posted on by SeeUS

U.S. teens have left Facebook in droves over the past seven years, preferring to spend time at video-sharing venues YouTube and TikTok, according to a Pew Research Center survey data out Wednesday.

TikTok has “emerged as a top social media platform for U.S. teens” while Google-run YouTube “stands out as the most common platform used by teens,” the report’s authors wrote.

Pew’s data comes as Facebook-owner Meta is in a battle with TikTok for social media primacy, trying to keep the maximum number of users as part of its multibillion-dollar, ad-driven business.

The report said some 95% of the teens surveyed said they use YouTube, compared with 67% saying they are TikTok users.

Just 32% of teens surveyed said they log on to Facebook — a big drop from the 71% who reported being users during a similar survey some seven years ago.

Once the place to be online, Facebook has become seen as a venue for older folks with young drawn to social networks where people express themselves with pictures and video snippets.

About 62% of the teens said they use Instagram, owned by Facebook-parent Meta, while 59% said they used Snapchat, researchers stated.

“A quarter of teens who use Snapchat or TikTok say they use these apps almost constantly, and a fifth of teen YouTube users say the same,” the report said.

In a bit of good news for Meta’s business, its photo and video sharing service Instagram was more popular with U.S. teens than it was in the 2014-2015 survey.

Meanwhile, less than a quarter of the teens surveyed said they ever use Twitter, the report said.

The study also confirmed what casual observers may have suspected: 95% of U.S. teens say they have smartphones, while nearly as many of them have desktop or laptop computers.

And the share of teens who say they are online almost constantly has nearly doubled to 46 percent when compared with survey results from seven years ago, researchers noted.

The report was based on a survey of 1,316 U.S. teens, ranging in age from 13 years old to 17 years old, conducted from mid-April to early May of this year, according to Pew.
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42 Malian Soldiers Killed in Suspected Jihadi Attacks 

Posted on by SeeAF

Forty-two Malian soldiers died in a sophisticated weekend attack by suspected jihadis using drones and artillery, authorities said Wednesday, the latest violent incident to rock the troubled Sahel country. 

The toll is one of the bloodiest in Mali’s decadelong insurgency, which has spread from the north of the country to the center and south and into neighboring Burkina Faso and Niger. 

A document naming the dead was authenticated to AFP by several senior military officials, while the government later confirmed the toll in a statement that said 22 soldiers were injured and 37 “terrorists” were neutralized. 

The attack occurred Sunday in the town of Tessit, in the troubled three-border region where the frontiers of the three nations converge. 

On Monday, the army had said 17 soldiers and four civilians died. Relatives of the victims, speaking on condition of anonymity, said some of the civilians were elected officials. 

Monday’s statement blamed the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS), saying its members had deployed “drone and artillery support and [used] explosives and an explosives-laden vehicle.” 

Previous attacks

The last time Mali’s armed forces sustained such losses was in a string of attacks in the same region in late 2019 and early 2020. Hundreds of soldiers were killed in assaults on nearly a dozen bases, typically carried out by highly mobile fighters on motorbikes. 

The raids prompted the Malian, Nigerien and Burkinabe forces to fall back from forward bases and hunker down in better-defended locations. 

In January 2020, France and its Sahel allies agreed on a push against the ISGS at a summit in Pau, southwestern France. 

Several of its leaders were targeted and killed, including its founder, Abu Walid Al-Sahraoui, but local people say the group has continued to recruit and carry out its operations. 

Tessit is one of the hot spots in the three-border area. 

The ISGS is fighting for control of the strategic, gold-rich area against an al-Qaida-linked alliance, the Support Group for Islam and Muslims (GSIM). 

In March 2021, 33 soldiers were killed in an ISGS-claimed ambush as units were being rotated, and in February this year, around 40 civilians, suspected by the ISGS of being in league with al-Qaida, were massacred. 

Mobile phone connections to the area have been frequently cut over the last few years and physical access is hard, especially during the midyear rainy season. 

Thousands have fled Tessit to the nearest large town, Gao, which is about 150 kilometers (90 miles) to the north.  

Across the Sahel, the jihadi campaign has claimed thousands of lives and forced more than 2 million to flee their homes. 

Sporadic cross-border attacks have also occurred in Ivory Coast, Togo and Benin to the south, amplifying fears of a jihadist push toward the Gulf of Guinea. 
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US Says Syrian Government Holding American Journalist Tice

Posted on by SeeUS

President Joe Biden said Wednesday the U.S. is certain that the Syrian government is holding American journalist Austin Tice, who went missing in the war-torn country a decade ago. He urged Damascus to help bring Tice back home.

Biden’s comments came in a statement released by the White House to mark the 10th anniversary of Tice’s abduction, which took place when he was in Syria covering its now-lengthy conflict. They were the clearest indication so far that the U.S. is certain Tice is being held by the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

Tice went missing shortly after his 31st birthday on August 14, 2012, at a checkpoint in a contested area west of the capital, Damascus. A video released a month later showed him blindfolded and held by armed men, saying “Oh, Jesus.” He has not been heard from since.

“We know with certainty that he has been held by the government of Syria,” Biden said in the statement, adding that “we have repeatedly asked the government of Syria to work with us so that we can bring Austin home.”

“On the 10th anniversary of his abduction, I am calling on Syria to end this and help us bring him home,” Biden said. He added there “is no higher priority in my administration than the recovery and return of Americans held hostage or wrongfully detained abroad.”

Four years ago, then-U.S. envoy to Syria James Jeffrey said Tice was believed to be alive and held hostage in Syria. He didn’t say why officials believed this or who might be holding him.

In May, top Lebanese security official Major General Abbas Ibrahim met with U.S. officials in Washington as part of mediation efforts between the U.S. and Syria for Tice’s release. Ibrahim, the chief of Lebanon’s General Security Directorate, has mediated complicated hostage releases in the past.

Tice is one of two Americans who went missing in Syria. The other is Majd Kamalmaz, a psychologist from Virginia, who vanished in Syria in 2017.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken also said in a statement that “we will continue to pursue all available avenues to bring Austin home and work tirelessly until we succeed in doing so.”

Blinken said Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs Roger Carstens will continue to engage with the Syrian government in close coordination with the White House, the Hostage Recovery Fusion Cell and the State Department.

In 2016, Syria’s then-Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad told The Associated Press that “Austin Tice is not in the hands of Syrian authorities, and we don’t have any information about him at all.” Mekdad is currently Syria’s foreign minister.

In May, Biden met Tice’s parents and reiterated his commitment to continue to work through all available avenues to secure “Austin’s long overdue return to his family.”

Tice is from Houston, and his work had been published by The Washington Post, McClatchy newspapers and other outlets. He went to Syria to cover the conflict that started in 2011 and has since left hundreds of thousands dead and nearly half the pre-war population of 23 million displaced. More than 5 million of the displaced are refugees outside the country.

In the final months of the Trump administration, two U.S. officials — including the government’s top hostage negotiator, Carstens — made a secret visit to Damascus to seek information on Tice and other Americans who have disappeared in Syria. It was the highest-level talk in years between the U.S. and Assad’s government, though Syrian officials offered no meaningful information on Tice.

“The Tice family deserves answers, and more importantly, they deserve to be swiftly reunited with Austin,” Biden said.
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Sierra Leone Imposes Nationwide Curfew Amid Deadly Anti-Government Protests

Posted on by SeeAF

At least two police officers and one civilian died after a day of anti-government protests in Sierra Leone’s capital, Freetown, staff at the city’s main mortuary said Wednesday.

Sierra Leone’s government previously said there had been deaths, but did not say how many, as protesters threw rocks and burned tires in the streets out of frustration at worsening economic hardship and other issues.

The West African country, which has been struggling with rising inflation and a fuel crisis, imposed a nationwide curfew from 3 p.m. local time in a bid to stem the violence.

“As a government, we have the responsibility to protect every citizen of Sierra Leone. What happened today was unfortunate and will be fully investigated,” President Julius Maada Bio said on Twitter.

In addition to the three bodies at the mortuary, a Reuters reporter saw another civilian body on a street in eastern Freetown.

The police chief and spokesman could not be reached for comment.

Videos on social media verified by Reuters showed large crowds of protesters and piles of burning tires in parts of the capital. Other footage showed a group of young men throwing rocks on a street filled with whitish smoke.

“People are upset about the country’s justice system, which is sickening, daily price rises and economic hardship,” said Daniel Alpha Kamara, a university student.

The violence started around 10:30 a.m. local time, he said, when he saw clouds of tear gas rising up outside his dormitory room.

“These unscrupulous individuals have embarked on a violent and unauthorized protest which has led to the loss of lives of innocent Sierra Leoneans, including security personnel,” Vice President Mohamed Juldeh Jalloh said in a video address.

“The government hereby declares a nationwide curfew,” he said. “The security sector has been authorized to fully enforce this directive.”

Regional political and economic bloc ECOWAS said it condemned the violence and called in a Twitter post for “all to obey law and order and for the perpetrators of the violence to be identified and brought before the law.”

Discontent has been boiling over for a number of reasons, including a perceived lack of government support for ordinary people who are struggling, said Augustine Sorie-Sengbe Marrah, a constitutional lawyer and governance activist.

“There has been little empathy from the central government to encourage folks that they see them suffering, and that they understand these are tough economic times,” he told Reuters.

Long-standing frustration has also been exacerbated by rising prices for basic goods in Sierra Leone, where more than half the population of around 8 million lives below the poverty line, according to the World Bank.

Earlier on Wednesday, internet observatory NetBlocks said Sierra Leone faced a near-total internet shutdown during the protests, with national connectivity at 5% of ordinary levels.

On Tuesday, the national security coordinator asked the armed forces to be prepared to back up the police through Friday, warning of a “potentially volatile security situation,” according to an internal letter shared widely online.
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In Scorched UK, Source of River Thames Dries Up

Posted on by SeeEU

At the end of a dusty track in southwest England where the River Thames usually first emerges from the ground, there is scant sign of any moisture at all.

The driest start to a year in decades has shifted the source of this emblematic English river several miles downstream, leaving scorched earth and the occasional puddle where water once flowed.

It is a striking illustration of the parched conditions afflicting swaths of England, which have prompted a growing number of regional water restrictions and fears that an official drought will soon be declared.

“We haven’t found the Thames yet,” said Michael Sanders, on holiday with his wife in the area known as the official source of the river.

The couple were planning to walk some of the Thames Path that stretches along its entire winding course — once they can find the waterway’s new starting point.

“It’s completely dried up,” the IT worker from northern England told AFP in the village of Ashton Keynes, a few miles from the source, noting it had been replaced by “the odd puddle, the odd muddy bit.”

“So hopefully downstream we’ll find the Thames, but at the moment it’s gone,” he said.

The river begins from an underground spring in this picturesque region at the foot of the Cotswolds hills, not far from Wales, before meandering for 350 kilometers (215 miles) to the North Sea.

Along the way it helps supply fresh water to millions of homes, including those in the British capital, London.

‘So arid’

Following months of minimal rainfall, including the driest July in England since the 1930s, the country’s famously lush countryside has gone from shades of green to yellow.

“It was like walking across the savanna in Africa, because it’s so arid and so dry,” David Gibbons said.

The 60-year-old retiree has been walking the length of the Thames Path in the opposite direction from Sanders — from estuary to source — with his wife and friends.

As the group members reached their destination, in a rural area of narrow country roads dotted with stone-built houses, Gibbons recounted the range of wildlife they had encountered on their journey.

The Thames, which becomes a navigable, strategic and industrial artery as it passes through London and its immediate surroundings, is typically far more idyllic upstream and a haven for bird watching and boating.

However, as they neared the source, things changed.

“In this last two or three days, [there’s been] no wildlife, because there’s no water,” Gibbons said. “I think water stopped probably 10 miles away from here; there’s one or two puddles,” he added from picturesque Ashton Keynes.

Andrew Jack, a 47-year-old local government worker who lives about 15 kilometers (9 miles) from the village, said locals had “never seen it as dry and as empty as this.”

The river usually runs alongside its main street, which boasts pretty houses with flower-filled gardens and several small stone footbridges over the water.

But the riverbed there is parched and cracked, the only visible wildlife were some wasps hovering over it, recalling images of some southern African rivers during the subcontinent’s dry season.

‘Something’s changed’

There will be no imminent respite for England’s thirsty landscape.

The country’s meteorological office on Tuesday issued an amber heat warning for much of southern England and eastern Wales between Thursday and Sunday, with temperatures set to reach the mid-30s Celsius.

It comes weeks after a previous heat wave broke Britain’s all-time temperature record and breached 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) for the first time.

Climate scientists overwhelmingly agree that carbon emissions from humans burning fossil fuels are heating the planet, raising the risk and severity of droughts, heat waves and other such extreme weather events.

Local authorities are reiterating calls to save water, and Thames Water, which supplies 15 million people in London and elsewhere, is the latest provider to announce forthcoming restrictions.

But Gibbons was sanguine.

“Having lived in England all my life, we’ve had droughts before,” he said. “I think that it will go green again by the autumn.”

Jack was more pessimistic as he walked with his family along the dried-up riverbed, where a wooden measuring stick gauges nonexistent water levels.

“I think there are lots of English people who think, ‘Great, let’s have some European weather,’ ” he said. “But we actually shouldn’t, and it means that something’s changed and something has gone wrong.

“I’m concerned that it’s only going to get worse and that the U.K. is going to have to adapt to hotter weather as we have more and more summers like this.”
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Wildfires Rage in France; Thousands Evacuated From Homes 

Posted on by SeeEU

Wildfires tore through the Gironde region of southwestern France on Wednesday, destroying homes and forcing the evacuation of 10,000 residents, some of whom had clambered onto rooftops as the flames got closer. 

Black-and-orange skies, darkened by the smoke billowing from forests and lit up by the flames, were seen across the area as the fires continued to burn out of control despite the efforts of firefighters backed by water-bombing aircraft. 

Fires, which have razed about 6,200 hectares, have now crossed into the neighboring Landes region. 

France, like the rest of Europe, has been struggling this summer with successive heat waves and its worst drought on record. Dozens of wildfires are ablaze across the country, including at least eight major ones. 

“Prepare your papers, the animals you can take with you, some belongings,” the Gironde municipality of Belin-Beliet said on Facebook before evacuating parts of the town. 

In the nearby village of Hostens, police had earlier been door to door telling residents to leave as the fire advanced. Camille Delay fled with her partner and her son, grabbing their two cats, chickens and house insurance papers. 

“Everyone in the village climbed onto their rooftops to see what was happening. Within 10 minutes, a little twist of smoke became enormous,” Delay, 30, told Reuters by telephone. 

Firefighters said more evacuations were likely. Even so, some Hostens residents were reluctant to abandon their homes. 

“It’s complicated to go with the dogs, and we cannot leave them here,” said Allisson Horan, 18, who stayed behind with her father. 

“I’m getting worried because the fire is in a plot of land behind ours, and the wind is starting to change direction.” 

Numerous small roads and a highway were closed. 

Heat waves 

More than 57,200 hectares have gone up in flames so far in France this year, nearly six times the full-year average for 2006-2021, data from the European Forest Fire Information System show. 

“The fire is creating its own wind,” senior local official Martin Guespereau told reporters, adding that efforts to fight it were made more difficult by how unpredictable it was. 

Sweden and Italy are among countries preparing to send help to France, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said. 

He repeated calls for everyone to be responsible — nine out of 10 fires are either voluntarily or involuntarily caused by people, he said. 

The Gironde wildfire is one of many that have broken out across Europe this summer, triggered by heat waves that have baked the continent and brought record temperatures. 

In Portugal, nearly 1,200 firefighters backed by eight aircraft have battled a blaze in the mountainous Covilha area 280 km northeast of Lisbon that has burned more than 3,000 hectares of forest since Saturday. 

Spain and Greece have also had to tackle multiple fires over the past few weeks. 

The Gironde was hit by major wildfires in July that destroyed more than 20,000 hectares of forest and temporarily forced almost 40,000 people from their homes. 

Authorities believe the latest inferno was a result of the previous fires still smoldering in the area’s peaty soil. 

Fires were also raging in the southern departments of Lozere and Aveyron. In the Maine-et-Loire department in western France, more than 1,200 hectares have been scorched by another fire.
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Russians Buy Last Goods From H&M, IKEA as Stores Wind Down

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Russians are snapping up Western fashion and furniture this week as H&M and IKEA sell off the last of their inventory in Russia, moving forward with their exit from the country after it sent troops into Ukraine.

Sweden-based H&M and Netherlands-based IKEA had paused sales in Russia after the military operation began and are now looking to unload their stocks of clothing and furnishings as they wind down operations there, saying the future is unpredictable. IKEA’s sales are online only, while the H&M store at the Moscow shopping mall Aviapark saw a steady stream of young shoppers Tuesday.

The racks and shelves were well stocked in the clothing retailer. Nearby shops were closed, including Zara, Oysho, Bershka, Pull&Bear and Uniqlo, while New Yorker, Finn Flare, Marks & Spencer and Mango were open.

“I will start looking at Russian brands,” one H&M shopper, who gave only her first name, Anya, said after emerging from the store. Another shopper, who gave his name only as Leonid, said he was “very hurt” that H&M is closing down: “A good store is leaving.”

Both companies are laying off staffers as they scale down business in Russia. H&M said Tuesday that 6,000 workers will be affected and that it was working on details of offering continued support in the coming months.

IKEA said in June that many workers will lose their jobs and it has guaranteed six months of pay for them, as well as core benefits. It said this week that it has 15,000 workers in Russia and Belarus, but it did not immediately confirm how many would be laid off.

“We are deeply saddened about the impact this will have on our colleagues and very grateful for all their hard work and dedication,” H&M Group CEO Helena Helmersson said last month.

Many Western companies promised to leave Russia after it sent troops into Ukraine, taking months to wind down operations and often selling holdings to Russian firms. McDonald’s sold its 850 restaurants to a Russian franchisee owner, who is moving to reopen them under the name Vkusno-i Tochka. British energy giants Shell and BP are taking billions of dollars in charges to exit investments and holdings in Russia.

Meanwhile, some Western companies have remained in Russia or are partially operating. French-owned home improvement retailer Leroy Merlin has kept open its 112 stores in Russia, for example, while PepsiCo, Nestle and drugmaker Johnson & Johnson are supplying essentials like medications and baby formula while halting nonessential sales.

H&M said it expects costs from leaving Russia to reach about 2 billion Swedish kronor ($197 million), which will be included as one-time costs in its third-quarter earnings this year.

IKEA said in June that it will start looking for new owners for its four factories in Russia and will close its purchase and logistics offices in Moscow and Minsk, Belarus, a key Russian ally.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has pushed for years to develop and deploy Russian substitute goods and services to make up for the loss of Western imports, which has taken on new urgency as companies like H&M and IKEA wind down operations.

It can be difficult to tell when stores in Russia are closed. At the famous GUM department store lined with shops in Red Square, most of the closed storefronts still have the lights on and a clerk or guard inside.
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House Speaker Pelosi: China Cannot Isolate Taiwan

Posted on by SeeUS

China’s military drills, threats and cuts in some bilateral cooperation in reaction to U.S. lawmakers’ visit to Taiwan is an attempt to establish a “new normal” in the Taiwan Strait, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters on Wednesday.

Pelosi said the delegation of congressional members that she led to Taiwan was intended as a salute to a thriving democracy, and China should not have taken offense.

“We didn’t go there to talk about China. We went there to praise Taiwan. And we went there to show our friendship to say, ‘China cannot isolate Taiwan.’ ”

Chinese President Xi Jinping’s attempt to drive a wedge between Taipei and Washington backfired, said House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Gregory Meeks. He noted that instead, China’s provocations have resulted in a greater closeness between Taiwan and the United States.

“The House of Representatives, led by the speaker of the House, gave Xi a message that he’s not going to dictate to us on what we do and what we don’t do,” Meeks said.

Representative Raja Krishnamurti told reporters Beijing’s response was an attempt to distract from problems inside China, and he is now glad to see the Chinese live-fire military exercises subsiding.

China’s Communist Party considers Taiwan a rogue province that must be reunited with the mainland.
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