August 2022 - Page 6 of 22

US: China Works to Manipulate Xinjiang Discourse

Posted on 08/25/2022 by SeeUS

The United States said in a report Wednesday that China tries to “manipulate and dominate global discourse on Xinjiang and to discredit independent sources reporting ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity conducted against predominantly Muslim Uyghurs” and other minority groups.

The U.S. State Department report said China’s methods include suppressing reports about atrocities and flooding social media networks with inauthentic, positive stories about Xinjiang.

Another tactic listed in the report is the use of trolling campaigns aimed at silencing critics, which can involve death and assault threats, cyberattacks and other forms of harassment.

The State Department said China’s Cyberspace Affairs Commission and Central Propaganda Department have millions of employees and volunteers carrying out such efforts, targeting both people within China as well as the Chinese diaspora.

Last week, the top U.N. expert on slavery issued a report saying it is “reasonable to conclude that forced labor among Uyghur, Kazakh and other ethnic minorities in sectors such as agriculture and manufacturing has been occurring in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China.”

China has denied accusations of abuse against Uyghurs in Xinjiang.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
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US Forces Respond to Rocket Attacks in Syria

Posted on 08/25/2022 by SeeUS

The U.S. military said Wednesday it destroyed vehicles and equipment used to launch rockets at two sites used by U.S. troops in northeastern Syria.

A U.S. Central Command statement said the U.S. response, which involved attack helicopters, killed two or three “suspected Iran-backed militants” and destroyed vehicles and other equipment used to launch the rockets.

One U.S. service member was treated for a minor injury.

“The United States does not seek conflict with Iran, but we will continue to take the measures necessary to protect and defend our people,” the statement said.

On Tuesday, the U.S. carried out airstrikes in eastern Syria that it said targeted an ammunition depot and other facilities used by groups linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Iran denied Wednesday any link to the sites.

Iranian forces have been in Syria supporting President Bashar al-Assad’s forces during Syria’s civil war.

The United States has about 900 troops in Syria working with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces to combat the Islamic State group.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
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US Sending $3B in Military Aid to Ukraine for ‘Long-Term Defense’

Posted on 08/25/2022 by SeeUS

The US is sending a new tranche of military assistance to help Ukraine defend itself against Russia’s invading force, a package valued at $3 billion dollars. This aid comes on top of the more than $10 billion in military assistance the U.S. has already sent to Ukraine in the past year and a half. VOA Pentagon correspondent Carla Babb has the details.
Video Editor: Kimberlyn Weeks
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Uvalde, Texas, School Board Fires Police Chief in Wake of Shooting Criticism

Posted on 08/25/2022 by SeeUS

The Uvalde, Texas, school board on Wednesday fired the school district’s embattled police chief for his much-criticized handling of the shooting rampage that killed 19 children and two teachers in the city three months ago.

The Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Board of Trustees voted unanimously to fire Pete Arredondo. He had been on unpaid administrative leave since shortly after the May 24 shooting.

Arredondo did not attend the meeting. A written statement from his attorney, George Hyde, was emailed to board members just before the board met. It cited death threats Arredondo has received and what it said was the district’s lack of efforts to provide any protection for him.

Hyde also wrote that the district was in the wrong for dismissing Arredondo, saying it did not carry out any investigation “establishing evidence supporting a decision to terminate” him.

Arredondo has come under scathing criticism for his handling of the massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, a small town in Texas Hill Country, about 129 kilometers west of San Antonio.

Parents of children slain and wounded in the deadliest U.S. school shooting in nearly a decade had demanded the school board dismiss Arredondo.

He was forced to resign his seat on the Uvalde City Council on July 2. Three weeks later, the board was scheduled to decide Arredondo’s fate as the school district police chief, but postponed the meeting due to “process requirements” at the request of his attorney.

According to the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS), Arredondo acted as “incident commander” in charge of law enforcement’s response to the shooting.

DPS officials said 19 officers waited for an hour in a hallway outside adjoining classrooms where the gunman was holed up with his victims before a U.S. Border Patrol-led tactical team finally made entry and killed the suspect.

Arredondo, they said, chose not to send officers to confront the suspect sooner, believing the immediate threat to students had abated after an initial burst of gunfire in the classrooms.

Arredondo, who oversaw a six-member police force before he was fired, has said he never considered himself the incident commander and that he did not order police to hold back on storming the suspect’s position.

(Reporting by Brad Brooks in Lubbock and Brendan O’Brien in Chicago; Editing by Josie Kao and Leslie Adler)
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22 Reported Killed in Independence Day Attack in Ukraine

Posted on 08/24/2022 by SeeEU

Russian forces Wednesday launched a rocket attack on a Ukrainian train station on the embattled country’s Independence Day, killing 22 people, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said after warning for days that Moscow might attempt “something particularly cruel” this week.

The lethal attack took place in Chaplyne, a town of about 3,500 people in the central Dnipropetrovsk region, Ukrainian news agencies quoted Zelenskyy as telling the U.N. Security Council via video. The president’s office also reported that an 11-year-old child was killed by rocket fire earlier in the day in the settlement.

“Chaplyne is our pain today,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address to the nation.

At one point, Zelenskyy put the number of wounded at about 50. The deputy head of Zelenskyy’s office later said 22 people were wounded in the attack, which hit five passenger rail cars.

Ukraine had been bracing for especially heavy attacks around the national holiday that commemorates Ukraine’s declaration of independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Wednesday also marked the six-month point in the war.

Days ahead of Independence Day, Kyiv authorities banned large gatherings in the capital through Thursday for fear of missile strikes.

Residents of Kyiv, which has been largely spared in recent months, woke up Wednesday to air raid sirens, but no immediate strikes followed. As the day wore on, Russian bombardments were reported in the country’s east, west and center, with the most serious attack apparently at the train station.

Outgoing British Prime Minister Boris Johnson marked the holiday with a visit to Kyiv — his third since the war broke out — and other European leaders used the occasion to pledge unwavering support for Ukraine, locked in a battle that was widely expected to be a lightning conquest by Moscow but has turned into a grinding war of attrition. U.S. President Joe Biden announced a new military aid package of nearly $3 billion to help Ukrainian forces fight for years to come.

Over the weekend, Zelenskyy cautioned that Russia “may try to do something particularly nasty, something particularly cruel” this week. He repeated the warnings ahead of the train station attack, saying, “Russian provocations and brutal strikes are a possibility.”

Nevertheless, a festive atmosphere prevailed during the day at Kyiv’s Maidan square as thousands of residents posed for pictures next to burned-out Russian tanks put on display. Folk singers set up, and many revelers — ignoring the sirens — were out and about in traditionally embroidered dresses and shirts.

Others were fearful.

“I can’t sleep at night because of what I see and hear about what is being done in Ukraine,” said a retiree who gave only her first name, Tetyana, her voice shaking with emotion. “This is not a war. It is the destruction of the Ukrainian people.”

In a holiday message to the country, Zelenskyy exulted over Ukraine’s success in fending off Moscow’s forces since the invasion, saying: “On February 24, we were told: You have no chance. On August 24, we say: Happy Independence Day, Ukraine!”

Britain’s Johnson urged Western allies to stand by Ukraine through the winter.

“This is not the time to put forward flimsy negotiating proposals,” he said. “You can’t negotiate with a bear when it’s eating your leg or with a street robber when he has you pinned to the floor.”

A car bombing outside Moscow that killed the 29-year-old daughter of right-wing Russian political theorist Alexander Dugin on Saturday also heightened fears that Russia might intensify attacks on Ukraine this week. Russian officials have blamed Ukraine for the death of Darya Dugina, a pro-Kremlin TV commentator. Ukraine has denied any involvement.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s forces have encountered unexpectedly stiff Ukrainian resistance in their invasion and abandoned their effort to storm the capital in the spring. The fighting has turned into a slog that has reduced neighborhoods to rubble and sent shock waves through the world economy.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, speaking Wednesday at a meeting of his counterparts from a security organization dominated by Russia and China, claimed the slow pace of Moscow’s military action was due to what he said was an effort to spare civilians.

Russian forces have repeatedly targeted civilian areas in cities, including hospitals and a Mariupol theater where hundreds of people were taking shelter.

But Shoigu said Russia is carrying out strikes with precision weapons against Ukrainian military targets, and “everything is done to avoid civilian casualties.”

“Undoubtedly, it slows down the pace of the offensive, but we do it deliberately,” he said.

On the battlefield, Russian forces struck several towns and villages in Donetsk province in the east over 24 hours, killing one person, authorities said. A building materials superstore in the city of Donetsk was hit by a shell and erupted in flames, the mayor said. There were no immediate reports of injuries.

In the Dnipropetrovsk region, the Russians again shelled the cities of Nikopol and Marhanets, damaging several buildings and wounding people, authorities said. Russian troops also shelled the city of Zaporizhzhia, but no casualties were reported.

In addition, Russian rockets struck unspecified targets in the Khmelnytskyi region, about 300 kilometers west of Kyiv, the regional governor said. Attacks there have been infrequent.
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Experts: Military Facilities Targeted by US in Syria Were Vital for Iran

Posted on 08/24/2022 by SeeUS

Targets in Syria hit by U.S. airstrikes earlier this week were critical facilities for Iranian-linked groups operating in the country, experts said.

The U.S. military said late Tuesday it carried out strikes in eastern Syria against “infrastructure facilities used by groups linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps [IRGC].”

“Today’s strikes were necessary to protect and defend U.S. personnel. The United States took proportionate, deliberate action intended to limit the risk of escalation and minimize the risk of casualties,” U.S. Central Command Communication Director Colonel Joe Buccino said in a statement Tuesday.

The U.S. official added that the airstrikes in the province of Deir el-Zour were carried out to protect U.S. forces from attacks, including one on August 15 in eastern Syria, which the U.S. said involved a drone that targeted a compound run by U.S. troops and U.S.-backed Syrian opposition fighters.

The military has not said whether the strikes resulted in any casualties. Iran on Wednesday denied having any links to those targeted in the U.S. airstrikes in Syria.

Iran is a staunch supporter of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime and has a significant military presence in areas along the Syria-Iraq border.

Experts say the facilities hit by the U.S. were military depots used for Iran’s military activities in the region.

“These military depots are strategically important for Iran as they are located on the Syria-Iraq border, which gives Iran access to a vast area in both countries,” said Omar Abu Layla, director of Deir Ezzor 24, a monitor group focused on developments in eastern Syria.

“Iran relies on these facilities to carry out attacks against American forces that are stationed on the eastern side of the Euphrates River,” he told VOA, noting that his network had recently confirmed “the arrival of several Iranian military shipments, including drones and mid-range missiles” to the warehouses that were hit by the U.S. on Tuesday.

While the U.S. military has not indicated what targets it has struck in eastern Syria, Deir Ezzor 24 and other local news networks have reported the Ayyash military depot complex was the main target.

Bashir al-Abbad, a Syrian journalist, told the U.S.-funded Alhurra television that “these are large warehouses that have 80 buildings located in a desert area south of the town of Ayyash” in Deir el-Zour.

The control of Deir el-Zour is divided between U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces on the eastern side of the Euphrates and Iranian- and Russian-backed Syrian government forces on the western side of the river.

The U.S. has about 900 troops in northeast Syria, including Deir el-Zour, as part of a global coalition against Islamic State, or ISIS, militants.

Iran’s foreign ministry condemned the Tuesday attack and denied any link between Tehran and the targeted facilities in eastern Syria.

Nasser Kanaani, a spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry, said in a statement Wednesday the U.S. attack was against the Syrian people, accusing the U.S. of violating Syria’s sovereignty.

The Syrian government has not immediately commented on the attack.

Myles Caggins, an analyst at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former spokesperson for the U.S.-led coalition against IS, said the U.S. strikes are a sign that Washington is still seriously engaged in defending its forces and allies in the region.

“It is very clear that the reason for the U.S.-led coalition presence in Syria is to keep ISIS from making a comeback, and attacks by adversary militia forces are a disruption, a distraction and can be deadly,” he told VOA.

After a decade of conflict, Caggins said, Syria continues to be a contested environment for groups vying for control.

This story originated in VOA’s Kurdish Service.
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Nigeria Integrates Rotavirus Vaccine into National Vaccination Programs Amid Shortfalls

Posted on 08/24/2022 by SeeAF

Nigeria this week added a rotavirus vaccine to its national program that is expected to prevent 50,000 deaths of children per year from the diarrheal disease. But the launch comes amid shortages of the vaccine in countries such as Cameroon, Kenya, Senegal and Tanzania.

The launch Monday coincided with the commemoration of Africa Vaccination Week.

Officials from the World Health Organization, the United Nations children’s agency, as well as Nigeria’s Health Ministry, attended the launch in the capital.

During the event, many young children received the vaccine for free, while authorities urged citizens to embrace the measure.

“They’ll get the opportunity of taking it when they’re taking other vaccines,” said Faisal Shuaib, executive director of the National Primary Health Care Development Agency. “We need to seize this opportunity — mothers, caregivers — so that our children will be protected from this virus.”

Rotavirus is the most common cause of diarrheal disease in children under 5 years old. WHO says that globally, up to 200,000 children die each year from the disease.

Authorities say the oral vaccine could prevent up to a third of severe diarrhea cases in Nigeria.

WHO country representative Walter Kazadi Mulombo also attended the launch.

“The introduction of the rotavirus vaccine provides the opportunity to reduce the number of children dying every day from diarrheal disease caused by rotavirus,” he said.

But this month, pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline said manufacturing challenges had led to a shortfall of 4 million doses of the rotavirus this year, as well as delays in delivery.

According to GAVI-the Vaccine Alliance, the company already said it would reduce deliveries of the rotavirus vaccine by 10 million a year between 2022 and 2028.

Moses Njoku, a research fellow at Nigeria’s National Institute for Pharmaceutical Research and Development, said a shortfall should not be a challenge to Nigeria.

“The issue of them thinning out shouldn’t be a threat to a country like Nigeria if we use our internal potential,” Njoku said. “Nigeria is beginning to see the need to start indigenous efforts to start research and production, development of vaccines, as well as production of known vaccines.”

Njoku also said authorities must take delivery of the rotavirus vaccines in batches to avoid waste.

“If care is not taken, they will not be imported at the right time,” he said, adding that some might ship with little time left before an expiration date. “So, eventually you won’t even use up to 10,000 doses and you have paid the money. The supply chain management system is also very poor.”

For now, authorities will be trying to get as many children vaccinated as possible.
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New York City Food Businesses Fight Hard to Keep Afloat Amid Inflation

Posted on 08/24/2022 by SeeUS

Inflation has reached a 40-year high in the U.S., leading to recession worries on Wall Street. But it appears small businesses and customers are bearing the brunt of rising prices. For VOA, Keith Kocinski spoke with New York City vendors who are trying to keep prices down and their wheels on the ground.
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Renewed Fighting Scuttles 5-Month-Old Ethiopia Cease-Fire

Posted on 08/24/2022 by SeeAF

Tigrayan forces say Ethiopia’s federal allies have launched an offensive against their southern positions in violation of a months-long cease-fire, but Ethiopia’s government blamed Tigrayan rebels for the flare-up in violence.

Officials told VOA Tuesday they are ready for peace talks mediated by the African Union.

The Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front, known as the TPLF, said Wednesday that troops from the National Defense Force and Amhara regional forces attacked its positions near Kobo in the Amhara region of Ethiopia. The claim was later confirmed by the Reuters news agency.

A statement from the TPLF command said, “Tigray’s army is reliably ready to repulse this offensive, and transition into a counteroffensive to liberate occupied sovereign Tigrayan territory and return our displaced people to their homes.” The statement appeared to suggest the TPLF could respond with force.

The Ethiopian government has since alleged that it was the TPLF which launched the attacks.

A statement from the federal government called on the international community for support.

“The international community should also condemn the obvious belligerence of the TPLF, lest it becomes complicit in the unconscionable march of the TPLF to a third round of conflict. All those who profess to be committed to the stability of the region and humanitarian ideals should exert pressure on the TPLF to renounce violence and endorse peace,” the statement said.

The Ethiopian government says it has been laying the groundwork for peace talks with the TPLF, mediated by the African Union.

On Tuesday, an Ethiopian government spokesperson, Selamawit Kassa, told VOA that “The federal government has full confidence in the African Union and its high commissioner assigned to cover the peace talks. There is no plausible reason for Ethiopia to look for other entities to broker the peace efforts.”

The TPLF, however, claims the AU is biased in favor of the federal government and will not come to the negotiating table without mediation by the Kenyan government and a resumption of basic services to the region, such as banking and humanitarian access, which have been blocked by officials in Addis Ababa.

Getachew Reda, a TPLF spokesperson, criticized the government for favoring AU mediation on Monday in an op-ed published on the website of The Africa Report, a monthly news magazine.

“It’s been very evident that both sides have been recuperating, preparing themselves for a new bout of fighting, at the same time as talking about peace,” said Ahmed Soliman, with the U.K.-based research group Chatham House. “As we’ve seen today and as happened at the beginning of the war in 2020, both sides have blamed the other for instigating the conflict. This relapse into fighting in Tigray and Ethiopia should have been avoided at all costs.”

William Davison, an analyst for the International Crisis Group, a research organization based in Belgium, said all sides to the conflict need to talk with each other.

“This is a clear indicator that the delay in talks has fed into this very volatile truce and we see events that could mean a resumption of conflict and I think there’s an evident and urgent need for the external actors here, the African Union, Kenya’s government, the U.S., etc…. to try and get the parties not just to pause these latest hostilities, but also to actually sit around the table for talks, where they can discuss all of their disagreements rather than making them preconditions for talks,” he said.

A humanitarian truce that was established in March between the two sides now appears to be at an end.

Renewed fighting is likely to have a major impact on the humanitarian situation in Tigray. Humanitarian organizations say parts of the region could already be in a state of famine.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Wednesday he is “shocked and saddened” by the renewed fighting and that Ethiopians have suffered enough.
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6 Months Since Russia Invaded Ukraine, Experts See Global Impact

Posted on 08/24/2022 by SeeEU

As Ukraine marks the six-month anniversary of Russia’s invasion, VOA’s Senior Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports on the fallout from the conflict. Millions of refugees have fled the country, food exports have plummeted and the United Nations is warning that the world faces “maximum danger” over the situation at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant.
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Jill Biden Has ‘Rebound’ COVID-19 Case; President Tests Negative

Posted on 08/24/2022 by SeeUS

First lady Jill Biden has tested positive for COVID-19 again in an apparent “rebound” case, after she initially tested negative for the virus over the weekend.

President Joe Biden, who spent three days with his wife at their Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, vacation home, continues to test negative, the White House said. He also suffered a rebound case earlier this month after an initial recovery from the virus.

The first lady’s deputy communications director, Kelsey Donohue, said Biden had “experienced no reemergence of symptoms, and will remain in Delaware where she has reinitiated isolation procedures.”

She added: “The White House Medical Unit has conducted contact tracing and close contacts have been notified.”

Jill Biden, 71, had been prescribed the antiviral drug Paxlovid, which has proven to be highly effective at preventing serious disease and death among those at highest risk from COVID-19, but a minority of those prescribed the drug have experienced a rebound case of the virus a few days after their initial recovery.
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WHO: COVID Deaths Down by 15%, Cases Fall Nearly Everywhere

Posted on 08/24/2022 by SeeEU

The number of coronavirus deaths reported worldwide fell by 15% in the past week while new infections dropped by 9%, the World Health Organization said Wednesday.

In its latest weekly assessment of the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.N. health agency said there were 5.3 million new cases and more than 14,000 deaths reported last week. WHO said the number of new infections declined in every world region except the Western Pacific.

Deaths jumped by more than 183% in Africa but fell by nearly a third in Europe and by 15% in the Americas. Still, WHO warned that COVID-19 numbers are likely severely underestimated as many countries have dropped their testing and surveillance protocols to monitor the virus, meaning that there are far fewer cases being detected.

WHO said the predominant COVID-19 variant worldwide is omicron subvariant BA.5, which accounts for more than 70% of virus sequences shared with the world’s biggest public viral database. Omicron variants account for 99% of all sequences reported in the last month.

Earlier this week, Pfizer asked U.S. regulators to authorize its combination COVID-19 vaccine that adds protection against the newest omicron relatives, BA.4 and BA.5, a key step towards opening a fall booster campaign.

The Food and Drug Administration had ordered vaccine makers to tweak their shots to target BA.4 and BA.5, which are better than ever at dodging immunity from earlier vaccination or infection.

Meanwhile, in the U.K., regulators authorized a version of Moderna’s updated COVID-19 vaccine last week that includes protection against the earlier omicron subvariant BA.1. British officials will offer it to people aged 50 and over beginning next month.

In Germany, Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Cabinet approved legislation Wednesday that ensures basic protective measures against the coronavirus pandemic are continued during the fall and winter, when more virus cases are expected.

Meanwhile, in the Philippines, millions of students wearing face masks streamed back to primary and secondary schools across the country on Monday for their first in-person classes after two years of coronavirus lockdowns.

Officials had grappled with daunting problems, including classroom shortages, lingering COVID-19 fears, an approaching storm and quake-damaged school buildings in the country’s north, to welcome back nearly 28 million students who enrolled for the school year.
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Biden Praises Ukraine’s ‘Extraordinary Courage,’ Sends Nearly $3 Billion in New Military Aid

Posted on 08/24/2022 by SeeEU

President Joe Biden on Wednesday praised the “extraordinary courage and dedication to freedom” of the Ukrainian people in fending off Russian fighters, six months into Moscow’s invasion, while demonstrating continued U.S. support for Kyiv’s forces with nearly $3 billion in new military aid.

On Ukraine’s Independence Day marking 31 years since escaping Soviet rule in 1991, Biden said the day “is not only a celebration of the past, but a resounding affirmation that Ukraine proudly remains – and will remain – a sovereign and independent nation.”

Biden said the new tranche of military assistance was designed to help Ukraine defend itself over the long term, with U.S. officials saying some of the weaponry might not be used for a year or two. The U.S. leader said the package would include air defense systems, artillery systems and munitions, counter-unmanned aerial systems, and radars.

The new aid comes on top of about $10.6 billion in military assistance the U.S. has already sent to Ukraine in the last year and a half.

Biden said he knows that this year’s Independence Day “is bittersweet for many Ukrainians as thousands have been killed or wounded, millions have been displaced from their homes, and so many others have fallen victim to Russian atrocities and attacks.”

He added, “Today and every day, we stand with the Ukrainian people to proclaim that the darkness that drives autocracy is no match for the flame of liberty that lights the souls of free people everywhere.”

In Norway, the defense ministry issued a statement saying Norway and Britain are jointly supplying Ukraine with micro drones used for “reconnaissance and target identification.”

Norway is also supplying a portable system that would allow Ukrainian forces to jam enemy drones, which the Norwegian defense ministry said is “particularly suitable for protecting smaller patrols, artillery positions and other important resources.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in a video address from Kyiv’s Independence Square, said Ukrainians are “fighting for our destiny” and will defend their land “until the end.”

He declared that while the end of the war would be marked by peace, now Ukraine wants victory.

“And we will put our hands up only once — when we will celebrate our victory. The whole of Ukraine,” Zelenskyy said. “Because we do not trade our lands and our people. For us, Ukraine is all of Ukraine. All 25 regions, without any concessions or compromises.”

Zelenskyy said Ukraine would regain control of the eastern Donbas region, where heavy fighting has raged for months, as well as Crimea.

Russian forces shifted their focus to the Donbas after failing in an early push toward the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv. Russian-backed separatists have been battling Ukrainian forces in the Donbas since 2014. The same year, Russian seized Crimea in a move not recognized by the international community.

“You don’t want your soldiers to die? Free our lands,” Zelenskyy said. “You don’t want your mothers to cry? Free our lands. These are our simple and clear terms.”

Public Independence Day celebrations were banned in Kyiv as Ukrainian leaders, and the United States, warned of increased Russian efforts to strike civilian infrastructure and government facilities in Ukraine.

Pope Francis used part of his general audience Wednesday to renew a call for prayers for the Ukrainian people, saying they have “been suffering the horrors of war for six months now,” according to Vatican News.

“I hope that concrete steps will be taken to bring an end to the war and to avert the risk of a nuclear disaster at Zaporizhzhia,” the pope said, referring to a nuclear power plant that Russia and Ukraine have accused each other of attacking in recent weeks.

The pontiff also talked about what he called “the madness” of war and losses on both sides of the conflict, saying children “have lost their father or mother, whether Russians or Ukrainians.”

Some information for this story came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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Somalia’s President Vows ‘Total War’ Against al-Shabab

Posted on 08/24/2022 by SeeAF

In a televised speech Tuesday night, Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud announced that his government will launch a “total war” against al-Qaida-affiliated militant group al-Shabab, after the group staged a deadly hotel siege in Mogadishu on Friday, killing at least 21 people and wounding more than 100.

Mohamud said that it is time to come together to defeat the enemy and said the military’s recent operations in parts of the country gained significant ground, including in central Galmudug state and Southwest state.

His remarks were made after he met with the country’s security council to discuss the latest attack on Hotel Hayat in the capital.

He said that he knows that the Somali people are tired of the endless mourning and that people lose their loved ones in every attack carried out by the terrorists. He urged people to be prepared for an all-out war against the ruthless terrorists who are hostile to the country’s peace.

He added that al-Shabab’s only principle is killing, intimidation, humiliation and carrying out atrocities against the civilians.

He said when he assumed the office of the presidency, he promised that he would launch a fight against al-Shabab to end the scourge of terrorism. There have been tangible victories, especially in Galmudug, Southwest and Hirshabele, he said.

This is Mohamud’s second term as Somalia’s president. He also held the office from 2012 to 2017.

When he took office in June, al-Shabab’s leader Abu Ubaidah released an audio message calling the president the worst of Somalia’s politicians and said al-Shabab would fight the new government.

The group frequently targets hotels and restaurants in Mogadishu, where Somali officials and security officers are known to gather.

It attacked the Hayat Hotel with suicide bombers and several gunmen. Security forces cleared the hotel after an operation that took 30 hours.
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Ebola Vaccinations in East Congo to Start on Thursday After New Case

Posted on 08/24/2022 by SeeAF

An Ebola vaccination campaign will start in the Congolose city of Beni on Thursday after a new case of the virus was confirmed this week, the World Health Organization said on Wednesday.

More than 200 vaccine doses have been arrived in Beni, in the east of Democratic Republic of Congo, it said.

The latest confirmed case has been genetically linked to a 2018-2020 outbreak in North Kivu and Ituri provinces, which claimed nearly 2,300 lives.

Six people were killed in another flare-up from that same outbreak last year.

A WHO spokesman told Reuters the shots were provided by the organization and that inoculations would start on Thursday.

Congo’s dense tropical forests are a natural reservoir for the Ebola virus, which causes fever, body aches, and diarrhea, and can linger in the body of survivors only to resurface years later.

The vast central African country has recorded 14 outbreaks since 1976. The 2018-2020 outbreak in the east was Congo’s largest and the second largest ever recorded, with nearly 3,500 total cases.

Congo’s most recent outbreak was in northwest Equateur province. Itwas declared over in July after five deaths.
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2 New York Democrats Ousted from US House in Primary Losses

Posted on 08/24/2022 by SeeUS

In a cluster of contentious Democratic primaries Tuesday, two New York incumbents were ousted from the U.S. House after redistricting shuffled congressional districts in one of the nation’s largest liberal states.

Rep. Carolyn Maloney, a 15-term incumbent who chairs a powerful House committee, lost to longtime colleague Rep. Jerry Nadler, while Rep. Mondaire Jones, a first-term progressive who was one of the first openly gay Black members of Congress, was defeated by Daniel Goldman, a former federal prosecutor who served as counsel to House Democrats in the first impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump.

In other races in the state, the chair of the House Democrats’ campaign arm, Sean Patrick Maloney, survived a primary challenge of his own from a progressive. Democrats held on to a swing district in a special election — at least for a few more months.

In Florida, an incumbent Republican narrowly defeated a far-right provocateur. Meanwhile, U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, a conservative firebrand, won his primary with the specter of a federal investigation looming over him.

Some of the highest-profile elections:

End of an era

Nadler and Carolyn Maloney each chair powerful committees and had spent 30 years representing Manhattan’s Upper West Side and Upper East Side, respectively. But they ended up in the same race after new redistricting maps merged much of their longtime congressional districts.

The race for New York’s 12th District, between Maloney, 76, and Nadler, 75, became contentious. The two stopped speaking after deciding to run against each other, Nadler said, and the campaign became barbed, with Maloney questioning his mental acuity.

Nadler, who was endorsed by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, has talked up his role overseeing Trump’s impeachments while serving as chair of the House Judiciary Committee. Maloney has touted her own check on the former president while serving as chair of the powerful House Oversight Committee and positioned herself as a feminist champion.

Challenging them both was 38-year-old lawyer Suraj Patel, who argued it was time for a new face in Congress.

Crowded field for an open seat

With Nadler and Maloney running in the district immediately north, a congressional seat covering southern Manhattan, including Wall Street, and Brooklyn, was a rare open contest in one of the most liberal and influential areas of the country.

Goldman, a Democratic attorney who built his reputation as a federal mob and securities fraud prosecutor but made a national name for himself as House Democrats’ lead counsel in Trump’s first impeachment hearing, won a crowded primary for New York’s 10th District, which attracted a bevy of progressive candidates. Among the contenders was Jones, a congressman from the New York City suburbs, who moved to the area to run and finished third in the primary.

House Democrats’ campaign chief wins primary

Sean Patrick Maloney, who became New York’s first openly gay congressman when he was elected a decade ago, survived a primary challenge from state Sen. Alessandra Biaggi in New York’s new 17th District, home to idyllic towns along the historic Hudson River Valley.

Maloney, who had the backing of former President Bill Clinton, campaigned on Democrats’ recent legislative wins in Congress and warned that the congressional seat could fall to Republicans in November if the Democratic nominee is too liberal.

Biaggi, a 36-year-old progressive endorsed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is a granddaughter of former Bronx congressman Mario Biaggi. She had sought to portray Maloney as out of touch and part of the establishment.

State GOP chair defeats controversial candidate

New York’s Republican Party chair, Nick Langworthy, won a primary in western New York by defeating controversial Buffalo businessman Carl Paladino in New York’s redrawn 23rd District.

Paladino, who unsuccessfully ran for governor in 2010, has a long history of inflammatory and offensive remarks, including recent comments that praised Adolf Hitler and circulated conspiracy theories around mass shootings.

The heated primary came as Langworthy and Paladino sought to replace GOP Rep. Chris Jacobs, who decided not to seek reelection after facing backlash from his own party for voicing support for an assault weapons ban following a racist mass shooting in his hometown of Buffalo in May.

A win for Republicans, a win for Democrats in special elections

In addition to the primary races, New Yorkers elected two new House members to fill vacancies for the rest of the year.

Democrat Pat Ryan won one of the special elections, a battleground race in southern and central New York to replace Democrat Antonio Delgado, who became New York’s lieutenant governor. Ryan defeated Republican Marc Molinaro in what is currently New York’s 19th Congressional District.

In western New York, Republican Joe Sempolinski defeated Democrat Max Della Pia in a special general election to serve out the rest of the year in what is currently New York’s 23rd District. Sempolinski will replace Republican Rep. Tom Reed, who resigned in May after being accused of sexual misconduct.

Far-right provocateur loses again

Florida Republican Rep. Dan Webster defeated Laura Loomer, a far-right provocateur in Florida who’s been banned on some social media networks because of anti-Muslim and other remarks.

Webster, who has served central Florida districts since 2011, won the unexpectedly tight primary in Florida’s 11th District, which is home to The Villages, the nation’s largest retirement community and a GOP stronghold.

Loomer unsuccessfully ran for the House in 2020, winning a Republican primary but losing the general election that year to incumbent Democrat Lois Frankel for a Palm Beach-area seat that includes Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.

On social media, Loomer regularly posted conspiracy theories and misinformation around Minnesota’s Ilhan Omar, the first Somali American elected to Congress. Among them was the false claim that Omar and other Democrats were plotting to institute Sharia law in Minnesota.

Gaetz wins republican primary amid scandal

Gaetz, a Trump protégé under federal investigation in a sex trafficking case, won a primary contest that was seen as a test of whether he could keep support among moderate Republicans.

Gaetz has not been charged and denies wrongdoing. He was facing a challenge from Mark Lombardo, a former Marine and executive at FedEx who had blanketed the western Panhandle with attack ads centering around the investigation as he tried to take him on in Florida’s 1st Congressional District.

Rebekah Jones, a former Department of Health employee who questioned the state’s COVID-19 data, won the Democratic primary for the seat in the heavily Republican district. A state inspector general’s report concluded Jones’ allegations were unfounded, but in her race for Congress, she tapped into national support for fundraising, bringing in more than $500,000.
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Zelenskyy Says Ukraine Will Fight ‘Until the End’

Posted on 08/24/2022 by SeeEU

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Wednesday that Ukrainians are “fighting for our destiny” as the country marked its Independence Day along with six months since Russia launched its invasion.

Speaking in a video address from Kyiv’s Independence Square, Zelenskyy said Ukraine will fight for its land “until the end,” and that while once the end of the war would be marked by peace, now Ukraine wants victory.

Zelenskyy said Ukraine would regain control of the eastern Donbas region as well as Crimea.

Russian forces shifted their focus to the Donbas after failing in an early push toward the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv. Russian-backed separatists have been battling Ukrainian forces in the Donbas since 2014. The same year, Russian annexed Crimea in a move not recognized by the international community.

“You don’t want your soldiers to die? Free our lands,” Zelenskyy said. “You don’t want your mothers to cry? Free our lands. These are our simple and clear terms.”

Military aid

U.S. officials are expected to announced as early as Wednesday an additional $3 billion in new aid to train and supply Ukrainian forces for years to come. The officials said the assistance would fund contracts for drones, weapons and other equipment that may not be used on the battlefront for a year or two.

Unlike most previous packages that provided immediate battlefield assistance, the new funding is largely aimed at helping Ukraine secure its medium- to long-term defense.

The new aid would come on top of about $10.6 billion in military assistance the U.S. has already sent to Ukraine in the last year and a half.

Norway’s defense ministry said in a statement Wednesday that Norway and Britain are jointly supplying Ukraine with micro drones used for “reconnaissance and target identification.”

Norway is also supplying a portable system that would allow Ukrainian forces to jam enemy drones, which Norwegian defense ministry said is “particularly suitable for protecting smaller patrols, artillery positions and other important resources.”

‘Madness’ of war

Pope Francis also talked about what he called “the madness” of war and losses on both sides of the conflict, saying children “have lost their father or mother, whether Russians or Ukrainians.”

Some information for this story came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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US Hate Crimes Rise During First Half of 2022

Posted on 08/23/2022 by SeeUS

Hate crimes in major U.S. cities rose moderately during the first half of 2022 after posting double-digit percentage increases over the past two years, according to police data compiled by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism.

The data collected from 15 major city police departments show an average increase of about 5 percent in bias-motivated incidents so far this year, according to a new report by the extremism research center at California State University at San Bernardino. The 15 cities have a combined population of 25.5 million people.

By comparison, a larger sample of data from 52 major cities compiled by the center showed hate crimes in the United States surged by nearly 30 percent in 2021, according to the report.

A hate crime is defined by the FBI as a “criminal offense against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, or gender identity.”

U.S. hate crimes have been on the rise in recent years, driven by factors ranging from a surge in anti-Asian sentiments during the COVID-19 pandemic to anti-Black animus in reaction to racial justice protests that broke out across America in 2020 after the killing of African American George Floyd while in police custody.

If the increases seen so far this year hold, it would mark the fourth consecutive year in which hate crimes have risen in the United States.

“There is a bit of a deceleration going on, but events don’t get confined to one year, they can be multi-year trends,” said Brian Levin, executive director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism.

Arusha Gordon of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law cautioned that hate crime data tend to undercount the true number of incidents.

“It always makes me very nervous discussing the data around hate crimes just because we know that the data really is so lacking,” Gordon, who heads the committee’s James Byrd Jr. Center to Stop Hate, said in an interview.

The findings come in advance of the FBI’s annual hate crime report for 2021 slated for release in the fall. A spokesperson said the bureau doesn’t have a confirmed release date yet.

Based on the preliminary data from major cities, Levin predicts that the FBI report will show a double-digit increase in hate crimes.

“The question is, how high?” Levin said.

Blacks, Jews, sexual minorities and Latinos have been the most frequent targets of hate crimes this year. Less so were Asian Americans, at least in some parts of the country.

Bias-motivated attacks on Asian Americans, which surged to record levels last year, dropped in several major cities, with the number of incidents in New York City decreasing by 48% and in Los Angeles falling by 17%.

Levin noted that anti-Asian hate crimes remain at high levels.

He pointed up, though, that anti-Muslim hate crimes dropped in 2002 after hitting record levels in the wake of the attacks of September 11, 2001.

What is more, overall hate crimes tend to rise during the second half of the year. With the U.S. midterm elections approaching, experts warn there could be a fresh surge in bias incidents later in the year.

“Oftentimes we see hate crimes increase as political rhetoric becomes more fierce,” Gordon said.

The spike in anti-Asian attacks during the COVID-19 pandemic prompted Congress last year to pass legislation aimed at combating hate crimes.

The COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act, signed into law by President Joe Biden in May 2021, created a new Justice Department position to expedite the review of COVID-19 related hate crimes.

In a report released on the first anniversary of the law, the Justice Department said it had charged more than 40 people with hate crimes tied to the pandemic since January 2021.

In September, Biden will host a White House summit “to counter the corrosive effects of hate-fueled violence on our democracy and public safety,” White House domestic policy advisor Susan Rice announced last week.

“Hate must have no safe harbor in America — especially when that hate fuels the kind of violence we’ve seen from Oak Creek to Pittsburgh, from El Paso to Poway, and from Atlanta to Buffalo,” Rice said in a statement.
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US National Archives: Trump Took 700 Pages of Classified Documents to Florida

Posted on 08/23/2022 by SeeUS

Former U.S. President Donald Trump left Washington with more than 700 pages of classified documents, including some containing the government’s top secrets, when his presidency ended last year, the National Archives disclosed Tuesday.

The disclosure came in a letter dated May 10 from the acting U.S. archivist, Debra Steidel Wall, to one of Trump’s lawyers, Evan Corcoran, as she rejected claims from Trump’s representatives that the former president should be allowed to keep some of the documents by claiming executive privilege from his time in the White House.

Wall described the growing alarm in the Justice Department’s National Security Division about the “potential damage resulting from the apparent manner in which these materials were stored and transported” to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate rather than being turned over the National Archives when his presidency ended, as required by U.S. law.

Her letter said there were “over 100 documents with classification markings” in the 15 boxes of materials the government retrieved from Mar-a-Lago in January, the first of three times this year that the FBI and U.S. archivists have collected boxes of classified materials from Trump’s wintertime residence and private club on the Atlantic coastline.

Trump and his aides handed over more documents in June, and then FBI agents, acting with a court-approved search warrant, retrieved another two dozen boxes, including 11 boxes of classified files on August 8, as they searched his office, a basement storage area and other rooms at the estate.

Some of the documents retrieved have been classified as “TS/SCI,” which stands for “Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information,” or labeled as “Special Access Programs,” which contain some of the government’s most closely held secrets and are supposed to be viewed only in secure government facilities, not a residence like Mar-a-Lago. Aside from being Trump’s home several months a year, it is a high-end dinner club and hotel for dues-paying members.

Trump has claimed that he declassified the materials before his term ended on Jan. 20, 2021, and Joe Biden became the U.S. president, but neither Trump nor his aides have produced any documented evidence of such a declassification.

John Solomon, one of Trump’s allies in the news media and one of the former president’s liaisons to the archives, first disclosed the Wall letter Monday night and the archives then released it on Tuesday.

The new disclosure came as Trump’s lawyers on Monday asked a federal court to temporarily block the FBI from reviewing documents recovered from his Florida estate until a special master can be appointed to separate out any materials covered by executive privilege and return them to him.

Federal investigators are probing whether Trump illegally kept the records at Mar-a-Lago, contending in a search warrant it used for the August 8 search that he might have violated three U.S. laws, including the U.S. Espionage Act.

The New York Times reported Monday that overall, the government has recovered more than 300 classified documents from Trump’s estate, including CIA, National Security Agency and FBI materials, although the content of the material has not been disclosed.

Trump has criticized the proceedings, and his legal filing called the August 8 FBI search a “shockingly aggressive move.”

Attorney General Merrick Garland said he had authorized the search, and a federal magistrate approved it after the FBI asserted in an affidavit that it believed a crime could have been committed.

Trump’s allies have asserted that he had a “standing order” to declassify material taken out of the Oval Office at the White House, but no paperwork has been produced confirming he did so.

Following the August 8 search, some of the biggest U.S. news organizations asked federal magistrate Bruce Reinhart in Florida to make public the FBI affidavit detailing the probable cause for conducting the search. The Justice Department opposes release of the document for fear it would jeopardize its investigation and divulge the names of cooperating witnesses.

The magistrate judge said he was considering releasing a redacted version of the affidavit but acknowledged Monday that if key portions of it were blacked out, as requested by government prosecutors, its release would be virtually meaningless. He has ordered prosecutors to present their proposed redactions by Thursday.

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Report: Rhino Poaching Down, but Population Still Decreasing

Posted on 08/23/2022 by SeeAF

Conservation groups say the rate of rhinoceros poaching in Africa has dropped significantly since a peak in 2015. 

The latest figures on the animal whose horns are coveted in traditional Chinese medicine are recorded in a report by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the NGO Traffic.

The report covers 2018 through 2021. It notes an increase in the number of rare black rhinos by just over 12 percent from 5,495 to 6,195; however, it says the number of white rhinos fell from just over 18,000 to 15,942. That’s also a change of 12 percent.

The report says overall there was a decrease, with about 22,137 rhinos, black and white, left in Africa at the end of 2021.

IUCN Rhino expert Sam Ferreira says the reason they aren’t seeing the results of a decreased poaching rate yet is that the drop needs to be sustained over a longer period.

Ferreira says he believes it wasn’t, as some experts have suggested, the COVID-19 lockdowns that made the difference, but improved policing and community involvement.

“I think that what is really important is that the arrests decreased from 493 in 2018 to 279 in 2021,” Ferreira said. “Now again, we don’t know what exactly is sitting behind these things. But it does suggest that there are interventions, critical interventions that range states and particularly managers on the ground are doing that are having some consequences on the decisions that people make to poach or not to poach rhinos.”

The IUCN Traffic report says since 2018, several education campaigns have been delivered to more than one million people.

The WWF’s global practice leader, Margaret Kinnaird, says conservationists use everything from social media to classic campaigns with posters to educate the public.

“For WWF, we’ve worked a lot with Chinese travelers in particular that are going overseas where they are visiting markets that have, for example, elephant ivory and rhino horn potentially for sale,” Kinnaird said. “The point there is to change the hearts and minds of those people who are approaching markets and thinking about taking a gift home. Or thinking about buying something for a medical cure. And just giving them alternative ideas for the sort of gift or product they would take home.”

Kinnaird says the smuggled horns go primarily to Asia and are sold through illegal markets in the Mekong region and in China, particularly in markets in Cambodia, Myanmar and Vietnam.

She says the horns are marketed from all four of the major rhino range states, the most coming from South Africa but also Kenya, Namibia and Zimbabwe. South Africa accounts for 90% of all reported poaching on the continent, mostly of white rhinos.

Kinnaird says that, while it is good news that poaching rates have dropped, more needs to be done to ensure the animal doesn’t become extinct.

“We need to improve our crime-related intelligence and make sure we’re targeting the right people, not the little people on the ground, we need to get at the big bosses, the kingpins, the organized criminals,” Kinnaird said.

The IUCN Traffic report was prepared for a U.N. convention on endangered fauna and flora taking place in Panama in November.

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Former Security Chief Claims Twitter Poses Security Risks for Users

Posted on 08/23/2022 by SeeUS

Twitter’s former head of security, who was recently fired, is alleging that the social media platform poses privacy threats for its 238 million daily users, including government agencies and officials, constituting a national security concern.

The claim was made by Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, a computer hacker who had been hired by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.

Zatko’s accusations, including alleged “extreme, egregious deficiencies” in Twitter’s practices to combat spam and hacking, are contained in a whistleblower document sent on July 6 to three U.S. government agencies, including the Department of Justice.

CNN and The Washington Post first reported details of the complaint Tuesday. A redacted version of the 84-page document was sent to the U.S. Congress.

Zatko “was fired from his senior executive role at Twitter in January 2022 for ineffective leadership and poor performance,” a Twitter spokesperson, who did not want to be identified by name, said in a statement to VOA.

“What we’ve seen so far is a false narrative about Twitter and our privacy and data security practices that is riddled with inconsistencies and inaccuracies and lacks important context. Mr. Zatko’s allegations and opportunistic timing appear designed to capture attention and inflict harm on Twitter, its customers and its shareholders. Security and privacy have long been company-wide priorities at Twitter and will continue to be,” the statement said.

Zatko alleges Twitter violated terms of a 2011 settlement with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission by falsely claiming it had a solid security plan. Zatko said he warned colleagues that in reality, the social media company’s computers were running outdated and vulnerable software and that company executives hid information from the board of directors about the lack of data protection and the actual number of security breaches.

The revelations come as Twitter finds itself in a legal battle with Tesla CEO Elon Musk, considered the world’s richest person. Musk pulled out of an agreement last month to purchase Twitter for $44 billion, accusing Twitter of hiding information about its number of automated user accounts, known as bots.

“I felt ethically bound. This is not a light step to take,” Zatko told The Washington Post about his whistleblower complaint. He declined to elaborate on its contents.

Zatko was fired in January by Dorsey’s successor, Parag Agrawal.

Under whistleblower protection laws in the United States, Zatko is entitled to legal protection against retaliation and may be eligible to receive money as a reward if his revelations lead to successful enforcement actions by government agencies.

“The Twitter whistleblower complaint raises questions about how well the company is managing security, particularly employees’ access to production systems handling user data. It also highlights the profits-before-user-privacy business model that we know has long existed at big social media platform companies and can put users in danger,” the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which defends civil liberties in the digital world, said in a statement.

Zatko’s allegations are “alarming,” according to Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Dick Durbin.

“The whistleblower’s allegations of widespread security failures at Twitter, willful misrepresentations by top executives to government agencies, and penetration of the company by foreign intelligence raise serious concerns,” the Democratic lawmaker said on Twitter.

Durbin added he will continue investigating the issue because if the claims are accurate, “they may show dangerous data privacy & security risks for Twitter users around the world.”

The top Republican on the committee concurred.

“Take a tech platform that collects massive amounts of user data, combine it with what appears to be an incredibly weak security infrastructure and infuse it with foreign state actors with an agenda, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster,” said Senator Chuck Grassley.

“The claims I’ve received from a Twitter whistleblower raise serious national security concerns as well as privacy issues, and they must be investigated further,” Grassley added in a statement supplied to VOA and other news organizations.

Zatko specifically alleges that India forced Twitter to put a government agent on the company payroll, meaning the person could have access to sensitive data about users because of the platform’s weak security infrastructure.

“By knowingly permitting an Indian government agent direct unsupervised access to the company’s systems and user data, Twitter executives violated the company’s commitments to its users,” the complaint states.

The embassy of India had no immediate response to VOA’s request for a comment regarding that allegation.

Michelle Quinn in San Francisco contributed to this report.
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2 Men Guilty of Conspiring to Kidnap Michigan Governor

Posted on 08/23/2022 by SeeUS

A jury on Tuesday convicted two men of conspiring to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in 2020, a swift victory for prosecutors in a foiled plot that was described as a rallying cry for a U.S. civil war by anti-government extremists.

Adam Fox and Barry Croft Jr. were also found guilty of conspiring to obtain a weapon of mass destruction, namely a bomb to blow up a bridge and stymie police if the kidnapping could be pulled off at Whitmer’s vacation home.

Croft, 46, a trucker from Bear, Delaware, was also convicted of another explosives charge. The jury deliberated for roughly eight hours over two days.

It was the second trial for the pair after a jury in April couldn’t reach a unanimous verdict after five days. Two other men were acquitted and two more pleaded guilty and testified for prosecutors.

The result was a big win for the U.S. Justice Department following the shocking mixed outcome last spring.

“You can’t just strap on an AR-15 and body armor and go snatch the governor,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Nils Kessler told jurors.

“But that wasn’t the defendants’ ultimate goal,” Kessler said. “They wanted to set off a second American civil war, a second American Revolution, something that they call the boogaloo. And they wanted to do it for a long time before they settled on Gov. Whitmer.”

The investigation began when Army veteran Dan Chappel joined a Michigan paramilitary group and became alarmed when he heard talk about killing police. He agreed to become an FBI informant and spent summer 2020 getting close to Fox and others, secretly recording conversations and participating in drills at “shoot houses” in Wisconsin and Michigan.

The FBI turned it into a major domestic terrorism case with two more informants and two undercover agents embedded in the group. Evidence showed the group had many gripes, particularly COVID-19 restrictions imposed by Whitmer early in the pandemic.

Fox, Croft and others, accompanied by the government operatives, traveled to northern Michigan to see Whitmer’s vacation home at night and a bridge that could be destroyed.

Defense attorneys tried to put the FBI on trial, repeatedly emphasizing through cross-examination of witnesses and during closing remarks that federal players were present at every crucial event and had entrapped the men.

Fox and Croft, they said, were “big talkers” who liked to smoke marijuana and were guilty of nothing but exercising their right to say vile things about Whitmer and the government.

“This isn’t Russia. This isn’t how our country works,” Croft attorney Joshua Blanchard told jurors. “You don’t get to suspect that someone might commit a crime because you don’t like things that they say, that you don’t like their ideologies.”

Fox attorney Christopher Gibbons said the FBI isn’t supposed to create “domestic terrorists.” He described Fox as poor and living in the basement of a Grand Rapids-area vacuum shop, which was a site for meetings with Chappel and an agent.

Whitmer, a Democrat, has blamed then-President Donald Trump for stoking mistrust and fomenting anger over coronavirus restrictions and refusing to condemn hate groups and right-wing extremists like those charged in the plot.

Over the weekend, she said she hadn’t been following the second trial but remains concerned about “violent rhetoric in this country.”

Trump recently called the kidnapping plan a “fake deal.”
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UN Agencies: Severe Hunger Sliding Toward Famine in Horn of Africa

Posted on 08/23/2022 by SeeAF

U.N. agencies warn that severe hunger is sliding toward famine-like conditions in the Horn of Africa, particularly in Somalia, as four years of consecutive drought have wiped out peoples’ ability to grow the crops they need to feed themselves.

The World Food Program reports up to 22 million people in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia are facing severe hunger. It says hunger and the death of millions of livestock have forced more than 7 million people to leave their homes in search of food, water and grazing pasture for their cattle.

The WFP warns these figures are likely to grow, and conditions will continue to deteriorate, as poor rainfall is forecast for the fifth year in a row.

The WFP regional director for East Africa, Michael Dunford, recently returned from a visit to Somalia and northern Kenya.

Speaking from the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, Dunford says he was particularly struck by the dire situation in Somalia where more than 7 million people are facing a humanitarian crisis. He says this is the worst situation he has seen in the 21 years he has been working for WFP.

“We have a real risk of famine. It has not been declared yet, but already there are over 200,000 people in famine-like conditions, catastrophic levels of food insecurity, with another 1.4 [million] on the edge. So, unless we are able to continue to advocate to raise funding, to scale up our operations, then we will have, I fear, a famine to deal with,” he said.

Dunford says the specter of the 2011 famine in Somalia, which killed 250,000 people, half of them children, looms large over this current crisis. He says WFP is scaling up to reach 8.5 million people across Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia. He says $416 million is needed to provide lifesaving aid for the rest of the year.

Malnutrition remains high across the Horn of Africa. The U.N. children’s fund reports 10 million children under the age of five are acutely malnourished. It adds that nearly 1.8 million face severe wasting, a condition that is life-threatening.

UNICEF spokesman James Elder says millions of children in the Horn of Africa are literally one disease away from catastrophe.

“When you have got these terrifyingly high levels of severe acute malnutrition in children — and that is 1.8 million of those children in that state right now in the Horn, 1.8 million when you have got those — and then you combine it with a simple outbreak in [a] disease like a cholera, like diarrhea, then you see child mortality rates rise at a petrifying speed,” he said.

Elder notes the number of people without access to safe water in the region has risen from nine million in February to 15 million now.

UNICEF has revised its emergency appeal from $119 million to nearly $250 million. This reflects the growing needs across the region.

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Angola Braces for Tight General Election

Posted on 08/23/2022 by SeeAF

Angola holds presidential and parliamentary elections Wednesday in what is expected to be the biggest challenge to the country’s longstanding one-party rule.

The ruling MPLA party, in power for nearly half a century, has been losing young supporters to the leading opposition party, UNITA.

The presidential candidates have focused mainly on economic issues, but observers are expressing concern about whether the election will be fair.

Angola’s national electoral commission has begun distributing voting material ahead of Wednesday’s polls.

The incumbent president, Joao Lorenco of the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola, MPLA, is facing a tough challenge from the opposition candidate Adalberto Costa Junior of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola, known as UNITA.

The two main political parties have promised to fight corruption, create jobs and improve the living standard of the people. Currently, half of Angola’s population lives on less than $2 per day.

Experts say economic challenges threaten the ruling party’s hope of winning the Wednesday vote.

Borges Nhamirre, a researcher for Institute for Security Studies, said the election campaign has been peaceful, with candidates focusing on solving the people’s and country’s problems.

“The electoral campaign was good, not much violence as in the past,” he said. “And also, the candidates discussed ideas about what they have to do for Angola; that is good as well. The performance of the electoral body was not that good because they failed to organize a transparent and fair election. The National Electoral Commission did not submit the voter roll to be audited, so they are going to vote, but the number of voters is not audited as mandatory by the law.”

Critics accuse the electoral commission of failing to build trust with the political class and the public ahead of the election.

Officially, there are at least 14 million people eligible to vote but some suspect the actual number to be less because the commission failed to clean the voter rolls of possible double registrations and the deceased.

UNITA fears the unverified voter register could be used to rig the vote in favor of the ruling party.

Opposition groups have also criticized the commission’s move to announce the results at the national election center in Luanda’s capital instead of at polling stations.

The head of Angola Institute of Electoral System and Democracy, Luis Jimbo, said the electoral agency must act properly on election day.

“Right now, it’s not about transparency. There have been a lot of transparent things that were supposed to be done from the beginning,” he said. “But we are demanding they must follow the law according to what the law says, to publish the results at the polling station, and the result at the national center must reflect those results. So, they are aware of this and there is pressure from all of society.”

Experts predict a tight presidential election. According to recent public opinion surveys, UNITA’s popularity among young voters has grown, something that worries the MPLA.

Nhamirre said the opposition can win the election but the ruling party may refuse to hand over power.

“In Angola, it’s very difficult to distinguish who is MPLA, the ruling party, and who is the state, so I foresee some groups within MPLA not accepting the result,” he said. “So, we might have a situation that mediation will be necessary to prevent conflict in Angola.”

Nhamirre says conflict can be avoided if the police remain peaceful and refrain from violence in the event of any post-election protests.

The MPLA has been in power since Angola won independence from Portugal in 1975.
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