Month: September 2022

Spanish Charity Rescues 372 in Central Mediterranean; 1 Dead

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The Spanish charity Open Arms has rescued 372 people seeking to cross the central Mediterranean to Europe in unseaworthy smugglers’ boats and recovered the corpse of a man who had been shot by smugglers, officials said Sunday.

The rescue ship Open Arms Uno remained at sea and is seeking a safe port for the rescued people, including some who need medical attention and many who are suffering from dehydration, said Laura Lanuza, an Open Arms representative. She said they have made at least two requests for a safe port in Malta.

In all, the ship performed three rescues in 24 hours. In the largest rescue, the Open Arms picked up 294 people, mostly Egyptians, from an overcrowded barge in waters south of Malta during a nighttime operation that spanned nearly five hours before dawn Sunday. Those rescued said they had been at sea for four days.

The packed boat had been spotted by volunteer pilots combing the Mediterranean for people in distress, and a photo showed its decks packed with people waving for help.

Before that, the Open Arms rescued 59 migrants from Syria, Egypt, Sudan and Eritrea, among them 10 minors, from an oil platform they had reached in international waters near Tunisia. Still in the flimsy smugglers’ boat was the wrapped body of a migrant who had been shot on shore by smugglers, Lanuza said.

“The smugglers forced the people to take the corpse with them. They spent a day or so at sea, and kept the corpse until they were saved,” Lanuza said.

On Saturday morning, the Open Arms rescued 19 people from a rubber dinghy off Libya in international waters. They included 16 people from Syria.

A photographer with The Associated Press aboard, the Open Arms, said during each rescue, desperate people flung themselves into the water, complicating the operation.
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Hurricane Fiona Makes Landfall in Southwestern Puerto Rico

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Hurricane Fiona has made landfall in Puerto Rico, knocking out power across the U.S. island territory and raising fears of “catastrophic flooding.”  
The storm is expected to dump as much as 64 centimeters over portions of the island in the Caribbean. 

 

The Miami-based National Hurricane Center said in a bulletin that Fiona came ashore along the extreme southwest coast, near Punta Tocon, at 3:20 p.m. local time Sunday. Winds were estimated at 140 kilometers per hour, making Fiona a Category 1 storm on the Saffir-Simpson scale of hurricane intensity.

LUMA [[ lumapr.com ]] energy, the operator of the island’s power grid, said on its website that “given the size and scope of the outage, as well as ongoing impacts of Hurricane Fiona, full power restoration could take several days.” The company, however, said it had “the team, the tools, and the resources in place to respond to this event.”  

Meanwhile, flights out of the main airport have been canceled and ports closed due to the weather emergency. Ahead of the storm’s arrival, some residents took shelter away from their homes. 

Earlier, U.S. President Joe Biden approved an emergency declaration for Puerto Rico, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). A statement said federal emergency aid has been made available to Puerto Rico and that FEMA is authorized to coordinate disaster relief efforts to alleviate the impact of the emergency. 

Fiona’s arrival comes five years after Hurricane Maria battered Puerto Rico as a powerful storm. Maria was the strongest hurricane to hit the island in nearly 90 years when it came ashore in September 2017. 

Weather forecasters also say Fiona is moving just west of Puerto Rico toward the Dominican Republic, where hurricane warnings and watches are in effect. Forecasters are also warning of catastrophic flooding and mudslides there. 
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New Model to Enlist Regular Americans to Resettle Refugees

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When nearly 80,000 Afghans arrived in the United States, refugee resettlement agencies quickly became overwhelmed, still scrambling to rehire staff and reopen offices after being gutted as the Trump administration dropped refugee admissions to a record low.

So, the U.S. State Department, working with humanitarian organizations, turned to ordinary Americans to fill the gap. Neighbors, co-workers, faith groups and friends banded together in “sponsor circles” to help Afghans get settled in their communities.

They raised money and found the newcomers homes to rent, enrolled their children in schools, taught them how to open bank accounts and located the nearest mosques and stores selling halal meat.

Since the U.S. military’s withdrawal from Kabul last year, the Sponsor Circle Program for Afghans has helped over 600 Afghans restart their lives. When Russia invaded Ukraine, a similar effort was undertaken for Ukrainians.

Now the Biden administration is preparing to turn the experiment into a private-sponsorship program for refugees admitted through the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program and is asking organizations to team up with it to launch a pilot program by the end of 2022.

The move comes amid increasing pressure on President Joe Biden, who vowed in a 2021 executive order to increase opportunities for Americans to resettle refugees and restore the U.S. as the world’s safe haven. The Trump administration decimated the refugee program, which traditionally tasks nine resettlement agencies with placing refugees in communities.

Experts say the private sponsorship model could transform the way America resettles refugees and ensure a door remains open no matter who is elected.

“I think there is a real revolution right now that is happening in terms of American communities and communities around the world that are raising their hands and saying, ‘We want to bring in refugees,’” said Sasha Chanoff, founder and CEO of RefugePoint, a Boston–based nonprofit that helped jump-start the effort.

It comes as the number of people forced to flee their homes topped 100 million this year, the first time on record, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

The pilot program will incorporate lessons learned from the Sponsor Circle Program for Afghans, which was developed as an emergency measure to accelerate the resettlement of Afghans, with many languishing on U.S. bases. But the pilot program will differ because it is intended to be “an enduring element of U.S. refugee resettlement,” a U.S. State Department representative said in an email to The Associated Press.

The pilot program will match regular Americans with refugees overseas who have already been approved for admission to the U.S., the representative said.   

Chanoff said the new model should also be in addition to the traditional U.S. government refugee program, which has admitted only about 15% of the 125,000 cap Biden set for the budget year that ends Sept. 30. The Biden administration has been slow to beef up staff and overcome the huge backlog, especially amid the COVID-19 pandemic, according to advocates.

Those numbers exclude the roughly 180,000 Afghans and Ukrainians who were mostly admitted through humanitarian parole, a temporary legal option that was intended to get them in quicker but left them with less government support.

Regular Americans helped fill that need, Afghan families say.

Under the Sponsor Circle Program for Afghans, participants underwent background checks, received training and developed a three-month plan. Each group had to raise at least $2,275 for each person who was resettled, the same allocation the U.S. government gives agencies for each refugee.

Mohammad Walizada, who fled Kabul with his family, said five days after he was connected to a sponsor circle with the Four Rivers Church in New Hampshire, his family moved into a furnished home in Epping, a town of about 7,000 residents.

Meanwhile, Afghan friends and relatives spent months on U.S. bases waiting to be placed by a resettlement agency, he said.  

He said his sponsor circle gave his family 10 months’ worth of rent and a car, and someone still checks on him, his wife and six children daily. Each circle gets a mentor who coaches them from WelcomeNST, an organization created in 2021 to help Americans resettle Afghans and now Ukrainians. The organization offers a Slack channel for circles and partners with the resettlement agency, HIAS, which connects them to caseworkers when needed.

The New Hampshire team has more than 60 members helping people like Walizada.

“I feel like I have a lot of family here now,” Walizada said.

To be sure, regular Americans have always helped resettle refugees, but not at this scale since the 1980 U.S. Refugee Act created the formal program, experts say.

A similar outpouring of goodwill happened when the Biden administration launched Uniting for Ukraine, which allows Ukrainians fleeing the war into the U.S. for two years with a private sponsor. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, an agency of the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the program, received more than 117,000 applications through August.

Hundreds of Americans have formed teams to resettle Ukrainians, including in Wyoming — the only state that has never allowed an official refugee resettlement program.

“We just wanted to be able to do something and we have such a beautiful community here,” said Darren Adwalpalker, pastor at Highland Park Community Church in Casper, who formed a group that sponsored three Ukrainians who arrived in the city of 60,000 in June.

Adwalpalker got support from humanitarian group Samaritan’s Purse.

“Without private sponsorship, this would not have been possible for a lot of these communities with tremendous resources and goodwill to do this,” said Krista Kartson, who directs its refugee programs.

With $3,000, the pastor said his group provided an apartment for six months for the one Ukrainian who stayed in Casper. Just about everything else — grocery store gift cards, furniture — was donated.

“One of the things I’ve learned is that the whole idea of a resettlement office isn’t that significant” if there are people on the ground willing to help, said Adwalpalker.

“We’ve got dentists working on their teeth. We have doctors seeing them. We have lawyers helping with their immigration paperwork.”
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Yellowstone, Surrounding Communities Still Gasping After Historic Flood

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Three months after a historic flood submerged southern Montana, Yellowstone National Park and surrounding communities are still recovering from its effects. VOA’s Natasha Mozgovaya has the story. Camera: Scott Stearns
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Ukraine Looks For War Dead in Recaptured Northeast Region  

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Ukraine on Sunday searched for its war dead in Izium and other towns in the northeastern part of the country it reclaimed from Russia in a lightning advance earlier this month.

Izium Mayor Valery Marchenko told state television that “the exhumation is under way, the graves are being dug up and all the remains are being transported to Kharkiv.

“The work will continue for another two weeks, there are many burials,” Marchenko said. “No new ones have been found yet, but the services are looking for possible burials.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Saturday that investigators had discovered new evidence of torture inflicted against some of the soldiers buried in Izium, one of more than 20 towns that Ukraine recaptured in the northeastern Kharkiv region that Russia had held for months. He said that 17 bodies were found at one site, some of which bore signs of torture.

Ukrainian officials said last week 440 bodies were discovered in woodlands near Izium, with most of the dead identified as civilians, Ukraine said the discovery proved war crimes had been committed by Russian forces. Emergency workers have been exhuming the remains.

Oleksandr Ilienkov, the chief of the prosecutor’s office for the Kharkiv region, told the Reuters news agency at the site on Friday: “One of the bodies [found] has evidence of a ligature pattern and a rope around the neck, tied hands.” Forensic examination of the bodies is continuing.

Moscow has repeatedly denied it has targeted civilians during its nearly seven-month invasion. The Kremlin has not commented publicly on the discovery of the graves.

The head of the pro-Russian administration that abandoned the Kharkiv region earlier this month accused Ukrainians of staging the atrocities at Izium. “I have not heard anything about burials,” Vitaly Ganchev told Rossiya-24 state television.

Meanwhile, as the fighting rages on, a British intelligence report said Sunday that Russia has widened its attacks on civilian infrastructure in the past week.

Five civilians were killed in Russian attacks in the Donetsk region in the last day. Ukrainian officials said that several dozen high-rise and private buildings, gas pipelines and power lines were damaged by Russian strikes in Nikopol.

The British report said, “As it faces setbacks on the front lines, Russia has likely extended the locations it is prepared to strike in an attempt to directly undermine the morale of the Ukrainian people and government.”

U.S. President Joe Biden is again warning Russian President Vladimir Putin against using weapons of mass destruction in Ukraine.

“Don’t. Don’t. Don’t. You will change the face of war unlike anything since World War II,” he said in an interview with CBS News scheduled to air Sunday night. Biden would not comment specifically on a U.S. response if Russia were to use chemical or nuclear weapons in Ukraine.

“They’ll become more of a pariah in the world than they ever have been,” he added. “And depending on the extent of what they do will determine what response would occur.”

It was not Biden’s first warning to his Russian counterpart. Biden said in March that the NATO military alliance would respond “in kind” to any use of weapons of mass destruction in Ukraine.

“We will respond if he uses it,” Biden said, referring to Putin. “The nature of the response depends on the nature of the use.”

He spoke after meeting with partners from NATO along with the Group of Seven leading industrialized economies and the European Union.

Just days into the invasion of Ukraine, Putin ordered Russia’s nuclear forces on high alert for the first time since the fall of the Soviet Union, prompting the White House to assemble a team of national security officials — the so-called Tiger Team — to study potential responses in the event Russia deployed chemical, biological or nuclear weapons against Ukraine, neighboring nations or NATO convoys of weapons and aid headed for Ukraine.

In 2000, Russia updated its military doctrine to allow the first use of nuclear weapons “in response to large-scale aggression utilizing conventional weapons in situations critical to the national security of the Russian Federation,” according to the U.S.-based Arms Control Association. The 1997 version of the doctrine had allowed the first use of nuclear arms only “in case of a threat to the existence of the Russian Federation.”

The newest version also states for the first time that Russia has the right to use nuclear weapons to respond to all “weapons of mass destruction” attacks.

In another development, The New York Times reports that Ukrainian military personnel in the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut say they believe they are fighting Russian prisoners instead of Russian soldiers.

The publication said it has analyzed a video posted online that apparently shows representatives of The Wagner Group, a private military company, promising inmates they could win their freedom if they completed a six–month, combat tour in Ukraine. The Times said, however, that the video could not be verified.

President Putin has said seizing Bakhmut is one of the main goals of its invasion of Ukraine.

Some material in this report came from Reuters.
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Funeral of Queen Elizabeth II Is Huge Security Challenge  

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The funeral of the only monarch most Britons have known involves the biggest security operation London has ever seen.

Mayor Sadiq Khan says Monday’s state funeral for Queen Elizabeth II is an “unprecedented” security challenge, with hundreds of thousands of people packing central London and a funeral guest list of 500 emperors, kings, queens, presidents, prime ministers and other leaders from around the world.

“It’s been decades since this many world leaders were in one place,” said Khan. “This is unprecedented … in relation to the various things that we’re juggling.”

“There could be bad people wanting to cause damage to individuals or to some of our world leaders,” Khan told The Associated Press. “So we are working incredibly hard — the police, the security services and many, many others — to make sure this state funeral is as successful as it can be.”

Metropolitan Police Deputy Assistant Commissioner Stuart Cundy said the “hugely complex” policing operation is the biggest in the London force’s history, surpassing the London 2012 Olympics.

More than 10,000 police officers will be on duty Monday, with London bobbies supplemented by reinforcements from all of Britain’s 43 police forces. Hundreds of volunteer marshals and members of the armed forces will also act as stewards along the processional route.

They are just the most visible part of a security operation that is being run from a high-tech control center near Lambeth Bridge, not far from Parliament.

Street drains and garbage bins are being searched and sealed. On Monday there will be police spotters on rooftops, sniffer dogs on the streets, marine officers on the River Thames and mounted police on horseback.

Flying drones over central London has been temporarily banned, and Heathrow Airport is grounding scores of flights so that aircraft noise does not disturb the funeral service.

Authorities face the challenge of keeping 500 world leaders safe, without ruffling too many diplomatic feathers. Presidents, prime ministers and royalty will gather offsite before being taken by bus to the abbey — though an exception is being made for U.S. President Joe Biden, who is expected to arrive in his armored limousine, known as The Beast.

Another challenge is the sheer size of the crowds expected to gather around Westminster Abbey and along the route the coffin will travel after the funeral, past Buckingham Palace to Hyde Park. From there it will be taken by hearse about 20 miles (32 kilometers) to Windsor, where another 2,000 police officers will be on duty.

The queen is due to be interred in St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle alongside her husband Prince Philip, who died last year aged 99.

Police are deploying more than 22 miles (36 kilometers) of barriers in central London to control the crowds, and transit bosses are preparing for jam-packed stations, buses and subway trains as 1 million people flood the ceremonial heart of London. Subways will run later than normal and train companies are adding extra services to help get people home.

While many will be mourning the queen, support for the monarchy is far from universal. Police have already drawn criticism for arresting several people who staged peaceful protests during events related to the queen’s death and the accession of King Charles III.

Cundy said it had been made clear to officers that “people have a right to protest.”

“Our response here in London will be proportionate, it will be balanced, and officers will only be taking action where it is absolutely necessary,” he said.

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Mark Rowley said the goal was to keep the event safe, “and try to do it in as unobtrusive a way as possible, because this is obviously a solemn occasion.”

Dean of Westminster David Hoyle, who will conduct the funeral service in the 900-year-old abbey, said preparations were going smoothly — despite the occasional security-related glitch.

“There was a wonderful moment when I had flower arrangers waiting in the abbey, and no flowers, because, quite properly, the police didn’t recognize what the van was and the flowers were sent back,” he said.
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Biden, World Leaders Gather in London For Funeral of Queen Elizabeth II 

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U.S. President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden are in London alongside hundreds of world leaders and thousands of ordinary people who flocked to the British capital, joining long lines to pay their final respects to the nation’s longest serving monarch, Queen Elizabeth II.

Biden, who arrived late Saturday, is among hundreds of world leaders who are gathering in Britain to attend the queen’s funeral Monday.

On Sunday, as people milled around central London, world leaders made their way to Lancaster House to deliver condolences over the queen’s death on Sept. 8 at the age of 96.

“This is a time of grief, but also a time of deep gratitude,” said Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who leads one of the 56 countries in the Commonwealth of Nations, an organization of many former British colonies now led by Elizabeth’s eldest son, King Charles III. “Australians give thanks for the life of service of Queen Elizabeth II, a life defined by commitment to family, to country, to [the] Commonwealth.”

Biden and his wife are also expected to pay their respects to Elizabeth Sunday in Westminster Hall, where her body has been lying in state since Wednesday. Members of Europe’s royal families are also expected to attend the services. The king will also host a formal state reception for dignitaries Sunday.

The British crown has extended a controversial funeral invitation to Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who is widely believed to be responsible for ordering the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. But they did not invite the leaders of Russia, Belarus, Syria, Afghanistan and Venezuela.

On Sunday, as the skies over London remained clear, thousands of people milled around Westminster, the center of the city. London police cheerfully marshalled the heaving crowds of families, veterans carrying bouquets and children holding lollipops, as the Queen’s image beamed at them from shop windows.
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Ukraine, Food Security in Spotlight During UN Leaders Week

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The annual gathering of leaders at the U.N. General Assembly is taking place this year in the shadow of Queen Elizabeth’s funeral and as the war in Ukraine heads into a possibly decisive period.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is skipping the Queen’s funeral to remain in New York to oversee an Education Summit on Monday. He will then participate in the opening of the annual debate Tuesday morning, telling reporters it would be “inconceivable” that he would miss it.

U.S. President Joe Biden as host country leader would traditionally be the second head of state to address the assembly Tuesday, but as he will be attending Elizabeth’s funeral Monday, U.S. officials say his speech will now shift to Wednesday.

Spotlight

Neither Russian President Vladimir Putin nor Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will be coming to New York, but despite this, their conflict will dominate the agenda.

“I think that Joe Biden and other Western leaders will use this as an opportunity to simply hammer home their anger with Russia over this war,” Richard Gowan, U.N. director for the International Crisis Group, told VOA.

He said Western leaders will also be seeking to shore up support from some non-Western countries they feel are trying to avoid taking sides or criticizing Russia.

U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield told reporters Friday that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine “tests the fundamental principles that the U.N. was founded on.” She urged the international community not to abandon those values.

“We must double down on our commitment to a peaceful world and hold even closer our deeply held principles of sovereignty, territorial integrity, peace and security,” she said.

“And that’s why next week is so critical. We believe this is a moment to defend the United Nations and to demonstrate to the world that it can still take the world’s most pressing global challenges on.”

On Thursday, the U.N. Security Council will hold a ministerial level meeting on the situation; it could see some heated exchanges between Russian and Western officials. There will also be a separate side event that day on accountability for war crimes committed in Ukraine.

But despite what will be many meetings and events about the conflict, even the secretary-general is not optimistic that there will be the opportunity for any ground-breaking diplomacy on the sidelines of the annual debate.

“My good offices are ready, but I have no illusions … at the present moment, the chances of a peace deal are minimal,” he told reporters Wednesday.

Food crisis

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has driven up global food, fertilizer and fuel prices, pushing fragile countries closer to the brink.

World Food Program Chief David Beasley warns that in 82 countries, as many as 345 million people are acutely food insecure, or “marching toward starvation.”

Somalia is one of the worst off.

Four failed rainy seasons have led to unprecedented drought. Eight million people could soon face famine if October’s rains fail as forecast.

“In total, 300,000 people are expected to be in IPC 5 conditions between October and December,” the Food and Agriculture Organization’s chief economist, Maximo Torero, told U.N. Security Council members Thursday.

IPC 5 is the humanitarian classification for famine.

In 2011-12 more than 250,000 Somalis died from famine. In 2016, there were fears that would be repeated, but international donors rallied to prevent the worst outcome.

Today, leaders know they need to act and do so quickly.

Somalia has sent its special envoy for drought response to New York to muster international support.

“Food is available inside the country — what we need is cash,” Abdirahman Abdishakur told VOA.

He warns that if a scaled-up humanitarian response does not happen in the next few weeks, people will die.

“The famine is real — it is happening,” he said.

On Wednesday, there will be a high-level meeting on responding to urgent needs in the Horn of Africa.

As for rising global food prices, the United States, the African Union, European Union and Spain will co-chair a food security summit Tuesday.

“It is bringing both the South as well as countries — developing countries and donor countries — together in the room to address these issues and how we move forward,” Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield said. “So that we can avoid the crisis that we are actually experiencing right now and see if we can make the situation better in the coming months.”

Improving market supply

The United Nations is counting on a package deal it has brokered with the help of Turkey and agreed by Ukraine and Russia, to put more grain on the global market and lower food prices.

The deal, signed July 22 in Istanbul, allows Ukrainian grain exports out of its Black Sea ports that Russia had blockaded. A separate agreement seeks to remove obstacles to get Russian fertilizer and food exports to world markets. Although not under Western sanctions, some shippers and insurers have been reluctant to do business with Russian companies for fear of running afoul of other sanctions targeting Moscow.

So far, more than 3 million metric tons of Ukrainian grain has gotten to markets in more than 30 countries via the deal, leading to a drop in food prices.

“Prices at the international level have gone down, but it is true that prices at the domestic level have not yet seen the decrease that we have seen in the international market,” said U.N. Conference on Trade and Development chief Rebeca Grynspan, who helped negotiate the deal.

She is also working to get more Russian fertilizer to markets, to ease prices, which she says are currently three times more than they were before the pandemic. If farmers cannot afford fertilizer, their crop yields could shrink, leading to food shortages next year.

“Fertilizer is a very important part of this deal,” Grynspan said.

Multitude of crises

While Ukraine may monopolize the spotlight during the high-level week, there is no shortage of other pressing issues, crises and conflicts for leaders to discuss.

Many will come up in bilateral meetings among top leaders. Others will get a broader setting.

Ahead of the general debate, Secretary-General Guterres is convening an education summit to address the massive disruption caused to schooling by the pandemic. The U.N. says 244 million young people worldwide are still out of school.

A new report from the U.N. children’s agency, UNICEF, estimates that only a third of 10-year-olds worldwide can read and understand a simple written story. That is half what it was pre-pandemic.

This is the first year leaders will meet again in New York in person in large numbers since the pandemic began in 2020, and while COVID-19 will not be in the spotlight, pandemic recovery will be part of economic and health discussions.

As will the climate crisis.

The U.N. chief just returned from Pakistan, where deadly floods have submerged one-third of the country.

“What is happening in Pakistan demonstrates the sheer inadequacy of the global response to the climate crisis, and the betrayal and injustice at the heart of it,” he told reporters.

He will use his platform to press for more investments for climate adaptation and mitigation for the poorest countries, which have contributed the least to climate change.
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Pastor-led Group Seeks Missing Migrants in Border Desert 

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After strapping on knee-high snake guards and bowing his head to invoke God’s protection, Oscar Andrade marched off into a remote desert at dawn on a recent Sunday to look for a Honduran migrant missing since late July.

The Tucson-based Pentecostal pastor bushwhacked for three hours in heat that rose above 38 Celsius, detouring around a mountain lion, two rattlesnakes and at least one scorpion, before taking a break to call the aunt of another missing man. Andrade believed he had found the young man’s skull the previous day.

“Much strength, my dear sister,” Andrade told her. “Sometimes we don’t understand, but there is a reason that God allowed this.”

On the fourth search for that 25-year-old man from the Mexican state of Guerrero, the pastor and his Capellanes del Desierto (Desert Chaplains) rescue and recovery group had found his ID card in a wallet 12 meters from a skull and other bones, picked clean by animals and the relentless sun.

Since March, Andrade has received more than 400 calls from families in Mexico and Central America whose relatives – sick, injured or exhausted – were left behind by smugglers in the borderlands.

Forensic experts estimate 80% of bodies in the desert are never found, identified or recovered. But those that are, added to casualties like 53 migrants trapped in an abandoned trailer in San Antonio, Texas, in June and nine migrants swept away in the Rio Grande this month, point to one of the deadliest seasons on record on the always dangerous Southwest border.

Fragile economies pummeled by the pandemic in Latin America, ruthless trafficking networks that control virtually all illegal crossings, and shifting U.S. asylum policies that affect migrants of different nationality and family status in drastically different ways all contribute to the toll – as does the Southwest’s extreme heat.

Andrade, his group, and an Associated Press journalist accompanying them on the six-hour search quickly came across evidence of distress on this popular smuggling route – abandoned backpacks and half-full water jugs, several days’ walk from the closest towns.

“To be out in the desert is more difficult than to be in a church,” said the 44-year-old pastor and father of three teens. “Our commitment is firstly with God, and with the families.”

The group didn’t find the missing 45-year-old Honduran but planned to look again; it usually takes several trips to locate remains in this desert.

It’s one of the deadliest corridors, according to aid groups and the U.S. Border Patrol, for migrants who, fearing being rejected under a pandemic provision called Title 42, try to evade authorities instead of turning themselves in right after crossing or applying for protection legally.

From staging camps guarded by cartel scouts in areas where the border has no fencing or bollard barriers, the migrants walk north for more than a week. They have to cross dozens of miles of desert mountains and dry washes before reaching major highways where smugglers’ vehicles will take them to destinations across the United States.

Faith often motivates volunteer organizations providing aid along the border. The Capellanes, who search for the missing at least once a week, pray with the grieving families and don’t charge them for the searches. They work closely with law enforcement, notifying the Border Patrol of every search and then local authorities if they find human remains, as they have nearly 50 times.

Even then, the migrant’s body still has a long journey home. It takes time for authorities to retrieve the remains, which are then subject to forensic analysis to determine the cause of death and identification.

The medical examiner office for Pima County, covering migrant deaths also in two adjacent border counties in southern Arizona, received 30 migrant bodies found in July alone, about half of them dead less than three weeks, said Mike Kreyche of Humane Borders, an aid group that maps border deaths.

That puts 2022 on track to match the last two years, when cases were almost double those of years in the last decade recorded by the office. Along the entire U.S.-Mexican border, since last fall Customs and Border Protection agents stopped migrants for crossing the border illegally more than 1.8 million times, historically an extraordinarily high number. The agency recorded 557 Southwest border deaths the previous year, the highest since it began tracking them in 1998.

Given how quickly a body decomposes in the desert, unless it’s found within a day, identification might require expensive DNA analysis, said Dr. Greg Hess, chief medical examiner for Pima County.

“The desert does a good job covering up crimes,” said Mirza Monterroso, director of the missing migrant program for the Colibri Center, a Tucson-based group that has recorded 4,000 missing migrants – 1,300 in Pima County alone – from reports from 14 countries and 43 U.S. states.

Unless there’s a lucky break, like dental records, it might take up to a year to confirm if the remains Andrade found are indeed the young Mexican man’s, Monterroso said.

His aunt, who asked the AP not to use their names because his parents haven’t been told yet of Andrade’s discovery, said she still hopes for a miracle. But otherwise, “we fought to the end to recover what little is left.”

“My nephew’s dream died at the border, but a person shouldn’t end up like this,” she said. “They left him in the desert because he had injured his feet.”

A 38-year-old father of two from Mexico City nearly died the same way last week after he developed debilitating foot blisters near the Baboquivari Peak, just 14 miles (23 kilometers) north of the border in Pima County.

Without food or water, he called 911 and was helped down the mountain by Daniel Bolin, an agent with the Border Patrol’s search, trauma and rescue team who said this was his fifth rescue this year in the same spot.

Facing almost certain expulsion to Mexico, the man, who gave his name as Leonardo, said he came to the United States after losing his business during the pandemic.

“But now I don’t think I’ll come back here. I’m too old to walk,” he said.

Asked about his future, he murmured “I don’t know” and burst into sobs.
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Book Ban Efforts Surging in 2022, US Library Association Says

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The wave of attempted book banning and restrictions continues to intensify, the American Library Association reported Friday. Numbers for 2022 already approach last year’s totals, which were the highest in decades.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” says Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom. “It’s both the number of challenges and the kinds of challenges. It used to be a parent had learned about a given book and had an issue with it. Now we see campaigns where organizations are compiling lists of books, without necessarily reading or even looking at them.”

The ALA has documented 681 challenges to books through the first eight months of this year, involving 1,651 different titles. In all of 2021, the ALA listed 729 challenges, directed at 1,579 books. Because the ALA relies on media accounts and reports from libraries, the actual number of challenges is likely far higher, the library association believes.

Friday’s announcement is timed to Banned Books Week, which begins Sunday and will be promoted around the country through table displays, posters, bookmarks and stickers and through readings, essay contests and other events highlighting contested works. According to a report issued in April, the most targeted books have included Maia Kobabe’s graphic memoir about sexual identity, “Gender Queer,” and Jonathan Evison’s “Lawn Boy,” a coming-of-age novel narrated by a young gay man.

“We’re seeing that trend continue in 2022, the criticism of books with LGBTQ subject matter,” Caldwell-Jones says, adding that books about racism such as Angie Thomas’ novel “The Hate U Give” also are frequently challenged.

Banned Books Weeks is overseen by a coalition of writing and free speech organizations, including the National Coalition Against Censorship, the Authors Guild and PEN America.

Conservative attacks against schools and libraries have proliferated nationwide over the past two years, and librarians themselves have been harassed and even driven out of their jobs. A middle school librarian in Denham Springs, Louisiana, has filed a legal complaint against a Facebook page which labeled her a “criminal and a pedophile.” Voters in a western Michigan community, Jamestown Township, backed drastic cuts in the local library over objections to “Gender Queer” and other LGBTQ books.

Audrey Wilson-Youngblood, who in June quit her job as a library media specialist in the Keller Independent School District in Texas, laments what she calls the “erosion of the credibility and competency” in how her profession is viewed. At the Boundary County Library in Bonners Ferry, Idaho, library director Kimber Glidden resigned recently after months of harassment that included the shouting of Biblical passages referring to divine punishment. The campaign began with a single complaint about “Gender Queer,” which the library didn’t even stock, and escalated to the point where Glidden feared for her safety.

“We were being accused of being pedophiles and grooming children,” she says. “People were showing up armed at library board meetings.”

The executive director of the Virginia Library Association, Lisa R. Varga, says librarians in the state have received threatening emails and have been videotaped on the job, tactics she says that “are not like anything that those who went into this career were expecting to see.” Becky Calzada, library coordinator for the Leander Independent School District in Texas, says she has friends who have left the profession and colleagues who are afraid and “feel threatened.”

“I know some worry about promoting Banned Books Week because they might be accused of trying to advance an agenda,” she says. “There’s a lot of trepidation.”
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Eritrea Calls Up Armed Forces After Ethiopia Clashes

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Eritrean authorities have called on their armed forces to mobilize in response to the renewed fighting in northern Ethiopia, the British and Canadian governments said.

The return to combat last month shattered a March truce and dashed hopes of peacefully resolving the nearly two-year war between Ethiopian authorities and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).

Tigrayan authorities have since expressed readiness to hold talks led by the African Union, but the Ethiopian government has not responded publicly to the overtures, other than saying it remains “committed” to the AU-led peace process.

Both sides have accused the other of firing first, and fighting has spread from around southern Tigray to other fronts farther north and west, while also drawing in Eritrean troops who backed Ethiopian forces during the early phase of the war.

In travel advisories published late Friday, the Canadian and British governments warned their nationals in Eritrea to limit their movements following the mobilization call. 

“Local authorities have issued a general call for mobilization of armed forces in response to the conflict in northern Ethiopia,” the Canadian government said.

“Additional security measures could be imposed on short notice across the country,” it said.

The British advisory said the Eritrean announcement was made on Wednesday.

“You should be extra vigilant at this time,” the advisory said.

Eritrea, which is one of the world’s most closed states, has not commented on the reports.

Since the latest clashes broke out, Tigray has been bombed several times, with an official at Ayder Referral Hospital, the region’s biggest, saying that 16 people had died in air strikes.

AFP was not able to independently verify the claims. Access to northern Ethiopia is severely restricted and Tigray has been under a communications blackout for more than a year.

The TPLF ruled Ethiopia for decades before Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed took office in 2018.

Abiy’s government has declared the TPLF a terrorist group and considers its claim to authority in Tigray illegitimate.

Abiy — a Nobel Peace Prize laureate — sent troops into Tigray in November 2020 to topple the TPLF, in response to what he said were attacks on federal army camps.

But the TPLF recaptured most of Tigray in a surprise comeback in June 2021.

It then expanded into the neighboring regions of Afar and Amhara before the fighting reached a stalemate.
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Biden in London for Queen’s Funeral

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U.S. President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden are in London where they will attend Queen Elizabeth’s funeral. 

Biden, who arrived late Saturday, is among hundreds of world leaders who are gathering in Britain to attend the queen’s funeral Monday. 

Biden and his wife are expected to pay their respects to Elizabeth Sunday in Westminster Hall, where her body had been lying in state since Wednesday. 

Members of Europe’s royal families are also expected to attend Elizabeth’s services. 

King Charles III, Elizabeth’s son, is holding a formal state reception Sunday for the many dignitaries who have gathered in England’s capital.

The British crown has extended a controversial funeral invitation to Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, who is widely believed to be responsible for ordering the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.  
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Belgrade’s EuroPride March Goes on Despite Far-Right Protests, Arrests

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Serbian police arrested more than 30 people as thousands of LGBTQ activists turned out for Belgrade’s EuroPride march Saturday, despite a government ban.

The event had been intended as the cornerstone event of the EuroPride gathering. But the interior ministry banned the march earlier this week, citing security concerns after right wing groups threatened to hold protests.

And although the march took place without major incident, local media said clashes broke out between counterdemonstrators and police.

The interior ministry had also barred any counter protests, but some far-right groups vowed to rally and gather in front of churches.

Interior Minister Aleksandar Vulin had warned in a statement that “we will not tolerate any violence in Belgrade streets, any more than illegal marches.”

Model and activist Yasmin Benoit said she had been to many gay pride parades “but this one is slightly more stressful than the others.”

“I’m from the U.K. where everyone is more supportive and it’s more commercial,” she told AFP.

“But here, this is really what pride should be,” she added, referring to the societal struggle at the origins of the movement.

“We are fighting for the future of this country,” said Luka, a Serbian taking part in Saturday’s event.

 

Gay marriage not recognized

Despite the official ban, demonstrators were able to march in the rain a few hundred meters between the Constitutional Court to a nearby park, a much shorter route than organizers had originally planned.

Gay marriage is not legally recognized in Serbia, where homophobia remains deep-seated despite some progress over the years in reducing discrimination.

The Balkan country, a candidate for EU membership, had been under intense international pressure to allow the march.

More than 20 embassies, including the U.S., France and Britain, had issued a joint statement urging the authorities to lift the ban.

There was a heavy police presence around the pride rally, with officers pushing back the small groups of counterdemonstrators waving crosses and religious insignia.

The interior ministry said 31 people were arrested.

The authorities gave no details on those detained, but AFP journalists saw several counterdemonstrators being taken away.

According to N1 television, there were scuffles between police and the counterdemonstrators, some of whom threw smoke bombs at the officers and damaged several vehicles.

The U.S. embassy had urged its citizens to avoid the event “because of the potential for unruly crowds, violence, as well as possible fines.”

‘Implicit sanctioning of bigotry’

Human rights groups and the European Union called on the Serbian government to rescind the ban.

“The Serbian government’s decision to cancel EuroPride is a shameful surrender to, and implicit sanctioning of, bigotry and threats of unlawful violence,” said Graeme Reid, director of the LGBT rights program at Human Rights Watch.

At least 15 members of the European Parliament announced that they would join the pride march in a show of solidarity.

Belgrade pride marches in 2001 and again in 2010 were marred by violence and rioting after far-right groups targeted the event.

Since 2014, the parade has been organized regularly without any notable unrest but was protected with a large law enforcement presence.

This year’s ban came just days after thousands took part in an anti-pride demonstration in Belgrade, with biker gangs, Orthodox priests and far-right nationalists demanding the EuroPride rally be scrapped.

“I am here to preserve Serbian traditions, faith and culture, which are being destroyed by sodomites,” Andrej Bakic, 36, a counter-protester in a group surrounded by riot police told AFP Saturday.
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William, Harry Stand Vigil with Cousins at Queen’s Coffin

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Princes William and Harry stood vigil at either end of the coffin of their grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, on Saturday, heads bowed as a line of mourners streamed past the late monarch’s lying-in-state.

The two sons of King Charles, attired in military uniforms, stood in silence at a 15-minute vigil in the vast Westminster Hall where the coffin has been lying since Wednesday, draped in the Royal Standard and with the bejeweled Imperial State Crown on top.

William and Harry were joined by their six cousins, including Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, who earlier paid tribute to Britain’s longest-reigning monarch. The queen died on September 8 at her summer estate in the Scottish Highlands at age 96.

“You were our matriarch, our guide, our loving hand on our backs leading us through this world,” said the sisters, daughters of Prince Andrew. “You taught us so much and we will cherish those lessons and memories forever. For now, dear grannie, all we want to say is thank you.”

Hundreds of thousands of people have lined up for long hours in a queue stretching along the River Thames, waiting to file past the coffin and honor the queen, a testimony to the affection in which she was held.

The other cousins at Saturday’s vigil were Peter Phillips and Zara Tindall, the children of Princess Anne, and Louise and James, the children of Prince Edward.

Earlier on Saturday, Charles and his heir William shook hands and greeted well-wishers in the queue, asking people how long they had been there and whether they were warm enough.

To cheers of “hip, hip, hurrah” and shouts of “God save the King,” Charles and William spoke to mourners near Lambeth Bridge, as they neared the end of the massive line to see the lying-in-state in the historic Westminster Hall.

On Friday night, Charles joined his three siblings, Princess Anne and Princes Andrew and Edward, in a silent vigil at the coffin.

“She wouldn’t believe all this, she really wouldn’t,” William was heard telling one man of the late queen, who came to the throne in 1952. “It’s amazing.”

One woman told Charles it had been “worth the wait” and others wished him well and cheered as he moved down the line.

Ahead of the state funeral at Westminster Abbey on Monday, world leaders also start arriving in the British capital.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese were among the dignitaries to pay their respects on Saturday while New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was seen curtsying to the coffin on Friday.

U.S. President Joe Biden was expected to go to the lying-in-state on Sunday.

On Saturday, Charles met leaders of the 14 countries where he is head of state such as Canada, Australia, and Jamaica after meeting the governors-general — the people who represent the monarch in overseas realms — at Buckingham Palace.

 

Security operation

London’s police force has described the funeral as the biggest security operation it has ever undertaken as prime ministers, presidents and royals come together and huge crowds throng the streets. The king visited police headquarters on Saturday to thank emergency services workers involved in the planning.

Underscoring the risks, police said one man had been detained and arrested after a witness told Sky News he “ran up to the queen’s coffin.” Footage showed a man being pinned to the ground by police officers and taken away.

By 5 p.m. local time, Britain’s culture ministry said the waiting time to reach the lying-in-state was up to 11 hours.

Inside the silent hall, some mourners wept, many were tearful while current soldiers and veterans saluted their former commander-in-chief. Others in the line fell to their knees.

New friendships, acts of kindness and the struggles of standing in line for hours, sometimes in the cold overnight, have come to define what has become known as just “the queue.”

The state funeral, to be attended by nearly 100 presidents and heads of government, is likely to be one of the biggest ceremonial events ever held in Britain.

Soldiers took part in early morning rehearsals in Windsor, where the queen’s coffin will be taken after the funeral at Westminster Abbey. Marching bands playing music and Grenadier Guards, who wear a tall bearskin hat on ceremonial duties, were seen marching down the High Street in preparation.

Liz Kelshall from Leatherhead, southern England, said she had brought her two children to Windsor so they would never forget the queen.

“It’s really important for them to grow up and remember this and it’s important for us as a family to come and show some respect for an amazing woman,” she said.
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Pelosi in Armenia Days After Clashes, Says US Committed to Peace

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U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi arrived Saturday in Armenia, days after the Caucasus country’s deadly border clashes with Azerbaijan jeopardized Western efforts to broker lasting peace between the arch foes.

The worst clashes since Yerevan’s 2020 war with Baku erupted on Tuesday, claiming the lives of 215 people, before hostilities ended on Thursday after international mediation.

Pelosi said her visit “is a powerful symbol of the United States firm commitment to a peaceful, prosperous and democratic Armenia, and a stable and secure Caucasus region.”

She is the highest-ranking U.S. official to travel to Armenia since the tiny, impoverished nation’s 1991 independence from the Soviet Union.

The three-day visit “will play a big role in ensuring our security,” Armenian Parliament Speaker Alen Simonyan told journalists ahead of her arrival.

Armenia and Azerbaijan have fought two wars, in 2020 and in the 1990s, over the contested Nagorno-Karabakh region, Azerbaijan’s Armenian-populated enclave.

Together with France and Russia, the U.S. co-chairs the Minsk Group of mediators, which had led decades-long peace talks between Baku and Yerevan under the aegis of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).

“We will convey the strong and ongoing support of the United States, as an OSCE Minsk Chair and longtime friend to Armenia, for a lasting settlement to the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh,” Pelosi said in a statement.

The latest escalation came as Armenia’s closest ally, Moscow, is distracted by its nearly seven-month war in Ukraine.

Analysts have said the hostilities have largely undone Western efforts to bring Baku and Yerevan closer to a peace deal.

With Moscow increasingly isolated on the world stage following its February invasion of Ukraine, the European Union had taken a lead role in mediating the Armenia-Azerbaijan normalization process.

The six weeks of fighting in 2020 claimed the lives of more than 6,500 troops from both sides and ended with a Russian-brokered cease-fire.

Under the deal, Armenia ceded swaths of territory it had controlled for decades, and Moscow deployed about 2,000 Russian peacekeepers to oversee the fragile truce.

Ethnic Armenian separatists in Nagorno-Karabakh broke away from Azerbaijan when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. The ensuing conflict claimed around 30,000 lives.
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Biden Warns Putin on Use of WMDs: ‘Don’t, Don’t, Don’t’

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President Joe Biden again is warning Russian President Vladimir Putin against using weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) in Ukraine.

“Don’t. Don’t. Don’t. You will change the face of war unlike anything since World War II,” he said in an interview with CBS News scheduled to air Sunday night. 

Biden would not comment specifically on a U.S. response if Russia were to use chemical or nuclear weapons in Ukraine.

“They’ll become more of a pariah in the world than they ever have been,” he added.  “And depending on the extent of what they do will determine what response would occur.”   

It was not Biden’s first warning to Putin: Following a meeting with European Union and G-7 partners and NATO allies in March, Biden said NATO would respond “in kind” to any use of WMDs in Ukraine.

“We will respond if he uses it,” Biden said, referring to Putin. “The nature of the response depends on the nature of the use.”

A month later, Biden chastised Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov as “irresponsible” after Lavrov told Russian state television that the risks of nuclear war were “considerable.”

“No one should be making idle comments about the use of nuclear weapons or the possibility of the need to use them,” Biden said.

Just days into his invasion of Ukraine, Putin ordered Russia’s nuclear forces on high alert for the first time since the fall of the former Soviet Union, prompting the White House to assemble a team of national security officials — the so-called Tiger Team — to study potential responses in the event Russia deployed chemical, biological or nuclear weapons against Ukraine, neighboring nations or NATO convoys of weapons and aid headed for Ukraine.

In 2000, Russia updated its military doctrine to allow the first use of nuclear weapons in “in response to large-scale aggression utilizing conventional weapons in situations critical to the national security of the Russian Federation,” according to the U.S.-based Arms Control Association.  The 1997 version of the doctrine had allowed the first use of nuclear arms only “in case of a threat to the existence of the Russian Federation.”  

The newest version also states for the first time that Russia has the right to use nuclear weapons to respond to all “weapons of mass destruction” attacks. 

Meanwhile, Russia’s targeting of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant has renewed nuclear anxiety across Europe. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi reported Saturday that the plant, Europe’s largest, is once again receiving electricity from the national grid.

Grossi cautioned that the general situation for the plant, however, remains precarious, as long as Russian forces are shelling in the wider region around Zaporizhzhia.  

The nuclear plant remains under Russian control, the IAEA said, but Ukrainians are handling its operations.
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Somalia President Sees Progress in Fight Against Al-Shabab, Seeks More US Support

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Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud has said that his country is seeing gains in the fight against the Somali-based, al-Qaida-affiliated Islamist militant group al-Shabab, following recent clashes in central Somalia between the Somali National Army supported by pro-government local clan militias and al-Shabab.

“We see a strong momentum against al-Shabab and want to sustain it to defeat a group that has proven to be remorseless and [like the] mafia, which has attained economic autonomy through intimidation and the murder of innocent people,” Mohamud said.  

In a speech to the Somali diaspora community in the Washington area Friday, he said his government is organizing a strong military front in the southern Jubaland state of Somalia.  

“There is ongoing preparation to liberate al-Shabab from middle-Juba region in southern Somalia, the only region in the country where the militants control its entirety,” Mohamud sad.  

He said his government’s new approach is being encouraged by the resistance of local clan militia, who keep fighting al-Shabab in the central Somali regions of Hiran and Galguduud.

“Once they could not tolerate the intimidation, the extortion and the abduction of their children, now some local clans say they have started fighting al-Shabab. Therefore, we want to support our people to live in peace and dignity,” Mohamud said.  

On Saturday, hours after the president’s speech in the U.S. state of Virginia, the Somali National Army said it killed 43 militants in central Somalia.  

“The Somali National Army launched an attack on the al-Shabab base in Aborey village and took over the militant base, killing 43 militants,” Brigadier General Mohamed Tahlil Bihi, infantry commander of the Somali National Army told government radio.  

Aborey is 25 km east of Bulaburte, a town 220 km north of Mogadishu.   

On Thursday, speaking to the government news agency (SONNA), Somali army chief General Odowaa Yusuf Rageh said the SNA killed at least 18 al-Shabab militants in an operation in the Buq Aqable area in the same region, located about 90 km south of Beledweyne city, the provincial capital of the Hiran region.

Government military officials say that in the recent military campaign against al-Shabab army troops, backed by armed locals, have killed more than 100 al-Shabab fighters and “liberated” 20 villages from the al-Qaida-affiliated group.   

Mohamud’s Washington visit   

In an exclusive interview with VOA Somali, President Mohamud said he discussed new government strategies to fight al-Shabab with top U.S government officials, who he said pledged “full support for his government.”  

At the Pentagon, President Mohamud met Thursday with U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, at the White House with the president’s National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Homeland Security Adviser Dr. Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, and at the State Department with U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland.

He said his trip to Washington has been mainly focusing on two things, security and the drought, which is feared to cause famine in parts of Somalia from October through December.    

“All the existing policies and strategies against the militant group seem to have fallen short of our expectations and the expectations of our partners because the militants keep changing tactics to survive. We came up with a new strategy that is based on two things, [an] ideological war front and cutting al-Shabab’s economic lifeline,” Mohamud said.  

According to a statement from the U.S. Department of Defense, Austin and Mohamud “exchanged views on the security outlook for the Horn of Africa in light of climate shocks, humanitarian issues, conflict, and the threat of violent extremism.”   

A White House statement said, “Mr. Sullivan and President Hassan Sheikh discussed the importance of political reconciliation in Somalia, particularly the renewed coordination between the federal government of Somalia and federal member states to improve governance, law enforcement, service delivery and security for the Somali people.”  

“Great to see Hassan Sheikh Mohamud with Under Secretary of State in Washington to discuss shared stabilization, good governance and humanitarian goals. The United States is committed to helping the people of Somalia counter terrorism, prevent famine, and advance democracy, and save lives,” Blinken said in a Twitter post. 

“It was a pleasure to meet with secretary Blinken and Under Secretary Nuland in Washington. We agreed on the importance of combating terrorism, promoting good governance and responding to [the] drought in Somalia. The U.S. is a strategic partner in Somalia’s sustainable development and progress.” Mohamud said in a Twitter post.  

Mohamud also met with The World Bank Group President David Malpass and International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva. 

“Mr. Malpass has reaffirmed to President Mohamud the World Bank Group’s (WBG) support to Somalia’s response to ongoing drought and humanitarian crises through reprogramming and additional financing and utilizing resources from IDA (International Development Association) Crisis Response Window,” the World Bank said.  

“I have discussed with all the U.S. government officials and the leaders of the other Washington-based institutions I have met, including senior officials from the World Bank and IMF on security, economic recovery and reform, as well as the ongoing drought situation in Somalia,” Mohamud told VOA. 

Mohamud also served as Somalia’s president between 2012 and 2017 and is the first Somali leader to win a second term in office.  After his victory in May he promised to transform the troubled Horn of Africa nation into “a peaceful country that is at peace within and with the world.”
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Somalia Says Its Military Killed at Least 30 Al-Shabab Militants

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Somalia’s Information Ministry said Saturday the country’s military has targeted al-Shabab militants in the Hiran region.

The Somali National Army has killed more than 30 al-Shabab militants in an operation conducted on the outskirts of the town of Bulo-burde in the central region of Hiran.

That’s according to a statement Saturday by Somalia’s Information Ministry, which says the operation was conducted overnight after the army received intelligence.

The government says five of its soldiers were injured during the operation.

Hiran has seen increased military activity this month as the army claimed it had gained significant ground from the al-Qaida-affiliated militant group al-Shabab.

The group has not commented on the Somali government’s claim, but it said that an airstrike in the same region killed a traditional leader and other civilians. The information could not be independently confirmed.

Somalia’s Internal Security Ministry also said the country’s national intelligence and security agency, NISA, has arrested 10 al-Shabab operatives in the capital, Mogadishu.

Ministry spokesman Abdikamil Moalim Shukri said at a news conference in Mogadishu that NISA also seized three houses that al-Shabab was using.

He said special forces of the national intelligence and security agency, based on intelligence information, have destroyed an al-Shabab network that was behind killings and insecurity in Mogadishu. The intelligence forces have arrested 10 al-Shabab conspirators, including militants who were prepared to kill and doctors who were treating al-Shabab members, he added.

The Somali government recently announced its forces “liberated” 21 villages from al-Shabab in a fresh offensive in parts of the country.

The government also said it killed about 100 al-Shabab militants.

Somalia’s new president, Hassan Sheikh Mahamud, who assumed office earlier this year, announced that his administration will wage a “total war” against the Islamist al-Shabab network after the group carried out a deadly hotel siege in Mogadishu that killed more than 20 people and wounded at least 100 others.
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Senegal’s President Appoints Former Economy Minister as PM

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Senegalese President Macky Sall reinstated the post of prime minister Saturday, appointing a former economy minister to the job two months after a tense legislative election in which Sall’s ruling coalition lost its comfortable majority.

Amadou Ba, a 61-year-old taxation specialist who has also served as foreign minister, was named as the West African country’s prime minister, a statement from the presidency said.  

Ba’s appointment reestablishes the position of prime minister in the West African country following its abolition in April 2019.

“The major priorities that the president has outlined include improving household purchasing power, taming inflation, security, housing, vocational training, employment and entrepreneurship,” Ba said on national television after a meeting with Sall Saturday.

The full government is expected to be appointed later Saturday.

Earlier this week, Senegal’s security forces were called to secure a voting process in parliament and hold back rowdy opposition members of parliament who tried to disrupt the election of a new president of the national assembly. The assembly was convening for the first time since July’s election.

Sall came to power in 2012 after unseating longtime President Abdoulaye Wade. He was elected again in 2019 on promises of large-scale infrastructure expansion as the country is set to start producing oil and natural gas next year.

But much of his second term has been marked by economic hardship – partly stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic and global fallout linked to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Political tensions have boiled over after Sall’s refusal to publicly rule out a third-term presidential bid in 2024.  

Violent protests erupted in Senegal last year when Ousmane Sonko, Sall’s main opponent — who came in third in the 2019 presidential election — was arrested on rape charges which he denied.   

Sonko was released but many protesters saw his arrest as an attempt by Sall to remove a prominent rival and clear his path for a third term bid.
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Cyprus Hails US Decision to Fully Lift Weapons Embargo

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Cyprus on Saturday hailed the full lifting of a U.S. arms embargo on the ethnically divided island nation as a milestone reaffirming increasingly tighter bilateral bonds that serve to bolster stability in the turbulent east Mediterranean region.

President Nicos Anastasiades tweeted his gratitude to the chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, New Jersey Democrat Robert Menendez, for helping to lift the embargo.

Turkey, which maintains more than 35,000 troops in the northern third of Cyprus, condemned the decision. Turkey’s Foreign Ministry urged the U.S. to reconsider, warning that the move would harm efforts for a Cyprus peace deal, lead to an arms race on the island and undermine regional stability.

U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price said in in a statement that Secretary of State Antony Blinken determined Cyprus met the conditions to allow for “exports, re-exports and transfers of defense articles … for the fiscal year 2023.”

The U.S. will assess annually whether Cyprus complies with conditions for the embargo lift, including implementing anti-money laundering regulations and denying Russian military vessels access to ports for refueling and servicing.

Cyprus barred Russian warships from using its ports in early March following the invasion of Ukraine.

The conditions are enshrined in the Eastern Mediterranean Security and Energy Partnership Act that the U.S. Congress passed in 2019. The law underscores U.S. support for closer ties among Greece, Cyprus and Israel based on recently discovered offshore gas deposits.

The U.S. enacted the embargo in 1987 to prevent a potential arms race from harming peace talks with the Mediterranean island nation’s breakaway Turkish Cypriots. Cyprus was split in 1974 when Turkey invaded following a coup aimed at union with Greece.

Barred access to U.S. weapons, Cyprus turned to Russia to procure Mi-35 attack helicopters, T-80 tanks and Tor-M1 anti-aircraft missile systems.
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Puerto Rico Under Hurricane Watch as Tropical Storm Fiona Approaches

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Tropical Storm Fiona threatened to dump up to 41 centimeters (16 inches) of rain in parts of Puerto Rico on Saturday, as forecasters placed the U.S. territory under a hurricane watch and people braced for potential landslides, severe flooding and power outages.

The storm was located 215 kilometers (135 miles) southeast of St. Croix Saturday morning with maximum sustained winds of 95 kph. It was moving west at 20 kph on a path forecast to pass near Puerto Rico. Forecasters warned Fiona could be near hurricane strength when it passes through Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic.

Fiona is expected to swipe past the Dominican Republic on Sunday as a potential hurricane, and Haiti and the Turks and Caicos Islands on Monday and Tuesday with the threat of extreme rain.

Forecasters issued a hurricane watch for the southern coast of the Dominican Republic from Cabo Engaño westward to Cabo Caucedo and for the northern coast from Cabo Engano westward to Puerto Plata.

In Puerto Rico, authorities opened shelters and closed public beaches, theaters and museums as they urged people to remain indoors.

“It’s time to activate your emergency plan and contact and help your relatives, especially elderly adults who live alone,” said Dr. Gloria Amador, who runs a nonprofit health organization in central Puerto Rico.

At least one cruise ship visit and several flights to the island were canceled, while authorities in the eastern Caribbean islands canceled school and prohibited people from practicing aquatic sports as Fiona battered the region.

In the French Caribbean Island of Guadeloupe, authorities said they recorded wind gusts of up to 120 kph, which would be considered a Category 1 hurricane. They also said 23 centimeters of rain fell in three hours in the Gros Morne area.

Fiona, which is the Atlantic hurricane season’s sixth named storm, was predicted to bring 13 to 25 centimeters of rain in eastern and southern Puerto Rico, with as much as 16 inches (41 centimeters) in isolated spots. Rains of 4 to 8 inches (10 to 20 centimeters) were forecast for the Dominican Republic, with up to 12 inches (30 centimeters) in places. Life-threatening surf also was possible from Fiona’s winds, forecasters said.

Meanwhile, Tropical Storm Lester in the eastern Pacific was on a projected path that could bring landfall near the Acapulco area on Mexico’s southwestern coast Saturday night.

Lester was expected to remain a tropical storm until hitting the Mexican coast. Forecasters warned of potential dangers from heavy rains.

The storm had maximum sustained winds of 75 kph late Friday. It was centered 180 kilometers southeast of Acapulco and moving northwest at 17 kph.

A tropical storm warning was up from Puerto Escondido to Zihuatanejo. The hurricane center said Lester could drop from 3 to 6 inches (8 to 15 centimeters) of rain on the coasts of upper Guerrero state and Michoacan state, with isolated areas getting 30 centimeters.
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Thousands Wait in Cold to Pay Respects to Queen Elizabeth II

Posted on by SeeEU

Thousands of people spent London’s coldest night in months huddled in line to view the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II, and authorities warned Saturday that arriving mourners face a 16-hour wait.

Police arrested a man after what the force described as a “disturbance” Friday night in Parliament’s Westminster Hall, where the queen’s coffin is lying in state, draped in her Royal Standard and capped with a diamond-studded crown.

Parliamentary authorities said someone got out of the queue and tried to approach the coffin on its platform. The Metropolitan Police force said a man was detained for a suspected public-order offense.

The tide of people wanting to say goodbye to the queen has grown steadily since the public was first admitted to the hall on Wednesday. On Friday, authorities temporary halted letting more visitors join the end of the line, which snakes around Southwark Park some 5 miles (8 kilometers) from Parliament.

Overnight, volunteers distributed blankets and cups of tea to people in line as the temperature fell to 6 degrees Celsius (43 degrees Fahrenheit). Despite the weather, mourners described the warmth of a shared experience.

“It was cold overnight, but we had wonderful companions, met new friends. The camaraderie was wonderful,” Chris Harman of London said. “It was worth it. I would do it again and again and again. I would walk to the end of the earth for my queen.”

People had myriad reasons for coming, from affection for the queen to a desire to be part of a historic moment. Simon Hopkins, who traveled from his home in central England, likened it to “a pilgrimage.”

“(It) is a bit strange, because that kind of goes against my grain,” he said. “I’ve been kind of drawn into it.”

Honoring their patience, King Charles III and Prince William made an unannounced visit to greet people waiting to file past Elizabeth’s coffin. The two senior royals shook hands and thanked the mourners in the miles-long queue near Lambeth Bridge.

Charles has made several impromptu walkabouts since he became king on Sept. 8, in an attempt to meet as many of his subjects as possible.

Members of the public kept silently streaming into Westminster Hall even as the queen’s four children — Charles, Princess Anne, Prince Andrew and Prince Edward — stood vigil around the flag-draped coffin for 15 minutes on Friday evening. A baby’s cry was the only sound.

Before the vigil, Edward said the royal family was “overwhelmed by the tide of emotion that has engulfed us and the sheer number of people who have gone out of their way to express their own love, admiration and respect (for) our dear mama.”

All eight of Queen Elizabeth II’s grandchildren are due to stand vigil beside her coffin on Saturday. Charles’ sons, Prince William and Prince Harry, will attend along with Princess Anne’s children, Zara Tindall and Peter Philips; Prince Andrew’s daughters, Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie; and the two children of Prince Edward – Lady Louise Windsor and James, Viscount Severn.

William, who after his grandmother’s death is now the heir to the throne, will stand at the head of the coffin and Harry at the foot. Both princes, who are military veterans, will be in uniform.

Most senior royals hold honorary military roles and have worn uniforms to commemorate the queen. Harry, who served in Afghanistan as a British army officer, wore civilian clothes during the procession of the queen’s coffin from Buckingham Palace because he is no longer a working member of the royal family. He and his wife Meghan quit royal duties and moved to the United States in 2020.

The king, however, has requested that both William and Harry wear their military uniforms at the Westminster Hall vigil.

People queuing to see the queen have been of all ages and come from all walks of life. Many bowed before the coffin or made a sign of the cross. Several veterans, their medals shining in the spotlights, offered sharp salutes. Some people wept. Others blew kisses. Many hugged one another as they stepped away, proud to have spent hours in line to offer a tribute, even if it lasted only a few moments.

On Friday, the waiting time swelled to as long as 24 hours. The mourners included former England soccer captain David Beckham, who lined up for almost 12 hours to pay his respects. Wearing a white shirt and black tie, he bowed briefly to the coffin before moving out of Westminster Hall.

“We have been lucky as a nation to have had someone who has led us the way her majesty has led us, for the amount of time, with kindness, with caring and always reassurance,” Beckham told reporters afterwards.

The lying-in-state is due to continue until Monday morning, when the queen’s coffin will be borne to nearby Westminster Abbey for a state funeral, the finale to 10 days of national mourning for Britain’s longest-reigning monarch. Elizabeth, 96, died at her Balmoral Estate in Scotland on Sept. 8 after 70 years on the throne.

Hundreds of heads of state, royals and political leaders from around the world are flying to London to attend the funeral, including U.S. President Joe Biden and Japanese Emperor Naruhito and Empress Masako. Charles is set to hold audiences Saturday with incoming prime ministers, governor generals of the realms and military leaders.

After the service at the abbey, the late queen’s coffin will be transported through the historic heart of London on a horse-drawn gun carriage. It will then be taken in a hearse to Windsor, where the queen will be interred alongside her late husband, Prince Philip, who died last year.

Hundreds of troops from the British army, air force and navy took part in an early-morning rehearsal on Saturday for the final procession. As troops lined The Long Walk, a picturesque path leading to Windsor Castle, the thumping of drums echoed into the night as marching bands walked ahead of a hearse.

London police said the funeral will be the largest single policing event the force has ever handled, surpassing even the 2012 Summer Olympics and the Platinum Jubilee in June celebrating the queen’s 70-year reign.

“The range of officers, police staff and all those supporting the operation is truly immense,” said Metropolitan Police Deputy Assistant Commissioner Stuart Cundy.
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Putin Vows to Press Attack on Ukraine; Courts India, China

Posted on by SeeEU

Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed Friday to press his attack on Ukraine despite Ukraine’s latest counteroffensive and warned that Moscow could ramp up its strikes on the country’s vital infrastructure if Ukrainian forces target facilities in Russia.

Speaking to reporters Friday after attending a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Uzbekistan, Putin said the “liberation” of Ukraine’s entire eastern Donbas region remained Russia’s main military goal and that he sees no need to revise it.

“We aren’t in a rush,” the Russian leader said, adding that Moscow has only deployed volunteer soldiers to fight in Ukraine. Some hardline politicians and military bloggers have urged the Kremlin to follow Ukraine’s example and order a broad mobilization to beef up the ranks, lamenting Russia’s manpower shortage.

Russia was forced to pull back its forces from large swaths of northeastern Ukraine last week after a swift Ukrainian counteroffensive. Ukraine’s move to reclaim control of several Russian-occupied cities and villages marked the largest military setback for Moscow since its forces had to retreat from areas near the capital early in the war.

In his first comment on the Ukrainian counteroffensive, Putin said: “Let’s see how it develops and how it ends.”

He noted that Ukraine has tried to strike civilian infrastructure in Russia and “we so far have responded with restraint, but just yet.”

“If the situation develops this way, our response will be more serious,” Putin said.

“Just recently, the Russian armed forces have delivered a couple of impactful strikes,” he said in an apparent reference to Russian attacks earlier this week on power plants in northern Ukraine and a dam in the south. “Let’s consider those as warning strikes.”

He alleged, without offering specifics, that Ukraine has attempted to launch attacks “near our nuclear facilities, nuclear power plants,” adding that “we will retaliate if they fail to understand that such methods are unacceptable.”

Russia has reported numerous explosions and fires at civilian infrastructure in areas near Ukraine, as well munitions depots and other facilities. Ukraine has claimed responsibility for some of the attacks and refrained from commenting on others.

Putin also sought Friday to assuage India’s concern about the conflict in Ukraine, telling Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi that Moscow wants to see a quick end to the fighting and alleging that Ukrainian officials won’t negotiate.

“I know your stand on the conflict in Ukraine and the concerns that you have repeatedly voiced,” the Russian leader told Modi. “We will do all we can to end that as quickly as possible. Regrettably, the other side, the leadership of Ukraine, has rejected the negotiations process and stated that it wants to achieve its goals by military means, on the battlefield.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says it’s Russia that allegedly doesn’t want to negotiate in earnest. He also has insisted on the withdrawal of Russian troops from occupied areas of Ukraine as a precondition for talks.

Putin’s remarks during the talks with Modi echoed comments the Russian leader made during Thursday’s meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping when Putin thanked him for his government’s “balanced position” on the Ukraine war, while adding that he was ready to discuss China’s unspecified “concerns” about Ukraine.

Speaking to reporters Friday, Putin said he and Xi “discussed what we should do in the current conditions to efficiently counter unlawful restrictions” imposed by the West. The European Union, the United States and other Western nations have put sanctions on Russian energy due to the war in Ukraine.

Xi, in a statement released by his government, expressed support for Russia’s “core interests” but also interest in working together to “inject stability” into world affairs. China’s relations with Washington, Europe, Japan and India have been strained by disputes about technology, security, human rights and territory.

Zhang Lihua, an international relations expert at Tsinghua University, said the reference to stability “is mainly related to China-U.S. relations,” adding that “the United States has been using all means to suppress China, which forced China to seek cooperation with Russia.”

China and India have refused to join Western sanctions against Russia over its war in Ukraine while increasing their purchases of Russian oil and gas, helping Moscow offset the financial restrictions imposed by the U.S. and its allies.

Putin also met Friday with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to discuss bolstering economic cooperation and regional issues, including a July deal brokered by Turkey and the United Nations that allowed Ukrainian grain exports to resume from the country’s Black Sea ports.

Speaking at the Uzbekistan summit on Friday, Xi warned his Central Asian neighbors not to allow outsiders to destabilize them. The warning reflects Beijing’s anxiety that Western support for democracy and human rights activists is a plot to undermine Xi’s ruling Communist Party and other authoritarian governments.

“We should prevent external forces from instigating a color revolution,” Xi said in a speech to the leaders of Shanghai Cooperation Organization member nations, referring to protests that toppled unpopular regimes in the former Soviet Union and the Middle East.

Xi offered to train 2,000 police officers, to set up a regional counterterrorism training center and to “strengthen law enforcement capacity building.” He did not elaborate.

His comments echoed longtime Russian grievances about the color-coded democratic uprisings in several ex-Soviet nations that the Kremlin viewed as instigated by the U.S. and its allies.

Xi is promoting a “Global Security Initiative” announced in April following the formation of the Quad by the U.S., Japan, Australia and India in response to Beijing’s more assertive foreign policy. U.S. officials complain it echoes Russian arguments in support of Moscow’s actions in Ukraine.

Central Asia is part of China’s multibillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative to expand trade by building ports, railways and other infrastructure across an arc of dozens of countries from the South Pacific through Asia to the Middle East, Europe and Africa.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization was formed by Russia and China as a counterweight to U.S. influence. The group also includes India, Pakistan and the four ex-Soviet Central Asian nations of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

Iran is on track to receive full membership.
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VOA Interview: John Kirby

Posted on by SeeUS

John Kirby, the National Security Council’s director of strategic communications, talks with VOA White House correspondent Anita Powell ahead of a big week in global diplomacy.
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