December 2022 - Page 7 of 24

Person Calling Media Outlets With Censorship Orders Was Not Government Official, Somalia Says

Posted on 12/24/2022 by SeeAF

Somali officials are denying that a member of the presidential office made calls to several media outlets to issue directives.

VOA this week spoke with members of at least four news outlets who said they had received calls from a person who identified himself as Abdikadir Hussein Wehliye.

The caller, who also said he was from Villa Somalia, the presidential office, ordered them to submit news content to authorities before it was aired.

The Somali Journalists Syndicate said at that time that at least seven media houses had received the same call.

Among those affected was Risaala Media Corporation in the capital, Mogadishu.

Managing director Mohamed Abdiwahab told VOA that a person identifying himself as being from the presidential office had called the media outlet on December 17 and had said the newsroom needed to submit content in writing before it was aired.

Deputy Information Minister Abdirahman Yusuf Adala told VOA earlier this week via a messaging app that he was not aware of such a directive.

Order ‘from above’

But a representative of the Somali Journalists Syndicate said that a spokesperson from the presidential office, who asked not to be identified, had confirmed that a directive was made and that the “order came from above.”

Abdikadir Dige of the Presidential Communications Office in an email to VOA denied any such directive was issued from his office or elsewhere in the government.

The Somali government denied to VOA’s Somali Service that anyone named Abdikadir Hussein Wehliye had worked in the presidential office.

VOA requested a statement from the Information Ministry early Friday and did not receive a response before publishing.

Journalists who spoke with VOA earlier this week believed the order did come from the government, which had issued two other directives to media in recent months on how they should cover the militant group al-Shabab.

The government this year has warned off journalists from publishing al-Shabab content and said they should refer to the militant group only as Khawarij, which loosely translates as “those who deviate from the Islamic faith.”

The Somali government is engaged in a military campaign against al-Shabab. But journalists say the directives on covering the group will limit press freedom and could put them at risk of retaliation from the militant group.

Censorship bid suspected

Because of those orders, journalists who spoke with VOA this week said they believed this was a new order with an aim to censor the media.

Abdiwahab of Risaala said he thought the order infringed on the country’s constitution and media law, both of which provide guarantees for media freedom.

He and Somali Journalist Syndicate member Mohamed Bulbul thought the order was a further attempt to curtail their independence.

Somalia is already a difficult environment for reporters, media watchdogs say. As well as attacks and threats, journalists risk arrest.

The Associated Press on Friday reported that police in central Hirshabelle state had detained four media workers over coverage of al-Shabab attacks in rural areas.

The chief editor of Radio Hiiraanweyn, Mustaf Ali Adow, and three others were detained Thursday and the station was taken off the air, AP reported.
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Doctors Using Virtual Reality to Relieve Patients’ Pain and More

Posted on 12/23/2022 by SeeUS

Virtual reality, an immersive technology embraced by gamers, has moved into medicine, where it is used for stress relief, physical therapy, pain management and other applications. Mike O’Sullivan has more.

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Moldova Intel: Russia Could Invade Moldova

Posted on 12/23/2022 by SeeEU

Moldovan intelligence officials say Russian forces could launch a military offensive early next year in southern Ukraine in order to link Russian forces there to Russian-backed separatists in Moldova’s Transnistria region. Anna Kosstutschenko reports. Camera: Paviel Syhodolskiy . Note: Some interviewees withheld their names for security reasons.

Some of the people interviewed did not provide their last names because of security concerns.
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Massive Winter Storm Brings Rolling Blackouts, Power Outages

Posted on 12/23/2022 by SeeUS

Tens of millions of Americans endured bone-chilling temperatures, blizzard conditions, power outages and canceled holiday gatherings Friday from a winter storm that forecasters said was nearly unprecedented in its scope, exposing about 60% of the U.S. population to some sort of winter weather advisory or warning.

More than 200 million people were under an advisory or warning on Friday, the National Weather Service said. The weather service’s map “depicts one of the greatest extents of winter weather warnings and advisories ever,” forecasters said.

Power outages have left about 1.4 million homes and businesses in the dark, according to the website PowerOutage, which tracks utility reports. Utilities in Nashville, Memphis and throughout the Tennessee Valley said they were implementing rolling blackouts Friday to conserve power as the region battles an extreme cold front.

And more than 4,600 flights within, into or out of the U.S. were canceled Friday, according to the tracking site FlightAware, causing more mayhem as travelers try to make it home for the holidays.

“We’ve just got to stay positive. Anger is not going to help us at all,” said Wendell Davis, who plays basketball with a team in France and was waiting at O’Hare in Chicago on Friday after a series of flight cancellations. After his flight to Cincinnati, Ohio, was canceled Friday afternoon, Davis was considering renting a car and driving to Columbus, Ohio, beccause train service was suspended. But first, he was trying to locate his luggage.

Border-to-border ‘bomb cyclone’

The huge storm stretched from border to border. In Canada, WestJet canceled all flights Friday at Toronto Pearson International Airport, beginning at 9 a.m. And in Mexico, migrants endured unusually cold temperatures near the U.S. border as they awaited a U.S. Supreme Court decision on whether and when to lift pandemic-era restrictions that prevent many from seeking asylum.

Forecasters said a bomb cyclone — when atmospheric pressure drops very quickly in a strong storm — had developed near the Great Lakes, stirring up blizzard conditions, including heavy winds and snow.

Even though fleets of snowplows and salt trucks have been deployed, driving was hazardous and sometimes deadly. The Kansas Highway Patrol said three people were killed in separate vehicle collisions in northern Kansas this week. The collisions occurred Wednesday evening as bitter cold and snow was moving through the region. The drivers involved in the collisions lost control of their vehicles on icy roads.

In Kansas City, Missouri, a driver died Thursday after skidding into a creek. Meanwhile, state police in Michigan reported multiple crashes Friday, including a pileup involving nine semitrailers.

Activists also were rushing to get the homeless out of the cold. Nearly 170 adults and children were keeping warm early Friday in Detroit, Michigan, at a shelter and a warming center designed to hold 100 people.

“This is a lot of extra people” but you can’t turn anyone away, said Faith Fowler, the executive director of Cass Community Social Services, which runs both facilities.

In Chicago, Illinois, Andy Robledo planned to spend the day organizing efforts to check on unhoused people through his nonprofit, Feeding People Through Plants. Robledo and volunteers build tents modeled on ice-fishing tents, including a plywood subfloor.

“It’s not a house, it’s not an apartment, it’s not a hotel room,” Robledo said. “But it’s a huge step up from what they had before.”

In Portland, Oregon, officials opened five emergency shelters. Fallen trees and power lines have closed roads across the Portland metro area. And nearly 50 miles (80 kilometers) of Interstate 84, a major highway through the Columbia River Gorge, were closed Friday morning.

All bus service was suspended in the greater Seattle, Washington, area Friday morning. And DoorDash suspended delivery service because of hazardous conditions in parts of several states, including Minnesota and Iowa.

In far northern Indiana, lake-effect snow rolling off Lake Michigan could boost storm totals to well over a foot in some areas by Sunday, said Mark Steinwedel, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Syracuse, Indiana.

“It’s really going to add up,” he said, predicting “pretty awful travel.”

Coldest Christmas in decades

The weather service is forecasting the coldest Christmas in more than two decades in Philadelphia, where school officials shifted classes online Friday.

In South Dakota, Governor Kristi Noem late Thursday activated the state’s National Guard to haul firewood from the Black Hills Forest Service to the Rosebud Sioux Tribe as some members were stranded in their homes with dwindling fuel.

Other tribes also were struggling, including the Oglala Sioux Tribe in the western part of the state, which was using snowmobiles to reach members who live at the end of miles-long dirt roads.

But with the vehicles breaking down in the 10-foot drifts, officials were considering using horses to deliver essentials to some homes as they sought help from federal officials.

“It’s been one heck of a fight so far,” said tribal President Frank Star Comes Out.

In Maine, gusts approaching 70 mph (113 kph) were reported along the coast Friday morning. Atop New Hampshire’s Mount Washington, the tallest peak in the Northeast, the wind topped 150 mph (2410 kph). The governor closed state offices, ferry service to Casco Bay islands was suspended and flooding was leading to some water rescues.

In Boston, Massachusetts, rain combined with a high tide sent waves over the seawall at Long Wharf in Boston and flooded some downtown streets.

With temperatures dipping to 7 degrees (-13.9 Celsius) early Friday in northern Mississippi, Kyle Young abandoned the shorts that he normally wears to his job at a Starkville store that sells Mississippi State University clothing and decor.

“It’s freezing here,” said Young, who dressed in layers as he did a brisk business with last-minute Christmas shoppers. “I can usually tough it out.”

In Jackson, Mississippi, the mayor had expressed concerns that the city’s beleaguered water system — which has led to numerous water shortages in recent years — remained vulnerable to subfreezing temperatures. But while there have been some water main breaks, the main water plants “held up to the temperature drops overnight,” city spokeswoman Melissa Faith Payne said.

It was so bad in Vermont that Amtrak canceled service for the day, and nonessential state offices were closing early.

“I’m hearing from crews who are seeing grown trees ripped out by the roots,” Mari McClure, president of Green Mountain Power, the state’s largest utility, said at a news conference.
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Niger Troops Killed 5 Jihadist Fighters in Southeast, Regional Governor Says

Posted on 12/23/2022 by SeeAF

Five Boko Haram jihadist fighters have been killed and two Niger soldiers wounded in clashes in southeast Niger near the Nigerian border, local authorities said Friday.

The military clashed with the jihadist fighters in the towns of Bague and Tchoungoua in the Diffa region on Thursday, the sources said.

“We have two with minor injuries on our side, and on the enemy side, five Boko Haram elements were killed,” said Smain Younous, appointed last month as governor of Diffa.

The Niger soldiers seized four AK-47 rifles from their assailants.

“The defense and security forces control every corner” of the Diffa region, Younous said.

Thursday’s violence came after weeks of calm in the Diffa region, which this year has also been plagued by severe flooding from the Yobe River.

The river forms a natural border with Nigeria, where it rises before flowing into Lake Chad, a vast area full of islets and swamps that serve as a refuge for jihadist groups.

In addition to the Boko Haram threat, Niger also faces frequent attacks by Sahelian jihadist groups, including Islamic State in the Greater Sahara in the west.

The Diffa region is home to 300,000 Nigerian refugees and internally displaced people driven out by Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province abuses, according to the U.N.

Niger, the world’s poorest country by the benchmark of the U.N.’s Human Development Index, has been hit hard by the insurgency, which began in northern Mali in 2012.
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Spain: No Evidence of Criminal Misconduct in Migrant Deaths

Posted on 12/23/2022 by SeeAF

Spanish prosecutors have dropped their investigation into the deaths of more than 20 migrants last June at the border between Morocco and the Spanish enclave city of Melilla, saying in a statement Friday they found no evidence of criminal misconduct by Spanish security forces.

Prosecutors said they spent six months investigating what happened when hundreds of migrants — some estimates say around 2,000 — stormed the Melilla border fence in northwest Africa from the Moroccan side in an attempt to reach European soil. At least 23 migrants were officially reported dead, though human rights groups say the number was higher.

“It cannot be concluded that the conduct of the (Spanish) security officers involved increased the threat to the life and well-being of the immigrants, so no charge of reckless homicide can be brought,” said the Spanish prosecutors.

The migrants, according to the prosecutors’ statement, were “hostile and violent.”

Hundreds of men, some wielding sticks, climbed over the fence from Moroccan territory and were corralled into a border crossing area. When they managed to break through the gate to the Spanish side, a stampede apparently led to the crushing of many people.

Moroccan police launched tear gas and beat men with batons, even when some were prone on the ground. Spanish guards surrounded a group that managed to get through before apparently sending them back.

The clash ended with African men, clearly injured or even dead, piled on top of one another while Moroccan police in riot gear looked on.

The Spanish prosecutors said that “at no point did (Spanish) security officers have reason to believe that there were people at risk who required help.”

Spanish security officers who turned 470 of the immigrants back to Morocco did so in accordance with their duty and in conformity with Spain’s immigration law, the statement said.

So-called “pushbacks” — the forcible return of people across an international border without an assessment of their rights to apply for asylum or other protection, violating both international and EU law — are a contentious issue in Europe.

The prosecutors did fault some security officers who threw rocks at the immigrants, recommending disciplinary procedures against them.

Amnesty International said earlier this month that the handling of the investigation by Spain and Morocco, which has remained mostly silent on the matter, “smacks of a cover-up and racism.”
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US Patriot Missiles, New $45B Aid Package for Ukraine

Posted on 12/23/2022 by SeeEU

Upon his return to Kyiv from his wartime visit to Washington, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy defiantly said Ukrainian forces “are working toward victory,” despite Russia’s relentless artillery, rocket and mortar fire and airstrikes on Ukraine.

“We will overcome everything,” Zelenskyy pledged on Telegram. “We are coming back from Washington with … something that will really help.”

The United States has promised Patriot missiles to help Ukraine fight against the Russian invasion. Zelenskyy has long asked for Patriot missiles to help counter Russian airstrikes, which have destroyed cities, towns and villages during 10 months of conflict and knocked out power and water supplies across the country over the past three months.

U.S. lawmakers are expected to approve on Friday a $45 billion aid package for Ukraine. This package follows U.S. aid worth about $50 billion sent to Ukraine previously this year.

Zelenskyy also thanked U.S. President Joe Biden and the U.S. Congress for supporting Ukraine’s fight against Russia.

During a Friday visit to Tula, a center for arms manufacturing, Russian President Vladimir Putin told Russia’s defense industry chiefs to do more to ensure that the Russian army quickly received all the weapons, equipment and military hardware it needed to fight in Ukraine.

“The most important key task of our military-industrial complex is to provide our units and front-line forces with everything they need: weapons, equipment, ammunition and gear in the necessary quantities and of the right quality in the shortest possible time frames,” he said.

Britain’s Defense Ministry said Friday in its intelligence update on Ukraine that Putin has been “presented with plans to expand the Russian military by around 30% to 1.5 million personnel.”

The ministry said the proposal was made Wednesday and that “Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu explained that the expansion would involve at least two brigades in northwestern Russia growing to divisional strength.”

The British defense minister explained the move by citing “the supposed threat from Finland’s and Sweden’s accession to NATO.”

“This constitutes one of the first insights into how Russia aspires to adapt its forces to the long-term strategic challenges resulting from its invasion of Ukraine,” the ministry update said. “It remains unclear how Russia will find the recruits to complete such an expansion at a time when its forces are under unprecedented pressure in Ukraine.”

Visit sends message

In Western Europe, Zelenskyy’s visit to the U.S. Capital was seen as symbolic, a message to the world that the U.S. will continue to support Ukraine intensely in its fight for survival.

Observers in the region were pleased to hear Biden point to the need to “maintain NATO unity” when it came to arms supplies.

“This strongly suggests that it is not the U.S., but other influential NATO states that are not convinced of the need to support Ukraine even more intensively,” Polish historian Lukasz Adamski of the Mieroszewski Center in Warsaw told VOA.

However, Putin said Zelenskyy’s trip only fueled the conflict.

“They say they may send Patriot there, fine, we will crack the Patriot, too,” Putin told reporters. He said the delivery of the battery “only drags out the conflict.”

In Ukraine, Zelenskyy’s Washington visit symbolizes the relationship between two countries honed by the war.

It was very important for Ukrainians and Zelenskyy to convey the appreciation of the Ukrainian people for the unwavering support the U.S. has shown to Ukraine, Ukrainian Mykola Davydiuk, a political analyst and director at Think Tank Politics, told VOA.

Despite Putin’s assessment that the U.S. delivery of a Patriot missile battery would extend the conflict, he said Russia is ready for talks with Ukraine on ending the conflict.

“One way or another, all armed conflicts end with talks,” Putin said. “The sooner this understanding comes to those who oppose us the better. We never rejected the talks.

“We will strive for an end to this and the sooner the better, of course,” he added.

The White House quickly countered Putin’s comments.

John Kirby, National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications, said Putin had “shown absolutely zero indication that he’s willing to negotiate” an end to the war that began with Russia’s February 24 invasion of Ukraine.

“Everything he [Putin] is doing on the ground and in the air bespeaks a man who wants to continue to visit violence upon the Ukrainian people [and] escalate the war,” Kirby told reporters, according to Reuters.

Shipment from North Korea

Also Thursday, Kirby said U.S. intelligence officers had determined that North Korea had completed an initial shipment of arms, including rockets and missiles, to private Russian military company the Wagner Group last month. The action was seen as a sign of the group’s expanding role in the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

The British government also condemned the shipment.

Wagner head Yevgeny Prigozhin said no effort had been made for North Korea to supply weapons to Russia and dismissed the talk as “gossip and speculation,” Reuters reported.

The Russian mission to the United Nations in New York did not immediately respond to a request for comment. North Korea’s foreign ministry denied the reports, calling them groundless.

Eastern Europe Bureau Chief Myroslava Gongadze contributed to this report. Some material for this article came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
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High-Tech Christmas Light Show Spreads Old-Fashioned Holiday Cheer

Posted on 12/23/2022 by SeeUS

Dazzling Christmas light displays are back outside ahead of the December holiday, and in the United States, more people are visiting big public displays following a pandemic hiatus. VOA’s Saqib Ul Islam visited one of the largest and most technologically advanced displays in the country for a closer look.
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Massive Winter Storm Brings Frigid Temps, Snow and Ice to US

Posted on 12/23/2022 by SeeUS

More than 3,400 flights within, into or out of the U.S. were canceled Friday, according to the tracking site FlightAware, causing more mayhem as travelers try to make it home for the holidays. Some airports, including Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, closed runways.

More than 458,000 homes and businesses were without power Friday morning.

The huge storm stretched from border to border. In Canada, WestJet canceled all flights Friday at Toronto Pearson International Airport, beginning at 9 a.m. And in Mexico, migrants waited near the U.S. border in unusually cold temperatures as they awaited a U.S. Supreme Court decision on whether and when to lift pandemic-era restrictions that prevent many from seeking asylum.

“This is not like a snow day when you were a kid,” President Joe Biden warned Thursday after a briefing from federal officials. “This is serious stuff.”

Among those with canceled flights was Ashley Sherrod, who planned to fly from Nashville, Tennessee, to Flint, Michigan, on Thursday afternoon.

“My family is calling, they want me home for Christmas, but they want me to be safe, too,” said Sherrod, whose bag — including the Grinch pajamas she was planning to wear to a family party — was packed and ready by the door.

Activists also were rushing to get the homeless out of the cold. In Chicago, Andy Robledo planned to spend the day organizing efforts to check on unhoused people who have received tents, propane heaters and other supplies through his nonprofit, Feeding People Through Plants.

Robledo and volunteers build the tents modeled on ice-fishing tents, including a plywood subfloor, and offer them to people living on the streets in Chicago.

“It’s not a house, it’s not an apartment, it’s not a hotel room. But it’s a huge step up from what they had before,” Robledo said.

In Portland, Oregon, officials opened four emergency shelters. It was so cold in the city that Taylor Bailey lost all sensation in her hands as she cycled to her job at at iconic bike rental, repair and touring store Cycle Portland in the frigid temperatures.

“It’s the wind, really, that’s so cold. The wind is absolutely bitter,” she said Thursday, adding that even her gloves didn’t help.

The weather service is predicting the coldest Christmas in more than two decades in Philadelphia, where school officials shifted classes online Friday. Some surrounding districts canceled classes altogether.

In South Dakota, Gov. Kristi Noem late Thursday activated the state’s National Guard to haul firewood from the Black Hills Forest Service to the Rosebud Sioux Tribe as some members were stranded in their homes with dwindling fuel.

Scot Eisenbraun, who runs a farm and ranch near Wall in western South Dakota, said he’s lost several cattle in recent days. The cold is life-threatening if you are caught outside, he said, so people travel in groups of two vehicles in case one gets stranded.

“Dress really warm and don’t get stuck outside really long,” he said.

Most of western and parts of northern Michigan were under blizzard warnings, according to the weather service. On the other side of the state, the zoo and an art museum in Detroit were closing. And to the north of the city, a rescue team used a Hovercraft to reach an injured swan Thursday that became frozen to ice on a lake.

Buffalo, New York, Mayor Byron Brown urged people to stay home as meteorologists warned that the city could see 2 to 4 feet (0.6 to 1.2 meters) of snow through the weekend.

While New England was being spared the numbing cold and snow, heavy rain and wind gusting to more than 60 mph (96 kph) knocked out power to thousands. About 150,000 homes and businesses in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont had no electricity as of Friday morning, according to the region’s major utilities. There were another 100,000 outages in Connecticut.

Hundreds of utility and tree crews were deployed, but the high winds hampered them. The limit for using bucket trucks is typically 25 mph (40 kph) to 35 mph (56 kph), a utility official said.

It was so bad in Vermont that Amtrak canceled service for the day, and nonessential state offices were closing early.

“I’m hearing from crews who are seeing grown trees ripped out by the roots,” Mari McClure, president of Green Mountain Power, the state’s largest utility, said at a news conference.
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Cameroon Military Denies Involvement in House Burnings in Northwest Region

Posted on 12/23/2022 by SeeAF

Rights groups in Cameroon have accused the military of torching scores of homes this week of suspected separatist supporters, leaving hundreds of people homeless this holiday season. The military has denied burning any civilian houses.

Cameroon civil society groups say hundreds of people rendered homeless by this week’s attacks are seeking refuge in churches.

Some of the homeless are living with relatives and well-wishers within their community according to the Roman Catholic Church in Cameroon’s restive Northwest region.

Rights groups, civilians and members of the church have been sharing videos of at least 12 houses burned on Thursday in Yer, a village in Jakiri district.

In the videos, shared on social media platforms including Facebook and WhatsApp, a man identifying himself as a community leader accuses Cameroon’s government troops of torching the houses.

“We are at the road linking Jakiri to Kumbo, precisely at Yer where these buildings were razed by the military. The military has burnt down buildings due to the incident that led to the loss of military and they resorted to burning down these buildings to ashes. That is a sign of weakness,” he said.

Cameroon military confirm that the video was taken after government troops attacked a separatist camp in Yer on Thursday to free civilians who were held hostage by separatist fighters.

At least four fighters were killed but no government troops were wounded according to the military. Separatists say at least seven government troops were killed.

The government says frustrated fighters escaped from their camp at Yer and set fire to the houses of people who the separatists accuse of collaborating with government troops.

Tar Emmanuel Tatah is a member of the Cameroon Civil Society Group. He says more than 40 houses have been torched this week in Yer, Kimah and Meluv, all villages in the Northwest region.

Tar says government troops organized reprisal attacks on civilians who the military accused of collaborating with separatists.

“It is really, really terrible that things have gone this way again with the burning of houses when people thought that everything was becoming normal,” Tar said. “It is going to scare people from coming back home. Those who had returned to the Northwest and Southwest regions, will again find themselves internally displaced. Government should use the right approach to solve this problem.”

Rights groups say some of the troops also looted homes before torching them.

Tar said the right approach would be for government troops to stop searching homes in towns and villages suspected to host separatist fighters. He said government troops should withdraw and allow only police officers to maintain law and order in western towns and villages where peace and civilians are returning.

Armed groups have been fighting to break off the largely English-speaking Northwest and Southwest Regions from the rest of Cameroon and its French-speaking majority since 2017.

Last week, the government said several thousand of the 750,000 people displaced by the separatist conflict had returned home for the first time since hostilities began in 2017.

The military said no major separatist attack had been reported within the past six weeks.
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Ethiopia, Tigray Rebels Agree to African Union Monitoring Team

Posted on 12/23/2022 by SeeAF

Kenya’s former president, Uhuru Kenyatta, will travel to Ethiopia’s Tigray region to oversee monitoring of last month’s peace deal. Ethiopian federal and Tigray region officials agreed late Thursday at talks in Nairobi to grant the African Union full access to the region to oversee an end to the two-year conflict.

Ethiopian military leadership and representatives of the rebel Tigray People’s Liberation Front have agreed to establish a joint monitoring team to oversee the peace agreement signed in November.

The agreement, signed in South Africa, ended two years of fighting between the federal government and TPLF that killed hundreds of thousands and displaced millions.

Former Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta, who is also part of the mediating team, said Thursday the warring factions have agreed to have a body monitor the peace deal.

“They have all concurred and agreed to give the monitoring and verification team of the African Union full access, full 360-degree viewpoint to ensure all the elements of the agreements are actually going to be implemented,” Kenyatta said.

The mediators, who met peace negotiators in Nairobi this week, expressed confidence in normalcy returning to the Tigray region and peace in Ethiopia.

Professor Chacha Nyaigoti Chacha, an expert in diplomacy and international relations, said the African Union must play its role in solving conflicts in the continent.

“The problem with the African Union is that sometimes the resolutions and determination of this nature have not been followed with tangible results in the field,” Chacha said. “But we are hoping this time round the warring parties will be able to appreciate the fact that they need very urgently to have a solution to the problems.”

The war between the Ethiopian government and the Tigray rebel group broke out in November 2020 and spread to the Amhara and Afar regions.

The peace deal has brought some relief to the suffering population in the north of the country.

Ethiopian leaders have been meeting to discuss ways of carrying out the disarmament of rebels in Tigray and neighboring regions and negotiate the withdrawal of Eritrean forces who assisted the Ethiopian army.

Kenyatta said his team and African Union representatives will visit Tigray’s capital to check on the progress of the peace agreement.

“They have been negotiating for the last two days but we agreed that the true statement that they need to make would be the statement they make when we are in Mekelle in the next few days observing and verifying the actions because documents are one thing, what we want now is the deliverables and this is why we are heading to Mekele,” Kenyatta said.

There was no immediate word on when Kenyatta will go to Tigray.

Chacha said the Kenyatta team’s visit will help solve the outstanding issues in the peace deal.

“The actions of visiting will give them firsthand information and knowledge about the situation on the ground and when the situation on the ground is clearly understood, then the parties concerned, including the mediators, can understand and appreciate the way they will approach the resolution in order for them to create an atmosphere that can bring about peace,” Chacha said.

Some of the peace deal’s provisions have already been implemented, including humanitarian aid and the restoration of banking and telecommunications services.
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Two Dead, Several Wounded in Paris Shooting, Suspect Arrested

Posted on 12/23/2022 by SeeEU

A shooter killed two people and wounded four others in a gun attack near a Kurdish cultural center in Paris on Friday, the prosecutor’s office said.

Multiple gunshots were fired in the Rue d’Enghien, a street lined with small shops and cafes in the capital’s 10th arrondissement, sowing panic. Armed police guarded a security cordon and several ambulances were at the scene, live television images showed.

“A gun attack has taken place. Thank you to the security forces for their swift action,” tweeted deputy Mayor Emmanuel Gregoire. “Thoughts for the victims and those who witnessed this drama.”

An investigation into murder, manslaughter and aggravated violence has been opened, the Paris prosecutor’s office said.

A 69-year-old man had been arrested and was in detention, the prosecutor’s office added. The incident was over, it said.

Police did not indicate the motives of the alleged shooter.

One witness told French news agency AFP that seven or eight shots had been fired. A second witness, speaking to BFM TV, said the suspected gunman was a white man who opened fire in silence.

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Notorious French Serial Killer Freed from Nepal Prison

Posted on 12/23/2022 by SeeEU

Confessed French serial killer Charles Sobhraj was freed from prison in Nepal on Friday after serving most of his sentence for the murders of American and Canadian backpackers.

Sobhraj was driven out of Central Jail in Kathmandu in a heavily guarded police convoy to the Department of Immigration, where he will wait for his travel documents to be prepared.

The country’s Supreme Court had ordered that Sobhraj, who was sentenced to life in prison in Nepal, be released because of poor health, good behavior and having already served most of his sentence. Life sentences in Nepal are 20 years.

The order also said he had to leave the country within 15 days.

Sobhraj’s attorney Gopal Siwakoti Chitan told reporters that the request for the travel documents must be made by the immigration department to the French embassy in Nepal, which could take some time. Offices are closed over the weekend for the Christmas holiday.

The court document said he had already served more than 75% of his sentence, making him eligible for release, and he has heart disease.

The Frenchman has in the past admitted killing several Western tourists and he is believed to have killed at least 20 people in Afghanistan, India, Thailand, Turkey, Nepal, Iran and Hong Kong during the 1970s. However, his 2004 conviction in Nepal was the first time he was found guilty in court.

Sobhraj was held for two decades in New Delhi’s maximum-security Tihar prison on suspicion of theft but was deported without charge to France in 1997. He resurfaced in September 2003 in Kathmandu.

His nickname, The Serpent, stems from his reputation as a disguise and escape artist.
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Final Report on Jan. 6 Attack Points Finger at Trump

Posted on 12/23/2022 by SeeUS

The committee formed by the House of Representatives to investigate the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol on Thursday released its final report, an 845-page set of documents supporting the committee’s claim that the attack was directly caused by former President Donald Trump and represented the final act in a “multipart conspiracy to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 Presidential election.”

The product of more than 17 months of investigation, the report is the distillation of evidence gathered from thousands of witness interviews, documents and subpoenaed electronic communications. According to the committee, “That evidence has led to an overriding and straight-forward conclusion: The central cause of January 6th was one man, former President Donald Trump, who many others followed. None of the events of January 6th would have happened without him.”

Trump himself has consistently denounced the committee and its work, and has continued to insist, falsely, that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

Expansive report

In addition to examining the attack itself, the report describes Trump’s pressure on U.S. officials, states, legislators and then-Vice President Mike Pence to manipulate the system or violate the law.

The release of the report follows a final hearing by the committee, held on Monday, in which members accused the former president of committing multiple crimes and referred him to the Department of Justice for prosecution. The charges include insurrection, obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the United States and conspiracy to make a false statement.

The referral carries no legal weight, but the voluminous records produced by the committee will supplement evidence gathered by the Justice Department in its own investigation and could influence the final decision on whether to prosecute the former president.

Major findings

The report issued Thursday builds a case that former President Trump was at the center of a conspiracy to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, using multiple strategies, all of which ultimately failed.

It documents efforts to pressure state and local officials to challenge or throw out election results that showed a Biden victory, even after dozens of lawsuits challenging the results were dismissed in court challenges.

After other attempts were thwarted, Trump latched on to a theory proposed by attorney John Eastman, which claimed that Pence had the authority to refuse to count the votes of specific states when Congress convened on January 6, a strategy meant to buy time to persuade state legislatures to take action to overturn state-level results. Pence ultimately refused to go along with the plan, and evidence uncovered by the committee indicates that even as he proposed it, Eastman was aware that the scheme was illegal.

Effort to corrupt DOJ

The committee report also lays out in detail what it describes as an effort by the former president to “corrupt the Department of Justice.”

In the aftermath of the election, former Attorney General William Barr informed Trump that all of the investigations into election irregularities undertaken by the Department of Justice had failed to find evidence of fraud sufficiently large to overturn the results of the balloting. In the face of Trump’s continued claims of fraud, Barr announced his resignation in December 2020.

The report documents that, in the weeks that followed, Trump took a number of steps to try to persuade senior officials in the department to issue statements expressing doubt about the results of the election.

Trump found an ally in DOJ attorney Jeffrey Clark, an official in the department’s Civil Division, who drafted a document for the department to send to election officials in Georgia, falsely claiming that the department had “significant concerns” about possible fraud that might have affected the election outcome there and in other states. The document, which was never transmitted, also urged the state legislature to consider overturning the election result in that state.

The report chronicles a dramatic showdown in the Oval Office, in which Trump proposed installing Clark as acting attorney general. The most senior officials in the department all told the president that if he took that step, they would immediately resign.

Trump knew claims were false

A crucial finding in the report, and one that was hammered home in public hearings, was that Trump knew that he had lost a fair election, having been told so unequivocally by a number of his top advisers.

The point is important, because demonstrating that the former president was not acting in good faith when he claimed that the election had been stolen and sought to have state officials produce alternative results is a key component of the fraud charges.

Trump pushed back against that claim in particular on his social media network, Truth Social, writing, “This is a total LIE. I never thought, for even a moment, that the Presidential Election of 2020 was not Rigged & Stolen, and my conviction became even stronger as time went by.”

Capitol assault

The investigative committee, formally the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, was originally conceived of as a bipartisan effort with support from leaders of both the Republican and Democratic caucuses in the House.

It was formed to gather facts and conclusions about the events of that day, when a thousands-strong crowd of Trump supporters attended a rally near the White House, at which Trump told them to march to the Capitol and “fight like hell.” The mob descended on the Capitol, where lawmakers had gathered to certify now-President Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election.

The crowd quickly became violent, and despite the presence of more than 1,000 law enforcement officers, was able to force entry into the building and force members of Congress and Pence to flee. Members of the crowd were angry at the vice president for his refusal to illegally declare Trump the victor, and many were chanting “Hang Mike Pence.”

The report establishes that, during the hourslong attack, President Trump was aware of what was taking place, and nevertheless sent out a tweet attacking Pence, further inflaming the crowd. Witnesses produced by the committee said that Trump declined requests by aides and members of his family to ask the rioters to leave.

Trump was eventually persuaded to ask the mob to disperse, which he did in a video address that described the rioters as “very special.” Order was eventually restored late in the day, with the help of National Guard troops, and Congress formally certified Biden’s victory.

Born in controversy

In the immediate aftermath of the assault, condemnation of the attack was bipartisan, and a proposal to fully investigate its causes received strong support from leaders on both sides. However, in the weeks that followed the assault, Republican lawmakers, taking cues from Trump, tried to minimize the seriousness of the event.

When the committee was formed in the early summer of 2021, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy nominated five Republicans, including Reps. Jim Jordan and Jim Banks. Because Jordan, a close Trump ally, was likely to be a target of the investigation, and because Banks had publicly stated his unwillingness to cooperate with an investigation, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rejected their appointments and requested that McCarthy name replacements. Instead, the Republican leader withdrew all five nominees and declined to offer new ones.

Pelosi replied by designating two Republicans, Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, both of whom had continued to denounce the attack and Trump’s role in inciting it.

Beginning in the summer of 2022, the committee held a series of nine public hearings in which it laid out a comprehensive timeline of the assault itself and of the efforts to overturn the election that preceded it.

House Republican report

A competing report issued by the five House Republicans who were originally nominated to serve on the Jan. 6 committee was released Wednesday.

The report focused primarily on the security failures that led the Capitol Police and Washington Metropolitan Police Department to be underprepared for the violence at the Capitol. The report lays much of the blame for the results of the riot on Pelosi, claiming that she decided not to bring on additional security, including the National Guard, in advance of the riot.

The Republican report does not address the root causes of the riot, the actions of former President Trump on Jan. 6 and before, or the broader effort to overturn the results of the election.
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Russia Mulls Early Return of Space Station Crew After Soyuz Capsule Leak

Posted on 12/23/2022 by SeeEU

Russia’s space agency said it is considering a plan to send an empty spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS) to bring home three crew members ahead of schedule, after their Soyuz capsule sprang a coolant leak while docked to the orbiting outpost.

Roscosmos and NASA officials said at a news conference Thursday they continue to investigate how the coolant line of the capsule’s external radiator sustained a tiny puncture last week, just as two cosmonauts were preparing for a routine spacewalk.

No final decision has been made about the precise means of flying the capsule’s three crew members back to Earth, whether by launching another Soyuz to retrieve them or by the seemingly less likely option of sending them home in the leaky capsule without most of its coolant.

Last week, Sergei Krikalev, Russia’s chief of crewed space programs, said the leak could have been caused by a micrometeoroid strike. But he and his NASA counterparts have left open the possibility of other culprits, such as a hardware failure or an impact by a tiny piece of space debris.

The Dec. 14 leak prompted mission controllers in Moscow to call off the spacewalk as a live NASA webcast showed what appeared to be a flurry of snowflake-like particles spewing from the rear of the Soyuz spacecraft.

The leak lasted for hours and emptied the radiator of coolant used to regulate temperatures inside the crew compartment of the spacecraft.

NASA has said that none of the ISS crew was ever in any danger from the leak.

Cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dimitri Petelin, who were suited up for the spacewalk at the time, flew to the ISS aboard the now-crippled Soyuz MS-22 capsule along with U.S. astronaut Frank Rubio in September.

They were originally scheduled to fly back on the same spacecraft in March, but Krikalev and NASA’s ISS program manager, Joel Montalbano, said Roscosmos would return them to Earth two or three weeks early if Russian space officials decide to launch an empty crew capsule for their retrieval.

Four other ISS crew members — two more from NASA, a third Russian cosmonaut and a Japanese astronaut — rode to the ISS in October via a NASA-contracted SpaceX Crew Dragon and they also remain aboard, with their capsule parked at the station.

The leak has upended Russia’s ISS routines for the weeks ahead, forcing a suspension of all future Roscosmos spacewalks as officials in Moscow shift their focus to the leaky MS-22, a designated lifeboat for its three crew members if something goes wrong aboard the space station.

Two U.S. astronauts, Rubio and Josh Cassada, conducted a seven-hour spacewalk without incident on Thursday to install a new roll-out solar array outside the station, NASA said.

If MS-22 is deemed unsafe to carry crew members back to Earth, another Soyuz capsule in line to ferry Russia’s next crew to the station in March would instead “be sent up unmanned to have (a) healthy vehicle on board the station to be able to rescue crew,” Krikalev, Roscosmos’ executive director for human spaceflight, told reporters.

No mention was made of possibly sending a spare SpaceX Dragon for crew retrieval.

Pinpointing the cause of the leak could factor into decisions about the best way to return crew members.

The recent Geminid meteor shower initially seemed to raise the odds of a micrometeoroid strike as the origin, but the leak was facing the wrong way for that to be the case, Montalbano said, though a space rock could have come from another direction.

Sending the stricken MS-22 back to Earth unfixed with humans aboard appeared an unlikely choice given the vital role the coolant system plays to prevent overheating of the capsule’s crew compartment, which Montalbano and Krikalev said was currently being vented with air flow allowed through an open hatch to the ISS.
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UN Experts Point to Rwandan Role in East DR Congo Rebel Crisis

Posted on 12/23/2022 by SeeAF

Rwanda’s army “engaged in military operations” against DR Congo’s military in the country’s troubled east, according to a report by a group of independent United Nations experts seen by Agence France-Presse on Thursday.

The experts said there was “substantial evidence” that the Rwandan army directly intervened in Congo’s fight against M23 rebels, and that it had supported the group with weapons, ammunition and uniforms.

A government spokesperson in Kigali denied Rwanda supported the rebels and declined to comment on specific allegations until the findings were formally published.

The Democratic Republic of Congo has repeatedly accused Rwanda of backing the M23.

The militia has captured swaths of territory in the DRC’s restive east since it emerged from dormancy late last year.

Current front lines lie 20 kilometers from Goma, a commercial hub of more than 1 million people.

Rwanda has repeatedly denied it supports the rebels, but the United States and France, among other Western countries, have agreed with the DRC’s assessment.

According to the U.N. experts’ report, Rwanda’s military intervened to reinforce the M23 as well as to combat the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) — a descendant of Rwandan Hutu extremist groups that carried out the 1994 Tutsi genocide in Rwanda.

Rwanda provided troop reinforcements to the M23 “for specific operations, in particular when these were aimed at seizing strategic towns and areas,” the report added.

Rwandan troops also led joint attacks with M23 fighters against Congolese positions in May, according to the report.

The 236-page document for the U.N. Security Council is expected to be published in the coming days.

Diplomatic crisis

Alain Mukuralinda, Rwanda’s deputy government spokesman, said Kigali had not seen the substance of the report or the evidence it was based upon.

“Today, as long as we have not seen the material evidence, as long as we have not examined this so-called evidence, it is difficult to take a position,” he told AFP.

But he added: “We do not support the M23, we do not need it.”

A Tutsi-led militia, the M23 first came to international prominence when it captured Goma in 2012, before being driven out and going to ground the following year.

But it re-emerged in late 2021 after the rebels claimed the DRC had ignored a promise to integrate them into the army and has since made significant advances.

A watershed moment came in June when M23 fighters captured the strategic town of Bunagana on the Ugandan border.

A fresh offensive in late October saw the M23 capture swaths of territory in North Kivu, displacing hundreds of thousands of people.

The rebels’ battlefield successes have sent relations between the DRC and neighboring Rwanda into a nosedive.

Several diplomatic initiatives have been launched in a bid to ease tensions, with the seven-nation East African Community (EAC) also deciding to deploy a military force to eastern DRC.

Talks between the DRC and Rwanda in the Angolan capital Luanda led to a truce agreement on November 23.

Under the deal, the M23 was to lay down arms and pull back from occupied territories.

But clashes with M23 continued.

Kinshasa subsequently accused the M23 of massacring civilians in the village of Kishishe.

A preliminary U.N. probe found that the M23 killed at least 131 civilians in the area.

On Wednesday, Rwanda said allegations of a massacre were a “fabrication.” It said the incident involved clashes between the M23 and Kinshasa-allied militias.

Militia shift

Armed groups, of which there are more than 120 in eastern DRC, have taken the fight to the M23 in recent weeks.

According to the U.N. experts’ report, the M23’s resurgence caused local militias to “shift alliances,” creating “new dynamics” with the Congolese military.

The experts cited evidence that Congolese troops had fought alongside armed groups in their struggle against the M23.

The U.N. experts recommended that the DRC “take all measures” to prevent cooperation between the Congolese military and armed groups.

They likewise urged Congo’s neighboring states to “prevent the provision of support” to armed groups within the vast nation of 90 million people.

Asked about the report, the U.S. State Department voiced concern and called on all nations to respect “territorial integrity.”

“Entry of foreign forces into the DRC must be done transparently with the consent of, and in coordination with, the DRC, and must be pre-notified to the Security Council in line with existing U.N. sanctions resolutions for the DRC,” a State Department spokesperson said.

The United States has repeatedly said that allegations of Rwandan support to the M23 rebels were credible.
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January 6 Committee Releases Final Report of Findings

Posted on 12/23/2022 by SeeUS

US lawmakers investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol released the final report of their findings Thursday. After a year and a half of investigation and more than a thousand witnesses, investigators alleged former President Donald Trump played a key role in encouraging the attempt to overthrow the results of the 2020 election. VOA’s Congressional Correspondent Katherine Gypson has more.
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Zelenskyy: Trip to US Delivered ‘Good Results’

Posted on 12/23/2022 by SeeEU

A brief wartime trip to the United States delivered “good results,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told his nation in a nightly video address on Thursday.

“We are returning from Washington with good results, with things that will really help,” Zelenskyy said on a video posted to his Telegram account and linked to YouTube.

He also thanked U.S. President Joe Biden and the U.S. Congress for supporting Ukraine’s fight against Russia, which invaded the country nearly 10 months ago.

Zelenskyy visited the United States on Wednesday, meeting privately with Biden and later addressing a joint meeting of Congress.

During his visit, Biden announced a new $1.8 billion military aid package for Ukraine that included a Patriot missile battery, one of the most powerful weapons to be delivered to Kyiv yet.

In addition, the U.S. Senate on Thursday approved a $1.7 trillion spending bill, of which Ukraine could receive $44.9 billion in additional aid. The bill now goes to the House.

Visit sends message

In Western Europe, his visit was seen as symbolic, a message to the world that the U.S. will continue to support Ukraine intensely in its fight for survival.

Observers in the region were pleased to hear Biden point to the need to “maintain NATO unity” when it came to arms supplies.

“This strongly suggests that it is not the U.S., but other influential NATO states, that are not convinced of the need to support Ukraine even more intensively,” Polish historian Lukasz Adamski of the Mieroszewski Center in Warsaw told VOA.

However, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Zelenskyy’s trip only fueled the conflict.

“They say they may send Patriot there, fine, we will crack the Patriot, too,” Putin told reporters. He said the delivery of the battery “only drags out the conflict.”

In Ukraine, a country withstanding Russian aggression for more than 300 days, Zelenskyy’s Washington visit symbolizes the unbreakable relationship between two countries honed by the war.

It was very important for Ukrainians and Zelenskyy to convey the appreciation of the Ukrainian people for the unwavering support the U.S. showed to Ukraine during these difficult times, Ukrainian Mykola Davydiuk, a political analyst and director at Think Tank Politics, told VOA.

Illia Shvachko, 32, a computer specialist in Kyiv, told The Associated Press, “It’s an historical visit, the first one since the war began. … Getting weapons helps.”

On his return from Washington, Zelenskyy stopped in Rzeszow, Poland, on Thursday and met with Polish President Andrzej Duda.

Duda said on Twitter that the two leaders had discussed “strategic plans for actions and cooperation in the upcoming 2023.”

Zelenskyy said he told Duda “about what I heard in the United States, about our strategic vision for the next year.”

Despite Putin’s assessment that the U.S. delivery of a Patriot missile battery would extend the conflict, he said Russia was ready for talks with Ukraine on ending the conflict.

“One way or another, all armed conflicts end with talks,” Putin said. “The sooner this understanding comes to those who oppose us, the better. We never rejected the talks.

“We will strive for an end to this, and the sooner, the better, of course,” he added.

The White House quickly countered Putin’s comments.

John Kirby, spokesperson for the White House National Security Council, said Putin had “shown absolutely zero indication that he’s willing to negotiate” an end to the war that began with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24.

Shipment from North Korea

Also Thursday, Kirby said U.S. intelligence officers had determined that North Korea completed an initial shipment of arms, including rockets and missiles, to a private Russian military company, the Wagner Group, last month. The action was seen as a sign of the group’s expanding role in the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

The British government also condemned the shipment.

Wagner head Yevgeny Prigozhin said no effort had been made for North Korea to supply weapons to Russia and dismissed the talk as “gossip and speculation,” Reuters reported.

The Russian mission to the United Nations in New York did not immediately respond to a request for comment. North Korea’s foreign ministry denied the reports, calling them groundless.

Eastern Europe Bureau Chief Myroslava Gongadze contributed to this report. Some material for this article came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
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Santa Claus Shortage Hits US

Posted on 12/22/2022 by SeeUS

The ho ho hos of Christmas are not as plentiful this year in the United States as the country faces a shortage of Santa Claus performers. Aron Ranen has the story from New York City. Producer: Igor Tsikhanenka. Camera: Aron Ranen.
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International Migration Drove US Population Growth in 2022

Posted on 12/22/2022 by SeeUS

The population of the United States expanded by 1.2 million people this year — with growth largely driven by international migration — and the nation now has 333.2 million residents, according to estimates released Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Net international migration — the number of people moving into the U.S. minus the number of people leaving — was more than 1 million from 2021 to 2022. That represented a growth rate of 168% over the previous year’s 376,029 international migrants, with every state gaining residents from abroad, according to the vintage 2022 population estimates.

Natural growth — the number of births minus the number of deaths — added another 245,080 people to the total in what was the first year-over-year increase in total births since 2007.

Rebound rate

This year’s U.S. annual growth rate of 0.4% was a rebound of sorts from the 0.1% growth rate during the worst of the pandemic from 2020 to 2021, which was the lowest since the nation’s founding.

Regionally, the Northeast lost almost 219,000 people in a trend largely driven by domestic residents moving out of New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts, as well as deaths outpacing births in Pennsylvania. The Midwest also lost almost 49,000 residents, driven in part by people moving out of Illinois and deaths outpacing births in Ohio.

South gains more than 1 million

The South gained 1.3 million residents, the largest of any region, driven by population gains in Texas and Florida that approached a half-million residents each. Texas, the second-most populous state in the U.S., surpassed the 30 million-resident mark, joining California as the only other state in this category.

But California lost more than 113,000 residents, and had a population of just more than 39 million in 2022, in what was the biggest annual decline behind New York’s more than 180,000-resident loss. The population decline was driven by more than 343,000 domestic residents moving out of California, and it helped drag down the West region’s population gain to only 153,000 residents.

Without international migration and a sizable natural increase of births outpacing deaths, the Western region would have lost population because of domestic residents also moving out of Oregon and Washington.

Puerto Rico lost 40,000 residents, or 1.3% of its population, because of people moving away and deaths outpacing births; its population now stands at 3.2 million residents.
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US Says Russia’s Wagner Group Bought North Korean Weapons for Ukraine War

Posted on 12/22/2022 by SeeEU

The Wagner Group, the private Russian military company, took delivery of an arms shipment from North Korea to help bolster Russian forces in Ukraine, a sign of the group’s expanding role in that conflict, the White House said on Thursday.

Wagner owner Yevgeny Prigozhin denied the assertion as “gossip and speculation.”

John Kirby, spokesperson for the White House National Security Council, said Wagner was searching around the world for arms suppliers to support its military operations in Ukraine.

“We can confirm that North Korea has completed an initial arms delivery to Wagner, which paid for that equipment. Last month, North Korea delivered infantry rockets and missiles into Russia for use by Wagner,” he told reporters.

The Wagner Group was founded in 2014 after Russia seized and annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and sparked a separatist insurgency in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region.

The United States estimates that Wagner has 50,000 personnel deployed in Ukraine, including 10,000 contractors and 40,000 convicts recruited from Russian prisons, Kirby said.

Prigozhin, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, said Kirby had a habit of making statements based on conjecture.

“Everyone knows that North Korea has not been supplying any weapons to Russia for a long time. And no such efforts have even been made,” he said in a statement.

“Therefore, the supply of weapons from North Korea is nothing but gossip and speculation.”

The U.S. assessment is that the amount of material delivered by North Korea will not change the battlefield dynamics, but that more military equipment is expected to be delivered by Pyongyang.

In November, after the White House said Pyongyang was covertly supplying Russia with a “significant” number of artillery shells, North Korea said it had never had arms dealings with Russia and had no plans to do so.

The Russian and North Korean U.N. missions did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The United States accused Pyongyang and Moscow of violating U.N. sanctions on North Korea and will share its information with the U.N. Security Council’s North Korea sanctions committee, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield said in a statement.

Pyongyang has built ballistic missiles capable of striking almost anywhere on Earth, weapons experts say, as well as shorter-range weapons.

Kirby said Putin has increasingly turned to the Wagner Group for help in Ukraine, where Russian forces have stumbled. The European Union has imposed sanctions on the group, accusing it of clandestine operations on the Kremlin’s behalf.

Putin has said the group does not represent Russia, but that private military contractors have the right to work anywhere in the world as long as they do not break Russian law.

Sanctions on Wagner

The Biden administration on Wednesday unveiled new curbs on technology exports to the Wagner Group. More sanctions are coming in the weeks ahead against the company and its support group in countries around the world, Kirby said.

Prigozhin is spending more than $100 million per month to fund Wagner’s operations in Ukraine, but has encountered problems recruiting Russians to fight there, Kirby said.

The Wagner Group, staffed by veterans of the Russian armed forces, has fought in Libya, Syria, the Central African Republic and Mali, among other countries.

U.S. intelligence indicates Wagner has played a major role in the battle for the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut and has suffered heavy casualties there with about 1,000 Wagner fighters killed in recent weeks, Kirby said.

Inside Russia, Prigozhin’s influence is expanding, and his group’s independence from the Russian Defense Ministry “has only increased and elevated over the course of the 10 months of this war,” Kirby said, without providing evidence.

Kirby said that in some instances, Russian military officials in Ukraine were subordinate to Wagner forces.

In addition, Prigozhin has criticized Russian generals and defense officials for their performance since the invasion.
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Zelenskyy’s Surprise Visit to DC Was Months in the Making

Posted on 12/22/2022 by SeeEU

The idea of a daring wartime trip by Volodymyr Zelenskyy to Washington had percolated for some time before the surprise visit was revealed just hours ahead of the Ukrainian president’s arrival.

During an October summit in Zagreb, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi discussed with her counterpart in the Ukrainian parliament the prospect of Zelenskyy addressing the U.S. Congress. Similarly, Biden administration officials had for months talked with Ukraine about a Zelenskyy visit to the White House, hoping for one before year’s end to send an unmistakable signal of support ahead of a brutal winter that could deepen Russian President Vladimir Putin’s assault.

In previous calls, Zelenskyy had indicated to President Joe Biden and other senior officials that the United States was the first country he wanted to visit when the time was right for him to travel, according to a U.S. official with knowledge of the conversations. So, in a December 11 phone call between the two leaders, Biden reiterated the invitation.

This time, Zelenskyy told Biden, was the right time.

“I really wanted to come earlier. Mr. President knows about it, but I couldn’t do it because the situation was so difficult,” Zelenskyy said from the Oval Office on Wednesday. The trip could happen now, the Ukrainian leader said, because “we controlled the situation and … first of all, because of your support.”

Ensuring a swift, safe journey

The behind-the-scenes details of Zelenskyy’s surprise visit to Washington were described by an aide to Pelosi, a U.S. official and a senior administration official, all of whom requested anonymity to describe planning for the secret trip. Once the wheels of planning started to roll, Zelenskyy’s 10-hour visit — which packed in an Oval Office meeting with Biden, a joint news conference at the White House and an address to a largely supportive Congress — came together quickly.

What came about Wednesday was an elaborately executed plan by U.S. and Ukrainian officials to swiftly and safely route Zelenskyy to Washington, his first known trip outside the country’s borders since Russia’s invasion in February.

The Ukrainian president crossed into Poland early Wednesday, according to Poland’s private broadcaster, TVN24, arriving at a train station in Przemysl, a border town and the arrival point for many refugees fleeing the war. Accompanied by the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Bridget Brink, Zelenskyy was transported in a U.S. Embassy vehicle to an airport in Rzeszow, where he boarded a nonstop flight that landed at Joint Base Andrews shortly after noon Wednesday.

Carrying Zelenskyy to Andrews was a U.S. Air Force jet — a government plane typically used for Cabinet secretaries and other dignitaries below the president and vice president. The White House didn’t publicly announce the impending Zelenskyy visit until 1 a.m. Wednesday — waiting until they felt Zelenskyy was safely out of Ukraine.

Once Zelenskyy landed, Secret Service protection kicked in, as is typically done for visiting heads of state.

Paving the way

The senior administration official said the U.S. consulted closely with Zelenskyy on his security, and that the Ukrainian president felt it was sufficient for him to travel to the United States briefly.

Meanwhile, Pelosi had been planting the seeds for months for a Zelenskyy address to Congress.

She had been at the Zagreb summit in October at the invitation of Zelenskyy and Ruslan Stefanchuk, the speaker of the Ukrainian parliament. There, Zelenskyy spoke to the audience of “the importance of the free world’s unshakable solidarity with Ukraine” — an address that Pelosi emphasized in her invitation to the Ukrainian president.

The U.S. House speaker returned from Croatia and began discussing the idea of a Zelenskyy address, informing other congressional leaders — Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell — about her conversations abroad and asking for their support for the Ukrainian leader to come to the Capitol.

On Wednesday, Pelosi — just days away from handing over her gavel to Republican control — welcomed Zelenskyy to the Capitol, which she called a “profound privilege” and a “great pride,” coming at a moment when Capitol Hill is about to greenlight an additional $45 billion in emergency aid to Ukraine.

Before he left Ukraine, there were clues in Zelenskyy’s own words that a surprise trip abroad could be in the works.

In a visit Tuesday to Bakhmut, located in Ukraine’s contested Donetsk province, Zelenskyy was handed a Ukrainian flag. He pledged then that he would pass on the flag “from the boys to the Congress, to the president of the United States.”

Standing before the U.S. Congress on Wednesday night, Zelenskyy produced the flag — covered in signatures by Ukrainian troops battling on the front lines.

“They asked me to bring this flag to you, to the U.S. Congress, to members of the House of Representatives and senators whose decisions can save millions of people,” Zelenskyy said in his final words to lawmakers. “So let these decisions be taken. Let this flag stay with you. Ladies and gentlemen, this flag is a symbol of our victory in this war.”
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UN Warns Malawi Against Child Labor on Tobacco Farms

Posted on 12/22/2022 by SeeAF

Despite abolishing a tenancy system last year that was blamed for fueling child labor, Malawi has 3,000 children working in its tobacco industry, according to a United Nations report.

On Wednesday, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights released a statement expressing concern about the findings of the report.

Siobhán Mullally, the U.N.’s special rapporteur on trafficking in persons and an expert who contributed to the report, told VOA Thursday that the U.N.’s concerns come after the U.N. communicated with Malawi government and tobacco companies operating in Malawi.

“Over two months ago, we sent formal communications to the companies and to the government of Malawi,” said Mullally. “Those published are their responses. So we will continue working with them to raise these concerns.”

Last year, Malawi enacted laws against the tenancy system, an often exploitative agrarian labor practice also known as sharecropping, which was long blamed for fueling child labor in the tobacco industry.

The U.N. expert report says human rights abuses reported within the sector affected more than 3,000 children and 7,000 adults.

It also says in the aftermath of COVID-19, more than 400,000 children were reported not to have returned to school.

“This is really why we want to see much more urgent action to monitor the situation and prevent such occurrences,” said Mullally. “And risks of exploitation need to be better addressed. The tobacco companies and government need to take greater efforts to prevent the recruitment and exploitation of children on tobacco farms to ensure their protection.”

Allegations

Tobacco is Malawi’s dominant cash crop, accounting for about 13 percent of its gross domestic product and 60 percent of the country’s exchange earnings.

However, in 2019, the U.S. government suspended Malawi tobacco imports after allegations of child labor.

This forced Malawi President Lazarus Chakwera to assent to legislation in 2021 amending the Employment Act, establishing provisions that abolish the tenancy system.

The Malawi government is currently running programs aimed to end child labor, including the National Social Cash Transfer Program, which supports low-income families in high-risk districts so children can stay in school.

However, the U.N. has reported that efforts undertaken by Malawi and some tobacco companies, including by supporting school feeding programs and scholarships, are proving insufficient to address the problem.

“The government can ensure that there is access for labor inspectors for civil society and ensure that all steps have been taken by those companies that have permission to operate,” said Mullally. “If it is [a] trafficking issue, it also requires cooperation with law enforcements.”

Big names in tobacco

The U.N. researchers said they already discussed the matter with some of the companies involved in the tobacco industry in Malawi, including British American Tobacco, Imperial, Philip Morris International, and Japan Tobacco Group.

Simon Evans, the group media relations manager for Imperial Brands PLC tobacco company, told VOA via email Thursday that the company takes the matters raised in U.N. report seriously and that the company does not condone exploitative practices in its supply chains, as outlined in the Code of Conduct on its corporate website.

As a long-standing member of the Eliminating Child Labor in Tobacco Growing Foundation, Evans said the company is working to prevent exploitation through multi-stakeholder initiatives.

These include the industry-wide Sustainable Tobacco Program in which all tobacco source suppliers are expected to participate to address child labor.

Malawi’s Minister of Labor Vera Kamtukule told VOA that the Malawi government is running a program that enrolls children withdrawn from child labor into schools as well as vocational training institutions.

“The total number that was withdrawn this year is 528, compared to 173 last year,” said Kamtukule. “The total number that have put into vocation is 196, compared to three last year. Those they have sent back to school this year alone, is 65 compared to 54 last year.”

The Malawi government, said Kamtukule, is working to eliminate child labor by 2025.

“What I can tell you is that the fight against child labor is really ongoing,” said Kamtukule. “It is not something that is ad hoc.”
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Gambia’s Attempted Coup Blamed on Lack of Security Reforms

Posted on 12/22/2022 by SeeAF

The African Union and the Economic Community of West African States have condemned an alleged coup attempt in Gambia. The Gambian government says it arrested four troops planning to overthrow President Adama Barrow. Political analysts say a lack of security reforms is to blame for this latest coup attempt in the small West African nation.

The Gambian government said in a statement on Wednesday based on intelligence reports that some soldiers in the army were plotting to overthrow the democratically elected government.

Gambian political analyst Sait Matty Jaw says people are worried about their economic situation but do not support military involvement in the country’s political affairs.

“There are so many other issues people are worried about, but we also know that the majority of Gambians are anti-coup based on survey data. This has been part of the conversation,” Jaw said. “It was shocking to hear it was being led by a land corporal. So today, there are people questioning whether this was even a plot.”

Four soldiers have been arrested and the army is in pursuit of three alleged accomplices.

President Barrow was reelected in December 2021, securing a second five-year term.

Barrow first came to power in 2016 after defeating the country’s authoritarian president Yahya Jammeh, who ruled the country for 22 years.

Coup attempts are common in the West African nation. Jammeh himself took power in a coup in 1994 and averted several attempts to overthrow him.

In 2017 eight soldiers who had a link to the former president tried to overthrow Barrow.

Jaw says lack of security reforms is to blame for Wednesday’s coup attempt.

“People are raising questions in terms of the speed of this reform and some of these things are part of what is increasing the insecurity and the need to speed this process,” Jaw said. “The other issue raises questions about the broader transitional justice process because a lot of things need to be done.”

West Africa has seen a rash of coups and coup attempts over the past two years. New governments seized power in Guinea, Mali and Burkina Faso, while Guinea-Bissau averted a coup attempt in February this year.

Ikemesit Effiong is a geopolitical analyst based in Nigeria. He says corruption, economic mismanagement and misuse of power on the continent are to blame for some countries’ military attempts or takeovers.

“If you look at the age profile of a lot of coup plotters in places like Mali, Guinea Bissau, in Burkina Faso right across the region, they are relatively young people and for many of them, democracy has not delivered, they are channeling this popular frustration with a democratic ruling in the region into violence military takeovers,” Effiong said.

Jaw says the government of Gambia needs to reform the country’s political, economic and security structure to stop the military from taking power.

“One way of ensuring that things like this do not happen is to ensure that there are adequate reforms that will address the gaps, the lacuna, but also for the government to be more transparent with the population ensuring that the governance challenges in this country are addressed,” Jaw said.

The Economic Community of West Africa States condemned the attempted military takeover of the government and praised the Gambian army for thwarting it.
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