The Biden administration is sending its first representative to Africa since promising in December that several high-level officials would visit in 2023. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s three-stop visit is aimed at strengthening economic ties with the continent. VOA’s Mariama Diallo reports.
…
Month: January 2023
Swiss Firm Says It Permanently Removed CO2 from Air for Clients
A Swiss company says it has certifiably extracted CO2 from the air and permanently stored it in the ground — for the first time on behalf of paying customers, including Microsoft.
Climeworks, a startup created in 2009 by two Swiss engineers, said its facility in Iceland had successfully removed carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and injected it into the ground, where it would very gradually be transformed into rock.
The potential for scaling up remains to be proved.
In its announcement on Thursday, Climeworks said its process had been certified in September by DNV, a Norwegian independent auditor, marking the first time carbon had been permanently captured on behalf of paying corporate clients.
Climeworks counts companies including Microsoft, Stripe and Shopify among the clients who have bought into its future carbon removal services, to compensate for their greenhouse gas emissions.
The startup said it hoped “to lead as an example for peers, customers and policy makers alike that are committed to climate action.”
The Paris Agreement, adopted by nearly all the world’s nations in 2015, called for the rise in the Earth’s average temperature to be limited at 1.5 degrees Celsius, which scientists say would keep the impact of climate change at manageable levels.
Many businesses, including fossil fuel companies, rely heavily on carbon offset schemes based on afforestation to compensate for continuing carbon emissions.
But there has been growing interest in the newest carbon dioxide removal method, of which Climeworks is the industry leader: a chemical process known as direct air carbon capture and storage.
In its report last year, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that regardless of how quickly the world slashes greenhouse gas emissions, it will still need to suck CO2 from the atmosphere to avoid climate catastrophe.
But it remains to be seen whether this can be done at scale.
So far, Climeworks’ direct air capture facility in Iceland, the largest in the world, removes in a year what humanity emits in 3 to 4 seconds.
The company has not divulged how much its clients are paying for the service, and how much CO2 each client wants extracted.
…
Czechs Go to Polls in First Round of Presidential Vote
Czech voters went to the polls Friday in the first round of voting to elect a new president, with billionaire populist and former Prime Minister Andrej Babis and retired army general Petr Pavel seen as the front-runners.
The two men lead eight candidates in the field. First-round voting continues Saturday, and if no candidate receives more than 50% of the vote — which, polls indicate, is the likely outcome — there will be a second round of voting in two weeks.
Polls indicate a very close contest between the 68-year-Babis and the 61-year-old Pavel.
The top three
Babis is the leading opposition candidate. Czech political analyst and writer Jiri Pehe describes him as an “oligarch populist” who “flirts with the political orientation” of Hungarian President Viktor Orban.
Orban, an admirer of former U.S. President Donald Trump, comes under frequent criticism from the European Union, which has accused him of stifling democratic institutions.
Pavel, a former chair of NATO’s military committee, has received the endorsement of the government. He and the third-ranked candidate, according to most polls, 44-year-old economics professor Danuse Nerudova, are seen as the most pro-Western, pro-democratic candidates.
Nerudova would also be the first woman to hold the office of president.
Issues affecting race
Political analyst Pehe, who leads New York University’s academic center in Prague, told VOA the war in Ukraine is likely to play a significant role in the elections, as it has raised security and foreign policy concerns to a higher level than they otherwise would be in the election.
This is likely to favor Pavel, Pehe believes, because of his extensive military and international experience. The political analyst said Pavel has been an enthusiastic supporter of Ukraine as the country defends itself from Russian attacks, while Babis has been more ambiguous.
Pehe said polls indicate the economy is a major issue for Czech voters, which could help Babis, as he has stressed domestic issues over aid to Ukraine. But Pehe added that the voters want to see the Czech Republic maintain strong ties with the West and NATO, which will once again help Pavel.
Recent Gallup polling shared with VOA shows that approval of EU leadership has risen to 49% in the country, the highest level recorded in 13 years. Approval of Russian leadership, meanwhile, is at a 13-year low of 5%.
Corruption is also a major concern of Czech voters, according to the 2022 Gallup polling. It showed that 74% of the public believe that corruption is widespread in the government, a belief that has been fairly consistent since 2006.
On the positive side, 65% of respondents told Gallup they are confident in the honesty of elections.
The winner of the election will take over from current President Milos Zeman, who is completing his second term. Pehe said Zeman became a divisive figure — who was quite pro-Russia and China — when he attempted to over-step his presidential powers as designated by the nation’s constitution.
In the Czech government, the president is elected by the popular vote and appoints the prime minister, but the job is otherwise a largely ceremonial post.
Myroslava Gongadze reported from Warsaw. Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
…
Virginia School Official Learned Before Shooting That Child Might Have Gun
At least one administrator at the Virginia school where a 6-year-old boy shot a teacher last week was aware the boy might have had a gun, but no weapon was found when the boy’s backpack was searched before the shooting, school officials said Friday.
Superintendent George Parker told parents at Richneck Elementary School during a virtual meeting Thursday that a school administrator learned the boy might have had a gun, according to Michelle Price, a spokesperson for Newport News Public Schools. Virginia’s WAVY-TV first reported the information.
The administrator has not been identified, nor is it clear how the person learned the boy might have had a gun.
Once alerted, school officials searched the boy’s backpack but did not find the gun. Why the gun was not ultimately found at the time has not been explained. The shooting took place about 2-1/2 hours after the boy’s backpack was searched.
Teacher Abigail Zwerner, 25, was shot a week ago by the young student. Police hailed the teacher as a hero earlier this week for managing to evacuate students from her classroom even after she had been shot. Police said Friday that Zwerner’s last known condition was stable.
The boy who shot Zwerner was in the custody of the Newport News Department of Human Services, police said.
Police said the investigation was continuing and that once the prove was complete, they would present the findings to the commonwealth’s attorney in Newport News, who would make any decision regarding possible charges against the boy’s mother.
The mother legally purchased the 9 mm Taurus handgun, police have said, but could face misdemeanor charges if it’s found she did not properly secure the weapon in her home.
The boy took the handgun from his home, placed it in his backpack and removed it while Zwerner was teaching class, Newport News Police Chief Steve Drew said earlier this week. The boy pointed the gun at the teacher and fired once. Zwerner was shot through the hand and into the chest.
After the shot, another woman who works at the school rushed into the classroom and held the boy down while Zwerner escorted the estimated 16 to 20 students out, Drew said. When the police arrived, they found the gun on the floor.
Parker previously told reporters the school was unprepared for a 6-year-old bringing a gun to school and firing it, saying this marked only the third time since 1970 that a child age 6 or younger had discharged a weapon at a U.S. school.
The Newport News school board announced Thursday that metal detectors would be installed in every school in the city following the shooting.
…
German, French Ministers Call for African Permanent Seats on UNSC
The foreign ministers of France and Germany have voiced support for Africa to receive two permanent seats on the powerful U.N. Security Council.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said she and French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna added their support to an African push for permanent seats on the Security Council.
Baerbock spoke after she and Colonna met with African Union Chairperson Moussa Faki at AU headquarters in Addis Ababa.
“As European partners and I, as a German foreign minister, we see that the world in 2023 is not the same than that after World War Two, and therefore we are supporting two permanent seats for the African continent,” Baerbock said.
African leaders have for years called for a permanent seat on the powerful U.N. body.
Outgoing African Union Chairman Macky Sall, also the president of Senegal, reiterated that demand at the September U.N. General Assembly.
He said Africa should also have a seat in the G-20 group of the world’s largest economies.
U.S. President Joe Biden backed both efforts at the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit in Washington last month.
Currently, the Security Council has five permanent members — Britain, China, France, Russia, and the United States. Other countries are elected to the Council for two-year terms by the U.N. General Assembly.
Having permanent seats on the Security Council would for the first time give African countries veto power over U.N. resolutions.
Meanwhile, Baerbock said Russia’s invasion of Ukraine underscored the importance of relations between the European Union and the African Union.
“As Russia is attacking the European peace order this needs more support from our friends,” Baerbock said. “We need you and we need Africa in defending our European peace order.”
Baerbock on Thursday made a visit to a World Food Program warehouse storing donated Ukrainian grain and condemned Moscow for using food as a weapon of war.
She was referring to Russian forces blocking some Ukrainian grain exports as the Horn of Africa suffers through a record drought that has tens of millions struggling with hunger.
The two foreign ministers also met with Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed on Thursday and called for accountability for atrocities committed during the war in the northern Tigray region.
Rights groups accuse all sides of committing rapes, torture, and extra-judicial killings during the two-year war.
The EU suspended some support for Ethiopia over the abuses and says accountability in the war is a condition for normalizing relations.
French Foreign Minister Colonna’s visit will include a grant of about 30 million U.S. dollars to aid people affected by the war.
The foreign ministers are in Addis to support a November peace deal between Ethiopia’s federal government and Tigray authorities.
Since the agreement, Ethiopia has restored the flow of humanitarian aid and some basic services to Tigray, while Eritrea has withdrawn its forces from parts of the region.
On Tuesday, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front began turning over heavy weapons to the Ethiopian army.
…
Treasury Secretary Says US Expected to Hit Debt Limit Thursday
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen notified Congress on Friday that the U.S. is projected to reach its debt limit on Thursday and will then resort to “extraordinary measures” to avoid default.
In a letter to House and Senate leaders, Yellen said her actions will buy time until Congress can pass legislation that will either raise the nation’s $31.4 trillion borrowing authority or suspend it again for a period — but, she said, it’s “critical that Congress act in a timely manner.”
“Failure to meet the government’s obligations would cause irreparable harm to the U.S. economy, the livelihoods of all Americans and global financial stability,” she said.
“In the past, even threats that the U.S. government might fail to meet its obligations have caused real harms, including the only credit rating downgrade in the history of our nation in 2011,” she said. Yellen was referring to the debt ceiling impasse during Barack Obama’s presidency, when Republicans had also just won a House majority.
Possible showdown
In this new Congress, the debt ceiling debate will almost certainly trigger a political showdown between newly empowered GOP lawmakers, who now control the House and want to cut spending, and President Joe Biden and Democrats, who had enjoyed one-party control of Washington for the past two years.
The White House has insisted that it won’t allow the nation’s credit to be held captive to the demands of GOP lawmakers.
“We have seen both Republicans and Democrats come together to deal with this issue,” White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Friday. “It is one of the basic items that Congress has to deal with, and it should be done without conditions.”
House Republican leaders liken the debt ceiling to a credit card limit and have said they would only raise the statutory ceiling if doing so also secures a spending overhaul. In an interview this week on Fox News Channel, new House Speaker Kevin McCarthy stopped short of saying House Republicans would go so far as to refuse to pass the annual spending bills needed to fund the government, as happened more than a decade ago during an earlier debt ceiling showdown in Congress.
“We’re going to look at every single dollar spent,” he said.
But any effort to compromise with House Republicans could force Biden to bend on his own priorities, whether that’s money for the IRS to ensure that wealthier Americans pay what they owe or domestic programs for children and the poor.
Yellen said that while Treasury can’t estimate how long the extraordinary measures will allow the U.S. to continue to pay the government’s obligations, “it is unlikely that cash and extraordinary measures will be exhausted before early June.”
‘Not the time for panic’
Shai Akabas, director of economic policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center, told reporters Friday that “this is not the time for panic, but it’s certainly a time for policymakers to begin negotiations in earnest.”
“Most policymakers agree that we have a major fiscal challenge. As a country, our debt is unsustainable,” he said, and “there’s no reason why we couldn’t agree on measures to improve our fiscal outcome and also ensure that we are paying all of our bills in full and on time.”
The Treasury first used extraordinary measures in 1985 and has used them at least 16 times since, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a fiscal watchdog. But the extraordinary measures only work for so long and would probably run out — and put the U.S. at risk of default.
Those measures include divesting some payments, such as contributions to federal employees’ retirement plans, to provide some headroom to make other payments that are deemed essential, including those for Social Security and debt instruments.
Past forecasts suggest a default could instantly bury the country in a deep recession right at a moment of slowing global growth as the U.S. and much of the world face high inflation due to the pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The financial markets could crash, and several million workers could be laid off.
The aftershocks could be felt for years. Moody’s Analytics called this risk “cataclysmic” in a 2021 forecast before the previous debt ceiling increase, suggesting that the resulting chaos would be due to government dysfunction rather than the underlying condition of the U.S. economy.
…
As China Reopens, African Countries Gear Up for Business
After three years of closed borders under its strict “zero-COVID” policy, China reopened its doors to allow international travelers in — and Chinese with cabin fever out — a move with economic implications around the world, including in Africa.
On the continent, which counts China as its largest trade partner, African importers who sell cheap Chinese-made goods said they were itching to return to China to stock up while many African countries are also hoping to attract Chinese tourists.
While fears about the spread of COVID-19 caused some countries in Asia, Europe and North America to implement negative testing requirements for Chinese travelers, drawing the ire of Beijing, countries like Kenya and South Africa said they would not be implementing any travel restrictions for travelers from China.
African businesses eye China’s reopening
Markets and stocks around the world shot up with China’s reopening, and African businesses are also hoping to cash in on the world’s second largest economy.
“We are open to going there now and we are looking forward to do that to make sure that we get our businesses back on track,” Samuel Karanja, the CEO of the Importers and Small Traders Association of Kenya, told VOA, adding that the pandemic years have been a “roller coaster” for traders.
“For the past three years, it has been a very difficult moment for those traders because they lost touch with their suppliers. Ideally, the traders could go to China, meet their suppliers or manufacturers, go with samples of the goods that they need to be produced for them, some of them could wait for even weeks to be able to see that the production is completed, and the goods are loaded in containers and they’re coming back to Kenya,” he said.
Karanja said that was how business was done before the pandemic where Kenyan small and medium enterprise owners would travel to Chinese cities including Guangzhou, where they bulk purchased everything from electronics and motorbike spare parts to kitchenware and school stationery. After China implemented its zero-COVID policy however, the Kenyan businesses had to make purchases remotely, often with the help of unscrupulous middlemen who ripped them off.
Denis Juru, president of the International Cross-Border Traders Association in South Africa, echoed this, telling VOA that China’s reopening has lots of advantages for his organization’s members.
“The opening of Chinese borders will boost the African economy as Chinese products are cheap. African traders new to the business will be able to go and make their choices physically. New companies in China will take this opportunity to convince traders from Africa by reducing prices,” he said.
He noted that traveling to China is expensive but said while staying in-country and shopping online is easier and more economical “some companies in China sell the wrong products online. Therefore, the process of exchange inconveniences African businesses.”
Optimism with caution
As for large corporations that do business with China, Christo van der Rheede, CEO of Agri SA, South Africa’s biggest agricultural organization, was more circumspect about the pros and cons of China’s reopening.
“It remains to be seen how this is going to impact on South Africa. Remember, South Africa’s a big exporter of particular commodities, for example coal, iron ore, as well as other agricultural commodities to China. Hopefully this will increase the demand for South African commodities,” he said.
He also noted South Africa needs to weigh the economic benefits with caution around the spread of COVID-19.
“I think economically wise, we’ve seen how the clampdown, the zero(-COVID) policy, has impacted on the logistics, especially import and export logistics, and how that has driven up the cost of shipping throughout the world,” he said. “So hopefully we’ll be able to manage it in a way that will boost our economy and our exports to China, but at the same time we need to manage any outbreak in South Africa very carefully.”
Attracting Chinese visitors
So, what about travel from the other direction: Chinese coming to the continent either for business, to work on Belt and Road infrastructure projects or for tourism?
As soon as the country opened, Beijing was quick to send new Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang on his first official visit to the continent on a five-country tour.
In a speech on his first stop in Ethiopia, Qin reassured Africa that China plans to strengthen trade ties and accelerate in-person exchanges.
“First, let us intensify our in-person interactions and connectivity of ideas. The pandemic will be over, and we can see [the] light of hope ahead. … We will expand exchange and cooperation with Africa in various fields and at all levels, including between the governments, legislatures, political parties, militaries and localities,” Qin said. “African political leaders, AU Commission officials at various levels and Africans in the political, business and academic circles are most welcome to visit in due course.”
“We will encourage Chinese companies and people to come to Africa for investment and tourism. We will provide more facilitation to restore two-way personnel exchanges at a faster pace,” he added.
In terms of Chinese visitors to South Africa, however, Rosemary Anderson, national chairperson of the Federated Hospitality Association of South Africa, told VOA the current system leaves much to be desired.
“The Chinese traveler to South Africa has to present themselves in person at an embassy or visa office in China and wait up to months for a visa to be supplied,” she said, noting South Africa only attracted about 93,000 visitors before the pandemic in 2019, out of some 155 million Chinese who traveled abroad.
However, she noted that it was encouraging that Air China has recently started a direct flight between Beijing and Johannesburg.
Anderson said South Africa should do more to attract Chinese travelers, including public and private sector marketing initiatives aimed specifically at the Chinese market, ensuring destination and product information is available on Chinese search engines, and marketing on Chinese social media channels like Weibo and WeChat.
As China reopens to the world, “showing that you are Chinese friendly by, for example, offering payment platforms like WeChat Pay and Alipay, keeping in mind Chinese holiday dates, learning a few key phrases in Mandarin and training tourist guides to speak Mandarin,” would all be useful, she said.
…
Trump Organization Fined $1.6 Million for Tax Fraud
Donald Trump’s company was fined $1.6 million Friday as punishment for a scheme in which the former president’s top executives dodged personal income taxes on lavish job perks — a symbolic, hardly crippling blow for an enterprise boasting billions of dollars in assets.
A fine was the only penalty a judge could impose on the Trump Organization for its conviction last month for 17 tax crimes, including conspiracy and falsifying business records.
The amount imposed by Judge Juan Manuel Merchan was the maximum allowed by law, an amount equal to double the taxes a small group of executives avoided on benefits including rent-free apartments in Trump buildings, luxury cars and private school tuition.
Trump himself was not on trial and denied any knowledge of his executives evading taxes illegally.
The Trump Organization was charged through its subsidiaries Trump Corp., which was fined $810,000; and Trump Payroll Corp., which was fined $800,000.
While the fines — less than the cost of a Trump Tower apartment — aren’t big enough to impact the company’s operations or future, the conviction is a black mark on the Republican’s reputation as a savvy businessman as he mounts a campaign to regain the White House.
Neither the former president or his children, who helped run and promote the Trump Organization, were in the courtroom for the sentencing hearing.
In a statement released after sentencing, the Trump Organization said it did nothing wrong and would appeal the verdict.
“New York has become the crime and murder capital of the world, yet these politically motivated prosecutors will stop at nothing to get President Trump and continue the never-ending witch-hunt which began the day he announced his presidency,” the statement said.
Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass said the fines constitute “a fraction of the revenue” of the Trump Organization and called the scheme “far-reaching and brazen.”
“All of these corrupt practices were part of the Trump Organization executive compensation package, and it was certainly cheaper than paying higher salaries to those executives,” he said.
Defense attorneys had argued that the fine should be slightly lower because, they said, state law bars fines on multiple counts of the same charge. They estimated the penalty should have been $750,000 or less for each of the two Trump entities.
Because the Trump Organization is a corporation and not a person, a fine is the only way a judge can punish the company after its conviction last month for 17 tax crimes, including charges of conspiracy and falsifying business records.
The company asked for 30 days to pay the fine; the judge ordered it to pay in 14 days.
By law, the maximum penalty that can be imposed by Merchan is around $1.6 million, an amount equal to double the taxes a small group of executives avoided on benefits including rent-free apartments in Trump buildings, luxury cars and private school tuition.
Trump himself was not on trial and denied any knowledge of his executives evading taxes illegally.
While a fine of that amount isn’t likely to affect the company’s operations or future, the conviction is a black mark on the Republican’s reputation as a savvy businessman as he mounts a campaign to regain the White House.
Besides the company, only one executive was charged in the case: former Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg, who pleaded guilty last summer to evading taxes on $1.7 million in compensation.
He was sentenced Tuesday to five months in jail.
Trump has said the case against his company was part of a politically motivated “witch hunt” waged against him by vindictive Democrats. The company’s lawyers have vowed to appeal the verdict.
The criminal case involved financial practices and pay arrangements that the company halted when Trump was elected president in 2016.
Over his years as the company’s chief moneyman, Weisselberg had received a rent-free apartment in a Trump-branded building in Manhattan with a view of the Hudson River. He and his wife drove Mercedes-Benz cars, leased by the company. When his grandchildren went to an exclusive private school, Trump paid their tuition.
A handful of other executives received similar perks.
When called to testify against the Trump Organization at trial, Weisselberg testified that he didn’t pay taxes on that compensation, and that he and a company vice president conspired to hide the perks by having the company issue falsified W-2 forms.
Weisselberg also attempted to take responsibility on the witness stand, saying nobody in the Trump family knew what he was doing. He choked up as he told jurors, “It was my own personal greed that led to this.”
Trump Organization lawyers repeated the mantra, “Weisselberg did it for Weisselberg,” contending that he had gone rogue and betrayed the company’s trust.
Assistant district attorney Joshua Steinglass attempted to refute that claim in his closing argument, showing jurors a lease Trump signed himself for Weisselberg’s apartment.
“Mr. Trump is explicitly sanctioning tax fraud,” Steinglass argued.
A jury convicted the company of tax fraud on December 6.
The company’s fine will be barely a dent in the bottom line for an enterprise with a global portfolio of golf courses, hotels and development deals. It could face more trouble outside of court due to the reputational damage, such as difficulty finding new deals and business partners.
The Trump Organization’s sentencing doesn’t end Trump’s battle with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who said the sentencing “closes this important chapter of our ongoing investigation into the former president and his businesses. We now move onto the next chapter.”
Bragg, a Democrat who took office in January, was referring to a related investigation of Trump that began under his predecessor, Cyrus Vance Jr.
At the same time, New York Attorney General Letitia James is suing Trump and the Trump Organization, alleging they misled banks and others about the value of its many assets, a practice she dubbed the “art of the steal.”
James, a Democrat, is asking a court to ban Trump and his three eldest children from running any New York-based company and is seeking to fine them at least $250 million. A judge has set an October trial date. As a preliminary measure, he appointed a monitor for the company while the case is pending.
Trump faces several other legal challenges as he looks to retake the White House in 2024.
A special grand jury in Atlanta has investigated whether Trump and his allies committed any crimes while trying to overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia.
Last month, the House January 6 committee voted to make a criminal referral to the Justice Department for Trump’s role in sparking the violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. The FBI is also investigating Trump’s storage of classified documents.
…
US Offers $10 Million Reward for Mastermind of 2019 Nairobi Terrorist Attack
The United States has announced a reward of up to $10 million for information leading to the arrest of the alleged leader of the 2019 attack on Nairobi’s Dusit D2 hotel complex. The attack in the Kenyan capital killed 21 people, including a U.S. citizen, and injured 30 others.
Kennedy Macharia was working at the complex on January 2019 when he heard gunshots. He and some of his colleagues barricaded themselves inside their office until police found them and led them out.
However, two of his colleagues were shot and killed.
Macharia welcomed Thursday’s U.S. announcement of a $10 million reward for information leading to the arrest of Mohamoud Abdi Aden, the alleged mastermind of the attack.
“I think the idea of looking for whoever masterminded the whole thing would be of great help, to serve justice to the families that lost their loved ones, some friends, some colleagues, some workmates,” Macharia said. “I feel it will serve justice and maybe it will bring closure to the whole ordeal.”
Mohamoud Abdi Aden is leader of the Somalia-based militant group al-Shabab. The U.S. State Department officially designated him as a terrorist in October.
U.S. Ambassador to Kenya Meg Whitman announced the reward offer, which is equivalent to more than 1.2 billion Kenya shillings. She said the U.S. is seeking information leading to Aden’s arrest and conviction in any country, plus information on anyone else involved in the Dusit D2 attack.
“We encourage anyone with information on those responsible for the attack to contact Rewards for Justice on Signal, Telegram or Whatsapp via Kenyan and Somali tip lines displayed on the posters,” Whitman said.
The U.S. reward offer is the third of its kind in three months.
In November, the U.S. offered $10 million for information leading to the capture of three al-Shabab leaders — Ahmed Diriye, Muhad Karate and Jehad Mostafa — alleged to be responsible for attacks in both Kenya and Somalia.
On January 5, the U.S. issued a reward offer for information on Maalim Ayman, believed to have planned an attack on Kenya’s Manda Bay Airbase, which is utilized by the U.S. armed forces for counterterrorism training.
Security analysts such as Daniel Omondi say the U.S. rewards are signaling Washington’s proactive efforts to nab terrorists in Kenya.
“Especially after the 1998 bombing of the U.S. embassies, the U.S. must keep on being on the forefront to help, especially with surveillance and enhancing efforts with regards to collection of information, which is very, very key in preventing further attacks in the region,” Omondi said.
Kenya and the U.S. have formed a multi-agency investigation unit to counter terrorism and share information to avert attacks. Authorities from both countries say the unit has been a success.
your ad hereBudapest Police Officer Killed, Two Others Injured in Knife Attack
Police in Hungary said Friday one police officer was killed and two others injured when they were stabbed while responding to a disturbance at a Budapest apartment complex.
A Budapest police department statement said the officers responded to a call late Thursday at the building in the city’s Ujbuda district and discovered a man trying to break down a door into an apartment.
Police said the suspect attacked the officers with a knife as they tried to detain him and ran into the street where a fourth officer fired at him, striking him in the leg.
The wounded officers and the suspect were all transported to a hospital. One of the officers, a 29-year-old police sergeant major, died from his injuries.
Budapest chief prosecutor Pal Furcht told a news briefing Friday the attack is not being investigated as a terrorist incident.
Speaking on state radio Friday, Hungary’s Prime Minister Victor Orban said the government would provide assistance to the family of the slain officer.
Some information for this report was provided by the Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
…
American Released From Russian Custody
An American citizen who had been detained in Russia for nearly a year was released Thursday.
Taylor Dudley, who is 35, was detained when he crossed from Poland into Kaliningrad, near Moscow, last year in April.
CNN reports the Michigan resident’s detention was not widely reported because his family wanted the negotiations for his release to remain private.
He was attending a music festival in Poland, but it is not clear why he crossed the border into Russia.
It appears that no exchange was made for Dudley on the U.S. side.
Negotiations for Dudley’s release were headed up by former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson.
…
MLK Holiday to Feature Tributes, Commitments to Race Agenda
Annual tributes and commemorations of the life and legacy of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., which begin nationwide on Friday, typically include a mix of politics, faith and community service.
For this year’s celebration, the 37th since its federal recognition in 1986, a descendant of King hopes to spur progress by helping more Americans personalize the ongoing struggle for racial equity and harmony. Bernice King, daughter of the late civil rights icon, said people must move beyond platitudes and deepen their own commitments to the needed progress.
“We need to change our thinking,” said King, who is CEO of The King Center in Atlanta.
Under the theme “It Starts With Me,” the center launched its slate of Martin Luther King Jr. Day events on Thursday with youth and adult summits to educate the public on ways to transform unjust systems in the U.S.
The summits were streamed online and are available for replay on the center’s social media accounts.
“It seems like we’re going through these cycles, because we’re trying to approach everything with the same mindset that all of this (racial inequity) was created,” King told The Associated Press.
“Change can be very small,” she said, “but transformation means that now we changed the character, form, and nature of something. That’s something we have not seen yet.”
Other King holiday weekend events include a statue unveiling in Boston, a symposium on police brutality in Akron, Ohio, and community service projects in many U.S. cities. The holiday kicks off another year of advocacy on a racial justice agenda — from police reforms and strengthening voting rights to solutions on economic and educational disparities — that has been stymied by culture wars and partisan gridlock in Washington and nationwide.
On Sunday morning, President Joe Biden is due to speak at a commemorative service at Ebenezer Baptist Church, the historic Atlanta house of worship where King preached from 1960 until his assassination in 1968. The church is pastored by the Rev. Sen. Raphael Warnock, who recently won election to a full term as Georgia’s first Black U.S. senator.
And on Monday, the federal observance of the King holiday, commemorations continue in Atlanta, as well as in the nation’s capital and beyond.
The Rev. Al Sharpton, who got his start as a civil rights organizer in his teens as youth director of an anti-poverty project of King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference, will hold his annual King holiday events in Washington, D.C. and New York on Monday. Martin Luther King III, son of the civil rights icon, is expected to attend Sharpton’s breakfast gala in Washington with his wife, Drum Major Institute president Arndrea Waters King, who will be honored alongside former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Monday afternoon in New York City, Sharpton, the founder and president of the National Action Network, is scheduled to convene more than 30 prominent state and local elected officials for a public policy forum at the House of Justice, his organization’s headquarters in Harlem.
In the decades since its establishment, the King holiday has become an opportunity for elected officials and candidates seeking office to establish their civil rights and social justice credentials. Bernice King said partisanship among politicians has been a major obstacle to legislative solutions on civil rights.
Overcoming that is “going to require elevating to a place where your loyalty is to humanity, not to party,” she said.
“If we don’t find humane ways to create policies and implement practices out of those policies, we’re going to continue in this vicious cycle of a downward spiral towards destruction and chaos.”
Outside of establishment politics, many King holiday weekend events are opportunities for Americans to give back, reflect on the civil right icon’s legacy or deal locally with racial discrimination in their own communities.
A massive monument to Martin Luther King Jr. is scheduled to be dedicated Friday in Boston, where the leader first met his wife, Coretta Scott King. In the early 1950s, he was a doctoral student in theology at Boston University and she was studying at the New England Conservatory of Music.
The $10 million sculpture called “The Embrace” consisting of four intertwined arms was inspired by a photo of the Kings embracing when King Jr. learned he had won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. It was designed byHank Willis Thomas and MASS Design Group and was selected out of 126 proposals.
Imari Paris Jeffries, executive director of EmbraceBoston, the organization behind the memorial, noted the significance of the sculpture’s placement at the Boston Common, America’s oldest public park and a high traffic area with millions of city residents and visitors walking its paths every year.
“I think Boston has this reputation of being this city of heroes and abolitionists, like W.E.B. Du Bois and Frederick Douglas, simultaneously with this reputation of not being friendly and in some cases being described as racist. So there’s this tension between these two images of Boston. Having the memorial there is part of our intention to transform our city’s perspective.”
In Akron, Ohio, the family of Jayland Walker, a 25-year-old Black man killed after police officers shot at him 46 times as he fled last July, will hold a symposium on public safety and mental health with local civil rights leaders on Saturday. Walker’s case received widespread attention from activists, including from the King family.
And for the seventh year, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation will mark a post-King holiday National Day of Racial Healing. On Tuesday, communities nationwide are scheduled to hold town halls to continue dialog on healing that the foundation says is needed to achieve racial equity.
“Regardless of who you are, there’s a journey of healing that everyone must consider,” said La June Montgomery Tabron, CEO of the Kellogg Foundation. “We’ve all been impacted by racism.”
…
3 Frontrunners as Czechs Vote for New President
The Czech presidential election is to kick off Friday with a billionaire, a general and an academic leading a likely two-round vote seen as too close to call.
The winner will replace Milos Zeman, an outspoken political veteran, following a period marked by the country’s 2022 EU presidency as the war in Ukraine raged.
The victor will face record inflation in the central European country of 10.5 million people, as well as bulging public finance deficits related to the war in Ukraine.
Unless a candidate wins more than 50% outright, which is considered unlikely, the two top contenders will go head-to-head in a second round on Jan. 27-28.
“If you asked me to place a bet (on the result), I wouldn’t,” Metropolitan University Prague political scientist Petr Just told AFP.
Populist ex-prime minister Andrej Babis, retired general Petr Pavel and university professor Danuse Nerudova are vying to become only the fourth president since the Czech Republic was founded in 1993 following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Business tycoon and former prime minister Babis, 68, is the fifth-wealthiest person in the Czech Republic, according to Forbes magazine.
Pavel, 61, is a former paratrooper who was decorated as a hero of the Serbo-Croatian war during which he helped to free French troops from a war zone.
He went on to be the chief of the Czech general staff and chair of NATO’s military committee.
Nerudova, the youngest frontrunner at 44, has a strong focus on social issues and is counting largely on the backing of younger voters.
Six wines, three shots
At the final campaign television debate late Thursday, Babis, Nerudova and Pavel vowed to forge a different path from the divisive Zeman if elected.
“Everybody knows me, I will be very active, and my advantage is I have the experience from all sectors in the government,” said Babis.
“That’s one of my priorities, to restore dignity to the presidential office,” Pavel told reporters.
Nerudova, wooing young voters as “the representative of the future,” said a woman would bring welcome change to the largely men’s world of Czech politics.
“There is a lot of aggression in our society, and I think that a woman would bring empathy and more political culture,” she added.
Polls suggest that both Pavel and Nerudova would beat Babis if they face him in the second round.
Five candidates — two senators, a far-right lawmaker, a former university rector and an entrepreneur — trail behind the top three favorites.
The Czech president’s role is largely ceremonial, but the head of state names the government, picks the governor of the central bank and constitutional judges, and serves as top commander of the armed forces.
But Zeman, a controversial politician who once confessed to a daily diet of six glasses of wine and three shots of spirits, repeatedly exploited loopholes in the constitution to increase his influence.
Polling stations open for the first round at 2 p.m. (1300 GMT) and close at 10 p.m. They then reopen from 8 a.m.-2 p.m. Saturday.
The first-round results are expected Saturday evening.
…
Russia Likely Using Convict Labor for Manufacturing Demands, UK Says
Britain’s defense ministry said Russia’s defense manufacturing sector is likely resorting to convict labor to meet wartime production demands, in an intelligence update Friday about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“In November 2022,” the report posted on Twitter said, “Uralvagonzavod (UVZ), Russia’s largest tank manufacturer, told local media that it would employ 250 prisoners after meeting with the Federal Penal Service (FSIN).”
Russia has a long history of prison labor and in 2017 “forced labor as a specific criminal punishment was reintroduced,” the ministry said.
The British Defense Ministry said, “The prison population provides a unique human resource to Russian leaders to utilize in support of the ‘special military operation’ while willing volunteers remain in short supply.”
“Convict labor will likely be particularly in demand from manufacturers of relatively low-tech weaponry such as UVZ, which are almost certainly under intense pressure from Moscow to increase their production,” the ministry said.
Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said Thursday there was fierce fighting in Soledar but that Ukraine’s forces were holding on.
Maliar spoke a day after conflicting claims about who controlled the town in eastern Ukraine.
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Wednesday called the battle for Soledar “a very fluid, dynamic environment, dynamic fight” amid reports that it had fallen to the Russians.
“At this point, we can’t corroborate that reporting,” Austin said in joint press briefing with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and their Japanese counterparts at the State Department.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of Russia’s mercenary Wagner Group, said Wednesday his forces had captured all of the mining town and killed 500 Ukrainian troops in heavy fighting.
Minutes later, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the fighting continued.
The Russians “are trying to pretend that part of our town of Soledar … is some sort of a Russian possession,” he said in a video address. “But fighting continues. The Donetsk theater of operations is holding.”
In a statement on Facebook, the Ukrainian general staff said Russian forces were suffering heavy losses. Russia has been trying to capture the salt-mining town since August because of its salt caverns and proximity to Bakhmut.
Active conflict
The area is one of the most active in the conflict, making it difficult for an independent assessment of the situation.
A Reuters photographer who recently reached the edge of Soledar said she could see smoke rising over the town, and the incoming artillery fire was relentless, Reuters reported. Ambulances were waiting to receive the wounded on the road from Soledar to Bakhmut.
Some information for this report came from Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
…
Storms, Tornadoes Slam US South, Killing at Least 7
A giant storm system billowing across the South on Thursday killed at least six people in central Alabama, where a tornado ripped roofs off homes and uprooted trees in historic Selma, while another person was killed in Georgia, where severe winds knocked out power to tens of thousands of people.
In Autauga County, Alabama, 66 kilometers northeast of Selma, at least six fatalities were confirmed, and an estimated 40 homes were damaged or destroyed by a tornado that cut a 32-kilometer path across two rural communities, said Ernie Baggett, the county’s emergency management director.
Several mobile homes were launched into the air and at least 12 people were injured severely enough to be taken to hospitals by emergency responders, Baggett told The Associated Press. He said crews were focused Thursday night on cutting through downed trees to look for people who may need help.
“It really did a good bit of damage. This is the worst that I’ve seen here in this county,” Baggett said.
In Georgia, a passenger died when a tree fell on a vehicle in Jackson during the storm, Butts County Coroner Lacey Prue said. In the same county southeast of Atlanta, the storm appeared to have knocked a freight train off its tracks, officials said.
Officials in Griffin, south of Atlanta, told local news outlets that multiple people had been trapped inside an apartment complex after trees fell on it. Firefighters also cut a Griffin man loose who had been pinned for hours under a tree that fell on his house. A high school was damaged, and students were held at four middle schools for parents to pick up after officials determined it was unsafe to run buses. The city of Griffin imposed a curfew from 10 p.m. Thursday to 6 a.m. Friday.
School systems in at least six Georgia counties on the southern fringes of metro Atlanta canceled classes on Friday. Those systems enroll a total of 90,000 students.
Nationwide, there were 33 separate tornado reports Thursday from the National Weather Service as of Thursday evening, with a handful of tornado warnings still in effect in Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina. However, the reports were not yet confirmed and some of them could later be classified as wind damage after assessments are done in coming days.
In Selma, a city etched in the history of the civil rights movement, a tornado cut a wide path through the downtown area, where brick buildings collapsed, oak trees were uprooted, cars were on their side and power lines were left dangling. Plumes of thick black smoke rose over the city from a fire burning. It wasn’t immediately known whether the storm caused the blaze.
Selma Mayor James Perkins said no fatalities have been reported, but several people were seriously injured. First responders were continuing to assess the damage and officials hoped to get an aerial view of the city Friday morning.
“We have a lot of downed power lines,” he said. “There is a lot of danger on the streets.”
With widespread power outages, the Selma City Council held a meeting on the sidewalk, using lights from cellphones, to declare a state of emergency. A high school was opened as a shelter, officials said.
Mattie Moore was among Selma residents who picked up boxed meals offered by a charity downtown.
“Thank God that we’re here. It’s like something you see on TV,” Moore said of all the destruction.
A city of about 18,000 people, Selma is about 80 kilometers west of the Alabama capital of Montgomery. It was a flashpoint of the civil rights movement and where Alabama state troopers viciously attacked Black people advocating for voting rights as they marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge on March 7, 1965.
After the tornado passed, Krishun Moore emerged from her home to the sound of children crying and screaming. She and her mother encouraged the kids to keep screaming until they found the two of them on top of the roof of a damaged apartment.
She estimated the kids were about 1 and 4 years old. Both of them are OK, she said through Facebook messenger.
Malesha McVay drove parallel to the tornado with her family. She said it got less than 2 kilometers from her home before suddenly turning.
“We stopped and we prayed. We followed it and prayed,” she said. “It was a 100% God thing that it turned right before it hit my house.”
She took video of the giant twister, which would turn black as it swept away home after home.
“It would hit a house, and black smoke would swirl up,” she said. “It was very terrifying.”
About 40,000 customers were without power in Alabama on Thursday night, according to PowerOutage.us, which tracks outages nationwide. In Georgia, about 86,000 customers were without electricity after the storm system carved a path across a tier of counties just south of Atlanta.
The storm hit in Griffin, south of Atlanta, with winds damaging a shopping area, local news outlets reported. A Hobby Lobby store partially lost its roof, and at least one car was flipped in the parking lot of a nearby Walmart.
Damage was also reported west of downtown Atlanta in Douglas County and Cobb County, with Cobb County government posting a damage report showing a crumbled cinderblock wall at a warehouse in suburban Austell.
In Kentucky, the National Weather Service in Louisville confirmed that an EF-1 tornado struck Mercer County and said crews were surveying damage in a handful of other counties.
Three factors — a natural La Nina weather cycle, warming of the Gulf of Mexico likely related to climate change and a decades-long shift of tornadoes from the west to east — came together to make Thursday’s tornado outbreak unusual and damaging, said Victor Gensini, a meteorology professor at Northern Illinois University who studies tornado trends.
The La Nina, a cooling of parts of the Pacific that changes weather worldwide, was a factor in making a wavy jet stream that brought a cold front through, Gensini said. But that’s not enough for a tornado outbreak. What’s needed is moisture.
Normally the air in the Southeast is fairly dry this time of year but the dew point was twice what is normal, likely because of unusually warm water in the Gulf of Mexico, which is likely influenced by climate change. That moisture hit the cold front and everything was in place, Gensini said.
…
Man Pleads Guilty to Hate Crime in Chinese Immigrant’s Death
A New York man pleaded guilty Thursday to a hate-crime manslaughter charge for beating a Chinese immigrant who was collecting cans to earn money.
Jarrod Powell, 51, is expected to get a 22-year prison sentence for the 2021 death of Yao Pan Ma. The killing drew national attention as part of a rise in hate crimes targeting Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in New York and around the country.
“This unprovoked attack took the life of Yao Pan Ma and took away a sense of security for so many in the AAPI community in New York,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said in a statement Thursday.
A message seeking comment was left for Powell’s attorney.
Ma was abruptly attacked from behind, knocked to the ground and kicked and stomped in the head on an East Harlem street on April 23, 2021, authorities said. His attacker fled and left him unconscious; a nearby bus driver flagged down an ambulance.
Ma, 61, suffered a traumatic brain injury and never regained consciousness. He died from his injuries eight months later.
Powell was arrested four days after the assault. In pleading guilty, he acknowledged that he targeted Ma because the victim was Asian, according to Bragg’s office.
Ma’s loved ones approved of the plea agreement, family spokesperson Karlin Chan said.
“While this will not bring back Mr. Yao Pan Ma, it is a significant sentence that we can accept,” Chan said, noting that the plea spares the family the pain of a trial.
Ma and his wife immigrated to the U.S. in October 2018 from China, where Ma was a dim sum chef, according to Chan. He has said Ma and his wife both lost their jobs — his as a kitchen worker, hers as a home care attendant — during the 2020 coronavirus pandemic shutdowns, and the couple then started collecting cans and bottles to return for refunds.
…
Security Agency Director Pushes Congress to Renew Surveillance Powers
A top U.S. intelligence official on Thursday urged Congress to renew sweeping powers granted to American spy agencies to surveil and examine communications, saying they were critical to stopping terrorism, cyberattacks and other threats.
The remarks by Army General Paul Nakasone, director of the National Security Agency, opened what’s expected to be a contentious debate over provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that expire at year’s end. The bipartisan consensus in favor of expanded surveillance powers in the years after September 11 has given way to increased skepticism, especially among some Republicans who believe spy agencies used those powers to undermine former President Donald Trump.
The new GOP majority in the U.S. House has already formed a panel on the “weaponization of the federal government.” And progressive Democrats have pushed for more curbs on warrantless surveillance.
The NSA and other spy agencies use authorities under FISA’s Section 702 to collect huge swaths of foreign communications, which also results in the incidental collection of emails and calls from Americans. The law prohibits spy agencies from targeting Americans and requires the FBI to seek a court order to access a U.S. citizen’s communications.
Section 702 was first added to FISA in 2008 and renewed for six years in 2018, when Trump originally tweeted opposition to the program but then reversed himself.
Nakasone argued the law “plays an outsize role in protecting the nation” and generates “some of the U.S. government’s most valuable intelligence on our most challenging targets.”
‘We have saved lives’
He gave several broad examples of that work, including the discovery of attempts to steal sensitive U.S. technology, stopping the transfer of weapons components, preventing cyberattacks and “understanding the strategic intentions” of China and Russia.
“We have saved lives because of 702,” Nakasone told a virtual meeting of the U.S. Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board.
The general said he could not publicly share more details about the impact of that surveillance, acknowledging that also limited his ability to make his case. Civil liberties advocates have long criticized the secrecy of intelligence court proceedings and the power that agencies have to collect years of incidental data on Americans.
Cindy Cohn, executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said Congress had created an effective “national security exception to the U.S. Constitution.”
“The American people and indeed people all around the world have lost the ability to have a private conversation over digital networks,” she told the board. Section 702, Cohn said, “was a mass monitoring infrastructure that subjects people’s communications to NSA review.”
Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee and other national security hawks are expected to push GOP colleagues to support a renewal this year accompanied by still unspecified changes.
“We’ve got to have a discussion within our own caucus, but I feel good about the groundwork we’ve laid,” said Representative Mike Gallagher, a Wisconsin Republican who will lead the House’s new select committee on China, in an interview this week. “There’s serious and legitimate concern. And so part of the process of getting renewal is to put in place reform that gives people confidence that there won’t be abuses in the future.”
In December 2019, the Justice Department’s inspector general found the FBI had withheld key information from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court as it applied for warrants to monitor the communication of Carter Page, a Trump campaign aide. But the inspector general did make clear the extent to which agents relied during that process on uncorroborated allegations compiled by a former British spy.
The chief judge of that court would issue an unusual rebuke to the FBI, saying it had made “unsupported” representations as it submitted the eavesdropping applications and had failed to provide other information that would have weakened the government’s case for surveillance.
Responding to the scrutiny, the FBI announced a series of changes designed to ensure that its applications to the court, which approves warrants to eavesdrop on American soil on people suspected of being agents of a foreign power, are more accurate.
Congress in 2020 let expire three provisions of the Patriot Act that the FBI and Justice Department had said were essential for national security, including one that permits investigators to surveil subjects without establishing that they’re acting on behalf of an international terrorism organization. A bill renewing those authorities passed the Senate, but Democrats pulled legislation from the House floor after Trump and House Republicans turned against the measure and ensured its defeat.
…
US Envoy Says Russian Wagner Group’s Activities Must End
A senior U.S. envoy expressed strong concern Thursday about the activities of the Russian private military contractor Wagner Group and its alleged attempts to recruit soldiers in Serbia and elsewhere in the world.
U.S. State Department Counselor Derek Chollet said he voiced these concerns during talks in Belgrade with Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic.
“We have seen that the Wagner Group is seeking to recruit soldiers from Serbia and elsewhere, and that’s something we think cannot stand,” he told reporters after the meeting.
“I don’t know if there are concerns [in Serbia], we talked about our concerns and we are looking forward to working with the government here in Belgrade and elsewhere where Wagner is active to put an end to their activities,” he added.
Wagner Group, owned by Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin, reportedly has been active in dozens of mostly African states, working with governments on pro-Russian propaganda and other military and political projects.
The group has boasted about its presence in Serbia, the only European state besides Belarus that has not joined international sanctions against Russia for its war against Ukraine. The group has reportedly announced the opening of its offices in Belgrade, something that was later denied.
Moscow’s propaganda portal RT, which recently started its Serbian-language online news site in Serbia, has published Wagner’s recruitment advertisement seeking fighters in Ukraine, saying the group offers “more than attractive” incentives.
Chollet said Wagner Group is “in action in terrible ways throughout the world, whether it is in Libya, the Central African Republic or right now in Ukraine.”
The group, which reportedly includes a large contingent of convicts recruited in Russian prisons, has spearheaded the attacks in eastern Ukraine, including the fierce battles in Soledar and Bakhmut.
Prigozhin and his group have been under U.S. sanctions for years, and the U.S. has recently taken additional steps to try to control Wagner’s access to weapons.
Wagner Group mercenaries have also been accused by Western countries and United Nations experts of numerous human rights abuses throughout Africa, including in the Central African Republic, Libya and Mali. Earlier this month U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced he has designated the Wagner Group as an “entity of particular concern” for its activities in the Central African Republic.
Chollet also urged Serbia to introduce sanctions against its traditional Slavic ally Russia.
“We believe that countries should sign on to the sanctions, and the reason why we believe that is because Russia’s actions do not only have to be condemned, they have to be punished,” he said. “Russia every day is prosecuting a brutal, unjustified war against Ukraine. We need to stand together, to ensure that this behavior, it’s clear that this behavior is unacceptable.”
The U.S. envoy this week launched a tour of several Balkan nations in a visit focused on international efforts to help normalize relations between Kosovo and Serbia after weeks of heightened tension. The former Serbian province declared independence in 2008, something Serbia and Russia don’t recognize.
…
Iran Media Say British Iranian Facing Execution Had Ties to Scientist’s Killing
Iranian state media published a video on Thursday that they said showed British Iranian national Alireza Akbari, who is facing the death penalty for spying, played a role in the 2020 assassination of Iran’s top nuclear scientist.
The video was aired a day after state media said a death sentence had been given to Akbari, who previously served as Iran’s deputy defense minister, on charges of spying for Britain, which has demanded he be released.
Iran has not said when Akbari’s sentence will be carried out. One hard-line news website said Akbari had been executed on Thursday, but there has been no official confirmation. A source told Reuters he had been transferred to a solitary cell typically used for those about to executed.
In the video of Akbari published by state media, he did not confess to involvement in the assassination of scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, killed in a 2020 attack outside Tehran, but said a British agent had asked for information about him.
In a separate recording broadcast by BBC Persian on Wednesday, Akbari said he had confessed to crimes he had not committed after extensive torture.
Britain’s foreign office declined to comment on the videos. Speaking in parliament on Thursday afternoon about the Akbari case, British Foreign Office Minister Leo Docherty said: “We have no news today, and it would be wrong of me to speculate about any future activities.”
On Wednesday, British Foreign Minister James Cleverly said the planned execution was politically motivated and called for his immediate release. The foreign office also said Wednesday that its priority was securing his immediate release.
“Akbari was transferred to the isolation section of the prison on Tuesday night and his first-degree relatives had been asked yesterday to have the final visit with him,” the source in Tehran told Reuters.
Akbari’s wife also said authorities had told the family to make a last visit to see him in prison, the BBC reported Wednesday.
Spying charges
Fakhrizadeh was widely seen by Western intelligence as the mastermind of clandestine Iranian efforts to develop nuclear weapons. Tehran denied that.
In the video, Akbari did not say what information, if any, he shared or with whom.
“They wanted to know about high-ranking officials depending on the major developments. … For example, he [the British agent] asked me whether Fakhrizadeh could be involved in such and such projects, and I said, ‘Why not’” Akbari said in the video broadcast by Iran’s state news agency IRNA, one of several clips broadcast on Thursday.
In the audio recording broadcast by BBC Persian on Wednesday, Akbari said he confessed to crimes he had not committed during months of torture in detention.
“I was interrogated and tortured for over 3,500 hours in 10 months. All of that were recorded on camera. … By using the force of gun and making death threats, they made me confess to false and baseless claims,” Akbari said in the audio message.
Iran’s state media often airs purported confessions by suspects in politically charged cases.
Reuters could not immediately establish the authenticity of the video and audio or when or where they were recorded.
Ties between London and Tehran have deteriorated in recent months as efforts have stalled to revive Iran’s 2015 nuclear pact, to which Britain is one of the parties.
Britain has also been critical of the Islamic Republic’s violent crackdown on anti-government protests sparked by the death in custody of a young Iranian Kurdish woman in September.
Akbari was sentenced on charges of “corruption on earth and extensive action against Iran’s internal and external security through the transmission of information to Britain,” the judiciary’s Mizan news agency said.
It said the supreme court had rejected his appeal.
Ally of security official
Akbari was a close ally of Ali Shamkhani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, who served as defense minister from 1997 to 2005, when Akbari was his deputy.
“I was accused of obtaining top secret information from Shamkhani in exchange for a bottle of perfume and a shirt during [former President Hassan] Rouhani’s presidency,” Akbari said in the audio message.
In another video, aired by IRNA, a caption read, “Akbari moved to Britain after being briefly detained and released on bail in 2008.” Another video showed Akbari blindfolded in a car.
Reuters could not immediately verify if Akbari had moved to Britain in 2008 or when he returned to Iran.
In his audio message, Akbari said he had returned to Tehran following an invitation by a senior Iranian diplomat involved in Tehran’s nuclear talks with world powers.
…
Proud Boys ‘Took Aim at the Heart of Our Democracy,’ Says Prosecutor
As one of the most high-profile trials to stem from the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack got under way, U.S. prosecutors on Thursday accused leaders of the far-right Proud Boys group of plotting an assault on American democracy.
In an opening argument, federal prosecutor Jason McCullough told jurors that Proud Boys chairman Henry “Enrique” Tarrio and four other leaders engaged in sedition by using force to try to keep Donald Trump in office after he lost the 2020 presidential election.
“On January 6, they took aim at the heart of our democracy,” McCullough told jurors.
Defendants’ lawyers said it was Trump, not the Proud Boys, who spurred thousands of supporters to attack the Capitol.
“He’s the one that told them to march over to the Capitol and fight like hell. Enrique didn’t say that,” said Sabino Jauregui, a lawyer for Tarrio.
‘These men did not stand back’
The case marks the third time the U.S. Justice Department has charged members of extremist groups with the rarely prosecuted crime of seditious conspiracy after Trump supporters invaded the Capitol in a failed bid to prevent lawmakers from certifying his November 2020 election loss to Biden.
Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and another chapter leader of the far-right militant group were found guilty of seditious conspiracy in November, and another trial is pending against four more members.
The Civil War-era law, which prohibits people from plotting to overthrow or destroy the U.S. government, carries a penalty of up to 20 years in prison.
When it became clear that Trump would not win re-election, “these men did not stand back. They did not stand by. Instead, they mobilized,” McCullough said, paraphrasing a comment Trump made in a debate before the election that the Proud Boys should “stand back and stand by.”
All five Proud Boys defendants have pleaded not guilty and their attorneys will argue that they did not plot to block the peaceful transfer of power.
Prosecutors have brought criminal charges against more than 950 people following the assault. Four people died during the chaos, and five police officers died of various causes after the attack.
Trump allies also under scrutiny
Under Special Counsel Jack Smith, the Justice Department is also investigating efforts by Trump’s advisers to overturn his election defeat.
In the Proud Boys case, the government accuses Tarrio and four other group members, some of whom led state chapters, of purchasing paramilitary gear for the attack and urging members of the self-described “Western chauvinist group” to descend on Washington.
They say Tarrio directed the attack from Baltimore because he had been ordered to stay out of Washington after being arrested on January 4 for burning a Black Lives Matter banner at a historic African-American church in December 2020.
Prosecutors say Tarrio met with Rhodes, the Oath Keeper founder, at an underground parking garage after being released from custody.
Prosecutors accuse the four other defendants – Nordean, Joseph Biggs, Zachary Rehl and Dominic Pezzola – of being among the first members of the crowd to charge past the barricades that had been erected to protect the Capitol.
A fifth member of the group, North Carolina chapter leader Charles Donohoe, pleaded guilty to other charges in April 2022 and could potentially be called as a witness in the case.
Biggs and Nordean are accused of tearing down a black metal fence that separated the crowd from police, Donohoe of throwing water bottles at police, and Pezzola with grabbing an officer’s riot shield.
The indictment said Pezzola used the stolen shield to break a window, allowing members of the mob to enter the Capitol.
…
US Sending Delegation to Cuba to Restart Talks on Law Enforcement
The Biden administration plans to send a delegation to Havana this month to restart U.S.-Cuba talks on law enforcement issues that were halted under former President Donald Trump, the U.S. State Department said Thursday.
U.S. concerns about counterterrorism will be among the subjects addressed, a State Department spokesperson said. Trump placed Cuba on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism shortly before his term ended in January 2021, and the Biden administration has been reviewing this since taking office.
The meeting will be the first of its kind since the law enforcement dialogue, which began in 2015 under former President Barack Obama, was stopped in 2018 under Trump as he rolled back his predecessor’s historic detente with Communist-ruled Cuba.
President Joe Biden has begun reversing some of Trump’s policies but has maintained others, insisting the Cuban government must improve its human rights record.
“This type of dialog enhances the national security of the United States through improved international law enforcement coordination, which enables the United States to better protect U.S. citizens and bring transnational criminals to justice,” the State Department spokesperson said in a statement.
But the official added that “this dialogue does not impact the administration’s continued focus on critical human rights issues in Cuba.”
A person in Washington familiar with the matter said the talks were expected to take place next week. The Cuban government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
U.S. and Cuban officials last year held rounds of talks in Washington and Havana focused on migration as Washington sought to stem the flow of Cubans to the United States by land and sea.
The talks are expected to focus on combating cybercrime, terrorist threats and drug trafficking, among other issues, according to the source familiar with the matter.
U.S. officials did not immediately respond to Reuters’ questions on whether the discussions were expected to include whether Cuba could be removed from the sponsors of terrorism list, which includes Iran, Syria and North Korea.
Cuba has called the U.S. designation a “slander” and a false pretext to continue punishing the island nation economically.
The Biden administration last May kept Cuba on a short list of countries the United States says are “not cooperating fully” in its fight against terrorism.
The State Department spokesperson said the coming discussion “provides a forum to raise difficult matters and convey our concerns directly to the Cuban government.”
The U.S. delegation, expected to be “working level” officials, will have representatives from the State Department, National Security Council and Justice Department, including the FBI, according to the person familiar with the matter.
…
Ukraine Will Seek International Backing for Its Peace Formula at UN
Ukraine’s deputy foreign minister said Thursday that Kyiv will pursue adoption of a resolution in the U.N. General Assembly that would enshrine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s 10-point peace formula.
“The Ukrainian leadership decided that the priority number one that will be considered in February is the resolution dedicated to the peace formula,” Emine Dzhaparova told reporters at the United Nations, where she attended a Security Council meeting on the rule of law.
February 24 marks one year since President Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
At the Group of 20 Summit in November, Zelenskyy addressed the meeting by video and presented his 10-point vision for ending Russia’s war against his country.
It includes the withdrawal of Russian troops and the cessation of hostilities, as well as nuclear safety, food and energy security, releasing prisoners of war and deported persons.
“[U.N.] Ambassador [Sergiy] Kyslytsya will now keep on pushing for the modality of consideration of this resolution because we might call for a special session to adopt this resolution,” Dzhaparova said.
She emphasized that the peace formula is the basis for a discussion, but it does not mean that Kyiv is ready to sign up to any agreement that goes against its interests.
“We are very much committed to any peace negotiation that comes and brings us to one result: territorial integrity, sovereignty, peace for our people,” she said. “But as my president has been constantly saying, we aren’t going to trade any inch of Ukrainian soil, and without having Russia’s army out of Ukraine, we will not discuss any peace negotiation.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, however, has said Kremlin officials would refuse to use Zelenskyy’s “peace formula” as a basis for negotiations, calling Kyiv’s intention to drive Russia out of eastern Ukraine and Crimea “an illusion,” according to Russia’s state-run RIA news agency.
The Kremlin on January 5 said Putin had told Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that Moscow was ready for peace talks only under the condition that Ukraine “take into account the new territorial realities,” a reference to Kyiv acknowledging annexed territories.
Dzhaparova said that Ukraine may also seek a second General Assembly resolution later in the year for setting up a special international tribunal to hold Russia’s leadership accountable for its invasion — the crime of aggression.
The International Criminal Court at The Hague is already investigating potential war crimes and crimes against humanity committed on Ukrainian territory since Russia’s invasion.
…
China Criticizes Britain-Japan Defense Pact
China criticized a defense pact signed Wednesday between Britain and Japan that could see troops deployed on each other’s territory. Both London and Tokyo have described China as a “challenge” in the Asia-Pacific region.
“The Asia-Pacific is a pacesetter for peace and development, not a wrestling ground for geopolitical games. China is a partner for cooperation for all countries instead of a challenge,” Wang Wenbin, a spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, told reporters in Beijing.
“Defense cooperation between the relevant countries should be conducive to enhancing mutual understanding, trust and cooperation among countries and should not create imaginary enemies or introduce the outdated mindset of bloc confrontation into the Asia-Pacific region,” Wang said.
Reciprocal pact
The defense deal was signed by Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and his British counterpart Rishi Sunak in the Tower of London, a medieval fortress that houses the crown jewels. The two leaders were shown a set of Japanese samurai armor that was presented to Britain’s King James in 1613 by Shogun Tokugawa to mark the first trade agreement between England and Japan.
The pact is officially called the Reciprocal Access Agreement and was agreed to in principle last May. It is the first time that Japan has signed such a deal with a European ally. Thousands of American troops are stationed in Japan as part of the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty.
In a statement, Sunak’s office said, “In this increasingly competitive world, it is more important than ever that democratic societies continue to stand shoulder to shoulder as we navigate the unprecedented global challenges of our time.”
Fighter jet
The two countries also agreed to work, alongside Italy, on the development of a new sixth-generation fighter jet. The British firm BAE Systems is already working on a prototype known as Tempest. It would be the biggest Japanese-European defense cooperation program ever undertaken.
Joint exercises
Japan is seeking to shore up defense ties in the face of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and China’s military expansion, analyst Jonathan Eyal of Britain’s Royal United Services Institute said.
“It’s an open secret that [British] special forces have been training on Japanese territory. The reality is that the militaries of the two countries have been training for a number of years now. This will be easier in to do in Japan because the legal framework will be in place,” Eyal told VOA.
“There is every intention of helping the Japanese in terms of training. And the key element is training for rapid response. The fear of Japan is that they may be confronted with a fait accompli with, let’s say, the Chinese seizure of some uninhabited Japanese island, to which the Japanese at the moment are unable to respond adequately,” Eyal added.
Asia-Pacific tilt
For Britain, the defense pact is part of a geopolitical tilt toward the Asia-Pacific region.
“The only influence that Britain can have — on what is becoming the center of gravity of world security concerns — is through a system of alliances. There is a view in London that the Europeans cannot continue to ask for U.S. protection in Europe without helping the U.S. with the security provision in Asia,” Eyal told VOA.
Sunak and Kishida also discussed Britain’s accession to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade deal signed by 11 countries. Britain is seeking new trade agreements following its exit from the European Union.
US-Japan security
The Japanese prime minister is visiting European and North American allies from the Group of Seven, including France, Italy, Canada and the United States. Japan currently holds the G-7 presidency.
Following talks between foreign and defense ministers in Washington on Thursday, the United States and Japan agreed to further strengthen security cooperation. In a joint statement, the two countries said China presented an “unprecedented” threat to the international order.
…