Month: March 2023

Kagame Looking at ‘Resolving’ Detention of ‘Hotel Rwanda’ Hero Rusesabagina 

Posted on by SeeAF

Rwandan President Paul Kagame on Monday said there were discussions about “resolving” the fate of Paul Rusesabagina, who was portrayed as a hero in the Hollywood film “Hotel Rwanda” and is serving a 25-year sentence in Rwanda on terrorism charges.   

Rusesabagina was sentenced in September 2021 over his ties to an organization opposed to Kagame’s rule. He denied all the charges and refused to take part in the trial that he and his supporters called a political sham.   

Washington has designated him as “wrongly detained”, partly because of what it called the lack of fair trial guarantees. Rusesabagina has U.S. permanent residency rights.   

Kagame has said his country would not be bullied over Rusesabagina, but on Monday appeared to suggest that there was room for compromise.   

“We don’t get stuck with our past. We move into the future,” Kagame said during a video interview at the Global Security Forum.   

“So there is discussion, there is looking at all possible ways of resolving that issue without compromising the most fundamental aspects of that case.”   

In August U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he had raised his concerns with Kagame over the trial. Rwanda has said the trial was lawful.   

Rusesabagina was feted around the world after being played by actor Don Cheadle in the 2004 film “Hotel Rwanda”. The movie portrayed him as a hero who risked his life to shelter hundreds of people as manager of a luxury hotel during the 1994 Rwandan genocide.   

Rusesabagina, a vocal critic of Kagame, acknowledged having a leadership role in the opposition group but denied responsibility for attacks carried out by its armed wing. The trial judges said the two were indistinguishable.   

Rights groups say Rusesabagina’s jailing is an example of Kagame using authoritarian tactics to crush political opposition and extend his more than two decades in power, allegations the president denies. 

 
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New Tunisian Parliament Begins Its First Session 

Posted on by SeeAF

Tunisia’s new parliament, elected in December and January in a vote with a turnout of 11%, sat for the first time on Monday in a session closed to all but state media and with the opposition coalition saying it would not recognize its legitimacy.

Journalists were not allowed to attend the opening session of parliament for the first time since the 2011 revolution. Officials told reporters on Monday that only state TV and radio and the state news agency were allowed to cover the event.

President Kais Saied shut down the previous elected parliament in July 2021, moving to rule by decree in a move that opposition parties called a coup. He has said his actions were legal and needed to save Tunisia from years of crisis.

The new parliament, operating under a constitution that Saied wrote last year and which was passed in a referendum with a turnout of 30%, will have very little power compared with the body it replaces.

As most parties boycotted the election, and candidates were listed on ballot papers without party affiliation, most of the new parliament members are political independents.

The National Salvation Front, the main opposition coalition that includes Tunisia’s biggest party, the Islamist Ennahda and activists, said in a statement on Monday it would not recognize a parliament emanating from a coup following elections that were boycotted by the majority.

 
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Bakhmut Sees Fierce Fighting Amid Divided Control     

Posted on by SeeEU

The battle for eastern Ukraine’s Bakhmut featured fierce fighting Monday, according to both sides, as the months-long struggle for control of the area raged on.

Ukraine’s military said it was using artillery, tanks and other weapons to repel Russian attempts to capture the city.

Britain’s defense ministry has assessed in recent days that Russia’s Wagner paramilitary group controls most of the eastern part of Bakhmut, with Ukrainian forces holding the western portion.

Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin described the situation Sunday as “very tough” with the fighting getting more difficult the closer his forces get to the city center.

Russia has targeted Bakhmut as a key part of its wider goal to seize the Donbas region.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has vowed to defend Bakhmut, while some allies, including U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg have cautioned that a Ukrainian defeat would not amount to a turning point in the conflict.

Some information for this story came from Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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Pope Francis Marks 10th Anniversary with Mass and Podcast

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Pope Francis marks 10 years as head of the Roman Catholic Church on Monday celebrating Mass with cardinals in the chapel of the Vatican’s Santa Marta hotel where he has lived since his election. 

The Argentina-born Francis, 86, became the first Latin American pontiff on March 13, 2013, succeeding Benedict XVI who had become the first pope in six centuries to resign. 

“It seems like yesterday,” he said in a podcast by Vatican News broadcast on Monday. “Time flies. When you gather up today, it is already tomorrow.” 

When it was recorded at his residence on Sunday, he asked: “What’s a podcast?” according to Vatican News reporter Salvatore Cernuzio. When it was explained to him, he said “Nice. Let’s do it.” 

The former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio has sought to project simplicity into the grand role and never took possession of the papal apartments in the Apostolic Palace used by his predecessors, saying he preferred to live in a community setting for his “psychological health.” 

He has invited all the cardinals who are in Rome with him to the Mass on Monday. 

A persistent knee ailment has forced Francis to alternate between a cane and a wheelchair, but he appears to be in good overall health. 

“You don’t run the Church with a knee but with a head,” he reportedly told an aide after he began occasionally using a wheelchair in public for the first time last May. 

Cardinal electors 

Francis has said he would be ready to step down if severe health problems prohibited him from running the 1.38-billion-member Church. But he has also said he thinks popes should try to reign for life and that being emeritus pope – as Benedict was – should not become a “fashion”. Benedict resigned on health grounds but lived nearly 10 more years. 

With his 10 years as pontiff, Francis has now reigned longer than the 7.5 years average length of the previous 265 pontificates. He has visited 60 states and territories, clocking up almost 410,000 kilometers. 

But he has not returned to his native Argentina, an absence that has prompted much speculation. 

He has named about 64% of the so-called cardinal electors who are under 80 and thus eligible to enter a conclave to elect his successor after he dies or resigns. 

Francis marks the anniversary having outlasted conservative opposition within the Church that has several times demanded his resignation and which is now at a crossroads, seeking new direction following the deaths of two of its leading figures. 

The longest papacy is believed to be that of St. Peter the apostle, the first pope, estimated to have lasted about 35 years. 

The longest papacy in recent centuries was that of Pius IX, which lasted more than 31 years between 1846 and 1878. After that comes the papacy of John Paul II, who reigned for more than 26 years between 1978 and 2005. 
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Biden to Approve Major Oil Project in Alaska -Source

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U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration will approve a major and controversial oil drilling project in Alaska on Monday, according to a source familiar with the matter. 

The decision to move ahead with the project by authorizing three drill sites in northwestern Alaska would come a day after Biden announced sweeping curbs on oil and gas leasing to protect up to 6.5 million hectares of water and land in the region. 

The Willow project, led by energy giant ConocoPhillips, would be located inside the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, a 9.3 million-hectare area on the state’s North Slope that is the largest tract of undisturbed public land in the United States. 

Earlier on Sunday, the U.S. Interior Department unveiled actions to make nearly 1.2 million hectares of the Beaufort Sea in the Arctic Ocean “indefinitely off limits” for oil and gas leasing, building on an Obama-era ban and effectively closing off U.S. Arctic waters to oil exploration. 

In addition to the drilling ban, the government will put forward new protections for more than 5.2 million hectares of “ecologically sensitive” Special Areas within Alaska’s petroleum reserve, the administration said in a statement on Sunday. 

The area includes the Teshekpuk Lake, Utukok Uplands, Colville River, Kasegaluk Lagoon and Peard Bay Special Areas. 

The developments unfolded as Biden tries to balance his goals of decarbonizing the U.S. economy with calls to increase domestic fuel supply to keep prices low. 

Willow has support from the oil and gas industry and state officials eager for jobs, but it is fiercely opposed by environmental groups who want to move rapidly away from fossil fuels to combat climate change. 

An environmental group said the new protections announced on Sunday did not go far enough, and the government should stop oil and gas developments to help fight climate change. 

“Protecting one area of the Arctic so you can destroy another doesn’t make sense, and it won’t help the people and wildlife who will be upended by the Willow project,” said Kristen Monsell, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. 
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Cohen to Testify Before Grand Jury in Trump Hush-Money Probe

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Donald Trump’s former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen is poised to testify Monday before a Manhattan grand jury investigating hush-money payments he arranged and made on the former president’s behalf. 

Cohen’s impending grand jury appearance was confirmed by two people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to speak publicly about grand jury proceedings and did so on condition of anonymity. 

Cohen’s closed-door testimony is coming at a critical time as the Manhattan district attorney’s office closes in on a decision on whether to seek charges against Trump. 

A Trump loyalist turned adversary, Cohen is likely to provide critical details about whatever involvement the Republican presidential candidate may have had in the payments, made in the final weeks of the 2016 campaign, to two women who alleged affairs with him. 

Cohen has given prosecutors evidence, including voice recordings of conversations he had with a lawyer for one of the women, as well as emails and text messages. He also has recordings of a conversation in which he and Trump spoke about an arrangement to pay the other woman through the supermarket tabloid the National Enquirer. 

Prosecutors appear to be looking at whether Trump committed crimes in how the payments were made or how they were accounted for internally at Trump’s company, the Trump Organization. 

One possible charge would be falsifying business records, a misdemeanor unless prosecutors could prove it was done to conceal another crime. No former U.S. president has ever been charged with a crime. 

Trump has denied the affairs and has said he did nothing wrong. Prosecutors have invited him to testify before the grand jury, and he has the right to testify under New York law. However, legal experts say he is unlikely to do so because it wouldn’t benefit his defense and he’d have to give up a cloak of immunity that’s automatically granted to grand jury witnesses under state law. 

Cohen served prison time after pleading guilty in 2018 to federal charges, including campaign finance violations, for arranging the payouts to porn actor Stormy Daniels and model Karen McDougal to keep them from going public. He has also been disbarred. 

Trump’s lawyers could point to those factors in an attempt to undermine Cohen’s credibility, if the former president is charged and Cohen ends up testifying at trial. 

Cohen has been meeting regularly with Manhattan prosecutors in recent weeks, including a daylong session Friday to prepare for his grand jury appearance. 

The panel has been hearing evidence since January in what Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has called the “next chapter” of his office’s yearslong Trump investigation. But the hush-money payments — perhaps the most salacious of the avenues of inquiry into Trump — are well-trodden ground. 

Federal prosecutors and Bragg’s predecessor in the D.A.’s office, Cyrus Vance Jr., each scrutinized the payments but didn’t charge Trump.  

Cohen declined to comment to reporters as he left the meeting, saying he’d be “taking a little bit of time now to stay silent and allow the D.A. build their case.” 

The Manhattan district attorney’s office also declined to comment. 

Trump continued to lash out at the probe on social media Friday, calling the case a “Scam, Injustice, Mockery, and Complete and Total Weaponization of Law Enforcement in order to affect a Presidential Election!” 

Cohen paid Daniels $130,000 through his own company and was then reimbursed by Trump, whose company logged the reimbursements as “legal expenses.” 

McDougal’s $150,000 payment was made through the publisher of the National Enquirer, which squelched her story in a journalistically dubious practice known as “catch-and-kill.” 

According to federal prosecutors who charged Cohen, the Trump Organization then “grossed up” Cohen’s reimbursement for the Daniels payment for “tax purposes,” giving him $360,000 plus a $60,000 bonus, for a total of $420,000. 
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Tropical Cyclone Freddy Hammers Mozambique for Second Time

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Record-breaking Cyclone Freddy made its second landfall in Mozambique on Saturday night, pounding the southern African nation with heavy rains and disrupting transport and telecommunications services. 

French weather agency Météo-France warned of “destructive and devastating” winds and “dangerous seas and heavy rains” that could lead to landslides. It said Freddy will go further inland through the weekend, generating heavy rains in Mozambique and southern Malawi, with rain also likely in Zimbabwe and Zambia. 

It’s the second time Freddy has hit the country, with the cyclone originally making landfall late last month. 

Météo-France also raised concerns that Freddy is unlikely to weaken over land in the coming week and has a high probability of exiting back into the sea. Freddy made landfall with maximum wind speeds at sea measuring 155 kilometers an hour and sea gusts averaging 220 kilometers an hour, the agency said. 

Freddy was initially on course to make landfall in the country Friday night but stalled over the Mozambique channel. The cyclone then intensified on Saturday and regained strength as it barreled toward land, Mozambique’s National Institute of Meteorology said. 

The cyclone’s second punch was showering a low-lying, vast land teeming with rivers and “almost all of them have no dam” to ease flooding, said Salomao Bandeira, a scientist at Mozambique’s Universidade Eduardo Mondlane. Flooding in the country earlier this year slammed regions where major rivers are controlled by dams, allowing some degree of control, Bandeira said, raising fears this hit could lead to more destruction. 

The projected deluge is already worrying health and disaster agencies in both Mozambique and Malawi, who have recently been battling cholera cases and other water-borne ailments. The U.N. and EU-led disaster alert system has already issued a red alert projecting that some 2.3 million people will be impacted. Mozambique’s disaster institute has moved thousands of people to storm shelters in anticipation. 

“More lives are being saved in Mozambique today” due to early preparedness, Bandeira said. 

In a statement released Saturday, Malawi Red Cross said it had activated its early response teams in southern Malawi to prepare for the cyclone. 

Earlier in the week, Freddy’s longevity and baffling trajectories caused the U.N. weather agency to set up a committee to determine whether it has broken the record as the longest-lasting tropical cyclone in recorded history after traversing more than 8,000 kilometers in the southern Indian Ocean. 

The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Freddy has already catapulted into the record books for the second-ever highest accumulated cyclone energy, or ACE, a measurement of a cyclone’s energy over time. 

Freddy is also the third storm on record to last more than 22 days, said NOAA’s Carl Schreck. Hurricane John in 1994 and an unnamed Atlantic hurricane in 1899 are the other two. The natural weather event La Nina and a negative Indian Ocean Dipole, or a change of temperatures over the ocean, “may have produced ocean temperatures and atmospheric circulations that made an event like this more likely,” Schreck added. 

Any storm that can remain at such a “strong intensity for so long and make two landfalls is important in terms of human impacts and in terms of science,” said Kristen Corbosiero, professor of atmospheric and environmental sciences at the University of Albany. 

“Intense storms generally go through a series of eyewall replacement cycles and intensity fluctuations,” where the cyclone begins to develop a a new eye, Corbosiero said. “But Freddy didn’t have these cycles for most of its life cycle. Trying to understand why, will be a good research topic.” 
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US Moves to Contain Bank Failure Fallout

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U.S. President Joe Biden is due to speak Monday about the banking system after the government acted to try to contain a potential crisis from the failure of two major banks. 

“The American people and American businesses can have confidence that their bank deposits will be there when they need them,” Biden said in a statement late Sunday. “I am firmly committed to holding those responsible for this mess fully accountable and to continuing our efforts to strengthen oversight and regulation of larger banks so that we are not in this position again.” 

The U.S. Treasury Department said in a statement Sunday that depositors at the California-based Silicon Valley Bank and the New York-based Signature Bank will have access to all of their money on Monday. 

The regulators also said no losses associated with the resolution of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank will be borne by the taxpayer. 

The statement followed a meeting of officials from top financial regulators, and said the Federal Reserve was also giving other banks access to an emergency lending program to provide additional stability to the wider banking system. 

The actions were prompted by the failure of Silicon Valley Bank, which regulators seized on Friday after concerns about the bank’s financial health led to a large number of depositors withdrawing their money at the same time. 

With about $200 billion in assets, Silicon Valley Bank’s failure was the second-largest in U.S. history.  The bank was heavily involved in financing for venture capital firms, especially in the tech sector. 

Signature Bank also had a large portion of clients in the tech sector, including cryptocurrency. Its failure, with more than $100 billion in assets, was the third-largest in the country’s history. 

Both banks were affected by a rise in interest rates, which negatively affected the market values of significant portions of their assets such as bonds and mortgage-backed securities. 

Some information for this story came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters. 
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Former Zimbabwean Commercial Farmers Thriving in Zambia

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Some of the Zimbabwean farmers whose land the government seized for redistribution two decades ago moved to Zambia and have prospered. In the past year, those farmers started exporting food to Zimbabwe, which has been struggling with food insecurity, partly because of those land seizures. Columbus Mavhunga reports from Chisamba, Zambia. Videographer: Blessing Chigwenhembe
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How BBC Host’s Tweet, Suspension Upended UK’s Sports Weekend

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The BBC’s sports coverage was hit with a second day of severe disruptions Sunday as dozens of staff refused to work in solidarity with top soccer host Gary Lineker, who was suspended by the broadcaster after he tweeted criticism of the British government’s asylum policy. 

The news corporation is reeling from huge fallout and questions over its impartiality after it suspended Lineker, one of English soccer’s most lauded players and the corporation’s highest-paid presenter, on Friday after he compared the Conservative government’s language about migrants to that used in Nazi Germany. 

He was referring to the government’s plans to stop migrants from arriving in small boats on U.K. shores by introducing tough new laws that would detain asylum seekers, deport them and ban them from ever re-entering the U.K. 

Immigration and “taking back control” of Britain’s borders has been a hot-button issue in the U.K. since voters backed Britain’s exit from the European Union. Like his predecessors in recent years, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has made stopping the English Channel migrant crossings one of his top priorities. But his latest plans have drawn swift condemnation from the U.N.’s refugee agency and many rights groups, which call the policies unethical and unworkable. 

Pressure is mounting on the BBC to resolve the crisis, with growing calls for its bosses to step down over allegations of political bias and suppressing free speech. 

The controversy has impacted the BBC’s sports programs, with dozens of sports presenters and reporters walking out of their jobs Saturday and Sunday in support of Lineker. 

A look at who Lineker is, the debate surrounding his comments and how it’s affected the BBC: 

Who is Lineker and what did he say? 

Lineker, 62, is one of Britain’s most influential media figures and was paid $1.6 million by the BBC last year. 

One of England’s greatest strikers with 48 goals in 80 international appearances, he was a household name in Britain even before he became chief presenter of the soccer highlights show “Match of the Day” in 1999. 

In a post Tuesday to his 8.7 million followers on Twitter, Lineker described the government’s new plan to detain and deport migrants arriving by boat as “an immeasurably cruel policy directed at the most vulnerable people in language that is not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the ’30s.” 

How did the BBC and others react? 

The BBC — which has prominently covered the Lineker controversy — said the presenter breached its social media guidelines and said he was to step back from presenting “Match of the Day.” 

While BBC news staff are barred from expressing political opinions, Linker is a freelancer who doesn’t work in news or current affairs. However, in guidelines updated in 2020, the BBC said presenters with a “significant public profile” had responsibility to avoid taking sides on party political issues or political controversies. 

The government called Lineker’s Nazi comparison offensive and unacceptable, and some lawmakers said he should be fired. 

In a BBC interview, the broadcaster’s director-general Tim Davie flatly rejected a suggestion that Lineker was suspended due to pressure from the governing Conservative Party. 

Many who supported Lineker said he had a right to express his opinion online. 

“I cannot see why you would ask someone to step back for saying that,” said Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp, who is known for being outspoken about current affairs. “If I understand it right, it is a message, an opinion about human rights and that should be possible to say.” 

Others say the corporation’s impartiality rules seem muddled, pointing out that Lineker did not face discipline when he criticized the Qatar government’s rights record during the World Cup last year. 

“It seems that they want to pick and choose when they want to be partial, criticizing others or criticizing other countries or other political parties or other religions seems to be okay,” former England soccer player John Barnes told Sky News. 

How has the BBC been affected? 

The 100-year-old BBC is under scrutiny particularly because it is a public corporation — it is mostly funded by a license fee paid by all households with a television — and is expected to be independent. 

The broadcaster’s neutrality came under recent scrutiny over revelations that its chairman, Richard Sharp — a Conservative Party donor — helped arrange a loan for then Prime Minister Boris Johnson in 2021, weeks before he was appointed to the BBC post on the government’s recommendation. 

More immediately, the decision to suspend Lineker has triggered a mass walkout of BBC sports presenters and reporters in solidarity with their colleague. 

On Saturday, several daytime soccer shows were pulled at the last minute and “Match of the Day,” regarded as something of a British institution since the 1960s, aired with no commentary and only featured shortened footage. Usually lasting around an hour and a half, Saturday’s “Match of the Day” only aired for 20 minutes. 

Sunday’s coverage of the Women’s Super League aired without commentary from regular BBC presenters and “Match of the Day 2” was also expected to run in a reduced format. 

Davie apologized for the disruption and said bosses are “working very hard to resolve the situation and make sure that we get output back on air.” 
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Nicaragua Closes Vatican Embassy in Managua, Suspends Diplomatic Ties

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Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega has ordered the closure of the Vatican Embassy in Managua and that of the Nicaraguan Embassy to the Vatican in Rome, a senior Vatican source said Sunday. 

Nicaragua signaled that the move, which came a few days after Pope Francis compared the Nicaraguan government to a dictatorship, was “a suspension” of diplomatic relations. 

The Vatican source said that while the closures do not automatically mean a total break of relations between Managua and the Holy See, they are serious steps toward that possibility. 

Ortega’s administration has been increasingly isolated internationally since he began cracking down heavily on dissent following street protests that erupted in 2018. Ortega called the protests an attempted coup against his government. 

Bishop Rolando Alvarez, a vocal critic of Ortega, was sentenced to more than 26 years in prison in Nicaragua last month on charges that included treason, undermining national integrity and spreading false news. 

Alvazez was convicted after he refused to leave the country along with 200 political prisoners released by Ortega’s government and sent to the United States. Alvarez refused to board the plane and was stripped of his citizenship. 

In an interview published last week with Latin American online news outlet Infobae ahead of Monday’s 10th anniversary of his pontificate, the pope pointed to Alvarez’s imprisonment and likened what was happening in Nicaragua to the “1917 Communist dictatorship or that of Hitler in 1935.” 

Staff in both embassies had been down to barebones for years with only a chargé d’affaires for the Vatican in Managua and almost no one for Nicaragua in Rome. 

The relationship between the Nicaraguan Catholic Church and the government has been severely strained since the crackdown on the anti-government protests in 2018, when the Church acted as a mediator between both sides. 

The Church had called for justice for more than 360 people who died during the unrest. 

Nicaraguan Bishop Silvio Baez, also a critic of the government, went into exile in 2019. 

A year ago, the Vatican protested to Nicaragua over the effective expulsion of its ambassador, saying the unilateral action was unjustified and incomprehensible. 

Archbishop Waldemar Sommertag, who had been critical of Nicaragua’s slide away from democracy, had to leave the country suddenly after the government withdrew its approval of the envoy.  
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US Government Moves to Stop Potential Banking Crisis

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The U.S. government took extraordinary steps Sunday to stop a potential banking crisis after the historic failure of Silicon Valley Bank, assuring depositors at the failed financial institution that they would be able to access all of their money quickly.

The announcement came amid fears that the factors that caused the Santa Clara, California-based bank to fail could spread, and only hours before trading began in Asia. Regulators had worked all weekend to try and come up with a buyer for the bank, which was the second largest bank failure in history. Those efforts appeared to have failed as of Sunday.

In a sign of quickly the financial bleeding was occurring, regulators announced that New York-based Signature Bank had failed and was being seized on Sunday. At more than $110 billion in assets, Signature Bank is the third-largest bank failure in U.S. history.

The Treasury Department, Federal Reserve and FDIC said Sunday that all Silicon Valley Bank clients will be protected and have access to their funds and announced steps designed to protect the bank’s customers and prevent more bank runs.

“This step will ensure that the U.S. banking system continues to perform its vital roles of protecting deposits and providing access to credit to households and businesses in a manner that promotes strong and sustainable economic growth,” the agencies said in a joint statement.

Regulators had to rush to close Silicon Valley Bank, a financial institution with more than $200 billion in assets, on Friday when it experienced a traditional run on the bank where depositors rushed to withdraw their funds all at once. It is the second-largest bank failure in U.S. history, behind only the 2008 failure of Washington Mutual.

Some prominent Silicon Valley executives feared that if Washington didn’t rescue the failed bank, customers would make runs on other financial institutions in the coming days. Stock prices plunged over the last few days at other banks that cater to technology companies, including First Republic Bank and PacWest Bank.

Among the bank’s customers are a range of companies from California’s wine industry, where many wineries rely on Silicon Valley Bank for loans, and technology startups devoted to combating climate change.

Sunrun, which sells and leases solar energy systems, had less than $80 million of cash deposits with Silicon Valley Bank as of Friday and expects to have more information on expected recovery in the coming week, the company said in a statement.

Stitchfix, the popular clothing retail website, disclosed in a recent quarterly report that it had a credit line of up to $100 million with Silicon Valley Bank and other lenders.

Silicon Valley Bank began its slide into insolvency when its customers, largely technology companies that needed cash as they struggled to get financing, started withdrawing their deposits. The bank had to sell bonds at a loss to cover the withdrawals, leading to the largest failure of a U.S. financial institution since the height of the financial crisis.

Yellen described rising interest rates, which have been increased by the Federal Reserve to combat inflation, as the core problem for Silicon Valley Bank. Many of its assets, such as bonds or mortgage-backed securities, lost market value as rates climbed.

Sheila Bair, who was chairwoman of the FDIC chair during the 2008 financial crisis, recalled that with almost all the bank failures during that time, “we sold a failed bank to a healthy bank. And usually, the healthy acquirer would also cover the uninsured because they wanted the franchise value of those large depositors so optimally, that’s the best outcome.”

But with Silicon Valley Bank, she told NBC’s “Meet the Press,” “this was a liquidity failure, it was a bank run, so they didn’t have time to prepare to market the bank. So they’re having to do that now and playing catch-up.”
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Britain’s Sunak Boosts Defense Spending to Silence Critics

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Prime Minister Rishi Sunak will spend an extra 5 billion pounds ($6 billion) to replenish ammunition stocks and fund the next phase of a submarine pact with the United States and Australia in an update to Britain’s foreign policy framework.

With his government unveiling the update to Britain’s national security and international policy, Sunak, on a visit to the U.S., will also set out an “ambition” to increase defense spending to 2.5% of gross domestic product in the longer term.

Sunak hailed the move as a way “to ensure we are never again vulnerable to the actions of a hostile power,” but his offer of 5 billion pounds is less than half of what some in his governing Conservative Party say is needed to be able to support Ukraine against Russia, while not leaving Britain vulnerable.

He said his previous increases to defense spending showed he was a man of his word and described the new commitments as a “strong and positive statement.”

“As the world becomes more volatile and competition between the states becomes more intense, the U.K. must be ready to stand our ground,” he said in a statement.

“We will fortify our national defenses, from economic security to technology supply chains and intelligence expertise, to ensure we are never again vulnerable to the actions of a hostile power.”

The Ministry of Defense said British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace was “delighted” with the settlement, especially in the tough economic times, and said it would maintain the upward trajectory after the government invested heavily in recent years.

The unveiling of the updated Integrated Review has been choreographed to coincide with Sunak’s visit to San Diego to agree to the next steps in a landmark defense agreement, AUKUS, with the United States and Australia.

Countering China

Meeting U.S. President Joe Biden and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Sunak will want to underline that the increase in spending will only bolster the AUKUS pact.

Some of the new spending will go toward programs that will help Australia build nuclear-powered submarines for the first time, part of efforts to counter China in the Indo-Pacific.

“As I will discuss with our American and Australian allies in the U.S. today, the U.K. will remain a leading contributor to NATO and a reliable international partner, standing up for our values from Ukraine to the South China Sea,” he said in the statement.

But Sunak is under pressure at home to offer more help to the defense ministry to combat the impact of inflation and spur production of ammunition and other military hardware to replace weapons sent to Ukraine to help Kyiv push back Russian forces.

Britain and other Western countries have scaled up their pledges of military aid for Ukraine this year, with promises of tanks and armored vehicles, as well as longer-range weapons. London has also offered to train Ukrainian soldiers on war planes rather than delivering fighter jets as yet.

While Sunak’s foreign minister, James Cleverly, is due to unveil the updated strategy, the British leader will hope to set the tone in San Diego, saying the “refresh” will set out how Britain has adapted its approach on China.

When the Integrated Review was published in 2021, it described China as a “systemic competitor” — a term some in Sunak’s party says was mealy-mouthed and should be toughened to call Beijing a “threat.”

Sunak said Sunday China presented an “epoch defining challenge” to the global order but it would not be a “smart or sophisticated foreign policy to reduce” the relationship with Beijing to just two words, such as labeling it “a threat.”

Instead, Britain will seek to engage China and be robust in defending the things it cares about, he said.

Officials say the document would most probably mention Taiwan for the first time. The island, increasingly concerned about the threat from China, was left out of the earlier document which was published in 2021.
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UK’s Sunak to Invite Biden to Northern Ireland Peace Anniversary

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British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak will invite U.S. President Joe Biden to Northern Ireland in April to help celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, which largely brought an end to three decades of political violence.

Sunak said Sunday that he would issue a formal invite to the celebrations, which are due to take place in the middle of April.

“I’ll be keen to invite him to come,” he told reporters on his plane as he flew to the United States for meetings with Biden and Anthony Albanese, the prime minister of Australia. “It’s not confirmed yet. But it will be something that obviously I’ll be talking to him about.

“We’ve got this very important milestone to commemorate and celebrate — the 25th anniversary.”

The Good Friday Agreement was a peace deal that largely ended the “Troubles,” three decades of violence that had convulsed Northern Ireland since the late 1960s. It was signed April 10, 1998, and partially brokered by the U.S. government of then President Bill Clinton.

The anniversary had been overshadowed in recent months after Northern Ireland’s largest unionist party boycotted the power-sharing assembly that made up part of the peace deal, in protest at post-Brexit trade rules that treated the province differently to the rest of the United Kingdom.

Sunak has recently struck a new deal with the European Union to ease the checks and paperwork needed to move goods from Britain to Northern Ireland, but the Democratic Unionist Party is yet to say whether they will support the plan.

“What I’m concentrating on now is talking to everyone in Northern Ireland so we can find a positive way to move forward and get power-sharing up and running — that’s my priority,” Sunak said.
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30 Migrants Missing, 17 Rescued After Boat Capsizes in Mediterranean

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Thirty people are missing and 17 were rescued Sunday in the central Mediterranean after the boat they were fleeing Libya in capsized during bad weather, Italy’s coast guard said.

Rescue operations were ongoing, supported by merchant ships and aerial support by the EU’s border agency Frontex, while two additional merchant vessels were en route to the area, the coast guard said in a statement.

Earlier Sunday, the Mediterranea Saving Humans charity had tweeted that according to several sources, the vessel, traveling in the direction of Italy, had capsized about 177 kilometers north-west of Benghazi.

Alarm Phone, another charity which picks up calls from migrant vessels in distress, said on Twitter it had first alerted authorities Saturday, emphasizing the boat, which was carrying 47 people, needed immediate rescue.

After an initial rescue attempt by a merchant ship failed due to bad weather, Libyan authorities asked Rome for help given that they lacked the means to carry out the rescue, the coast guard said in the statement.

Rome then requested merchant ships in the area to join the rescue efforts. However, the migrant vessel turned over during an attempt to transfer the people on to the “FROLAND” merchant ship Sunday morning, it said.

The coast guard added that two of the rescued people needed medical assistance and would be disembarked in Malta before the merchant vessel could resume its trip to Italy.

Arrivals on the rise

Italy’s coast guard said Sunday that the capsize occurred outside Italy’s Search and Rescue area (SAR).

However, Rome’s ability to rescue migrants at sea has come under scrutiny following a Feb. 26 shipwreck near the southern region of Calabria, in which at least 79 died.

On Saturday the coastguard said that more than 1,300 migrants had been rescued in three separate operations off the southern tip of Italy, with a further 200 saved off Sicily.

The numbers of migrant arrivals in Italy have been on the rise, piling pressure on the country’s conservative government, which took office in October promising to cut the flow only to see a sharp increase in such landings this year from both North Africa and Turkey.

Some 17,600 people had reached Italy this year as of March 10, compared to 6,000 in the same period of 2022. Hundreds have also died trying to cross the Mediterranean and reach Europe. 
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South Africa Rapper Costa Titch, 28, Dies During Performance

Posted on by SeeAF

The South African rapper Costa Titch died on stage while performing, police said Sunday, as they opened an investigation into the circumstances of the 28-year-old’s sudden death.

 

The artist “collapsed while he was performing” Saturday evening at the Ultra South Africa concert in the Johannesburg suburb of Nasrec, police told AFP.  

 

They said a post-mortem would establish the cause of death.

 

Costa Titch scored a major hit with “Big Flexa,” which has more than 45 million YouTube views, showcasing the Amapiano or ‘the pianos’ local subgenre of house music blending house, jazz and lounge music.

 

Videos on social media of his concert Saturday show him performing with his microphone in hand when he appears to fall. He continues singing but collapses again, prompting other artists to come to his aid.

 

Costa Titch, whose real name is Costa Tsobanoglou, died a month on from the assassination of another popular South African rapper Kiernan Forbes, known as AKA.

 

Forbes was shot dead outside a Durban restaurant and an investigation is ongoing into what has been seen as a likely contract killing.

 

Tributes swiftly appeared Sunday for Titch with Julius Malema, leader of radical leftist party EFF, posting an image of a broken heart alongside Costa Titch’s name on social media.

 

The Southern African Music Rights Organization wrote on Twitter: “SAMRO is saddened by the passing of popular rapper Costa Tsobanoglou, better known as Costa Titch. Heartfelt condolences to his family, friends and broader music industry.”

 

“RIP, Costa Titch. Great talent gone too soon,” tweeted rapper Da L.E.S.
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Ethiopian Journalist Honored by US Sounds Alarm on Media Freedom

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An Ethiopian journalist presented an award by the United States has sounded the alarm over media freedom in her country, which Secretary of State Antony Blinken is set to visit.

Meaza Mohammed, the founder of the online network Roha TV, was honored at the White House on Wednesday on International Women’s Day as part of a group receiving “International Women of Courage” awards.

Introducing her, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said that Meaza “shares stories of those who are often silenced.”

“Despite three arrests in under one year, she continued to raise her voice, advocating for survivors of gender-based violence and urging accountability for crimes committed against them,” Jean-Pierre said.

In an interview with AFP, Meaza said that authorities also raided her outlet and seized everything from her office.

“This award is a big thing for me — not only for me, but for the women out there in my country,” she said. “Because in my country, having a media (outlet) or working in (the) press is very dangerous, very difficult.”

Internet platforms, including YouTube, Facebook, Telegram and TikTok, have been inaccessible in Ethiopia since February 9.

The shutdown came after a dispute within the Ethiopian Orthodox Church led to calls for demonstrations against Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. The issue was resolved but the sites remain down.

The northern region of Tigray, the scene of an armed conflict with the federal government, was largely deprived of telecommunications for the two-year duration of the war. 

Blinken is due in Ethiopia on Wednesday on the highest-level US visit since the war with plans to encourage the peace process.

Meaza came to prominence for her campaign for answers over the kidnapping in late 2019 of a group of students whose fate remains unknown.

The students belong to Ethiopia’s second largest ethnic group, the Amhara, and Meaza has been accused in some quarters of a pro-Amhara tilt in the ethnically diverse nation where questions of identity have become increasingly incendiary. 

Speaking to AFP in Washington, Meaza denounced “ethnic cleansing” against the Amhara, who have long held privileged positions in Ethiopia’s economic, political and cultural life.

An Amhara militia known as the Fano has also been accused of numerous abuses.
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Pope Francis Calls for Peace as Fighting in Ukraine’s Bakhmut Intensifies

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From the Vatican, Pope Francis sent a message of solidarity with Ukraine as Russian attacks in the city of Bakhmut and other regions intensified. VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias looks at the logistical challenges Ukrainian forces are still facing on the battlefield. Video editor: Marcus Harton.
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Thousands Rally in New Greece Protest Over Train Crash

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Thousands of people protested Sunday against safety deficiencies in Greece’s railway network nearly two weeks after dozens were killed in the country’s deadliest train crash. 

The demonstrators also demanded punishment for those responsible for the head-on collision between a passenger train and a freight train that killed 57 people Feb. 28. Police said that more than 8,000 people in Athens gathered outside Parliament Sunday to protest. 

The protesters later marched to the offices of privatized train operator Hellenic Train. The company, which has been owned by Italy’s Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane since 2017, isn’t responsible for the maintenance of the railway network. State-owned Hellenic Railways oversees upkeep. 

Authorities shut down four subway stations on two lines running through central Athens because of the protest. 

The rally was organized by civil servants, a pro-communist union and university students. 

In Thessaloniki, Greece’s second-largest city, about 5,000 people demonstrated, listened to speeches and shouted slogans, such as “we will be the voice for all the dead.” 

Sunday’s rallies, which passed off without serious incident, weren’t as well-attended as similar events earlier in the week, when more than 30,000 had turned out in Athens and more than 20,000 in Thessaloniki. Police said four people were detained in Athens. 

A memorial service was conducted for 12 students who attended Thessaloniki’s Aristotle University, Greece’s largest, who were killed in the train crash. 

An inexperienced stationmaster accused of placing the trains on the same track has been charged with negligent homicide and other offenses, and the country’s transportation minister and senior railway officials resigned the day after the crash. 

Revelations of serious safety gaps on Greece’s busiest rail line have put the center-right government of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on the defensive. He has pledged the government’s full cooperation with a judicial inquiry into the crash. 

Elections are due later this spring and opinion polls released over the past week have shown the ruling conservatives’ lead over the left-wing opposition shrink almost by half compared with polls published before the crash. 
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Pence: History Will Hold Trump ‘Accountable’ for 2021 Capitol Riot

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Former U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, eyeing a 2024 run for the Republican presidential nomination, has delivered his strongest rebuke yet of the president he loyally served, Donald Trump. Pence said Trump was personally responsible for encouraging the January 6, 2021, riot of Trump supporters at the U.S. Capitol, trying to keep Congress from certifying that Joe Biden had defeated the 45th president in the 2020 election.

“President Trump was wrong; I had no right to overturn the election,” Pence told a group of elite Washington journalists and government officials at the annual Gridiron dinner Saturday night. “And his reckless words endangered my family and everyone at the Capitol that day. And I know that history will hold Donald Trump accountable.”

Pence last week asked a judge to block a subpoena for his testimony before a grand jury investigating the insurrection and Trump’s efforts to upend the election result. But at the dinner, he disparaged ongoing attempts, chiefly by conservative lawmakers and Fox News commentators, to downplay the rampage at the Capitol in which more than 1,000 Trump supporters have been arrested and about half, so far, convicted of an array of offenses.

“Tourists don’t injure 140 police officers by sightseeing,” Pence said. “Tourists don’t break down doors to get to the speaker of the House or voice threats against public officials.”

“Make no mistake about it. What happened that day was a disgrace, and it mocks decency to portray it in any other way,” Pence said at the dinner.

Pence also said people “have a right to know what took place” during the insurrection, praising journalists’ role in writing about the rampage, which for hours delayed lawmakers from certification of the Electoral College vote count showing Biden had won the election. In the United States, the president and vice president, running on the same ticket, are not elected by the national popular vote, but rather by state-by-state elections, with the biggest states holding the most Electoral College votes.

Trump had privately and publicly demanded that Pence block the outcome as the then-vice president presided over the vote count. Pence refused, saying his role was merely ceremonial.

Some rioters shouted, “Hang Mike Pence!” and protesters had erected a gallows on the National Mall within eyesight of the Capitol. As the rioters rampaged through the Capitol, security officials scrambled to keep Pence and his family safe, sheltering them at a loading dock inside the Capitol.

Meanwhile, officials in the White House that day say Trump watched the riot unfold on television and only after three hours issued a statement calling for his supporters to leave the Capitol. Officials have testified that Trump disparaged Pence for being weak in failing to block the election outcome and deserved to be hanged.

The annual white-tie Gridiron dinner features comedy routines by journalists poking fun at Washington officialdom and both Republican and Democratic officials making light of each other.

Even before turning serious about the riot at the Capitol more than two year ago, Pence, a devout Christian, jabbed at Trump.

“I once invited President Trump to Bible study,” Pence said early in his speech. “He really liked the passages about the smiting and perishing of thine enemies. As he put it, ‘You know, Mike, There’s some really good stuff in here.’”

Trump has announced his 2024 presidential candidacy and Pence has said he is weighing a run as well. Some Republicans have suggested or declared they won’t again support Trump, who is facing several criminal investigations, if he is the nominee.

Pence joked, “I will wholeheartedly, unreservedly support the Republican nominee for president in 2024. If it’s me.”
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Iran Claims US Prisoner Swap; US Calls It ‘Cruel Lie’

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Iran’s top diplomat claimed Sunday that a prisoner swap was near with the U.S., though he offered no evidence to support his assertion. The U.S. immediately dismissed his comments as a “cruel lie.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian has made similar comments in the past about possible deals with the U.S. on frozen assets abroad and other issues that never came to fruition. Some of those remarks have appeared aimed at shoring up domestic support amid the mass protests challenging Iran’s theocracy and supporting the country’s troubled rial currency.

However, in an interview Sunday with Iranian state television, Amirabdollahian claimed that Iran had “reached an agreement in recent days regarding the exchange of prisoners between Iran and the United States.”

“If everything goes well on the American’s side, I think we will see the exchange of prisoners in the short term,” he added. He alleged a document between Iran and the U.S. laying out the exchange had been “indirectly signed and approved” since March 2022.

Reached by The Associated Press, U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price called the comments “another especially cruel lie that only adds to the suffering of their families.” 

“We are working relentlessly to secure the release of the three wrongfully detained Americans in Iran,” Price said. “We will not stop until they are reunited with their loved ones.”

A separate statement from the White House’s National Security Council also called the remarks “false.”

“Unfortunately, Iranian officials will not hesitate to make things up, and the latest cruel claim will cause more heartache for the families of Siamak Namazi, Emad Shargi and Morad Tahbaz,” the council said.

Iran long has taken prisoners with Western passports or ties to use in negotiations with foreign nations.

As of right now, there are at least three American citizens known to be held in Iranian prisons on widely disputed espionage charges.

The evidence against them has never been made public. The detainees all have dual U.S.-Iranian citizenship, something Tehran does not recognize.

In recent days, however, longtime Iranian American detainee Siamak Namazi was allowed to conduct an interview with CNN from Tehran’s notorious Evin prison — something that would not have happened without the acquiescence of security forces.

Meanwhile, Ali Bagheri Kani, a deputy Iranian foreign minister who has handled nuclear talks with world powers, made a trip Sunday to Oman, a longtime interlocutor between Tehran and Washington.

Amirabdollahian’s comments also come after Iran and Saudi Arabia, with Chinese mediation, announced Friday they would reestablish diplomatic ties and reopen embassies after a seven-year freeze in relations. 
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 Zelenskyy: Russia Has Become a Synonym for Terror 

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his daily address Saturday that Russia “has become a synonym for terror and will be an example of defeat and fair punishment for this terror.”

Zelenskyy said Russian shelling Saturday “took the lives of people in Kherson who simply went to a store to buy groceries. Three Ukrainians died.”

A sanctioning decree has been published, Zelenskyy said, with more than 280 companies and 120 people “who, through gambling business schemes, worked against Ukraine, withdrew funds from our state and financed various Russian schemes.”

The British Defense Ministry said Sunday in its intelligence update on Ukraine that Russia is suffering “extremely heavy casualties,” but their impact is not being felt in the richest cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg. Instead, the report said, the death rate as a percentage of the population in the Eastern regions is “30-40 times higher than in Moscow.”

Ethnic minorities are taking the biggest hit, according to the ministry. In the southern Astrakhan region, about 75% of the casualties are among minority Kazakhs and Tartars.

According to the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW), the mounting casualties for Russia are having an impact in Moscow and are reflected in a loss of government control over the country’s information sphere. The think tank said that Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova confirmed “infighting in the Kremlin inner circle.” Due to that strife the Kremlin has effectively ceded control over the country’s information space. Russia President Vladimir Putin has been unable to readily regain control of it, said the ISW.

The British ministry said that while Russia continues to look for ways to increase its combat personnel, that “insulating the better-off and more influential elements of Russian society will highly likely remain a major consideration.”
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Theft Probe Clears South African President of Wrongdoing 

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A corruption watchdog group said in a preliminary report that South African President Cyril Ramaphosa was not involved in a cover-up concerning the theft of a large amount of cash he had stuffed into a sofa at his farmhouse.

Allegations of a cover-up about the theft of the money had hung over the president’s head for months and had almost cost him his presidency.

Vincent Magwenya, Ramaphosa spokesperson, said in a statement, “We reiterate that the president did not participate in any wrongdoing, nor did he violate the oath of his office.”

Ramaphosa will still be the focus of a police investigation into the money and where it came from and what he did after it was stolen.

The findings of the investigation have not been released publicly, but some media outlets have obtained copies of the report. They indicate the probe found that the head of the president’s protection service acted improperly when he launched an investigation into the theft of the cash without reporting it to the police.
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