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Month: February 2024
Nikki Haley Trounced by ‘None of These Candidates’ in Nevada Republican Primary
LAS VEGAS — Nikki Haley was swamped Tuesday in Nevada’s symbolic Republican presidential primary as GOP voters resoundingly picked the “none of these candidates” option on the ballot in a repudiation of the former U.N. ambassador who is the last remaining major rival to front-runner Donald Trump.
Trump, the former president, didn’t compete in the primary, which doesn’t award any delegates needed to win the GOP nomination. He’s instead focused on caucuses that will be held Thursday and will help him move closer to becoming the Republican standard-bearer.
That leaves the Republican results on Tuesday technically meaningless. But they still amount to an embarrassment for Haley, who has sought to position herself as a candidate who can genuinely compete against Trump. Instead, she became the first presidential candidate from either party to lose a race to “none of these candidates” since that option was introduced in Nevada in 1975.
Haley had said beforehand she was going to “focus on the states that are fair” and did not campaign in the western state in the weeks leading up to the caucuses. Her campaign wrote off the primary results with a reference to Nevada’s famous casino industry.
“Even Donald Trump knows that when you play penny slots the house wins,” spokeswoman Olivia Perez-Cubas said. “We didn’t bother to play a game rigged for Trump. We’re full steam ahead in South Carolina and beyond.”
Trump joked on his social media network, “Watch, she’ll soon claim Victory!”
Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo, a Republican, had announced beforehand that he would vote for “none of these candidates” on Tuesday. Several Republicans interviewed heading to the polls said they intended to do the same.
Washoe County Republican Party Chair Bruce Parks, who pushed for the GOP to hold caucuses, said that he told voters who called his office — and Trump supporters — to participate in the primary by voting for “none of these candidates” over Haley.
“They basically told us they don’t care about us,” Parks said in an interview after the race was called. “By marking ‘none of these candidates,’ we respond in kind — we don’t care about you either.”
The Associated Press declared “None of these candidates” the winner at 12:01 a.m. on Wednesday based on initial vote results that showed it with a significant lead over Haley in seven counties across the state, including in the two most populous counties.
There was also a Democratic primary on Tuesday that President Joe Biden easily won against author Marianne Williamson and a handful of less-known challengers. Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota was not on the ballot.
Biden issued a statement thanking Nevada voters for their support and, with an eye toward an expected matchup in November, warned that Trump is trying to divide America.
“I want to thank the voters of Nevada for sending me and Kamala Harris to the White House four years ago, and for setting us one step further on that same path again tonight. We must organize, mobilize, and vote. Because one day, when we look back, we’ll be able to say, when American democracy was a risk, we saved it — together,” Biden said.
Nevada lawmakers added “none of these candidates” as an option in all statewide races as a way post-Watergate for voters to participate but express dissatisfaction with their choices. “None” can’t win an elected office, but it came in first in primary congressional contests in 1976 and 1978. It also finished ahead of both George Bush and Edward Kennedy in Nevada’s 1980 presidential primaries.
The caucuses on Thursday are the only Nevada contest that count toward the GOP’s presidential nomination. But they were seen as especially skewed in favor of Trump because of the intense grassroots support they require from candidates and new state party rules that benefitted him further.
Trump is expected to handily win the caucuses, which should deliver him all 26 of the state’s delegates. Delegates are party members, activists and elected officials who vote at the national party conventions to formally select the party’s nominee.
“If your goal is to win the Republican nomination for president, you go where the delegates are. And it baffles me that Nikki Haley chose not to participate,” Trump’s senior campaign adviser Chris LaCivita said in an interview before the primary.
Nevada, the third state in the field after Iowa and New Hampshire, was set to hold a state-run primary election instead of party-run caucuses after Democrats controlling the Legislature changed the law to try to boost participation.
Caucuses typically require voters to show up for an in-person meeting at a certain day or time, while elections can offer more flexibility to participate, with polls open for most of the day on Election Day, along with absentee or early voting.
But Nevada Republicans chose to hold party-run caucuses instead, saying they wanted certain rules in place, like a requirement that participants show a government-issued ID.
The caucuses require a candidate to intensely organize supporters around the state to be competitive, a feat that Trump, the former president and prohibitive front-runner, was easily positioned to do.
The Nevada GOP also restricted the involvement of super PACs like the one Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was relying on to boost his now-suspended campaign. And the party barred candidates from appearing both on the primary ballot and in the caucuses.
Former Vice President Mike Pence and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott also signed up to compete in Nevada’s primary instead of the caucuses before ending their presidential campaigns.
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Hyenas Kill 1 Person, Injure 2 Others Near Kenyan University
NAIROBI, Kenya — Marauding hyenas killed a man and wounded two people near a university outside the Kenyan capital, officials said Tuesday, prompting hundreds of students from the school to block streets to protest what they called a lack of security.
One of the wounded was a student at Kenya’s Multimedia University who was attacked by the hyenas late Monday on a road that borders the Nairobi National Park in Ongata Rongai. Students from the university disrupted traffic there Tuesday as police used tear gas to disperse them.
“The university is not safe because we are near the national park,” said Ochieng Kefah, a student at Multimedia University, who was among the protesters. “The government should, maybe, put some restrictions on the movement of the animals.”
The injured student was identified as 21-year-old engineering student Kevin Mwendwa, who lost a thumb in the attack.
A team that was sent to investigate the scene of Monday’s attack found body parts of another victim of the hyenas, the Kenya Wildlife Service said Tuesday.
KWS’ Problem Animal Management Unit team promptly put down one hyena and moved to identify any surrounding hyena dens. The carcass was being examined to determine if the hyena had rabies or other diseases.
The man who was killed was Anthony Pasha, whose relatives said he was killed while collecting firewood.
“The hyena came, it attacked him, chased him from the forest, put him down here,” Kaaji Lesian, the victim’s cousin, told The Associated Press. “He left his firewood exactly where you are seeing them … down there.”
Hyena attacks have become increasingly frequent on the outskirts of Nairobi, prompting KWS to release guidelines on how to react when confronted by the animals. “If faced with a hyena, do not move away until it does and continue facing its direction. Be loud, look aggressive, and appear frightening to deter the hyena,” the KWS advises.
The guidelines were released in January, after 10-year-old Dennis Teya was attacked and killed in a field in Kiambu County, north of Nairobi.
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Azerbaijan’s Snap Presidential Elections Come Under Scrutiny
washington — Azerbaijan is set to hold snap presidential elections on Wednesday, with seven candidates vying for the top position. Incumbent President Ilham Aliyev is widely expected to secure victory, though no official reason has been given for the early election.
The leading opposition parties, the Azerbaijan Popular Front Party (APFP) and the Musavat Party, are boycotting the elections, claiming that the vote will not be held in a transparent and objective manner.
“We should protest Ilham Aliyev’s desire for power for life. He has been in power for 20 years by falsifying elections,” Ali Karimli, chairman of the APFP has said.
Many local political activists and human rights defenders do not consider the elections credible.
“There is no democratic election environment in Azerbaijan,” political analyst Nasimi Mammadli told VOA. “In fact,” he added, “freedom of assembly has been banned in the country. There are serious problems with the media freedom. There are problems with the freedom of expression. There are reports of more than 250 political prisoners in the country.”
According to Seymur Hazi, deputy chairman of the APFP, the elections in Azerbaijan do not meet modern standards.
“Due to many parameters, it is very difficult to call the process taking place in Azerbaijan an election,” he said.
The head of the National Front Party, Razi Nurullayev, one of the seven presidential candidates, said it’s not right to criticize the elections without actively participating in the process.
“Even if the elections are not free and democratic, if you are an opposition party, and if you want to lead the people, you must endure those hardships. You have to see the process with your own eyes, you have to gather experience and you have to join the struggle,” he said.
The Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights at the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) has issued an interim report detailing the political atmosphere on the eve of the elections. The ODIHR has noted that six candidates participating in the elections have openly supported the president in the past.
Elections amid pressure on media
The elections come during an increased crackdown on journalists over the past couple of months. At least 10 journalists have been detained since late 2023. Many of the journalists working for Abzas Media, an online media outlet, have been accused of smuggling foreign currency. If convicted, they could face up to eight years in prison. The journalists deny the accusations and link their persecution to investigations into suspected corruption among high-ranking officials in Azerbaijan.
“In the last three months, there have been numerous detentions and arrests of journalists and managers of several online media outlets, several of which were in the reporting period. This, along with the restrictive nature of the new media law, the prohibition of foreign funding of media, and the country-wide blocking of some major critical media websites, was raised as concerns by several ODIHR EOM [election observation mission] interlocutors,” the ODIHR report said, referring to a 2022 media law.
Concern about fair elections
The elections follow the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe’s (PACE) resolution to suspend the mandate of the Azerbaijani delegation. The organization has cited “serious concerns” regarding Azerbaijan’s ability to conduct free and fair elections, among other things, as the basis for its decision.
German Member of Parliament Frank Schwabe, in an interview with VOA, said that one of the reasons for PACE’s decision to suspend Azerbaijan was that its monitoring mission was not invited to observe the elections.
“Azerbaijan not just invited, they organized dozens of election observation missions, which I would call fake election observation missions,” he said.
According to Schwabe, “the very difficult” situation in Azerbaijan makes it impossible to think of free and fair elections there.
“The outcome of the elections of the 7th of February are already clear. Everyone knows it,” he said.
Parliament not observing vote
The European Parliament has also announced that it will not be observing the snap presidential election.
“The European Parliament will not observe this election process and therefore will not comment on the process or the results that will be announced later,” co-chairs of the European Parliament’s Democracy Support and Election Coordination Group (DEG) David McAllister and Thomas Tobe said in a January 15 statement. “No individual member of the European Parliament has the authority to observe or comment on this election process on behalf of the parliament.”
Authorities claim that all conditions have been created for holding democratic and free elections in the country. The Central Election Commission has said that the presidential candidates have all the opportunities provided by law, including equal opportunities to conduct election campaigns.
“I can say that all conditions and necessary circumstances exist for holding fair, transparent and free elections in our country,” Chairman of the Supreme Court and Judicial-Legal Counsel Inam Karimov said during his speech at the regional seminar-deliberation held in Baku on January 8.
The country’s current leader — Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev — has been in power since 2003 and has since won elections in 2008, 2013 and 2018 by a wide margin. According to many international rights organizations, none of those elections was considered free or fair by international observers.
Constitutional amendments following the referendums in 2009 and 2016 increased the presidential term from five to seven years and removed the limit on the number of terms a president can serve.
This story originated in VOA’s Azerbaijani Service.
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White House Top Asia Aide Confirmed as State Department’s No. 2
State Department — The U.S. Senate confirmed President Joe Biden’s top Asia aide, Kurt Campbell, as the deputy secretary of state on Tuesday.
Campbell is replacing Wendy Sherman, who retired on July 28, and will now serve as the State Department’s second-ranking diplomat behind Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
During Campbell’s tenure as the White House National Security Council coordinator for Indo-Pacific Affairs, he emphasized that the United States, while in competition with China, does not seek conflict or confrontation. He has said the U.S. is committed to working with allies and managing competition with China responsibly.
In his prepared testimony for his nomination hearing in December, Campbell stated, “Today’s challenges are truly global. What happens in one region affects the others. Our competitors are collaborating – just look at China, Iran, and North Korea’s support for Russia’s war of aggression. We are stronger across-the-board due to our alliances and partnerships.”
“China believes that we are in hurtling decline. It is critical that we prove otherwise,” he told U.S. senators during the nomination hearing.
Campbell has also underscored the urgency of advancing new 20-year funding agreements with three Pacific Island nations—Micronesia, Marshall Islands, and Palau—to counter Beijing’s regional influence.
During the nomination hearing, he voiced serious concerns over North Korea’s alarming actions, including the provision of military equipment to Russia amid its aggression in Ukraine and the enhancement of Pyongyang’s missile and nuclear capabilities.
“I am worried that North Korea in the current environment has decided that they are no longer interested in diplomacy with the United States. And that means that we’re going to have to focus even more on deterrence,” he told lawmakers from the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs.
North Korea has consistently rejected U.S. outreach despite repeated efforts. The last diplomatic engagement took place in Vietnam between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and former president Donald Trump. Since then, North Korea has rebuffed every attempt by the U.S. to reach out, including offers of vaccines and humanitarian aid during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Campbell was assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs from 2009 to 2013 under then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Campbell played a crucial role during the administration of former President Barack Obama in shaping Washington’s “pivot to Asia” policy, which reoriented U.S. foreign policy toward that region.
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Nigerian Authorities Voice Worry as Rising Cost of Living Sparks Protests
Abuja, Nigeria — Nigerian authorities say they are worried after hundreds of people took to the streets of central Niger state and northwest Kano state Monday to protest the rising cost of food.
Finance Minister Olawale Edun, speaking in Abuja on Monday during a meeting with a visiting German delegation, said the government is concerned about the surge in prices and working to fix the problem.
He blamed the recent increase in food prices on rising demand, saying the only way to address the situation is to boost agricultural production.
“The president has intervened in that sector to provide grain, fertilizers to farmers and to bring rice, wheat, maize, and cassava under additional acreage, additional production in order to increase the output and thereby bring down prices and that will help bring down the inflation,” Edun said.
Police authorities in the Niger state capital, Minna, said they dispersed the protesters using “minimum force,” but the demonstrators threatened to reconvene.
For months, Nigerians have complained over the state of the economy, which has remained sluggish amid the government’s reform policies.
President Bola Tinubu announced bold economic reforms last May, including the scrapping of subsidies on fuel and the floating of the national currency, the naira.
Authorities say the policies will help restore Nigeria’s economy in the long term, but acknowledged that there will be challenges.
Economic analyst Isaac Botti agreed.
“I feel that it will take some time, policies don’t yield results immediately,” he said. “When we look at some of the programs and policies that the government is rolling out, within the next six months, if they’re truthful with their plans, Nigeria should see some changes. Within the next six months, if government is able to achieve its benchmark on local fuel production, it will bring down the cost of goods and services, transportation.”
In December, inflation reached a 27-year high, triggered by the rising cost of food items, a side effect of the increase in fuel prices.
Nigeria’s economy is heavily dependent on proceeds from oil sales. But for years, the country has struggled with massive crude oil theft. The country’s four refineries are moribund, and so it also relies on imports of fuel and other petroleum products.
On Tuesday, Tinubu’s ruling All Progressives Congress party said in a statement that the administration was “solidly committed to doing everything in its power to mitigate the transient pains of reforms that are crucial to economic recovery.”
Felix Morka, the national publicity secretary of the APC, said: “This is a mono product economy for a population of over 200 million people. We can’t simply put all of our eggs in the basket of crude oil sales, especially when we’re not able to sustain the kind of productive levels that can support our economy and our naira. To come out of the situation we’re in for a more sustainable future requires also some level of endurance. At the end of the day, the benefits of reforms will far outweigh the transient difficulties.”
Nigeria is working to resume local refining of fuel. In December, authorities announced that all four refineries will undergo rehabilitation to restart operations by the end of 2024.
Experts say if that happens, it will address Nigeria’s problems significantly.
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EU Proposes Tougher Rules to Combat Child Sexual Abuse
Strasbourg, France — The EU unveiled plans for stringent rules on Tuesday to tackle child sexual abuse, giving victims more time to bring their abusers to justice.
It is estimated that one in five children in the European Union suffer from some form of sexual abuse or exploitation, European Commission Vice President Dubravka Suica told a news conference.
The commission is seeking to expand the type of criminal offenses related to child sexual abuse, with new technologies blamed for a proliferation of new forms of abuse.
Reported cases have been rising across the 27-country EU, with concerns that easy-to-use AI tools will spur an even bigger spread of harmful content.
In 2022, 1.5 million cases of child sexual abuse were reported across the bloc, up from one million in 2020, Suica told reporters in Strasbourg.
The new rules would update crime definitions to include abusive material in deepfakes or AI-generated content, and livestreaming abuse.
New offences would also include possessing or exchanging so-called pedophile “handbooks” — in which abusers provide guidance to each other, said Ylva Johansson, the EU’s internal affairs commissioner.
The proposals will be debated by the European Parliament and the EU’s member states before any formal adoption.
“New technologies and the digital era we live in have, unfortunately, increased the threat and the abuse both offline and online,” Suica said.
The commission’s proposals would update rules from 2011.
The plans include changing the statutes of limitations, because officials said that all too often, victims were only able to come forward years after the event, and were unable to mount a case.
Under the new rules, the statutes would not start until the victim turns 18, and there would be varying limits of 20 and 30 years depending on the gravity of the crimes.
The aim was to “make sure that the perpetrator can still be prosecuted”, Johansson said.
Regulators are increasingly turning to the world’s biggest digital companies to do more to protect children online.
Big tech firms, including Google and Facebook-owner Meta, teamed up last year to tackle the issue under a new program called Lantern.
They would share signals of activity that violate their policies on child exploitation so that platforms can move quicker to detect, take down and report harmful content.
The commission proposed a law in 2022 to stop the online spread of child sexual abuse imagery, but the proposal is currently blocked because some member states worry it would allow mass surveillance of private communications.
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Russia Briefly Detains Journalists at Anti-war Protest
WASHINGTON — A Reuters journalist was among 20 reporters briefly detained by Russian authorities Saturday.
Authorities made the arrests as the media covered an anti-war demonstration in Moscow.
The journalists, most of whom work for Russian media outlets, had been reporting on a group of women demanding the return of their husbands who were mobilized to fight in Ukraine. The media also filmed as people laid flowers at the Eternal Flame near the Tomb of the Unknown Solider.
The Russian-based independent news outlets SOTA and SOTA-Vision posted a video of journalists in vests printed with the word “press” being confronted by authorities.
The media watchdog Reporters Without Borders, or RSF, said the journalists were held in a van before being transported to a police station.
The journalists were released several hours later after being made to sign a document stating that the police “have information” that they “took part in public events organized in violation of the law,” said RSF.
Although the document has no legal value, RSF noted that it could be used in later legal cases.
RSF in a statement described the arrests as “unprecedented.”
“This incident reflects the Kremlin’s watchword for the media: ensure that neither the outside world nor the Russian people learn anything about expressions of popular discontent regarding the war in Ukraine,” said Jeanne Cavelier, who heads RSF’s Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk.
In a separate case, the Russian outlet Sirena in a video report said that seven journalists were believed to have been detained near President Vladimir Putin’s election headquarters in Pokrovka and taken to a police station.
Russia’s embassy in Washington did not respond to VOA’s request for comment.
At the start of Russia’s full invasion of Ukraine, Moscow introduced a law against sharing news it deemed to be false about the war or armed forces. The law carries a 15-year prison term.
Russia is also a leading jailer of journalists, with at least 22 behind bars for their work as of late 2023, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Moscow has also issued arrest warrants or tried in absentia prominent Russian journalists who fled into exile at the start of the war.
Among the journalists imprisoned currently in Russia are two Americans: The Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, detained since March, and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty editor Alsu Kurmasheva, held in custody since October.
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King Charles III’s Cancer Was Caught Early, UK Prime Minister Says
London — King Charles III’s cancer was caught early and the whole country is hoping for a speedy recovery, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said Tuesday, as the monarch’s son Prince Harry reportedly flew from the U.S. to visit his father.
Buckingham Palace announced Monday evening that the king has begun outpatient treatment for an undisclosed form of cancer. It was found during his recent hospital treatment for an enlarged prostate but is a “separate issue” and not prostate cancer, the palace said.
“Thankfully, this has been caught early,” Sunak told BBC radio, adding that as prime minister he would “continue to communicate with him as normal.”
“Many families around the country listening to this will have been touched by the same thing and they know what it means to everyone,” Sunak said. “So we’ll just be willing him on and hopefully we get through this as quickly as possible.”
Less than 18 months into the reign that he’d famously waited decades to begin, the 75-year-old monarch has suspended public engagements but will continue with state business — including weekly meetings with the prime minister — and won’t be handing over his constitutional roles as head of state.
The palace said Charles, who has generally enjoyed good health, “remains wholly positive about his treatment and looks forward to returning to full public duty as soon as possible.”
The king’s younger son, Prince Harry — who quit royal duties in 2020, moved to California and has a troubled relationship with his father — has spoken to Charles about the diagnosis and “will be traveling to the U.K. to see His Majesty in the coming days,” said the office of Harry and his wife, Meghan. British media reported that he was en route Tuesday from Los Angeles.
Charles became king in September 2022 when his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, died at the age of 96 after 70 years on the throne.
News of the king’s diagnosis comes as his daughter-in-law Kate, Princess of Wales, recovers from abdominal surgery that saw her hospitalized for about two weeks.
Kate is taking a break from royal duties as she recovers. Her husband, Prince William, who is heir to the throne, also took time off to help look after her and the couple’s three children, but is due to preside over a ceremony at Windsor Castle and a charity dinner on Wednesday.
Charles departed from royal tradition with his openness about his prostate condition. For centuries Britain’s royal family remained tight-lipped about health matters.
Disclosing information about his cancer diagnosis — albeit in a limited way — is another break with tradition.
When U.K. monarchs had real power, news of illness was withheld for fear it might weaken their authority. The habit of secrecy lingered after royals became constitutional figureheads.
The British public wasn’t told that Charles’ grandfather, King George VI, had lung cancer before his death in February 1952 at the age of 56, and some historians have claimed that the king himself wasn’t told he was terminally ill.
In the final years of Elizabeth’s life, the public was told only that the queen was suffering from “mobility issues” when she began to miss public appearances towards the end of her life. The cause of her death was listed on the death certificate simply as “old age.”
When and how much to disclose about illness remains a difficult subject for many public figures. U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has been criticized for not telling President Joe Biden or other key leaders that that he was being treated for prostate cancer, even when he was hospitalized in intensive care in January for post-surgery complications.
Buckingham palace said that the king “has chosen to share his diagnosis to prevent speculation and in the hope it may assist public understanding for all those around the world who are affected by cancer.”
Charles took the throne intending to preside over a slimmer monarchy with fewer senior royals carrying out ceremonial public duties. But with Charles and Kate both temporarily sidelined, Prince Harry self-exiled to California and Prince Andrew largely banished from view because of his association with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, the royal “Firm” risks becoming severely overstretched.
William and Charles’ wife, Queen Camilla, are both expected to take on extra public engagements during the king’s treatment.
There are no current plans to call on the “counsellors of state” — senior royals, including the queen and the heir to the throne — to deputize for the monarch on constitutional duties such as signing legislation and receiving ambassadors.
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Opposition Protests Postponement of Senegal Election
NAIROBI, KENYA — Opposition leaders in Senegal are protesting the move to postpone elections that had been set for February 25, while some analysts say the delay hurts Senegal’s reputation as a beacon of democracy.
President Macky Sall announced the delay this past weekend, saying it was necessary because of allegations of corruption in election-related cases and the disqualification of some leading candidates, including Ousmane Sonko, who came third in the 2019 elections, and Karim Wade, son of former President Abdoulaye Wade.
Lloyd Kuveya, assistant director at the Center for Human Rights at the University of Pretoria law school in South Africa, said, “Some people are saying because of the chaos that is prevailing in Senegal, where some opposition party leaders are imprisoned, including Sonko, which is really disturbing … the elections will not be a legitimate election.”
Senegal’s parliament voted Monday to delay the election until December. The parliamentary process was chaotic as security forces escorted out some opposition lawmakers as they tried to block the vote.
On Monday, two opposition parties filed a court petition challenging the delay.
Anta Babacar Ngom, presidential candidate for the Alternative for the Citizen Succession party, said, “This is President Macky Sall’s balance sheet. It’s upsetting, because he almost left with his head held high; but now, unfortunately, he’s showing [his] true face.
“It’s a constitutional coup, and we won’t accept it.”
In July, following deadly clashes protesting a possible run for a third term by Sall, he said he would not seek one.
Kuveya said it seems like Sall wants to stay a little longer.
“Can we really trust Macky Sall?” he asked. “Everybody knows that his intentions were going for a third term, and if it hadn’t been for the protests of the people of Senegal, I am quite sure he would’ve gone ahead to change the constitution and gotten the supreme court to endorse that unconstitutional change.”
Kuveya said Sall had ample time to prepare for the February 25 elections.
“You have five years in which to ensure that there’s a conducive environment in which elections are going to be held,” he told VOA via Skype. “You have five years to allow political participation of any person who wants to contest for political power.”
Senegal has long been seen as a beacon of democracy in a region plagued by coups.
Awa Dieng Morel, CEO of France Ak Senegal, a nongovernmental organization active in the field of education, said, “It’s very sad, because Senegal is losing this image of being an island of democracy in Western Africa, and its credibility, too.
“When one sees what is happening in other countries of the subregion — like Niger, Mali, or Burkina Faso or what happened years ago … in Ivory Coast — it’s really frightening,” she told VOA by WhatsApp on Tuesday.
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Kenyan Cult Leader Charged With Murder of 191 Children
Nairobi — Kenyan cult leader Paul Mackenzie and 29 associates were charged on Tuesday with the murder of 191 children whose bodies were found among more than double that number buried in a forest.
The defendants all denied the charges brought before a court in the coastal town of Malindi. One suspect was found mentally unfit to stand trial.
Prosecutors say Mackenzie ordered his followers to starve themselves and their children to death so that they could go to heaven before the world ended. More than 400 bodies were exhumed from the Shakahola forest.
Mackenzie was arrested last April after the bodies began to be discovered. He has already been charged with terrorism-related crimes, manslaughter and torture.
There have been different charges brought before different courts in connection with the killings.
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EU Proposes Scrapping Pesticide Proposals Concession to Farmers
BRUSSELS — The European Union’s executive arm shelved an anti-pesticides proposal Tuesday in yet another concession to farmers after weeks of protests blocked major capitals and economic lifelines across the 27-nation bloc.
Although the proposal had languished in EU institutions for the past two years, the move by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was the latest indication that the bloc is willing to let slip some environmental concerns to keep the farming community on its side.
Farmers have insisted that measures like the one on pesticides would only increase the bureaucratic burden and keep them behind laptops instead of on tractors and add to the price gap between their products and cheap imports produced by foreign farmers without similar burdens.
The pesticides “proposal has become a symbol of polarization,” von der Leyen told the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France.”To move forward, more dialogue and a different approach is needed.”
She acknowledged that the proposals had been made over the heads of farmers.
“Farmers need a worthwhile business case for nature-enhancing measures. Perhaps we have not made that case convincingly,” von der Leyen said.
It is unclear when new proposals will be drafted. EU parliamentary elections are set for June, and the plight of farmers has become a focal point of campaigning, even pushing climate issues aside over the past weeks.
The decision to shelve the proposal on pesticides represented the EU’s latest act of political self-retribution in reaction to protests that affected the daily lives tens of millions of EU citizens and cost businesses tens of millions of euros due to transportation delays.
Last week, von der Leyen announced plans to shield farmers from cheaper products exported from wartime Ukraine and to allow farmers to use some land they had been required to keep fallow for environmental reasons.
The European Commission is set to announce more measures late Tuesday on how to reach its stringent targets to counter climate change. Environmentalists fear their could be more concessions there, too.
In France, where the protests gained critical mass, the government promised more than $436 million in additional financial support.
Meanwhile, protests continued in many EU nations. On Monday night, farmers in the Netherlands blocked several roads and highways with their tractors and torched hay bales and tires.
Police in the rural province of Gelderland said they took action against farmers blocking roads, but there were no immediate reports of arrests.
In recent weeks, farmers have protested from Poland to Greece, and from Ireland over Germany to Lithuania.
your ad hereMore Strikes Against US forces Follow Wave of US Airstrikes
Iranian-backed militants in the Middle East were not deterred by U.S. strikes in Iraq, Syria and Yemen over the weekend, launching three attacks in Syria and causing the U.S. to conduct at least two self-defense strikes in Yemen. VOA Pentagon correspondent Carla Babb reports.
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US Republicans Spar Over Border Security Bill Linked to Ukraine, Israel Aid
After months of negotiations, U.S. senators will vote on a $118 billion bipartisan agreement on border security and aid to Ukraine and Israel later this week. As VOA’s congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson reports, even if the bill passes the Democratic-majority U.S. Senate, it has little chance of passage in the Republican-majority U.S. House of Representatives.
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Killings of 3 Somali Women, Allegedly by Their Husbands, Stir Outrage
mogadishu, somalia — Three women were killed in Somalia last week in what police say were marriage disputes. The country’s parliament called for urgent investigations and the arrest of the perpetrators as citizens expressed outrage.
The killings occurred in Mogadishu, the Lower Shabelle region and the Qoryooley district. One woman was stabbed, a second shot and a third set afire, all allegedly at the hands of their husbands.
Police Chief Moalim Mahdi, chief of the Banadir region that covers Mogadishu, pledged action against the offenders.
Various forms of gender-based violence remain prevalent in Somalia. The situation is worsened by the absence of strong legal frameworks to deter attacks.
In 2020, parliament debated a controversial bill to address gender-based violence but was forced to hold it back following local and international pressure over clauses that allowed for child and forced marriage and other violations of women’s rights.
Amina Haji Elmi, director of the Mogadishu-based advocacy group Save Somali Women and Children, said that Somali women, “alongside others, have been living in [a] war-ravaged country. They were victimized by both natural disasters and man-caused problems. Currently, women are facing many challenges … among them are lack of support, poverty. They do not get protection and support after incidents.”
Elmi called on security agencies to deliver justice to the families of those killed.
“We strongly condemn the heinous acts against these innocent women,” Elmi said. “It is sad to hear that a mother is being killed in front of her children. We call upon the security agencies to bring the perpetrators to justice. We extend condolences to the families of these victims.”
Members of parliament decried the killings during a debate Saturday and called for the offenders to be prosecuted.
Despite the condemnations, Somali lawmakers have yet to pass the U.N.-backed Sexual Offenses Bill that the Council of Ministers approved in 2018. Female MP Gobsan Muhumed was among those who spoke during the session.
“It is heartbreaking for paternal orphans to witness their mother being burned by their stepfather, who was laughing at the time of the incident,” she said.
On Sunday in the southwestern town of Afgooye, another man was arrested in possession of gasoline and a matchbox amid allegations he intended to set his wife and children on fire.
Prosecutors in Somalia rely on provisions of the 1970s penal code to charge perpetrators of sexual and other gender-related offenses. Critics say this law is not tough enough and have called for the government to adopt harsher penalties.
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