Month: July 2024

Rwanda President Kagame deflects retirement questions, focuses on upcoming election  

Posted on by SeeAF

Kigali — Rwandan President Paul Kagame wrapped up his reelection campaign Saturday, two days before voting takes place on Monday. The incumbent faces two opponents who say he has overstayed. Kagame tells reporters that his supporters want him to run for another term.

At a news conference following his last campaign rally, Rwandan President Paul Kagame told reporters that his priorities for the country he’s been leading since 2000 will not change.

“Priority No. 1 after we’ve gone through all of this is to continue to make as much progress as we can in the area of security and stability for our country, socio-economic development progress … we are building our country, growing it toward prosperity,” he said.

This will be his fourth term if he wins reelection next week. Kagame faces two other candidates including the Democratic Green Party’s Frank Habineza, who ran against him in 2017 and says the president has stayed around for way too long. Habineza told VOA he’s successfully campaigned in most of the 30 districts across the country recently, and voters have been more enthusiastic this time around.

“I am giving them hope that after 30 years, we really need to see a different way of living, different political programs, different thinking, and a different vision. We are not going to destroy the good things that have been done before, but we want to give them better hope and a better future,” he said.

Kagame joked at the news conference that he never wanted to be president, saying that it was his party that insisted he get into the race in 2000. Decades later, his supporters tell him they want him to run for another term.

“Every day I am being asked when are you leaving, when are you going? These people who made me president are telling me they still want me to be president. Somebody else somewhere says no you are here too long. I really get confused. I think this is not fair,” he said.

The 66-year-old leader is expected to cruise to an easy victory. One reason, according to critics, is that he has stifled dissent. But another, analysts say, is the way he’s been able to guide the East African country toward internal peace since the 1994 genocide, when an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed by Hutu extremists.

Eric Ndushabandi is a political science and international relations professor at the University of Rwanda, and an associate researcher at the Louvain University in Brussels. He said Kagame’s support has been there because of his efforts to address Rwandans’ need for stability after the genocide.

“The language, practice and success around stabilization and security, mainly in internal politics, is joining the expectations and aspirations of many Rwandans after this tragic and historical background,” he said.

Ndushabandi also said there is a big gap between the presidential candidates in terms of popularity, ideology, means, and capacity.

Other candidates were barred from the race by the National Electoral Commission for various reasons. One was a fierce Kagame critic, Diane Rwigara, who the commission said did not provide a criminal record statement and did not collect the minimum number of supporters’ signatures.
…

your ad here

The race is on to keep a 150-year-old lighthouse from crumbling into Hudson River

Posted on by SeeUS

HUDSON, N.Y. — Wooden pilings beneath Hudson-Athens Lighthouse are deteriorating, and the structure, built in the middle of the river when steamboats still plied the water, is beginning to shift. Cracks are apparent on the brick building and its granite foundation.

While there are other endangered lighthouses around the nation, the peril to this one 100 miles 161 (kilometers) north of New York City is so dire the National Trust for Historic Preservation placed Hudson-Athens on its 2024 list of the country’s 11 most endangered historic places. Advocates say that if action isn’t taken soon, yet another historic lighthouse could be lost in the coming years.

“All four corners will begin to come down, and then you’ll have a pile of rock in the middle. And ultimately it will topple into the river,” Van Calhoun of the Hudson-Athens Lighthouse Preservation Society said during a recent visit.

The society is trying to quickly raise money to place a submerged steel curtain around the lighthouse, an ambitious preservation project that could cost as much as $10 million. Their goal is to save a prominent symbol of the river’s centuries-long history as a busy waterway. While the Hudson River was once home to more than a dozen lighthouses, only seven still stand.

Elsewhere, there’s a similar story of lost history.

Across the United States, there were around 1,500 lighthouses at the beginning of the 20th century. Only about 800 of them remain, said U.S. Lighthouse Society executive director Jeff Gales. He said many of the structures deteriorated after they were automated, a process that became more common by the 1940s.

“Lighthouses were built to have human beings taking care of them,” Gales said. “And when you seal them up and take the human factor out, that’s when they really start falling into disrepair.”

The Hudson-Athens Lighthouse began operating in 1874 offshore from the city of Hudson and was eventually co-named for the village of Athens on the other side of the river. It was built to help keep boats from running aground on nearby mud flats, which were submerged at high tide.

“There were shipwrecks because they couldn’t see the sandbar. And so that’s why this lighthouse was put in the middle of the river, unlike most that are on the shoreline,” said preservation society president Kristin Gamble.

The lighthouse is still in use, though now with an automated LED beacon. The preservation society owns the building and maintains it as a museum.

The last full-time keeper, Emil Brunner, retired in 1949 when the lighthouse became automated. He lived there with his family for much of his tenure. One of his daughters recalled rowing to school and, in the winter, walking across the ice on a safe path marked by her father’s tobacco juice stains on the frozen surface. Brunner also is portrayed on a 1946 Saturday Evening Post cover painting rowing with a child, Christmas presents and a tree in tow, as his wife and other children await their arrival on the lighthouse landing.

Visitors who are ferried to the lighthouse today can explore the keeper’s quarters, which are modest but feature river views from every window. And they can climb up the tight spiral staircase to the tower to take in a unique panorama view of the river and the Catskill Mountains to the west.

Roof work on the lighthouse is underway this summer, but repairs to the building will ultimately mean little unless workers address damage to some of the 200 wood pilings packed in mud that hold the lighthouse above water. The support structure has weathered 150 years of currents and ice. But large commercial ships of the modern era — with their big propellors — introduce new problems.

“They create a turbulence that’s like being inside a washing machine. And that turbulence actually comes underneath and pulls — churns up — the soil underneath us and sucks it away,” Calhoun said. “In fact, there are boulders as big as your car that are 100 feet out in that river that used to be right next to us.”

The underwater agitation washes away mud around the pilings, leaving them exposed to water. And that accelerates decay of the wood. Engineers estimate the structure could begin to tilt in three to five years, which Gamble said would be “the beginning of the end.”

The proposed ring of corrugated steel would shield the structure from that turbulence. The 100-foot (31-meter) diameter circle, which would project above the water line, would be filled in and covered by a deck, enlarging the area around the lighthouse.

The preservation group is optimistic about getting federal money to help pay for the project. Both of New York’s U.S. senators, Democrats Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, support the effort, as does local Republican U.S. Rep. Marc Molinaro.

Though the project is pricey, Gamble said, it would not only save the lighthouse from being lost to time, but it would also protect the 19th-century beacon for generations to come.

“We need, basically, the 100-year fix,” she said.
…

your ad here

Leader of Nepal’s largest communist party named the country’s new prime minister 

Posted on by SeeEA

KATHMANDU, Nepal — The leader of the Nepal’s largest communist party, Khadga Prasad Oli, was named the Himalayan nation’s new prime minister on Sunday following the collapse of a previous coalition government.   

A statement issued by the president’s office said Oli will take his oath of office on Monday.   

Oli will be leading a coalition government made up of his Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist Leninist) and the Nepali Congress party, the two largest parties in Nepal.   

It is his fourth time as Nepal’s prime minister.   

The last government headed by Pushpa Kamal Dahal collapsed on Friday after Oli’s party, which had been a part of the coalition, withdrew its support to join the new partnership.   

Oli would have to seek vote of confidence in parliament to continue in office within a month. The two parties in the new alliance have more than half the members in parliament required to prove their majority.   

Oli, 72, was born in a village in east Nepal and has been involved in politics since he was young. He has a kidney illness and has had kidney transplant surgeries. He has made regular trips abroad for medical treatment. 
…

your ad here

Fears of unrest in convention host Milwaukee after Trump assassination attempt

Posted on by SeeUS

The U.S. Republican Party is expected to formally nominate Donald Trump for president this week, days after he survived an assassination attempt at a political rally. Already tight security is expected to be heightened in Milwaukee, which is hosting the Republican National Convention. VOA’s Jorge Agobian and William Gallo spoke with convention delegates and Milwaukee residents, who are concerned about the possibility of more unrest.
…

your ad here

Sister of North Korean leader Kim hints at resuming flying trash balloons toward South Korea

Posted on by SeeEA

…

your ad here

Stegosaurus nicknamed Apex will be auctioned in New York

Posted on by SeeUS

NEW YORK — The nearly complete fossilized remains of a 161-million-year-old stegosaurus discovered in Colorado in 2022 will be auctioned by Sotheby’s in New York next week, auction house officials said.

The dinosaur that Sotheby’s calls Apex stands 3.3 meters tall and measures 8.2 meters nose to tail, according to Cassandra Hatton, Sotheby’s global head of science and popular culture.

The stegosaurus, with its distinctive pointy dorsal plates, is one of the world’s most recognizable dinosaurs.

Apex, which Hatton called “a coloring book dinosaur,” was discovered in May 2022 on private land near the town of Dinosaur, Colorado. The excavation was completed in October 2023, Sotheby’s said.

Though experts believe stegosauruses used their fearsome tail spikes to fight, this specimen shows no signs of combat, Sotheby’s said. The fossil does show evidence of arthritis, suggesting that Apex lived to an advanced age.

Hatton said Apex was found “with the tail curled up underneath the body, which is a common death pose for animals.”

The dinosaur will be auctioned on July 17 as part of Sotheby’s “Geek Week” series.

Sotheby’s is estimating that it will sell for $4 million to $6 million, but that’s just an educated guess.

“This is an incredibly rare animal,” Hatton said. “A stegosaurus of this caliber has never sold at auction before, so we will find out what it is actually worth.”
…

your ad here

DR Congo detects at least 25 mpox cases in Goma

Posted on by SeeAF

PARIS — At least 25 cases of a dangerous new strain of mpox spreading through the Democratic Republic of Congo have been detected in the eastern city of Goma, mostly in camps housing people fleeing a surrounding conflict, health authorities said Wednesday.

Congo has seen 20,000 cases and more than 1,000 deaths from mpox, mainly among children, since the start of 2023. Over 11,000 cases, including 443 deaths, have been reported so far this year.

Authorities recently approved the use of vaccines to tackle the upsurge, but none are currently available outside of clinical trials in the country.

The head of the national response team against the mpox epidemic, Cris Kacita, said in an interview that most of the new reported cases were in displaced people camps.

He said cases were infected with a new strain of the virus that is spreading in South Kivu province. Goma is the capital and largest city of the neighboring North Kivu province.

The World Health Organization (WHO) and scientists raised the alarm last month about the mpox situation in Congo, including the spread of a new strain of mpox spreading in South Kivu.

Mpox has been endemic in Congo for decades but a new variant of the clade I of the virus emerged last year. It is a viral infection that spreads through close contact, causing flu-like symptoms and pus-filled lesions. Most cases are mild, but it can kill.

A different, less severe form of mpox – clade IIb – spread globally in 2022, largely through sexual contact among men who have sex with men. This prompted the WHO to declare a public health emergency that has now ended, although there are still cases and the agency has said mpox remains a public health threat.

“The national biomedical research institute in Goma has sequenced the virus and this proves that the virus has been circulating for a long time in the city of Goma,” Kacita said.

“The risk here is the promiscuity in the camps and the speed with which the epidemic is spreading,” he warned.

Hundreds of thousands of people who fled conflict in Congo’s insurgent-hit east are staying in overcrowded camps in and around Goma.

The number of displaced has increased since a rebel group known as the M23 launched a major offensive in 2022, prompting national and regional military responses that have struggled to stem the militia’s advance. 
…

your ad here

Israel’s Holocaust memorial opens a facility to store artifacts, photos and more

Posted on by SeeEU

JERUSALEM — Israel’s national Holocaust museum opened a new conservation facility in Jerusalem on Monday that will preserve, restore and store its more than 45,000 artifacts and works of art in a vast new building, including five floors of underground storage.

Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, serves as both a museum and a research institution. It welcomes nearly a million visitors each year, leads the country’s annual Holocaust memorial day and hosts nearly all foreign dignitaries visiting Israel.

“Before we opened this building, it was very difficult to exhibit our treasures that were kept in our vaults. They were kind of secret,” said Yad Vashem chairman Dani Dayan. “Now there’s a state-of-the-art installation (that) will help us to exhibit them.”

The David and Fela Shapell Family Collections Center, located at the Yad Vashem museum in Jerusalem, will also provide organization and storage for the museum’s 225 million pages of documents and half a million photographs.

Dayan said the materials will now be kept in a facility that preserves them in optimal temperatures and conditions.

“Yad Vashem has the largest collections in the world of materials related to the Holocaust,” Dayan said. “We will make sure that these treasures are kept for eternity.”

The new facility includes advanced, high-tech labs for conservation, enabling experts to revisit some of the museum’s trickier items, such as a film canister that a family who fled Austria in 1939 brought with them. It was donated to the museum but arrived in an advanced state of decay.

“The film arrived in the worst state it could. It smelled really bad,” said Reut Ilan-Shafik, a photography conservator at Yad Vashem. Over the years, the film had congealed into a solid piece of plastic, making it impossible to be scanned.

Using organic solvents, conservators were able to restore some of the film’s flexibility, allowing them to carefully unravel pieces of it. Using a microscope, Ilan-Shafik was able to see a few frames in their entirety, including one showing a couple kissing on a bench in a park and other snapshots of Europe before World War II.

“It is unbelievable to know that the images of the film that we otherwise thought lost to time” have been recovered, said Orit Feldberg, granddaughter of Hans and Klara Lebel, the couple featured in the photo.

Feldberg’s mother donated the film canister, one of the few things the Lebels were able to take with them when they fled Austria.

“These photographs not only tell their unique story but also keep their memory vibrantly alive,” Feldberg said.

Conservation of items from the Holocaust is an expensive, painstaking process that has taken on greater importance as the number of survivors dwindles.

Last month, the Auschwitz Memorial announced it had finished a half-million-dollar project to conserve 3,000 of the 8,000 pairs of children’s shoes that are on display at the Nazi concentration camp in Poland.
…

your ad here

Syria-Turkey rapprochement: Here’s what it might mean for the region

Posted on by SeeEU

ANKARA — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Syrian President Bashar Assad have recently signaled that they are interested in restoring diplomatic ties that have been ruptured for more than a decade.

Erdogan has said that he hopes to arrange a meeting with Assad soon for the first time since the countries broke off relations in 2011 as mass anti-government protests and a brutal crackdown by security forces in Syria spiraled into a still-ongoing civil war.

Speaking at a NATO summit in Washington on Thursday, Erdogan said he had called on Assad two weeks ago to either come to Turkey for the meeting or to hold it in a third country, and that he had assigned Turkey’s foreign minister to follow up.

Turkey backed Syrian insurgent groups seeking to overthrow Assad and still maintains forces in the opposition-held northwest, a sore point for Damascus.

This is not the first time that there have been attempts to normalize relations between the two countries, but previous attempts failed to gain traction.

Here’s a look at what might happen this time around:

What happened at their last talks

Russia, which is one of the strongest backers of Assad’s government but also has close ties with Turkey, has been pushing for a return to diplomatic relations.

In December 2022, the Turkish, Syrian and Russian defense ministers held talks in Moscow, the first ministerial level meeting between rivals Turkey and Syria since 2011. Russia also brokered meetings between Syrian and Turkish officials last year.

However, the talks fizzled, and Syrian officials publicly continued to blast Turkey’s presence in northwest Syria. Assad said in an interview with Sky News Arabia last August that the objective of Erdogan’s overtures was “to legitimize the Turkish occupation in Syria.”

What’s different now

Russia appears to once again be promoting the talks, but this time around, Iraq — which shares a border with both Turkey and Syria — has also offered to mediate, as it previously did between regional arch-rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Aron Lund, a fellow with the Century International think tank, said Iraq may have taken the initiative as a way to deflect pressure from Turkey to crack down on the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, a Kurdish separatist group that has waged an insurgency against Turkey since the 1980s and has bases in northern Iraq.

By pushing rapprochement with Syria, Baghdad may be trying to “create some form of positive engagement with the Turks, kick the can down the road, and deflect the threat of an intervention,” Lund said.

The geopolitical situation in the region has also changed with the war in Gaza and fears of a wider regional conflict. Ozgur Unluhisarcikli, an analyst on Turkey and director of the German Marshall Fund in Ankara, said that both countries may be feeling insecure and seeking new alliances in the face of the war’s potential regional ripple effects.

What Turkey and Syria want

From Erdogan’s side, Unluhisarcikli said, the attempt to engage is likely driven in part by the increasing anti-Syrian sentiment in Turkey. Erdogan is likely hoping for a deal that could pave the way for the return of many of the 3.6 million Syrian refugees living in his country.

From the Syrian side, a return to relations with Turkey would be another step toward ending Assad’s political isolation in the region after more than a decade as a pariah due to his government’s brutal crackdown on protesters in 2011 and alleged war crimes afterward.

And despite their differences over Turkey’s presence in northwest Syria, Damascus and Ankara both have an interest in curtailing the autonomy of Kurdish groups in northeast Syria.

Turkey may be concerned that the security situation in northeast Syria could deteriorate in the event that the U.S. withdraws troops it currently has stationed there as part of a coalition against the Islamic State militant group, Unluhisarcikli said. That could require Turkey to “cooperate or at least coordinate with Syria, to manage the aftermath of the U.S. withdrawal,” he said.

Joseph Daher, a Swiss-Syrian researcher and visiting professor at the European University Institute in Florence, said the two governments likely hope for modest “economic gains” in a rapprochement. While trade never completely stopped, it currently goes through intermediaries, he said, while restoring diplomatic relations would allow official commerce to resume and make trade more fluid.

The prospects for an agreement

Analysts agreed that the talks are unlikely to bring about the full Turkish withdrawal from northwest Syria that Damascus has called for or any other major shift in conditions on the ground in the near term.

Although the two countries’ interests “actually overlap to a large degree,” Lund said, “there are also major disagreements” and “a lot of bad blood and bitterness” that could impede even “lower-level dealmaking.” Both Erdogan and Assad may also want to wait for the outcome of U.S. elections, which could determine the future American footprint in the region, before making a major deal, he said.

In the long run, Lund said, “The logic of the situation dictates Turkish-Syrian collaboration in some form. … They’re neighbors. They’re stuck with each other and the current stalemate does them no good.”

Unluhisarcikli agreed that a “grand bargain” is unlikely to come out of the present talks, but the increased dialogue could lead to “some confidence building measures,” he said.

Daher said the most probable outcome of the talks is some “security agreements” between the two sides, but not a full Turkish withdrawal from Syria in the short term, particularly since the Syrian government army is too weak to control northwest Syria by itself.

“On its own, it’s not able to take back the whole of the northwest — it needs to deal with Turkey,” he said.

How people in Turkey and Syria view a potential agreement

In Turkey and in government-controlled Syria, many view the prospects of a rapprochement positively. In northwest Syria, on the other hand, protests have broken out against the prospect of a normalization of relations between Ankara — which had previously positioned itself as a protector of the Syrian opposition — and Damascus.

Kurds in Syria have also viewed the potential rapprochement with apprehension. The Kurdish-led authority in northeast Syria said in a statement that the prospective reconciliation would be a “conspiracy against the Syrian people” and a “clear legitimization of the Turkish occupation” of previously Kurdish-majority areas that were seized by Turkish-backed forces. 
…

your ad here

Four US presidents were assassinated; others were targeted, as were presidential candidates

Posted on by SeeUS

…

your ad here

President Joe Biden’s statement following assassination attempt at Trump rally

Posted on by SeeUS

President Joe Biden said Saturday that “everybody must condemn” the suspected assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, adding that he hoped to speak with his 2024 presidential rival soon.
…

your ad here

Competition between NATO, China intensifies following Washington summit

Posted on by SeeEU

irvine, california — NATO and China’s efforts to deepen cooperation with like-minded countries in the Indo-Pacific and Europe are viewed by some analysts as part of the growing competition between major powers, especially between the United States and China.    

“[The latest development] is a standard major power competition,” said Ian Chong, a political scientist at the National University of Singapore.  

These efforts are aimed at “finding out where are their friends and who can support their efforts,” he said. “[But] it’s pretty clear that the competition between major powers is intensifying,” he told VOA by phone.    

During its annual summit in Washington, NATO announced it would launch four new joint projects with Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand. The projects will focus on deepening cooperation with the four Indo-Pacific countries on Ukraine, artificial intelligence, disinformation, and cybersecurity.

U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the goal is to “harness the unique strengths” of democracies to address shared global challenges. In response, the Chinese government accused NATO of “inciting bloc confrontation and hyping up regional tensions” by engaging with countries in the Indo-Pacific region.

Instead of expanding its footprint to the Indo-Pacific region through these joint projects, some experts say NATO is trying to involve more like-minded countries in the process of building up competencies in critical areas of competition.  

“These are core areas that will shape military and other forms of competition moving forward so NATO wants to establish more cooperation with like-minded democracies,” said Stephen Nagy, a regional security expert at the International Christian University in Japan.  

Since NATO has labeled China as “the decisive enabler” of Russia’s war against Ukraine, Nagy said the alliance is trying to show Beijing that it won’t back out of the global competition in key areas.    

“NATO is signaling to China that they can be part of the solution, or they would be part of the problem,” he told VOA by phone.    

In an interview with VOA’s Mandarin Service, Japan’s Foreign Press Secretary Maki Kobayashi said that while Tokyo has been working closely with NATO member states, these efforts shouldn’t be viewed as an attempt to establish a NATO in Asia.

China’s attempt to counter NATO  

While the U.S. and its NATO allies aimed to strengthen cooperation with Indo-Pacific countries through the summit in Washington, China is also beefing up military cooperation with Belarus and Russia.  

On Monday, China initiated an 11-day joint military exercise near the border of Poland with Belarus, the newest member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. While the Chinese Foreign Ministry insisted that the exercise wasn’t targeting any country, some analysts told VOA that the move is Beijing’s response to NATO’s growing interest in Asia.

In addition to the military exercise with Belarus in Europe, China also announced Friday a joint naval exercise with Russia in waters near the southern city of Zhanjiang.  

The Chinese defense ministry characterized the drills, which will take place near the disputed South China Sea, as attempts for Beijing and Moscow to demonstrate their resolve and capabilities to address “maritime security threats and preserving global and regional peace and stability.”  

Nagy in Japan said Beijing is trying to show its displeasure toward NATO’s efforts to strengthen ties with Indo-Pacific countries. 

“China is signaling to NATO member states that they can cause headaches for them in their region or regions that matter to them,” he told VOA.    

Apart from closely aligning the dates of the two military exercises with the NATO Summit, China also used last week’s SCO Summit in Kazakhstan to uphold its “no limits partnership” with Russia and promote the alternative world order that it has been championing in recent years.

While the SCO isn’t an alliance with a common goal, some experts say China will still try to use it as a platform to “build its own blocs” to counter NATO and dilute Western influence.    

“China is strengthening these arrangements through bilateral agreements and strategic partnership, which often include security,” Sari Arho Havren, an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, told VOA by phone.    

But since the SCO includes member states such as India, which is also part of the quadrilateral security dialogue with Australia, Japan, and the U.S., Nagy thinks New Delhi is unlikely to back any efforts to transform SCO into a counterweight of NATO.  

And while China might engage in some security cooperation with other authoritarian states like Russia or Iran — such as the joint military exercise the three countries conducted in March — Nagy said the differences in the three countries’ tolerance for risk and their visions for these partnerships will make it difficult for them to form a formal alliance. 

In his view, Russia has a higher tolerance for risk while China is concerned about how the war in Ukraine may affect stability around the world.  

“In the North Korea front, China is not happy about Putin’s recent trip to Pyongyang while Beijing wants a stable relationship with Iran, which adds limits to their cooperation,” Nagy told VOA. 

“The idea that these countries can converge to form an alliance to combat the so-called Western containment is not feasible, but they may align themselves so they can coordinate the supply of resources,” he added. 

Despite some limitations in reality, Arho Havren said China and NATO’s latest efforts to deepen partnerships show that a bloc competition may be emerging. 

“Both sides are more assertive and clear about their messaging and recent developments may accelerate this trend,” she told VOA.   
…

your ad here

Nigeria exam day turns into disaster; school collapses, killing 22

Posted on by SeeAF

Jos, Nigeria — After her early morning class ended, 16-year-old Nigerian student Chidera Denis was waiting to join classmates for end-of-term exams.

Moments later, she was trapped under rubble as her school building suddenly collapsed, with pupils barely protected by the desks where they were sitting. 

Denis was one of the lucky ones. The collapse of the Saint Academy school in Jos North district in Plateau State killed 22 students Friday, with dozens more hospitalized for treatment, including Denis’ friend.  

“She said she was going to die … that if they rescued me, I should tell her mother,” Denis told AFP a day after the disaster.  

“I said she should stop saying that, that we’ll be alive, that God is our strength.”  

Her brother also attended the school. 

“I am yet to see her brother,” she told AFP. “I am still searching. I am in pain.”  

 

Rescue efforts end

A spokesperson for the National Emergency Management Agency, Yohanna Audu, told AFP on Saturday that rescue efforts had ended after the disaster, the latest fatal building collapse in Nigeria.  

Audu said there were 22 fatalities, “all of whom are students.”   

The Red Cross posted on X, formerly Twitter, Saturday that a teacher and a student were still missing. 

“I was beside someone who died,” 14-year-old Chidinma Emmanuel told AFP. “He fell down on my arm and it broke. The falling debris landed on his head and killed him.” 

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu described the incident as a “huge loss to the nation.” 

The day after, 58 people were still hospitalized while 74 were discharged, the state commissioner for information Musa Ibrahim Ashoms said in a statement Saturday. 

 

Collapses common

Building collapses are common in Africa’s most populous country.  

The accident Friday was the deadliest since November 2021, when a high-rise building under construction in the country’s commercial hub of Lagos collapsed and killed at least 45 people, most of them construction workers. 

Poor quality of work, lack of oversight, and official corruption to bypass safety checks are often blamed for the incidents.   

Ashoms said it was not immediately clear what caused the collapse in Plateau, but residents said it came after three days of heavy rain. 

Although formal investigations have yet to commence, state authorities have said there was a need to reinforce building standard codes. 

Plateau Governor Caleb Mutfwang “emphasizes the need for all developers and property owners to submit their building plans to the Jos Metropolitan Development Board for verification and revalidation,” Ashoms said.  

The school building disaster was the latest tragedy to hit Plateau State, which has seen a series of deadly intercommunal clashes.  

Gunmen killed 40 people in Zurak, a mining village 260 kilometers (160 miles) east of Jos, in May. And nearly 200 people were killed in the state last December in raids on mostly Christian villages. 
…

your ad here

UN urges release of detained Libyan journalist

Posted on by SeeAF

Tripoli, Libya — The United Nations mission in Libya called Saturday for the “immediate” release of a prominent journalist arrested this week, warning against a “crackdown” on media freedoms in the war-torn country.  

Ahmed Sanussi, chief editor of Libyan financial news website Sada, who has long covered corruption in the hydrocarbon-rich country, was arrested in his Tripoli home after returning from Tunisia, his family said.  

The United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) said, it was “deeply concerned about the arbitrary arrest and detention of journalist Ahmed Sanussi on July 11 in Tripoli.”  

In a message on social media platform X, formerly Twitter, UNSMIL called for his “immediate release.”  

“The crackdown on journalism fosters a climate of fear and undermines the necessary environment for democratic transition in Libya,” it said.

Division and unrest 

Libya has been wracked by division and unrest since the 2011 NATO-backed overthrow of former dictator Moammar Gadhafi and remains divided between two rival administrations. 

The U.N. mission highlighted the need for a “thriving civic space where Libyans can engage in open and safe debate and dialogue by exercising their right to freedom of expression.”   

“All Libyan authorities must protect journalists and media professionals.” 

Sanussi’s latest reporting on corruption implicated Economy Ministry Mohamad Ali Houej.   

Authorities in Libya did not comment on the arrest, which was also condemned by Western governments. 

Journalism group pushes for release

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) deemed it “unacceptable that authorities have not disclosed where he is being held or the reason for his arrest.”  

The Netherlands’ ambassador in Libya, Joost Klarenbeek, said on X, formerly Twitter, he was “deeply concerned,” adding that “any acts of arbitrary detention, enforced disappearance or ill-treatment must be thoroughly investigated.”  

CPJ’s MENA program coordinator, Yeganeh Rezaian, said Libyan “authorities must release Sanussi immediately and unconditionally and ensure his safe return home.” 
…

your ad here

Missing Polish coal miner found alive more than two days after quake

Posted on by SeeEU

WARSAW, Poland — A miner who was reported missing after an earthquake shook Poland’s Rydultowy coal mine has been found alive more than two days after the accident that killed one of his colleagues and injured another 17, local officials said Saturday. 

The miner has been airlifted to a hospital and the rescue operation has been closed, said Witold Gałązka of the coal mining group that operates the mine. 

Earlier, the office of the provincial governor of the Silesia coal mining region, in southern Poland, said that the miner was conscious and was being transported to the surface. 

“This is fantastic news,” provincial governor Marek Wojcik said on TVN24. 

The head of the Polish Coal Mining Group that operates the mine, Leszek Pietraszek, said that rescuers reached the 32-year-old miner around 2 p.m. Saturday. He was conscious and communicating but had some problems breathing. He received first aid from a doctor who also prepared him for transportation to the surface. 

Hundreds of rescuers took part in the operation and at times had to be withdrawn from the corridor when more tremors were threatened or because of dangerous methane gas levels. The rescuers had to dig through the rubble by hand to reach the miner, authorities said. 

Seventy-eight miners were in the area when a magnitude 3.1 tremor struck about 1,200 meters below the surface on Thursday afternoon. 

One miner, age 41, was killed and 17 were hospitalized with injuries. Thirteen of the injured have since been released from the hospital. 

The tremor caused a slide of rocks into the corridor at one spot, where the miner was found Saturday. 

The mining group has suffered several deadly accidents this year. In May, three miners died in a cave-in at the Myslowice-Wesola coal mine, and one was killed at the same mine in April. 

Two miners lost their lives in separate accidents in 2019 and 2020 in the Rydultowy mine, which was opened in 1792 and employs about 2,000 miners. 

Coal mining is considered hazardous in Poland, where some mines are prone to methane gas explosions or to cave-ins. Excavation in older mines goes deep into the ground in the search for coal, increasing the job’s hazards. The coal industry is among Poland’s key employers, providing some 75,000 jobs. 

Last year, 15 miners died in accidents. 
…

your ad here

Cambodia searches for missing military training helicopter

Posted on by SeeEA

Phnom Penh, Cambodia — A Cambodian military helicopter has gone missing following an “accident” in bad weather in the southwest of the country, its Defense Ministry said Saturday. 

The ministry said in a Facebook post that the chopper went missing in the rugged Cardamom Mountains, which are cloaked in dense rainforest. 

“A helicopter has lost contact with the headquarters of the air force … during a training [session],” it said. 

“The accident happened due to bad weather,” it added. 

The ministry did not say when the chopper went missing, what model it was, or how many people were on board. 

But air force sources told AFP that a Chinese-made Z-9 chopper with at least two people aboard disappeared Friday during a training exercise. 

The Defense Ministry said rescue teams began searching for the missing chopper Saturday morning, but the chopper had not been found. 

Local press reports said the search was focused on Pursat province. 

Cambodia bought 12 Z-9 helicopters from China in 2013 to boost its military capacity. 

Four Cambodian soldiers died, and one was injured in 2014 when a Z-9 exploded in midair before crashing into a water-filled quarry during military training on the outskirts of the capital Phnom Penh. 

In 2008, Cambodia’s chief policeman, Hok Lundy, was killed in a helicopter crash along with the deputy army commander and two pilots when their chopper went down in bad weather. 
…

your ad here

Democratic Milwaukee wrestles with hosting Trump, Republican convention

Posted on by SeeUS

MILWAUKEE, Wisconsin — Milwaukee loves its Miller Beer, Brewers baseball and “Bronze Fonz” statue.

The deepest blue city in swing state Wisconsin, Milwaukee also loves Democrats.

So, it can be hard for some to swallow that Milwaukee is playing host to former President Donald Trump and the Republican National Convention this coming week while rival Chicago, the larger city just 90 miles to the south, welcomes President Joe Biden and Democrats in August.

It didn’t help smooth things over with wary Democrats after Trump used the word “horrible” when talking about Milwaukee just a month before the convention that begins Monday.

Adding to the angst, Milwaukee was supposed to host the Democratic National Convention in 2020, but it didn’t happen because of COVID. Owners of local restaurants, bars and venues say the number of reservations that were promised during the RNC aren’t materializing. And protesters complained the city was trying to keep them too far away from the convention site to have an impact.

“I wish I was out of town for it,” Jake Schneider, 29, said as he passed by the city’s statue of Fonzie, the character played by Henry Winkler in the 1970s sitcom “Happy Days,” which was set in Milwaukee. “I’m not super happy that it’s the Republican Party coming to town.”

Schneider, who lives in an apartment downtown, said Trump “sabotaged himself” with his comments about Milwaukee.

“I hope he’s proven wrong and sees how wonderful of a city it is,” Schneider said.

Ryan Clancy, a self-described democratic socialist who is a state representative and serves on the Milwaukee County Board, puts it more bluntly: “It is shameful that we rolled out the red carpet for the RNC.”

Still, Democratic and Republican convention boosters point to the potential economic boon and chance to show off Milwaukee and Wisconsin during the convention that runs through Thursday.

“Folks are ready to have the convention and have it be successful and elevate Milwaukee to the next level,” said Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson, a Democrat. “Donald Trump, regardless of where it happens, is going to be the Republican nominee. So, it didn’t matter if it happened in Milwaukee. It didn’t matter if it happened in Mar-a-Lago.”

Milwaukee has been in the national spotlight more in recent years, following the Bucks winning the national NBA championship in 2021 and the airing this spring of the latest season of “Top Chef,” a reality TV show that was filmed in the city and featured a Milwaukee chef who made the finals.

And as Trump’s “horrible” comment showed, Milwaukee has also long been a target for conservative Republicans who have pointed to its crime, low-ranking schools and financial struggles as an example of poor Democratic leadership.

“I hope this convention shows off all the best things about Milwaukee,” said Wisconsin Republican Party Chairman Brian Schimming. “But it is a city, like many other Democrat-run cities, that has extraordinarily significant issues.”

Democrats picked Milwaukee for the party’s last convention, but the 2020 DNC became an online event because of the pandemic.

The city’s back-to-back selection by Democrats and Republicans speaks to the swing state’s importance.

Wisconsin is one of a handful of battleground states likely to determine this year’s presidential race. It was one of the so-called “blue wall” states that Democrats once relied on, but Trump narrowly won in 2016, paving the way for his surprise victory. Biden flipped the state back in 2020, and both campaigns are targeting it heavily this year.

But there’s nothing swing about Milwaukee. It voted 79% for Biden in 2020. After his loss that year, Trump fought unsuccessfully to disqualify thousands of voters in Milwaukee, falsely portraying late-arriving returns driven by heavy absentee turnout as fraud.

Republicans say staging the convention in Milwaukee will energize their base. While the city itself is Democratic, the outlying suburbs are a battleground within a battleground state. Once deeply red, Democrats have made inroads since 2016 as suburban women, in particular, drift away from Trump and the conservative agenda.

Before the city was even chosen to host the convention, Clancy and other Democrats urged Milwaukee to drop out of the running, as Nashville did after Democrats there objected to hosting Republicans.

But by far the biggest kerfuffle came in June when Trump used the word “horrible” in talking about Milwaukee during a closed-door meeting with Republicans in Congress. While those in attendance disagreed over whether Trump was talking about crime, election concerns or something else, and he later said in a Wisconsin rally that he “loved” Milwaukee, for some Democrats it only reaffirmed earlier concerns about playing host to Republicans.

Mobcraft, a Milwaukee-based brewery, showed off the city’s Midwestern sense of humor and love of beer by releasing a “[not so] Horrible City IPA.”

As the convention nears, some local business owners are questioning estimates that the convention will bring in $200 million in revenue.

Only one of the six venues run by the Pabst Theater Group in Milwaukee is booked for the week of the convention, said Gary Witt, the group’s president and CEO. Witt said he will lose more than $100,000 by not having venues used, and he’s concerned about the impact the convention will have on other Milwaukee businesses.

“Once these people are all gone, we’re meaningless to them anyway,” Witt said of convention attendees.

Demonstrators are trying to spread counterprogramming throughout the week but have argued they’re being kept too far from the convention sites.

Omar Flores, chair of the March on the RNC Coalition, said he’s confident the protests will be peaceful and take advantage of the national platform they will have. He said the coalition had to fight to get a march route that will be in sight and sound of the convention, after Milwaukee’s Democratic leaders “completely sold us out, completely sold out the city and refused to listen to what any of the residents had to say.”
…

your ad here

America’s pioneering sex therapist Dr. Ruth Westheimer dies at 96

Posted on by SeeUS

NEW YORK — Dr. Ruth Westheimer, the diminutive sex therapist who became a pop icon, media star and best-selling author through her frank talk about once-taboo bedroom topics, has died. She was 96.

Westheimer died on Friday at her home in New York City, surrounded by her family, according to publicist and friend Pierre Lehu.

Westheimer never advocated risky sexual behavior. Instead, she encouraged an open dialogue on previously closeted issues that affected her audience of millions. Her one recurring theme was that there was nothing to be ashamed of.

“I still hold old-fashioned values, and I’m a bit of a square,” she told students at Michigan City High School in 2002. “Sex is a private art and a private matter. But still, it is a subject we must talk about.”

Westheimer’s giggly, German-accented voice, coupled with her 4-foot-7 frame, made her an unlikely looking — and sounding — outlet for “sexual literacy.” The contradiction was one of the keys to her success.

But it was her extensive knowledge and training, coupled with her humorous, nonjudgmental manner, that catapulted her local radio program, “Sexually Speaking,” into the national spotlight in the early 1980s. She had a nonjudgmental approach to what two consenting adults did in the privacy of their home.

Her radio success opened new doors, and in 1983 she wrote the first of more than 40 books: “Dr. Ruth’s Guide to Good Sex,” demystifying sex with rationality and humor. There was even a board game, Dr. Ruth’s Game of Good Sex.

She soon became a regular on the late-night television talk-show circuit, bringing her personality to the national stage. Her rise coincided with the early days of the AIDS epidemic, when frank sexual talk became a necessity.

“If we could bring about talking about sexual activity the way we talk about diet — the way we talk about food — without it having this kind of connotation that there’s something not right about it, then we would be a step further. But we have to do it with good taste,” she told Johnny Carson in 1982.

She normalized the use of words such as “penis” and “vagina” on radio and TV, aided by her Jewish grandmotherly accent, which The Wall Street Journal once said was “a cross between Henry Kissinger and Minnie Mouse.” People magazine included her in their list of “The Most Intriguing People of the Century.”

Westheimer defended abortion rights, suggested older people have sex after a good night’s sleep and was an outspoken advocate of condom use. She believed in monogamy.

In the 1980s, she stood up for gay men at the height of the AIDS epidemic and spoke out loudly for the LGBTQ community. She said she defended people deemed by some far-right Christians to be “subhuman” because of her own past.

Born Karola Ruth Siegel in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1928, she was an only child. At 10, she was sent by her parents to Switzerland to escape Kristallnacht — the Nazis’ 1938 pogrom that served as a precursor to the Holocaust. She never saw her parents again; Westheimer believed they were killed in the gas chambers at Auschwitz.

At the age of 16, she moved to Palestine and joined the Haganah, the underground movement for Israeli independence. She was trained as a sniper, although she said she never shot at anyone.

Her legs were severely wounded when a bomb exploded in her dormitory, killing many of her friends. She said it was only through the work of a “superb” surgeon that she could walk and ski again.

She married her first husband, an Israeli soldier, in 1950, and they moved to Paris as she pursued an education. Although not a high school graduate, Westheimer was accepted into the Sorbonne to study psychology after passing an entrance exam.

The marriage ended in 1955; the next year, Westheimer went to New York with her new boyfriend, a Frenchman who became her second husband and father to her daughter, Miriam.

In 1961, after a second divorce, she finally met her life partner: Manfred Westheimer, a fellow refugee from Nazi Germany. The couple was married and had a son, Joel. They remained wed for 36 years until “Fred” — as she called him — died of heart failure in 1997.

After receiving her doctorate in education from Columbia University, she went on to teach at Lehman College in the Bronx. While there she developed a specialty — instructing professors how to teach sex education. It would eventually become the core of her curriculum.

“I soon realized that while I knew enough about education, I did not really know enough about sex,” she wrote in her 1987 autobiography. Westheimer then decided take classes with the renowned sex therapist, Dr. Helen Singer Kaplan.

It was there that she had discovered her calling. Soon, as she once said in a typically folksy comment, she was dispensing sexual advice “like good chicken soup.”

In 1984, her radio program was nationally syndicated. A year later, she debuted in her own television program, “The Dr. Ruth Show,” which went on to win an Ace Award for excellence in cable television.

She also wrote a nationally syndicated advice column and later appeared in a line of videos produced by Playboy, preaching the virtues of open sexual discourse and good sex. She even had her own board game, “Dr. Ruth’s Game of Good Sex,” and a series of calendars.

Her rise was noteworthy for the culture of the time, in which then-President Ronald Reagan’s administration was hostile to Planned Parenthood and aligned with conservative voices.
…

your ad here

DR Congo faces catastrophic health, humanitarian crisis

Posted on by SeeAF

GENEVA — The World Health Organization warns that millions of people in the Democratic Republic of Congo are facing a health and humanitarian crisis because of escalating conflict and violence, mainly in the eastern part of the country in recent months.

The agency said the surge in violence by armed groups, principally Rwandan-backed M23 Tutsi-led rebels, an accusation denied by the Rwandan government, is leading to “mass displacement, widespread disease, gender-based violence and severe mental trauma.”

Dr. Adelheid Marschang, a WHO senior emergency officer, told journalists in Geneva Friday, “The DRC now has the highest number of people in need of humanitarian aid in the entire world, with 25.4 million affected.”

She said the DRC “remains one of the most underfunded crises,” which hampers the ability of people to receive the relief supplies and care needed to protect them from infectious diseases, hunger, and sexual and gender-based violence.

The United Nations’ $2.6 billion Humanitarian Response Plan, which aims to assist 8.7 million people in the DRC in 2024, is only 16% funded. Marschang said the WHO has received just $6.3 million of the $30 million it requires, at a minimum, until the end of the year “as the situation is expected to get worse.”

“Mass movements of people overwhelm water and sanitation systems and bring an additional burden on the population’s scarce resources,” she said. “As a result, people are facing outbreaks of cholera, measles, meningitis, mpox and plague, all exacerbated by severe flooding and landslides affecting some parts of the country.”

In the first half of this year, the WHO has reported more than 20,000 cases of cholera, including 274 deaths, most in North Kivu province, and 65,415 cases of measles, including 1,523 deaths.

“The actual numbers are likely to be higher due to limited disease surveillance and data reporting,” Marschang said.

She said armed conflict and mass displacement, compounded by widespread floods, were driving hunger and malnutrition to new heights, “by forcing families to leave their farms, leave their crops, leave everything they have to move wherever it is safe.”

The latest IPC Chronic Food Insecurity report finds that about 40% of the DRC’s population — 40.8 million people — “face serious food shortages, with 15.7 million facing severe food insecurity and higher risk of malnutrition and infectious diseases.”

Marschang said 1 million children out of 6.9 million are malnourished and at risk of becoming severely acutely malnourished if they do not receive specialized therapeutic treatment.

She explained that children with this condition have a weakened immune system, which makes them susceptible to deadly infectious diseases. Severe acute malnutrition also has serious cognitive consequences for children “harming their prospects in life.”

During a media briefing earlier this week, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO director-general, warned of the global health threat posed by mpox, with 26 countries reporting nearly 98,000 cases to the WHO.

Noting that the DRC was in the crosshairs of a growing epidemic, he said, “The outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo shows no sign of slowing, with more than 11,000 cases reported this year, and 445 deaths, with children the most affected.”

Mpox, a viral disease, spreads through close contact with an infected person through contaminated materials, or with infected animals. Last month, scientists warned of a dangerous new strain of mpox in South Kivu, which could spread widely in overcrowded camps in and around Goma.

“It is a reason for concern,” Marschang said, adding that two camps in North Kivu province are infected with the virus.

“If we consider that we have military activities around those camps and some camps were actually targeted this year, I think it illustrates the increasing risk for this disease to spread and also the difficulties of containing it if security is not addressed,” she said.

The U.N. peacekeeping force MONUSCO began winding down its operations in South Kivu in January. Marschang warned that “could create a security vacuum.”

“This could throw us further into a situation of increasing numbers of displaced, of victims, of violence,” she said, “with the whole vicious cycle just continuing.”
…

your ad here

Older voters could be a sweet spot for Biden in November 

Posted on by SeeUS

U.S. President Joe Biden’s halting performance at last month’s presidential debate triggered questions about the president’s age and ability to serve another four years. One group of voters that might empathize with the president’s plight are older people. Historically, people over 65 are the most reliable bloc of voters in presidential elections. VOA’s Dora Mekouar reports. VOA footage by Adam Greenbaum.
…

your ad here