Month: September 2024

Guinea gives land to victims of forced evictions 

Posted on by SeeAF

Conakry — Guinea has handed over a plot of land to thousands forcibly evicted by previous governments, with some of the victims having waited more than 25 years for compensation.  

More than 20,000 people were displaced when the government of former president Alpha Conde demolished the Kaporo-Rails, Kipe 2, Dimesse, and Dar Es Salam neighborhoods of the capital Conakry between February and May 2019, according to Human Rights Watch.  

The government said the land belonged to the state and would be used for official buildings.  

A previous round of demolitions took place in the same area of Conakry in 1998, under the rule of president Lansana Conte.   

At a jubilant ceremony on Saturday, the associations representing the victims received the land deeds for a 258-hectare (638-acre) plot in Wonkifong, some 60 kilometers (40 miles) from Conakry, an AFP journalist saw.  

The land will be managed by the state-owned company SONAPI, which will be responsible for developing the site and rehousing the victims.  

“We are taking a concrete step towards healing the wounds of the past for 2,683 households, while laying the foundations for a shared future,” the managing director of SONAPI, Maimouna Laure Mah Barry, said in a statement.   

The spokesman for the victims, Samba Sow, said the event marked “the reparation of a 26-year-old injustice for those who were evicted in 1998 and five years for those evicted in 2019.”  

“Thousands of homes, schools, markets and places of worship were destroyed in flagrant violation of the laws of our country. The lives of several thousand families have been destroyed,” he added.  

Sow called on current head of state, junta leader General Mamady Doumbouya, to set up a compensation fund for the victims.   

The ceremony was attended by General Amara Camara, a junta spokesman, who said the president was “resolutely committed to drying the tears of all the sons and daughters of this country.”  

The West African state has been ruled by a military junta led by Doumbouya since a coup in September 2021 toppled civilian president Conde. 
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US Fed expected to announce its first interest rate cut since 2020

Posted on by SeeUS

Washington — The Federal Reserve is gearing up to announce its first interest rate cut for more than four years on Wednesday, with policymakers expected to debate how big a move to make less than two months before the U.S. presidential election.   

Senior officials at the U.S. central bank including Fed chair Jerome Powell have in recent weeks indicated that a rate cut is coming this month, as inflation eases toward the bank’s long-term target of two percent, and the labor market continues to cool.   

The Fed, which has a dual mandate from Congress to act independently to ensure both stable prices and maximum sustainable employment, has repeatedly stressed it will make its decision on rate cuts based solely on the economic data.  

But a cut on Wednesday could still cause headaches for Powell, as it would land shortly before the election, in which former Republican president Donald Trump is running against the current Democratic vice president, Kamala Harris. 

“As much as I think the Fed tries to say that they’re not a political animal, we are in a really wild cycle right now,” Alicia Modestino, an associate professor of economics at Northeastern University, told AFP.   

How big a cut? 

The debate among policymakers on Tuesday and Wednesday this week will likely center on whether to move by 25 or 50 basis points.   

However, a rate cut of any size would be the Fed’s first since March 2020, when it slashed rates to near-zero in order to support the US economy through the Covid-19 pandemic.  

The Fed started hiking rates in 2022 in response to a surge in inflation, fueled largely by a post-pandemic supply crunch and the war in Ukraine.   

It has held its key lending rate at a two-decade high of between 5.25 and 5.50 percent for the past 14 months, waiting for economic conditions to improve.   

Now, with inflation falling, the labor market cooling, and the US economy still growing, policymakers have decided that conditions are ripe for a cut.   

Policymakers are left with a choice: making a small 25 basis point cut to ease into things, or a more aggressive cut of 50 basis points, which would be helpful for the labor market but could also risk reigniting inflation.   

“I think that in advance of the November meeting, there’s not quite enough data to say we’re in jeopardy on the employment side,” said Modestino, who was previously a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.    

Analysts see the smaller cut as a safe bet.   

“We expect the Fed to cut by 25bp [basis points],” economists at Bank of America wrote in a recent note to clients.   

“The Fed likes predictability,” Modestino from Northeastern said. “It’s good for markets, good for consumers, good for workers.”   

“So a 25 basis point cut now, followed up by another 25 basis point cut in November after the next round of economic data, offers a somewhat smoother glide path for the economy,” she added.    

How many cuts?  

While analysts overwhelmingly expect the Fed to start cutting in September, there is less clarity about what comes next.   

Economists at some banks, including Goldman Sachs, expect cuts totaling 75 basis points over the last three meetings of the year, while others see more aggressive cuts, like economists at Citi, who have 125 basis points of easing as their base case.   

“The continued softening of the labor market is likely to provoke larger-sized cuts if not at this FOMC meeting then in November and December,” the Citi economists wrote in a recent note to clients, referring to the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC).   

The Fed will shed some light on the issue on Wednesday, when it publishes the updated economic forecasts of its 19-member FOMC — including their rate cut expectations.  

In June, FOMC members sharply reduced the number of cuts they had penciled in for this year from a median of three down to just one amid a small uptick in inflation.     

But as inflation has fallen and the labor market has weakened, expectations of more cuts have grown.  

Traders also see a greater-than 99 percent chance of at least four more cuts in 2025, which would bring the Fed’s key lending rate down to between 3.5 and 3.75 percent — 175 basis points below current levels. 
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87 and hobbled, Pope Francis goes off-script in Asia and reminds world he can still draw a crowd

Posted on by SeeEA

DILI, East Timor — It was the farthest trip of his pontificate and one of the longest papal trips ever in terms of days on the road and distance traveled. But Pope Francis, age 87, hobbled by bad knees and bent over with sciatica, appeared to be having the time of his life.

With half of East Timor’s population gathered at a seaside park, Francis couldn’t help but oblige them with a final good night and languid loops in his popemobile, long after the sun had set and the field was lit by cellphone screens.

It was late, the heat and humidity had turned Tasitolu park into something of a sauna, and most of the journalists had already gone back to their air-conditioned hotel to watch the Mass on TV. But there was Francis, defying the doubters who had questioned if he could, would or should make such an arduous trip to Asia given everything that could go wrong.

“How many children you have!” Francis marveled to the crowd of 600,000, which amounted to the biggest-ever turnout for a papal event as a proportion of the population. “A people that teaches its children to smile is a people that has a future.”

The moment seemed to serve as proof that, despite his age, ailments and seven hours of jet lag, Pope Francis still could pope, still likes to pope and has it in him to pope like he used to at the start of his pontificate.

That’s never truer than when he’s in his element: in the peripheries of the world, among people forgotten by the big powers, where he can go off-script to respond to the spirit of the moment.

And it was certainly the case on his 11-day trip through Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore, during which he clocked nearly 33,000 kilometers (20,505 miles) in air travel alone. It was a trip that he had originally planned to make in 2020 but COVID-19 intervened.

Four years and a handful of hospitalizations later (for intestinal and pulmonary problems), Francis finally pulled it off. He seemed to relish getting out of the Vatican and away from the weighty grind of the Holy See after being cooped up all year, much of it battling a long bout of bronchitis.

Francis does tend to rally during foreign trips, though he usually sticks to a script when he’s in the protocol meetings with heads of state, dutifully delivering speeches that were written in advance by Vatican diplomats.

But when he’s meeting with young people or local priests and nuns, he tends to show his true colors. He’ll ditch his prepared remarks and speak off-the-cuff, often engaging in back-and-forth banter with the faithful to make sure his message has stuck.

Doing so thrills the crowd, terrorizes his translators and complicates the work of journalists, but you always know Francis is enjoying himself and feels energized when he goes rogue. And he went rogue plenty of times in Asia — and on the in-flight press conference coming back to Rome, during which he urged American Catholics to vote for who they think is the “lesser evil” for president.

Francis started in Indonesia, arguably the most delicate destination on his itinerary given the country is home to the world’s largest Muslim population. The Vatican would be loathe to say or do anything that might cause offense.

And yet from his very first encounter with President Joko Widodo, Francis appeared in a feisty mood, praising Indonesia’s relatively high birthrate while lamenting that in the West, “some prefer a cat or a little dog.”

Francis has frequently made the same demographic quip at home in Italy, which has one of the world’s lowest birthrates. But the high-profile trip meant that his trademark sarcasm got amplified. American commentators immediately assumed Francis had entered the “childless cat ladies” debate roiling U.S. politics, but there was no indication he had JD Vance in mind.

Even in the most delicate moment in Jakarta, at Southeast Asia’s biggest mosque, Francis threw protocol aside and kissed the hand of the grand imam and brought it to his cheek in gratitude.

In Papua New Guinea, Francis was similarly jazzed after pulling off a visit to a remote jungle outpost that had seemed impossible for him to reach: The airport in Vanimo, population 11,000, doesn’t have an ambulift wheelchair elevator that Francis now needs to get on and off planes, and bringing one in just for him was out of the question.

The stubborn pope, who really, really wanted to go to Vanimo, ended up rolling on and off the back ramp of a C-130 cargo plane that Australia had offered to get him, and the metric ton of medicine and other supplies he brought with him, to the town.

Despite the considerable security concerns of entering a region torn by tribal rivalries, Francis seemed to relish the jungle visit, perhaps because he felt so much at home. A dozen Argentine missionary priests and nuns have lived in Vanimo with the local community for years and had invited him to come. They decorated the simple stage in front of the church with a statue of Argentina’s beloved Virgin of Lujan, to whom Francis is particularly devoted, and had a gourd of mate, the Argentine tea, waiting for him.

In East Timor Francis had to negotiate perhaps the most sensitive issue clouding the visit: the case of Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo, the revered national hero who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his nonviolent independence campaign. The Vatican revealed in 2022 that it had sanctioned Belo, who now lives in Portugal, for having sexually abused young boys and ordered him to cease contact with East Timor.

Francis didn’t mention Belo by name and didn’t meet with his victims, but he did reaffirm the need to protect children from “abuse.” There was nary a mention of Belo’s name in any official speech during a visit in which East Timor’s traumatic history and independence fight were repeatedly evoked.

In Singapore, his final stop, Francis once again ditched his remarks when he arrived at the last event, a meeting of Singaporean youth on Friday morning.

“That’s the talk I prepared,” he said, pointing to his speech and then proceeding to launch into a spontaneous back-and-forth with the young people about the need to have courage and take risks.

“What’s worse: Make a mistake because I take a certain path, or not make a mistake and stay home?” he asked them.

He answered his own question, with a response that could explain his own risky decision to embark on the Asia trip in the first place.

“A young person who doesn’t take a risk, who is afraid of making a mistake, is an old person,” the 87-year-old pope said.

“I hope all of you go forward,” he said. “Don’t go back. Don’t go back. Take risks.”
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UK foreign minister Lammy plays down Putin threats

Posted on by SeeEU

London — U.K. Foreign Secretary David Lammy accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of “bluster” Sunday over his warning that letting Ukraine use long-range weapons to strike inside Russia would put NATO “at war” with Moscow.

Tensions between Russia and the West over the conflict reached dire levels this week as U.S. President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer met at the White House to discuss whether to ease rules on Kyiv’s use of western-supplied weaponry.

“I think that what Putin’s doing is throwing dust up into the air,” Lammy told the BBC. 

“There’s a lot of bluster. That’s his modus operandi. He threatens about tanks, he threatens about missiles, he threatens about nuclear weapons.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been asking for permission to use British Storm Shadow missiles and U.S.-made ATACMS missiles to hit targets deeper inside Russia for months.

Biden and Starmer delayed a decision on the move during their meeting on Friday.

It came after Putin warned that green-lighting use of the weapons “would mean that NATO countries, the U.S., European countries, are at war with Russia.”

“If that’s the case, then taking into account the change of nature of the conflict, we will take the appropriate decisions based on the threats that we will face,” he added. 

The Russian leader has long warned Western countries that they risk provoking a nuclear war over their support for Ukraine.

“We cannot be blown off course by an imperialist fascist, effectively, that wants to move into countries willy nilly,” said Lammy.

“If we let him with Ukraine, believe me, he will not stop there.”

Lammy said that talks between Starmer, Biden and Zelensky over the use of the missiles would continue at the United Nations General Assembly gathering in New York later this month.
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Floods kill 1 in Poland and rescue worker in Austria as rains batter central Europe

Posted on by SeeEU

LIPOVA LAZNE, Czech Republic — One person drowned in southwest Poland and thousands were evacuated across the border in the Czech Republic as heavy rains continued to batter central Europe on Sunday, causing flooding in several areas.

A firefighter tackling flooding in lower Austria was also killed, Austrian Vice Chancellor Werner Kogler said on Sunday on social platform X as authorities declared the province, which surrounds Vienna, bordering the Czech Republic and Slovakia, a disaster area.

Rivers overflowed from Poland to Romania, where four people were found dead on Saturday, after days of torrential rain in a low-pressure system named Boris.

Some parts of the Czech Republic and Poland faced the worst flooding in almost three decades.

In the Czech Republic, a quarter of a million homes were without power due to high winds and rain. Czech police said they were looking for three people who were in a car that fell into the river Staric near Lipova Lazne, 235 kilometers east of Prague on Saturday.

In Poland, one person died in Klodzko county, which Prime Minister Donald Tusk said was the worst-hit area of the country and where 1,600 had been evacuated.

“The situation is very dramatic,” Tusk told reporters on Sunday after a meeting in Klodzko town, which was partly under water as the local river rose to 6.65 meters Sunday morning before receding slightly.

That surpassed a record seen in heavy flooding in 1997, which partly damaged the town and claimed 56 lives in Poland.

The nearby historic town of Glucholazy ordered evacuations Sunday morning as the local river started to break its banks, while firefighters and soldiers had been fighting since Saturday to protect a bridge in the town.

Residents across the Czech border also said the situation was worse than flooding seen before.

“What you see here is worse than in 1997, and I don’t know what will happen because my house is under water, and I don’t know if I will even return to it,” said Pavel Bily, a resident of Lipova Lazne.

The fire service in the region said it had evacuated 1,900 people as of Sunday morning, while many roads were impassable.

In the worst-hit areas, more than 10 centimeters of rain fell overnight and around 45 centimeters since Wednesday evening, the Czech weather institute said.

More rain is expected Sunday and Monday.

In Budapest, officials raised forecasts for the Danube to rise in the second half of this week, to above 8.5 meters, nearing a record 8.91 meters seen in 2013, as rain continued in Hungary, Slovakia and Austria.

“According to forecasts, one of the biggest floods of the past years is approaching Budapest but we are prepared to tackle it,” Budapest’s mayor Gergely Karacsony said.

In Romania, authorities said the rain was less intense than on Saturday, when flooding killed four and damaged 5,000 homes. Towns and villages in seven counties across eastern Romania were affected, and the country’s emergency response unit said it was still searching for two people missing. 
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Shanghai braces for direct hit from Typhoon Bebinca

Posted on by SeeEA

SHANGHAI/BEIJING — Shanghai halted transportation links, recalled ships and shut tourism spots including Shanghai Disney Resort on Sunday as it braced for Typhoon Bebinca, in what could be the strongest tropical cyclone to hit the Chinese financial hub since 1949.

The Category 1 typhoon, packing maximum sustained wind speeds near its center of around 144 kph, was about 500 kilometers southeast of Shanghai as of 1 p.m.  It is expected to make landfall along China’s eastern coast after midnight on Monday.

The strongest storm to make landfall in Shanghai in recent decades was Typhoon Gloria in 1949, which tore through the city with gusts of 144 kph. Shanghai was last threatened by a direct hit in 2022 by the powerful Typhoon Muifa, which instead landed 300 kilometers away in the city of Zhoushan, in Zhejiang province.

Shanghai is typically spared the strong typhoons that hit farther south in China, including Yagi, a destructive Category 4 storm that roared past southern Hainan province last week. But Shanghai and neighboring provinces are taking no chances with Category 1 Bebinca.

Resorts in Shanghai, including Shanghai Disney Resort, Jinjiang Amusement Park and Shanghai Wild Animal Park, have been temporarily closed while most ferries have been halted to and from Chongming Island – China’s third-biggest island known as “the gateway to the Yangtze River.”

More than 600 flights to and from Shanghai were also canceled, according to local media.

In Zhejiang, ships have been recalled while several parks in the provincial capital Hangzhou announced closures.

Bebinca’s arrival will coincide with the Mid-Autumn festival, a nationwide three-day holiday when many Chinese travel or engage in outdoor activities.

China’s Ministry of Water Resources on Saturday issued a Level-IV emergency response — the lowest level in China’s four-tier emergency response system — for potential flooding in Shanghai and the provinces of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui. 
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Tech billionaire returns to Earth after first private spacewalk

Posted on by SeeUS

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida — A billionaire spacewalker returned to Earth with his crew on Sunday, ending a five-day trip that lifted them higher than anyone has traveled since NASA’s moonwalkers.

SpaceX’s capsule splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico near Florida’s Dry Tortugas in the predawn darkness, carrying tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, two SpaceX engineers and a former Air Force Thunderbird pilot.

They pulled off the first private spacewalk while orbiting nearly 740 kilometers above Earth, higher than the International Space Station and Hubble Space Telescope. Their spacecraft hit a peak altitude of 1,408 kilometers following Tuesday’s liftoff.

Isaacman became only the 264th person to perform a spacewalk since the former Soviet Union scored the first in 1965, and SpaceX’s Sarah Gillis the 265th. Until now, all spacewalks were done by professional astronauts.

“We are mission complete,” Isaacman radioed as the capsule bobbed in the water, awaiting the recovery team. Within an hour, all four were out of their spacecraft, pumping their fists with joy as they emerged onto the ship’s deck.

It was the first time SpaceX aimed for a splashdown near the Dry Tortugas, a cluster of islands 113 kilometers west of Key West. To celebrate the new location, SpaceX employees brought a big, green turtle balloon to Mission Control at company headquarters in Hawthorne, California. The company usually targets closer to the Florida coast, but two weeks of poor weather forecasts prompted SpaceX to look elsewhere.

During Thursday’s commercial spacewalk, the Dragon capsule’s hatch was open barely a half-hour. Isaacman emerged only up to his waist to briefly test SpaceX’s brand-new spacesuit followed by Gillis, who was knee-high as she flexed her arms and legs for several minutes. Gillis, a classically trained violinist, also held a performance in orbit earlier in the week.

The spacewalk lasted less than two hours, considerably shorter than those at the International Space Station. Most of that time was needed to depressurize the entire capsule and then restore the cabin air. Even SpaceX’s Anna Menon and Scott “Kidd” Poteet, who remained strapped in, wore spacesuits.

SpaceX considers the brief exercise a starting point to test spacesuit technology for future, longer missions to Mars.

This was Isaacman’s second chartered flight with SpaceX, with two more still ahead under his personally financed space exploration program named Polaris after the North Star. He paid an undisclosed sum for his first spaceflight in 2021, taking along contest winners and a pediatric cancer survivor while raising more than $250 million for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

For the just completed so-called Polaris Dawn mission, the founder and CEO of the Shift4 credit card-processing company shared the cost with SpaceX. Isaacman won’t divulge how much he spent. 
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Meet straight man protesting Ghana’s anti-LGBTQ bill

Posted on by SeeAF

ACCRA, Ghana — Texas Kadiri Moro stood in the middle of the hustle and bustle of Accra on Thursday, dressed in short pink Speedos and a pink polo shirt.

Accompanied by trumpet players, carrying a banner with slogans including “Why should a society of evildoers judge others?” and “Justice begins where inequality ends!” he marched across the Ghanaian capital in a one-man protest against a highly controversial bill that targets members of the LGBTQ+ community and their supporters. 

Moro is an unusual figure amid the LGBTQ+ rights activists in the coastal West African nation. 

He is heterosexual, married to a woman, and a father of six. He is a teacher. And he is a practicing Muslim. Yet for months he has been conducting solo demonstrations against the bill, which criminalizes members of the LGBTQ+ community, as well as its supporters, including promotion and funding of related activities and public displays of affection. It could send some people to prison for more than a decade. 

The bill was passed by Ghana’s parliament earlier this year but has been challenged in the Supreme Court. 

It has not yet been signed into law by President Nana Akufo-Addo, who cited ongoing proceedings. But he refused to reject it either. 

“There are so many issues about rights” when it comes to the bill, Moro told The Associated Press. 

“Homosexuality does not affect anyone,” Moro said. “We have activities that people are doing in the country that are worse than homosexual activities,” he said, citing adultery as an example. Parliament, he said, should be more concerned with “other crimes and pollution.” 

The bill has sparked condemnation from rights groups and some in the international community who have been concerned about similar efforts by other African governments. 

Sponsors of the bill have said it seeks to protect children and people who are victims of abuse. 

Man becomes target

Gay sex is already illegal in Ghana, carrying a three-year prison sentence, but the new bill could imprison people for more than a decade for activities including public displays of affection and promotion and funding of LGBTQ+ activities. 

Since he began his protests, Moro has lost his job, not received any assistance from the LGBTQ+ community, and become a target of “very hostile attacks from the Muslim community,” he said. 

But he is determined to continue. For him, it is about battling injustice. 

“I know I’m doing something that God is asking me to do,” he said. 

To point out the hypocrisy of the bill, Moro carried a petition to the Parliament asking the government to withdraw foreign missions from countries where homosexuality is legal, if they find it “filthy,” he said. 

Bill ‘is a wrongdoing’

At the entrance to Parliament House, Kate Addo, Parliament’s director of communications, received Moro’s petition on behalf of the speaker. She said she was pleased with his initiative. 

“We live in a democratic country where what people do in their bedrooms is not to be anyone’s concern,” Addo said. “However, we are also regulated by law.” 

Even though Ghana’s president delayed signing the bill into law, activists said that the debate by itself triggered an increase in physical and psychological violence against LGBTQ+ people. 

Joseph Kobla Wemakor, the executive director of Human Rights Reporters Ghana, said that “abuse, both psychologically and physically against members of the community has skyrocketed” since the bill was introduced. 

“The moment people hear that you are part of this, the LGBTQ+, you are an enemy,” Wekamor said. “They are looking forward to hurting you, even lynching you, killing you.” 

They are “forgetting that we are all humans,” he said.

“It takes one man to change the world,” he said. “And if he has started something like that, other people will follow, because it (the bill) is a wrongdoing.” 
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Bag of Cheetos has huge impact on national park ecosystem 

Posted on by SeeUS

ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico — A bag of Cheetos gets dropped and left on the floor. Seems inconsequential, right?

Hardly.

Rangers at Carlsbad Caverns National Park in southern New Mexico describe it as a “world-changing” event for the tiny microbes and insects that call this specialized subterranean environment home. The bag could have been there a day or two or maybe just hours, but those salty morsels of processed corn made soft by thick humidity triggered the growth of mold on the cavern floor and on nearby cave formations.

“To the ecosystem of the cave it had a huge impact,” the park noted in a social media post, explaining that cave crickets, mites, spiders and flies soon organized to eat and disperse the foreign mess, essentially spreading the contamination.

The bright orange bag was spotted off trail by a ranger during one of the regular sweeps that park staff make through the Big Room, the largest single cave chamber by volume in North America, at the end of each day. They are looking for straggling visitors and any litter or other waste that might have been left behind on the paved trail.

The Big Room is a popular spot at Carlsbad Caverns. It is a magical expanse filled with towering stalagmites, dainty stalactites and clusters of cave popcorn.

Tons of trash

From this underground wonderland in New Mexico to lake shores in Nevada, tributaries along the Grand Canyon and lagoons in Florida, park rangers and volunteers collect tons of trash left behind by visitors each year as part of an ongoing battle to keep unique ecosystems from being compromised while still allowing visitors access.

According to the National Park Service, more than 300 million people visit the national parks each year, bringing in and generating nearly 70 million tons of trash, most of which ends up where it belongs – in garbage bins and recycling containers.

But for the rest of the discarded snack bags and other debris, it often takes work to round up the waste, and organizations like Leave No Trace have been pushing their message at trailheads and online.

At Carlsbad Caverns, volunteers comb the caverns collecting lint. One five-day effort netted as much as 50 pounds (22.68 kilograms). Rangers also have sweep packs and spill kits for the more delicate and sometimes nasty work that can include cleaning up human waste along the trail.

“It’s such a dark area, sometimes people don’t notice that it’s there. So they walk through it and it tracks it throughout the entire cave,” said Joseph Ward, a park guide who is working specifically on getting the “leave no trace” message out to park visitors and classrooms.

The rangers’ kits can include gloves, trash bags, water, bleach mixtures for decontamination, vacuums and even bamboo toothbrushes and tweezers for those hard-to-reach spots.

As for the spilled Cheetos, Ward told The Associated Press that could have been avoided because the park doesn’t allow food beyond the confines of the historic underground lunchroom.

Cheetos response

After the bag was discovered in July, cave specialists at the park settled on the best way to clean it up. Most of the mess was scooped up, and a toothbrush was used to remove rings of mold and fungi that had spread to nearby cave formations. It was a 20-minute job.

Some jobs can take hours and involve several park employees, Ward said.

Robert Melnick, professor emeritus at the University of Oregon, has been studying the cultural landscape of Carlsbad Caverns, including features like a historic wooden staircase that has become another breeding ground for exotic mold and fungi. He and his team submitted a report to the park in recent days that details those resources and makes recommendations for how the park can manage them in the future.

The balancing act for park managers at Carlsbad and elsewhere, Melnick said, is meeting the dual mandate of preserving and protecting landscapes while also making them accessible.

“I don’t quite know how you would monitor it except to constantly remind people that the underground, the caves, are a very, very sensitive natural environment,” he said.

Pleas to treat the caverns with respect are plastered on signs throughout the park, rangers give orientations to visitors before they go underground, and reminders of the dos and don’ts are printed on the back of each ticket stub.

But sometimes there is a disconnect between awareness and personal responsibility, said JD Tanner, director of education and training at Leave No Trace.

Personal stake is vital

Many people may be aware of the need to “keep it pristine,” but Tanner said the message doesn’t always translate into action or there is a lack of understanding that small actions — even leaving a piece of trash — can have irreversible damage in a fragile ecosystem.

“If someone doesn’t feel a personal stake in the preservation of these environments, they may not take the rules seriously,” Tanner said.

Diana Northup, a microbiologist who has spent years studying cave environments around the world, once crawled up the main corridor at Carlsbad Caverns to log everything that humans left behind.

“So this is just one thing of very many,” she said of the Cheetos.

As many as 2,000 people go through the caverns on any given day during the busy season. With them come hair and skin fragments, and those fragments can have their own microbes on board.

“So it can be really, really bad or it can just be us and all the stuff we’re shedding,” Northup said of human contamination within cave environments. “But here’s the other side of the coin: The only way you can protect caves is for people to be able to see them and experience them.”

“The biggest thing,” she said, “is you have to get people to value and want to preserve the caves and let them know what they can do to have that happen.”
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Traveling ‘health train’ has become essential source of free care in South Africa

Posted on by SeeAF

JOHANNESBURG — Thethiwe Mahlangu woke early on a chilly morning and walked through her busy South African township, where minibuses hooted to pick up commuters and smoke from sidewalk breakfast stalls hung in the air.

Her eyes had been troubling her. But instead of going to her nearby health clinic, Mahlangu was headed to the train station for an unusual form of care.

A passenger train known as Phelophepa — or “good, clean, health” in the Sesotho language — had been transformed into a mobile health facility. It circulates throughout South Africa for much of the year, providing medical attention to the sick, young and old who often struggle to receive the care they need at crowded local clinics.

For the past 30 years — ever since South Africa’s break with the former racist system of apartheid — the train has carried doctors, nurses and optometrists on an annual journey that touches even the most rural villages, delivering primary health care to about 375,000 people a year.

The free care it delivers is in contrast to South Africa’s overstretched public health care system on which about 84% of people rely.

Health care reflects the deep inequality of the country at large. Just 16% of South Africans are covered by health insurance plans that are beyond the financial reach of many in a nation with unemployment of over 32%.

Earlier this year, the government began to address that gap. President Cyril Ramaphosa in May signed into law the National Health Insurance Act, which aims to provide funding so that millions of South Africans without health insurance can receive care from the better-provisioned private sector.

But the law has been divisive. The government has not said how much it will cost and where the money will come from. Economists say the government will have to raise taxes. Critics say the country can’t afford it and warn that the system — yet to be implemented — will be open to abuse by corrupt officials and businessmen. They say the government should fix the public health care system instead.

For Mahlangu and others who look to the train for a rare source of free treatment, the situation at local health clinics is one of despair.

Long lines, shortages of medicines and rude nurses are some of the challenges at the clinics that cater for thousands of patients a day in Tembisa, east of Johannesburg.

“There we are not treated well,” Mahlangu said. “We are made to sit in the sun for long periods. You can sit there from 7 a.m. until around 4 p.m. when the clinic closes. When you ask, they say we must go ask the president to build us a bigger hospital.”

The health train has grown from a single three-carriage operation over the years to two 16-carriage trains. They are run by the Transnet Foundation, a social responsibility arm of Transnet, the state-owned railway company.

When the train began in 1994, many Black people in South Africa still lived in rural villages with little access to health facilities. It was a period of change in the country. The train began as an eye clinic, but it soon became clear that needs were greater than that.

Now both trains address the booming population of South Africa’s capital of Pretoria and nearby Johannesburg, the country’s economic hub. One would spend two weeks in Tembisa alone.

“The major metros are really struggling,” said Shemona Kendiah, the train’s manager.

But the traveling clinic is far from the solution to South Africa’s health care problems.

Public health expert Alex van den Heever said there have been substantial increases in the health care budget and the public sector employment of nurses and doctors since the country’s first democratic government in 1994. The health department’s budget in Gauteng province, which includes Pretoria and Johannesburg, has grown from 6 billion rand ($336 million) in 2000 to 65 billion ($3.6 billion) rand now.

But van den Heever accused the African National Congress, the ruling party since the end of apartheid, of allowing widespread corruption to undermine the public sector, including the health care system.

“This has led to a rapid deterioration of performance,” he said.

For South Africans who have witnessed the decline firsthand, it can be a relief when the health train pulls into town.

Mahlangu — with her new pair of glasses — was among hundreds who walked away satisfied with its services and already longing for the train’s return next year.

Another patient, Jane Mabuza, got a full health checkup along with dental services. She said she hoped the train would reach many other people.

“Here on the train, you never hear that anything has been finished,” she said.
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Historians say increased censorship in China makes research hard

Posted on by SeeEA

BEIJING — At Beijing’s largest antiques market, Panjiayuan, among the Mao statues, posters and second-hand books are prominent signs warning against the sale of publications that might have state secrets or “reactionary propaganda.”

Some of the signs display a hotline number so that citizens can tip off authorities if they witness an illegal sale.

China’s antique and flea markets were once a gold mine of documents for historians, but now the signs are emblematic of the chill that has descended on their ability to do research in the country.

On one hand, Beijing wants to increase academic exchange and President Xi Jinping last November invited 50,000 American students to China over the next five years — a massive jump from about 800 currently.

How much steam that will gather is very much an open question. But scholars of modern Chinese history in particular — arguably among the people most interested in China – fear that tightened censorship is extinguishing avenues for independent research into the country’s past.

This is especially so for documents relating to the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution — the most historically sensitive period for the Chinese Communist Party — when Mao Zedong declared class war and plunged China into chaos and violence.

“I would say the period of going to flea markets and simply finding treasure troves is pretty much over,” said Daniel Leese, a modern China historian at the University of Freiburg.

Trawling for documents “has basically gone out of favor because it has simply become too complex, difficult and dangerous,” he said, adding that younger foreign scholars are increasingly relying on overseas collections.

The Chinese Communist Party has exerted control over all publications including books, the media and the internet since establishing the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, with the degree of censorship fluctuating over time.

But censorship has only intensified under President Xi Jinping, who came to power in 2012 and has blamed “historic nihilism” or versions of history that differ from the official accounts for causing the collapse of the Soviet Union.

In recent years, a raft of new national security and anti-espionage legislation has made scholars even more wary of citing unofficial Chinese materials.

Some scholars of modern Chinese history who have published studies that either challenged Chinese state narratives or are on sensitive topics say they have been denied visas to China.

James Millward, a historian at Georgetown University, said he had been visa-blocked on several occasions after contributing to the 2004 book Xinjiang: China’s Muslim Borderland but has since received short-term visas a few times albeit after a lengthy process.

The political climate is also shaping how historians choose their research subjects. One historian based in the U.S. said he has chosen to work on non-controversial topics to maintain travel access to China. He declined to be identified due to the sensitivity of the issue.

China’s education ministry did not respond to a Reuters request for comment. The foreign ministry said it was unaware of relevant circumstances.

Documentary discoveries

Leese and other foreign historians say they previously found case files of persecuted intellectuals as well as secret Communist Party documents at Chinese flea and antique markets.

These were often donated by relatives of deceased officials or painstakingly rescued by booksellers from recycling centers near government offices disbanded during the mass state sector layoffs of the 1990s.

But the government has, since 2008, cracked down on flea markets and other sources of used books and documents. Buyers have been arrested, sellers have been fined and used book websites have been cleared of politically sensitive items, according to domestic media reports, collectors and four overseas researchers who spoke with Reuters.

In 2019, for example, a Japanese historian was detained for two months on spying charges after buying 1930s books on the Sino-Japanese War from a second-hand bookshop.

Two years later, a hobbyist accused of selling illegal publications from Hong Kong and Taiwan publishers on Kongfuzi, China’s biggest website for used books, was fined 280,000 yuan ($39,000) for not having a business license, Chinese media reported.

And this year, two workers at a recycling center were punished for selling confidential military documents, state media said.

Buyers now cultivate personal relationships with merchants who sell through WeChat, said a Beijing-based collector interested in documents from the Cultural Revolution, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Historians also note that access to the vast majority of local government archives has been restricted since 2010 and their digitization has enabled censors to heavily redact them.

Foreign-based historians add that their counterparts in mainland China can only preserve materials for posterity in the current political climate. But not all are downbeat.

“Even under Xi, Chinese scholars continue to seek openings and enlarge the understanding and interpretation of PRC history,” said Yi Lu, assistant history professor at Dartmouth College, who has worked extensively with Chinese university collections of 20th-century materials. “All is not lost.”
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Italian prosecutors seek 6-year sentence for Salvini in migration case

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rome — Italian prosecutors requested on Saturday a six-year prison sentence for Matteo Salvini, Italy’s far-right deputy prime minister, for allegedly blocking migrants from disembarking at one of the country’s ports in 2019.

Salvini, a partner in Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s coalition, is on trial for alleged deprivation of liberty and abuse of office for keeping 147 migrants at sea for weeks on a ship run by the Open Arms charity.

“The prosecution has asked for former interior minister Salvini to be sentenced to six years,” Open Arms’ lawyer Arturo Salerni told AFP, as the “long and difficult trial” nears an end.

A verdict in the trial, which began in October 2021, could come next month, he said. Salvini would be free to appeal any decision.

Salvini was not present, but wrote on Facebook: “Six years in prison for having blocked arrivals and defended Italy and Italians? Madness. Defending Italy is not a crime.”

Meloni also criticized the prosecutors.

“It is incredible that a minister of the Italian Republic risks 6 years in prison for doing his job defending the nation’s borders, as required by the mandate received from its citizens,” the prime minister wrote on X.

In summing up, prosecutor Geri Ferrara told the Palermo court in Sicily that there was “one key principle that is not debatable.”

“Between human rights and the protection of state sovereignty, it is human rights that must prevail in our fortunately democratic system,” he said.

The ship was stuck at sea for nearly three weeks before the migrants were allowed to disembark on the island of Lampedusa following a court order.

Members of Open Arms have testified that the migrants’ physical and mental well-being reached a crisis point as sanitary conditions onboard became dire, including a scabies outbreak.

Salvini, head of the anti-immigration League party and interior minister at the time, testified in January that he had understood that “the situation was not at risk” onboard the ship.

“The POS (safe port) should have been provided immediately and without delay,” prosecutor Marzia Sabella said Saturday, according to Italian media reports.

“Refusing to do so was breaking the rules, not being in line with a government plan,” and Salvini’s “choices” had given rise to “chaos,” she said.

A populist known for an “Italians first” policy, Salvini has repeatedly used attacks against illegal immigration to boost his political capital.

In 2019, serving under prime minister Giuseppe Conte, he implemented a “closed ports” policy under which Italy refused entry to charity ships that rescue migrants stranded while crossing the Mediterranean.

He cast it as a tough measure against traffickers who operate boats between North Africa and Italy and Malta, the deadliest migrant crossing in the world.

French far-right leader Marine Le Pen, also known for her anti-immigrant politics, offered Salvini a message of support on Saturday night, alleging he was the target of “judicial harassment aimed at silencing him.”

Salvini thanked her and promised not to “give in.”

Much of the trial has been focused on determining whether the decision-making and responsibility in the case lay with the Conte government or Salvini alone.

Salvini has previously faced a similar trial, accused of refusing to allow 116 migrants to disembark from an Italian coast guard boat in July 2019. But it was thrown out by a court in Catania in 2021. 
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WHO flags limited mpox testing in epicenter DRC

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Geneva, Switzerland — Limited capacity is keeping mpox testing coverage low in the DR Congo — the epicenter of the international emergency — the World Health Organization said Saturday in its latest situation report. 

“Testing coverage in the Democratic Republic of the Congo remains low, due to limited testing capacity,” the United Nations health agency said in its update. 

It said the mpox case fatality ratio in the DRC in 2024 was 0.5% among confirmed cases — or 25 deaths from 5,160 cases — and 3.3% among suspected cases, both tested and untested — or 717 deaths among 21,835 cases. 

“Due to limited access to laboratory testing in remote areas, only about 40% of all suspected cases have been tested in 2024 (up from 9% in 2023), and among these, around 55% tested positive,” the WHO said. 

It said the three countries reporting the most suspected cases in the year up to September 8 were the DRC, followed by Burundi (1,489 suspected cases, no deaths), and Nigeria (935 suspected cases, no deaths). 

There are two clades of mpox, each with a and b subclades. 

The WHO said the clades and their subclades were circulating in different geographic areas and were affecting different populations — and therefore needed “tailored and locally adapted outbreak responses.” 

The WHO declared an international emergency over mpox on August 14, concerned by the surge in cases of the new Clade 1b strain in the DRC that spread to nearby countries. 

In the DRC, Clade 1b has been detected chiefly in the eastern South Kivu and North Kivu provinces, with additional cases in the Kinshasa capital province. 

Current sequencing capacity in the DRC “is limited, and clade distribution might be broader than what is currently known” the WHO said. 

Clade 1b has also been detected in the DRC’s eastern neighbors Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda, plus Kenya. Additionally, a single case has been detected in Sweden and another in Thailand. 

Looking at global vaccine availability, the WHO said more than 3.6 million doses had been pledged for the global response, including more than 620,000 doses of the MVA-BN vaccine by European countries, the United States and manufacturer Bavarian Nordic. 

Meanwhile Japan has pledged 3 million doses of the LC16 vaccine. 

To date, 265,000 MVA-BN doses have been delivered to Kinshasa, while 10,000 have gone to Nigeria. 
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Tunisia’s presidential campaign season begins a day after protests

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TUNIS, Tunisia — The official start of the presidential campaign season in Tunisia began on Saturday, a day after Tunisians took their anger to the streets of the capital to decry what protesters say is the deteriorating state of the country.

In what appeared to be the largest protest since authorities began a monthslong wave of arrests earlier this year, hundreds of Tunisians marched peacefully on Friday and called for an end to what they called a police state.

“We’re here to say no and show that we don’t all agree with what’s really happening in the country,” Khaled Ben Abdeslam, a father and urban development consultant, told The Associated Press.

In 2011, longtime Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was toppled by nationwide protests that unleashed revolt across the Arab world.

More than a decade later, Ben Abdelslam said he was worried about the growing number of political figures who’ve been thrown in jail under President Kais Saied and said he wants to ensure Tunisia “turns the page” for the good of his kids.

“Nobody dares to say or do anything anymore today,” he said as protesters neared Tunisia’s powerful Interior Ministry.

He and other demonstrators slammed both Tunisia’s economic and political woes, carrying signs that grouped together the growing costs of staple items and growing concerns about civil liberties.

“Where is sugar? Where is oil? Where is freedom? Where is democracy?” signs read.

Some carried posters telling the government that “human rights are not optional” while others revived the popular slogans that mobilized Tunisia’s masses against Ben Ali.

This time though, they directed scorn toward Saied.

The protests capped off a week in which the North African country’s largest opposition party, Ennahda, said its senior members had been arrested en masse, at a scale not previously seen.

The arrests come as Saied prepares to campaign for reelection on October 6, when he will ask voters to grant him a second term.

When first elected in 2019, Saied used anti-corruption promises to win over people disillusioned with the political controversies that plagued Tunisia’s young democracy in the years that followed the Arab Spring.

Since taking office, the 66-year-old former law professor has gone to lengths to consolidate his own power, freezing the country’s parliament and rewriting the constitution. Throughout his tenure, authorities have arrested journalists, activists, civil society figures and political opponents across the ideological spectrum.

And though he promised to chart a new course for the country, its unemployment rate has steadily increased to one of the region’s highest at 16%, with young Tunisians hit particularly hard.

The economy continues to face significant challenges, yet Saied has managed to energize supporters with populist rhetoric, often accusing migrants from sub-Saharan Africa of violence and crime and aiming at changing the country’s demography.

In the months leading up to his reelection bid, the political crackdown has expanded.

His opponents have been arrested, placed under gag order or faced criminal investigations that observers have called politically motivated. Figures who said they planned to challenge him have been sentenced for breaking campaign finance laws. Others have been ruled ineligible to challenge him by Tunisia’s election authority.

Even those whom the authority approved have later faced arrest.

Ayachi Zammel, a businessman planning to challenge Saied, was promptly arrested after being announced as one of the two candidates approved to appear on the ballot alongside Saied. His attorney, Abdessattar Messaoudi, told The Associated Press that she feared a court may bar him from politics for life as it had done to other Saied challengers.

The Tunisian Network for the Defense of Rights and Freedoms — a newly formed coalition of civil society groups and political parties — organized Friday’s protest to draw attention to what it called a surge of authoritarianism.

Outrage swelled among many members of the network after the country’s election authority — made up of Saied appointees — dismissed a court ruling ordering it to reinstate three challengers to Saied.

The authority has defied judges who have ruled in favor of candidates who have appealed its decisions and pledged not to allow Mondher Zenaidi, Abdellatif El Mekki and Imed Daimi to appear on the ballot alongside Saied next month.

Hajer Mohamed, a 33-year-old law firm assistant said that she and her friends are terrified about the direction Tunisia is heading in ways they couldn’t have imagined when people rejoiced the freedoms won 13 years ago.

“We never thought that after the 2011 revolution we’d live to see the country’s suffocating situation,” she said. “Even under former dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, the situation wasn’t as scandalous as it is today.” 
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‘Shame must change sides’ — France’s rape plaintiff becomes feminist icon

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Marseille, France — Walking into court each day with her head held high, the ex-wife of a Frenchman on trial for orchestrating multiple rapes of her in her own bed for almost a decade has become a feminist icon. 

With her now trademark auburn bob and dark glasses, 71-year-old Gisele Pelicot has become a figurehead in the battle against the use of drugs to commit sexual abuse.  

Her life was shattered in 2020 when she discovered that her partner of five decades had for years been secretly administering her large doses of tranquilizers to rape her and invite dozens of strangers to join him.  

But she has decided not to hide and demanded the trial of Dominique Pelicot, 71, and 50 co-defendants since September 2 be open to the public because, as she has said through one of her lawyers, it should be up to her alleged abusers — not her — to be ashamed.  

“It’s a way of saying … shame must change sides,” her attorney Stephane Babonneau said as the trial opened.   

Since then, feminist activists have held up her stylized portrait by Belgian artist Aline Dessine, with the words “Shame is changing sides,” to show support at protests.  

The artist with 2.5 million followers on TikTok has given up all rights to the image.  

Thousands protest

Thousands protested in cities across France on Saturday in support of Gisele Pelicot and demanding an end to rape. 

“Gisele for all, all for Gisele,” read one hand-drawn poster at a gathering in the southern city of Marseille. 

A day earlier, outside the courthouse in the southern town of Avignon, protester Nadege Peneau said she was full of admiration for the trial’s main plaintiff. 

“What she’s doing is very brave,” she said. “She’s speaking up for so many children and women, and even men” who have been abused. 

Gisele Pelicot in August obtained a divorce from her husband, who has confessed to the abuse after meticulously documenting it with photos and videos. 

She has moved away from the southern town of Mazan where, in her own words, for years he treated her like “a piece of meat” or a “rag doll.”  

She now uses her maiden name, but during the trial has asked the media to use her former name as a married woman. 

Her lawyer Antoine Camus said she had transformed from a devoted wife and retiree, who loved walks and choir singing, into a woman ready for a battle. 

“I will have to fight till the end,” she told the press on September 5, in her only public statement outside court in the first days of the four-month trial. 

“Obviously it’s not an easy exercise and I can feel attempts to trap me with certain questions,” she added calmly.  

Learning truth behind memory lapses

She met Dominique Pelicot, her future husband and rapist, in 1971. 

She had dreamed of becoming a hairdresser but instead studied to be a typist. After a few years temping, she joined France’s national electricity company EDF, ending her career in a logistics service for its nuclear power plants. 

At home, she looked after her three children and later seven grandchildren. 

Only when the police caught her husband filming up women’s skirts in a supermarket in 2020 did she find out the true reason behind her troubling memory lapses. 

Camus, her lawyer, said his client “never wanted to be a role model.” 

“She just wants all this not to be in vain,” he said. 
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Boeing strike could last ‘a while’; workers confident of higher wages, union says

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SEATTLE — A strike at Boeing “could go on for a while” as workers are confident they can get bigger wage increases and an improved pension, union leader Jon Holden said in an interview with National Public Radio on Saturday.

More than 30,000 members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM), who produce Boeing’s top-selling 737 MAX and other jets in the Seattle and Portland, began a strike Friday after overwhelmingly voting down a new contract.

Boeing and union negotiators are to return to the bargaining table next week, in talks overseen by U.S. federal mediators, after more than 94% of workers voted to reject an initial contract offer that Holden had endorsed.

Holden said the priorities for his members were a bigger wage increase and the restoration of a defined-benefit pension scheme that the union lost during a previous round of negotiations with Boeing a decade ago.

“We have the most leverage and the most power at the most opportune time that we’ve ever had in our history, and our members are expecting us to use it,” Holden told NPR.

“I know that our members are confident. They’re standing shoulder to shoulder and they’re ready. So it (the strike) could go on for a while,” he said.

The initial deal included a 25% pay raise spread over four years and a commitment by Boeing to build its next commercial jet in the Seattle region, if the plane program is launched within the four-year period of the contract.

Union members, venting frustration at years of stagnant wages and rising living costs, said removal of a performance bonus in the Boeing offer would erode half of the headline salary increase.

Boeing’s stock fell 3.7% on Friday. It has tumbled almost 40% so far this year, slashing the company’s market value by roughly $58 billion.

A long strike could further damage Boeing’s finances, already groaning because of $60 billion in debt. A lengthy pause on plane production would also weigh on airlines that fly Boeing jets and suppliers that manufacture parts. 
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NATO’s Bauer, others support Ukraine using long-range weapons against Russia

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PRAGUE — The head of NATO’s military committee said Saturday that Ukraine has the solid legal and military right to strike deep inside Russia to gain combat advantage — reflecting the beliefs of several U.S. allies — even as the Biden administration balks at allowing Kyiv to do so using American-made weapons.

“Every nation that is attacked has the right to defend itself. And that right doesn’t stop at the border of your own nation,” said Admiral Rob Bauer, speaking at the close of the committee’s annual meeting, also attended by U.S. Gen. CQ Brown, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Bauer, of Netherlands, also added that nations have the sovereign right to put limits on the weapons they send to Ukraine. But, standing next to him at a news briefing, Lt. General Karel Řehka, chief of the General Staff of the Czech Armed Forces, made it clear his nation places no such weapons restrictions on Kyiv.

“We believe that the Ukrainians should decide themselves how to use it,” Řehka said.

Their comments came as U.S. President Joe Biden is weighing whether to allow Ukraine to use American-provided long-range weapons to hit deep into Russia. And they hint at the divisions over the issue.

Biden met with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Friday, after this week’s visit to Kyiv by their top diplomats, who came under fresh pressure to loosen weapons restrictions. U.S. officials familiar with discussions said they believed Starmer was seeking Biden’s approval to allow Ukraine to use British Storm Shadow missiles for expanded strikes in Russia.

Biden’s approval may be needed because Storm Shadow components are made in the U.S. The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share the status of private conversations, said they believed Biden would be amenable, but there has been no decision announced yet.

On Thursday Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that allowing long-range strikes “would mean that NATO countries, the United States and European countries, are at war with Russia.” His remarks were in line with the narrative the Kremlin has promoted since early in the war, accusing NATO countries of de-facto participation in the conflict and threatening a response.

Providing additional support and training for Ukraine was a key topic at the NATO chiefs’ meeting, but it wasn’t clear Saturday if the debate over the U.S. restrictions was discussed.

Many of the European nations have been vigorously supportive of Ukraine in part because they worry about being the next victim of an empowered Russia.

At the opening of the meeting, Czech Republic President Petr Pavel broadly urged the military chiefs gathered in the room to be “bold and open in articulating your assessments and recommendations. The rounder and the softer they are, the less they will be understood by the political level.”

The allies, he said, must “take the right steps and the right decisions to protect our countries and our way of life.”

The military leaders routinely develop plans and recommendations that are then sent to the civilian NATO defense secretaries for discussion and then on to the nations’ leaders in the alliance.

The U.S. allows Ukraine to use American-provided weapons in cross-border strikes to counter attacks by Russian forces. But it doesn’t allow Kyiv to fire long-range missiles, such as the ATACMS, deep into Russia. The U.S. has argued that Ukraine has drones that can strike far and should use ATACMS judiciously because they only have a limited number.

Ukraine has increased its pleas with Washington to lift the restrictions, particularly as winter looms and Kyiv worries about Russian gains during the colder months.

“You want to weaken the enemy that attacks you in order to not only fight the arrows that come your way, but also attack the archer that is, as we see, very often operating from Russia proper into Ukraine,” said Bauer. “So militarily, there’s a good reason to do that, to weaken the enemy, to weaken its logistic lines, fuel, ammunition that comes to the front. That is what you want to stop, if at all possible.”

Brown, for his part, told reporters traveling with him to the meeting that the U.S. policy on long-range weapons remains in place.

But, he added, “by the same token, what we want to do is — regardless of that policy — we want to continue to make Ukraine successful with the capabilities that have been provided” by the U.S. and other nations in the coalition, as well as the weapons Kyiv has been able to build itself.

“They’ve proven themselves fairly effective in building out uncrewed aerial vehicles, in building out drones,” Brown told reporters traveling with him to meetings in Europe.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has made similar points, arguing that one weapons system won’t determine success in the war.

“There are a number of things that go into the overall equation as to whether or not you know you want to provide one capability or another,” Austin said Friday. “There is no silver bullet when it comes to things like this.”

He also noted that Ukraine has already been able to strike inside Russia with its own internally produced systems, including drones. 
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China’s economy softens in August as Beijing grapples with lagging demand

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BEIJING — China’s economy softened in August, extending a slowdown in industrial activity and real estate prices as Beijing faces pressure to ramp up spending to stimulate demand.

Data published by the National Bureau of Statistics Saturday showed weakening activity across industrial production, retail sales and real estate this month compared to July.

“We should be aware that the adverse impacts arising from the changes in the external environment are increasing,” said Liu Aihua, the bureau’s chief economist in a news conference.

Liu said that demand remained insufficient at home, and the sustained economic recovery still confronts multiple difficulties and challenges.

China has been grappling with a lagging economy post-COVID, with weak consumer demand, persistent deflationary pressures and a contraction in factory activity.

Chinese leaders have ramped up investment in manufacturing to rev up an economy that stalled during the pandemic and is still growing slower than hoped.

Beijing also has to deal with increasing pressure to implement large-scale stimulus measures to boost economic growth.

While industrial production rose by 4.5% in August compared to a year ago, it declined from July’s 5.1% growth, according to the bureau’s data released.

Retail sales grew 2.1% from the same time last year, slower than the 2.7% increase last month.

Fixed asset investment rose by 3.4% from January to August, down from 3.6% in the first seven months.

Meanwhile, investment in real estate declined by 10.2% from January to August, compared to last year.

The figures released Saturday come after trade data for August saw imports grow just 0.5% compared to a year ago.

The consumer price index rose 0.6% in August, missing forecasts according to data released Monday. Officials attributed the higher CPI to an increase in food prices due to bad weather.

But the core CPI, which excludes food and energy prices, rose by just 0.3% in August, the slowest in over three years.
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Nigerian army rescues 13 hostages from extremist group

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ABUJA, Nigeria — Nigerian troops have rescued 13 hostages who were kidnapped by an extremist group in the northwestern state of Kaduna, the country’s army said on Saturday. 

The army said in a statement that “the troops successfully overwhelmed the terrorists, forcing them to abandon their captives.” 

Several kidnappers were killed, and others were captured, the military added. It didn’t specify which armed group the kidnappers belonged to. 

The rescued hostages were taken to a military facility for a medical assessment before being reunited with their families. Weapons, ammunition, solar panels and cash were also discovered during the rescue operation. 

Kidnappings have become common in parts of northern Nigeria, where dozens of armed groups take advantage of a limited security presence to carry out attacks in villages and along major roads. Most victims are released only after the payment of ransoms that sometimes run into the thousands of dollars. 

At least 1,400 students have been taken from Nigerian schools since the 2014 kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls by Boko Haram militants in the village of Chibok in Borno state shocked the world. 

Boko Haram, Nigeria’s homegrown jihadi rebels, launched its insurgency in 2009 to establish Islamic Shariah law in the country. At least 35,000 people have been killed and 2.1 million people displaced due to the extremist violence, according to United Nations agencies in Nigeria.  
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Biden to use rest of term putting Ukraine in ‘best position,’ says adviser

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Kyiv, Ukraine — U.S. President Joe Biden will use the remaining four months of his term “to put Ukraine in the best possible position to prevail,” a senior adviser said Saturday. 

Speaking remotely to a forum in Kyiv, Ukraine, Jake Sullivan, the U.S. national security adviser, also said Biden will meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in late September at the U.N. General Assembly in New York to discuss aid to Ukraine. 

“President Zelenskyy has said that ultimately this war has to end through negotiations, and we need them to be strong in those negotiations,” Sullivan said, adding Ukraine would decide when to enter talks with Russia. 

Biden will be replaced next January either by Vice President Kamala Harris, who has indicated she will continue his policies of backing Ukraine, or by former President Donald Trump, who would not say at a debate earlier this week whether he wanted Kyiv to win the war. 

The announcement of the upcoming Biden-Zelenskyy meeting came after Moscow and Kyiv earlier Saturday swapped 103 prisoners of war each in a UAE-brokered deal, and as Russian forces continue to gain ground in their grinding offensive in east Ukraine. 

Sullivan, in his comments by video link to the forum in Kyiv, said “difficult and complicated” logistics — rather than unwillingness — was delaying aid to Ukraine. 

“It’s not a matter of political will,” Sullivan said. “But given what Ukraine is up against, we’ve got to do more, and we’ve got to do better.” 
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3 Americans, 2 Spaniards held over alleged plot to ‘destabilize’ Venezuela

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Caracas, Venezuela — Three American citizens, two Spaniards and a Czech citizen have been detained in Venezuela on suspicion of plotting to destabilize the country through “violent actions,” the government said Saturday, adding that hundreds of weapons had been seized.  

Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello said that the five were held on suspicion of planning an attack on President Nicolas Maduro and his government.  

The arrests come amid heightened tensions between Venezuela and both the United States and Spain over Venezuela’s disputed July 28 presidential election, which the country’s opposition accuses Maduro of stealing.  

Maduro, a former bus driver, who succeeded iconic left-wing leader Hugo Chavez on his death in 2013, insists he won a third term but failed to release detailed voting tallies to back his claim.  

“We know that the United States government has links to this operation,” Cabello asserted.   

He said the two Spaniards were recently detained in Puerto Ayacucho in the southwest.  

He added that three Americans and a Czech national were also arrested and linked the alleged plot to intelligence agencies in the United States and Spain as well as to Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado.  

“They contacted French mercenaries, they contacted mercenaries from Eastern Europe, and they are in an operation to try to attack our country,” he said.  

He added that “more than 400 rifles were seized” and accused the detainees of plotting “terrorist acts.”  

The United States, Spain and Czech Republic had yet to react to the sensational claims, which come amid a deepening standoff between Maduro and Western powers.   

Maduro’s ‘dictatorship’ 

Tensions between Caracas and former colonial power Spain rose sharply after Venezuelan opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, 75, went into exile in Spain a week ago, after being threatened with arrest.  

Earlier this week Caracas recalled its ambassador to Madrid for consultations and summoned Spain’s envoy to Venezuela for talks after a Spanish minister accused Maduro of running a “dictatorship.”  

Venezuela was also angered by Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s decision to meet with Gonzalez Urrutia and warned Spain against any “interference” in its affairs.   

Caracas has additionally been engaged in a war of words with the United States, which recognized Gonzalez Urrutia as the winner of the election.   

Washington announced Thursday new sanctions against 16 Venezuelan officials, including some from the electoral authority, for impeding “a transparent electoral process” and not publishing accurate results.  

Venezuela denounced the measures as a “crime of aggression” and Maduro decorated four military officers among those targeted by the sanctions.   

Maduro’s claim to have won a third term in office sparked mass opposition protests, which claimed at least 27 lives and left 192 people wounded.   

The opposition published polling station-level results, which it said showed Gonzalez Urrutia winning by a landslide.  

About 2,400 people, including numerous teens, were arrested in the unrest. 

After Venezuela’s last election, in 2018, Maduro also claimed victory amid widespread accusations of fraud.  

With the support of the military and other institutions, he managed to cling to power despite international sanctions.   

Maduro’s tenure since 2013 has seen GDP drop 80% in a decade, prompting more than 7 million of the country’s 30 million citizens to migrate.  
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