Aug 8 – Canadian rapper Tory Lanez was sentenced on Tuesday to 10 years in prison, more than seven months after he was convicted of shooting fellow musical artist Megan Thee Stallion during an argument in 2020.

Judge David Herriford handed down the sentence to the 30-year-old rapper, whose legal name is Daystar Peterson, during a hearing in Los Angeles Superior Court that had been pushed back by delays.

On Dec. 23, a jury found Lanez guilty of carrying a loaded and unregistered firearm in a vehicle, assault with a semiautomatic handgun and discharging a firearm with gross negligence.

Lanez was accused of shooting Grammy-winning rapper Megan Thee Stallion, 28, injuring her feet after a pool party in the Hollywood Hills in July 2020.

The shooting was preceded by an argument that became heated when the two began attacking each other’s music careers, she told the court during the two-week trial.

Megan Thee Stallion, who was born Megan Pete, needed surgery and spent four days in the hospital before physical therapy allowed her to walk again.

She did not attend the sentencing hearing, saying she could not bear to be in the same room as Lanez but wrote a statement that was read in court on Monday, the New York Times reported.

“He not only shot me, he made a mockery of my trauma,” the statement said. “This is a statement for all survivors that their lives matter and there is zero tolerance for the torture that accompanies violence.”

Jose Baez, a defense lawyer representing Lanez, told reporters outside the courthouse that he thought the sentence was too harsh and that Lanez would appeal his conviction, saying he had not received a fair trial. Lanez’ lawyers had sought a sentence of probation.

“I have seen homicide case, other cases where there’s a death and the person still gets less than 10 years,” Baez said. “It’s just another example of somebody being punished for their celebrity status, someone being utilized as an example.”

Megan Thee Stallion won Grammy awards for best new artist, best rap performance and best rap song in 2021. She has also been nominated for six more.

Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon, whose office prosecuted the case, said after December’s verdict that women, especially Black women, are afraid to report crimes such as assault and sexual violence because they are too often not believed.

“The fact that Ms. Pete is a successful entertainer has brought the spotlight on the important issue of violence against women,” he told reporters after the verdict.

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U.S. acting deputy secretary of state Victoria Nuland traveled to Niamey earlier this week to negotiate with the military junta, with hopes that the United States could help serve as a mediator in the aftermath of a military coup that saw Bazoum deposed. She bluntly told reporters that the trip wasn’t going according to plan.

The conversation was “at times quite difficult,” Nuland told reporters on a call.

During the trip, she urged General Moussa Salaou Barmou, who has been named chief of staff of the military after the coup, to not make deals with Russia’s Wagner Group, Prigozhin’s mercenary fighting group, she said.

Prigozhin was quick to respond to the comments in a Telegram post Tuesday: “This brings joy, Mrs. Nuland,” Prigozhin said.

“I am proud of the boys from Wagner,” he added. “Just the thought of them makes ISIS and Al Qaeda small, obedient, silky boys. And the U.S. has recognized a government that it did not recognize yesterday just to avoid meeting the Wagner PMC in the country.”

Prigozhin, for his part, is chomping at the bit to get involved. In the days after the military junta detained the president, Prigozhin offered up Wagner mercenaries’ services to help out.

The mercenary boss’ taunting comes as prospects for a negotiated outcome in Niger look slimmer by the hour. Nuland admitted that even after more than two hours of conversations and side bars, the meeting in Niger left a clear impression that the military junta has a different vision for how to proceed. She added that her conversations in Niamey did not shed light on how the junta is planning around possible collaboration with Wagner.

“There was some side conversations. After that, I hope they will keep the door open to diplomacy. We made that proposal. We’ll see,” Nuland told reporters. “As I said, they have their own ideas about how this goes forward. They do not – their ideas do not comport with the constitution, and that will be difficult in terms of our relationship if that’s the path they take.”

“It is trash talk, but it’s trash talk with a purpose.”

A faction of soldiers from the presidential guard detained the Nigerien president, Bazoum, on July 26, and dissolved the constitution. The group has since claimed to install a new leader in the country. European countries and the United States have condemned the action, and neighboring countries threatened to use force to resolve the conflict if the military junta didn’t reverse their plans by Sunday—threats that have failed to materialize.

Prigozhin’s decision to weigh in Tuesday on tense talks between the State Department and the military junta is just the latest sign that he is working to wedge his way into the crisis and come out on top.

It’s not clear if the coup-plotters and Wagner fighters have reached any kind of conclusion on working together, according to the State Department.

Some of Prigozhin’s rhetoric, though, might help provide clues about whether coordination is looming, according to Sean McFate, a former paratrooper and officer in the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division who has previously dealt with African warlords.

Prigozhin is likely still in the process of casting his net within Niger and working to get Niger coup-plotters to take him up on his offer, McFate told The Daily Beast.

“It is trash talk, but it’s trash talk with a purpose. He wants to publicly show the world and the Nigerien coup-makers whose side he’s on and in a very anti-Western manner, and let’s not forget that there’s a lot of anti-Western anti-French sentiment already in Niger and across the Sahel,” McFate said. “It’s a well-organized campaign that’s part of his playbook that is meant to message his potential client, ‘I am really on your side.’”

U.S. Secretary of State Tony Blinken warned that Wagner would be bound to try to leverage the situation.

“What happened and what continues to happen in Niger was not instigated by Russia or by Wagner, but to the extent that they try to take advantage of it—and we see a repeat of what’s happened in other countries, where they’ve brought nothing but bad things in their wake,” Blinken told the BBC in an interview.

Prigozhin is bound to try to exacerbate existing anti-Western sentiments to try to weasel his way in to Niger, just as he has in other countries, including in Mali and the Central African Republic.

“The indicators suggest that Prigozhin and the junta leaders in Niger are going to probably work out some arrangement that will look something like his neighbors in Mali and CAR,” McFate predicted.

Prigozhin’s status on the world stage—and his Wagner Group’s operations in African countries—had been cast into doubt in recent weeks following his failed march on Moscow.

After reaching a deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin to exile in Belarus, however, Wagner Group has continued recruitment, and in all likelihood has reached a sort of symbiotic arrangement to continue operating in African countries so long as it continues to provide benefit to Moscow, McFate predicted.

“Putin and Prigozhin also have a need for each other. Putin wants to extend his global reach into Africa… It gets around sanctions, it directly funds the war, it does all sorts of things and Prigozhin needs the financial infrastructure of Russia,” McFate said.

And although negotiations don’t seem to be going well, even by the State Department’s usually discreet take on matters, Prigozhin is still trying to sell himself in Niger, an indication that the military junta may still be weighing its options, said McFate.

“If it were a sealed deal, I’m not sure Tori Nuland would go all the way out there—or if she did it would just be sort of like a last resort,” McFate said. “But I don’t think her presence and her rank from the State Department is going to move the needle much in Niger amongst the generals.”

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Tou Thao was sentenced to almost five years in prison in a state court in Minneapolis for holding back bystanders during the murder of Mr Floyd, who died in May 2020 when another officer, Derek Chauvin, knelt on his neck for almost 10 minutes.

Thao previously said he had acted as a “human traffic cone” by keeping bystanders away from the scene as Mr Floyd pleaded for his life and said: “I can’t breathe.”

The incident was captured on video by an onlooker and triggered a worldwide outpouring of anger over police brutality towards black people.

Biblical references

At the hearing on Monday, Thao denied any responsibility for Mr Floyd’s death and spoke about his growth as a Christian during his 340 days behind bars.

In remarks littered with biblical references, he drew parallels with the sufferings and false accusations endured by Job and Jesus.

“I did not commit these crimes,” he said. “My conscience is clear. I will not be a Judas nor join a mob in self-preservation or betray my God.”

Peter Cahill, the Hennepin County judge who convicted Thao in May, said he had imposed a harsher sentence because of his lack of remorse for his actions.

As he sentenced him to four years and nine months behind bars, Mr Cahill said he was hoping “for more than preaching” from Thao.

“After three years of reflection, I was hoping for a little more remorse,” he said.

Top end of sentence range

The sentence is at the top end of the range recommended under state guidelines, where the standard sentence is four years.

The sentence was more than the 51 months that prosecutors had sought and the 41 months requested by Thao’s attorney, Robert Paule.

Thao’s sentence will run concurrently with a three-and-a-half year sentence for his separate conviction on a federal civil rights charge, which an appeals court upheld on Friday.

He will be returned to a federal prison to finish the sentence before he is transferred to a Minnesota state prison to serve out the remaining few months with credit for time served.

Mr Paule, who called Thao “a good and decent man with a family” in court, said afterwards that they will appeal in both the state and federal cases. He declined to comment further.

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CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico, Aug 8 – Hundreds of migrants gathered alongside the U.S. border in the northern Mexican city of Ciudad Juarez late on Monday, after false rumors spread via social media and word-of-mouth that the U.S. would allow entry to a mass group.

Some said they had been waiting weeks to secure appointments to request asylum via a U.S. mobile app called CBP One, and were eager to try their luck at the border itself.

About 1,000 people clustered around the border just opposite the Texas city of El Paso – some peering through the slats of the border wall while others sat alongside an industrial train line headed to the United States.

Officers from Customs and Border Protection uncoiled razor wire across the railway gate.

“You can just see how many people want to pass … for our families, for our future,” said Venezuelan migrant Johan Ramirez. “We’ve spent many days here. Our money is running out, we’re sleeping in the streets.”

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The names, positions and salaries of more than 440 staff were revealed in its report to Congress despite Joe Biden previously calling attention to pay disparities among other employers. 

The median man on the president’s staff earns $105,000 (£82,352), while the median woman earns just $84,000 (£65,882). Mr Biden earns $400,000 a year.

The conclusion from Mark Perry, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, was that women on the White House payroll earn 80 cents for every dollar paid to male staff.

Mr Perry, who has been examining White House salaries for years, has previously found that the pay gap was 37 per cent under Donald Trump in 2017 and almost 11 per cent under Barack Obama in 2016.

In its own analysis, The Wall Street Journal noted that the reason behind the pay gap in the Biden White House was a “composition effect”.

While there are more women employed by the White House than men, 269 to 179, there are more women in lower-paid roles, the newspaper said.

Some women are among the highest paid in the president’s team. Karine Jean-Pierre, Mr Biden’s press secretary, and eight other women are listed with salaries of $180,000 (£141,176).

‘More structurally sexist’ 

The figures stand in contrast to Mr Biden’s pronouncements on pay parity.

The president marked “national equal pay day” at the White House in March by saying he was “working to change” pay disparities.

“I call upon all Americans to recognise the full value of women’s skills and their significant contributions to the labour force, acknowledge the injustice of wage inequality and join efforts to achieve equal pay,” he said at the time.

In an editorial, The Wall Street Journal wryly noted that the figures were slightly higher than the national average for the workforce in 2022, according to the White House’s own analysis.

The White House Council of Economic Advisers estimated that among all full time workers, a woman made just 83 cents for every dollar paid to a man.

“If Mr Biden pays only 80 cents on the dollar, does that mean his White House is three percentage points more structurally sexist than the labour market writ large?” The Wall Street Journal editorial asked.

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Norwegian authorities warned Tuesday to prepare for “extremely heavy rainfall” after Storm Hans caused two deaths, ripped off roofs and upended summertime life in northern Europe.

Strong winds continued to batter the region along with rains, causing a lengthy list of disruptions in Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Lithuania, Finland, Estonia and Latvia. Ferries were canceled, flights were delays, roads and streets were flooded, trees were uprooted, people were injured by falling branches and thousands remained without electricity Tuesday.

In Oslo, officials urged people to work from home. On its website, the Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate warned of “extremely heavy rainfall” in the country’s south, adding “unnecessary traffic should be avoided.”

“This is a very serious situation that can lead to extensive consequences and damages. There will be extensive flooding, erosion damage and flood damages to buildings and infrastructure,” it said in English on its website.

In Finland, authorities urged people to rethink whether it “it is necessary to go out” to sea, Ville Hukka, a spokesperson for the Gulf of Finland Coast Guard District was quoted by the Hufvudstadsbladet newspaper.

SMHI, the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute, on Tuesday issued a red warning for parts of central Sweden, signaling “very large amounts of rain causing extremely high flows in streams and ditches in several places.”

Floods and slides closed dozens of roads in southern Norway and neighboring Sweden and dozens of people have been evacuated. Norwegian police said at least 119 people had been evacuated by Tuesday midday. There were scattered reports of helicopters being used to fly people out of affected areas.

Denmark’s Meteorological Institute, meanwhile, reported of waves of up to 26 feet and beach houses were seen washed into the North Sea.

On Monday, a 50-year old woman was killed in Lithuania by falling trees near the Latvian border. In central Sweden, a train was partly derailed because the embankment under the rails had been washed away. Three were people were slightly injured.

Also Monday in Latvia, near the Belarus border, a second person died on Monday when a tree fell on him, Latvian television said, adding he died of his injuries. The man was not further identified.

In Estonia, nearly 10,000 people were without power Tuesday morning, according to the Baltic News Service, the region’s main news agency.

Norwegian authorities kept the extreme weather warning alert at its highest level in southern Norway due to heavy rain, mudslides and flash floods. They also sent out text messages in several foreign languages, including English, to holidaymakers warning of the foul weather.

In the Swedish town Are, a ski resort, roads and streets were flooded. The Susaback river that runs through Are, some 331 miles from Stockholm, went over its banks and flooded much of downtown.

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Aug 8 – Los Angeles municipal employees went on a 24-hour strike on Tuesday to protest what their union calls bad-faith bargaining by government officials over a new contract, the latest in a series of job actions affecting the city.

Hundreds of city workers, including mechanics, lifeguards and traffic officers marched in picket lines at city hall and the Los Angeles International Airport, saying city management has engaged in unfair labor practices during negotiations over recruitment, retention and hiring issues.

“We are here demanding respect,” Raymond Mesa, a member of Service Employees International Union (SEIU) 721, told KTLA 5 outside of city hall. “We are going back to the bargaining table on Monday and we are sending them a message that they need to take this seriously.”

The union represents about 11,000 city workers.

Los Angeles officials have refused to honor previous agreements, sent negotiators to the bargaining table without the authority to bargain and have restricted union access to work sites, it said.

Some city services will be unavailable during the one-day strike, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said in a statement.

A number of the city’s 55 swimming pools will shut down, trash pickups will be pushed back by a day and the city’s 311 information call center may experience delays. Passengers departing from Los Angeles Airport should arrive an hour earlier than usual in case of delays, Bass said.

“The City of Los Angeles is not going to shut down,” the mayor said.

The walkout is the latest in series of organized labor job actions in Los Angeles. Hollywood writers have been on strike for three months, and actors went on strike three weeks ago. In July, thousands of hotel workers in Los Angeles staged a three-day strike over wages, benefits and working conditions.

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Melody Johnson, 39, from Arizona, was arrested in July after her husband, Roby Johnson, showed the allegedly incriminating footage to the police.

Mr Johnson became suspicious when he noticed his coffee tasting strange while stationed in Germany towards the end of March.

He continued to drink it for a few weeks before using chemical testing strips on the water in his coffee machine, which apparently showed high levels of chlorine.

Mr Johnson then set up a camera in his home that captured footage of his wife “pouring something into his coffee pot”, the complaint alleges.

He pretended to drink the coffee until they returned to the US in the summer because he did not want to file a police report in Germany.

The airman set up another camera while stationed at a hotel on Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Arizona in July. Again, footage is said to show Mrs Johnson “walk to his coffee maker and pour something into his water reservoir”.

Police request further evidence

Mr Johnson reported his wife to the police the next day but was told by officers that it was not clear what she had poured into the machine.

It was only when the family moved into a house in July and Mr Johnson set up several cameras that he was able to record his wife allegedly decanting bleach into a container before pouring it into the coffee maker.

He told the police that he believed the 39-year-old was trying to kill him to collect death benefits, police said.

The couple are going through a divorce but were living together with a child at the time.

Mrs Johnson was arrested by police in Tucson and charged with first-degree attempted murder, attempted aggravated assault and adding poison to food or drink. She is being held at the Pima County Jail before her next scheduled court appearance on Sept 6.

Bail has been set at $250,000 (£197,000), which prosecutors argued was necessary because Mrs Johnson had recently bought a house in the Philippines and should be considered a flight risk.

Investigators recovered a container holding a liquid that smelled of bleach from her bedroom, court documents state. The liquid inside the coffee maker was also said to smell of bleach.

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This year’s MLB regular season concludes on October 1 with six teams from each league qualifying for the playoffs, which start October 3-5 with two best-of-three wildcard matchups in each league.

The two division champions in each league with the best records will face the wildcard winners in the best-of-five division series matchups, which will run from October 7-14.

Those winners advance to the best-of-seven league championship series showdowns, which will be played from October 15-23 as needed in the American League and October 16-24 as needed in the National League.

The World Series will open October 27-28 at the league champion with the better record, followed by games October 30-November 1 as needed in the other team’s stadium. If required the last games would be November 3-4 at the original site.

The Baltimore Orioles own the best record in the American League at 70-42 with Tampa Bay three games back in the East division. Texas leads the AL West division at 67-46, three games ahead of the reigning champion Houston Astros.

In the National League, Atlanta has the East division lead and MLB’s best record at 70-40 while the Los Angeles Dodgers are next, atop the West division at 65-46 by four games over San Francisco.

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The World Organisation of the Scout Movement confirmed on Monday that the government had decided to close down the global jamboree early “due to the expected impact of Typhoon Khanun” later this week.

Kim Sung-ho, a senior official at the Korean interior ministry, said the event’s location was “only changing because of the natural disaster, but it is still continuing”. The event had been due to run until August 12.

Officials are reportedly seeking alternative venues and accommodation in and around Seoul, the Korean capital, as well as in university dorms for the some 40,000 teenagers who remain at the site.

The announcement came as Khanun, which has already wreaked havoc and proved deadly in Japan and the Philippines, loomed.

The storm has generated winds as strong as 73-95mph and is expected to make landfall on Thursday. But the early impact of the typhoon could hit Buan, the coastal wetland where the camp is situated, as early as Wednesday.

Choi Chang-haeng, secretary-general of the jamboree’s organising committee, said more than 340 evacuation venues had been secured, including community centres and gyms, in regions near Buan.

British and American scouts had already abandoned the campsite early due to sanitation and mosquito problems as well as a national heatwave that sent temperatures and humidity levels soaring and caused hundreds of participants to suffer heat exhaustion.

Some 4,500 UK scouts and volunteers relocated to Seoul over the weekend, prompting a divided response of relief and anger from anxious parents back home.

In a YouTube statement on Monday, Matt Hyde, chief executive of the UK Scout Association, said the relocation will cost the organisation more than £1 million, with the funds set to be drawn from its reserves.

“We had commitments to those reserves that will of course mean that we can’t now do things that we wanted to do over the next three to five years,” he said.

Mr Hyde said the decision to withdraw had been made out of “severe” health and safety concerns over poor sanitation.

He also cited a lack of heat relief measures, a scarcity of food for those with dietary issues and the site’s insufficient medical facilities.

“We are disappointed in the organisers and the organisation and we do feel let down,” he said.

But Mr Hyde also praised the “incredible people of Seoul” and the British embassy for helping to pull together an alternative programme for the young participants at the last minute.

The Korean government has thrown millions of pounds at trying to salvage the event, the first global scout gathering since the pandemic, but its efforts have been to little avail.

Officials have confirmed the campsite will no longer be used for any event after the scouts leave.

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Scientists warned late last month that it was on track to become the world’s hottest month on record.

This year has been the third-warmest year to date, Copernicus deputy head Samantha Burgess said.

[1/3]A man checks his phone as he stands near a fan to cool off during a heatwave across Italy, in Rome, July 14, 2023. REUTERS/Guglielmo Mangiapane/File Photo

“We just witnessed global air temperatures and global ocean surface temperatures set new all-time records in July,” she said.

“It shows the urgency for ambitious efforts to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions, which are the main driver behind these records.”

June had also smashed through the previous temperature record for that month, according to Copernicus, which bases its calculations on a dataset going back to 1950.

Sweltering temperatures have affected considerable swathes of the planet, with heat records registered from Death Valley in the U.S. state of California to a northwest China township as Canada and southern Europe battle wildfires.

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Prosecutors said Zhi Alan Cheng, 33, filmed his assaults in New York, Las Vegas, San Francisco and Thailand over several years.

He was first arrested in December 2022 and fired from NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital in Queens after his then-girlfriend discovered and reported videos of him allegedly assaulting her and multiple other women.

Police later found recreational drugs such as cocaine and ecstasy and several anaesthetics at his home, as well as a stash of recordings.

‘Sexual predator of the worst kind’

On Monday, Mr Cheng appeared in court and was charged with 50 new counts, including rape, sexual abuse and unlawful surveillance and pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Prosecutors cited dozens of short videos of him allegedly sexually abusing women, including a 19-year-old patient suffering from gallstones and a “seriously ill” 47-year-old.

The new charges relate to six women – three patients attacked in hospital and three others at his home. All of them appeared to be unconscious during the attacks.

At least five other unidentified women were filmed being assaulted at hotel rooms or at homes across the United States and Thailand.

However, prosecutors fear there may be more victims that have not yet been identified.

Melinda Katz, the district attorney for Queens County, urged other victims to come forward, saying the evidence pointed to “a sexual predator of the absolute worst kind, a serial rapist”.

She said he was prepared to violate “every standard of human decency”.

In one case, Mr Cheng is accused of filming himself groping a 37-year-old patient as she lay unconscious at the prominent Queens hospital in 2021.

He is accused of filming himself raping a woman he met on a dating app a short time later.

A small brown bottle is visible in the footage, similar to one containing a powerful anaesthetic recovered during the raid of Mr Cheng’s flat, according to the authorities.

That same year, he is accused of raping a 19-year-old patient who was being treated for severe gallstone-related pain.

Mr Cheng performed an unnecessary exam and injected the woman with an “unknown substance” and sexually assaulted her, said prosecutors.

Nicholas Liakas, the victims’ lawyer, called the doctor “essentially a predator in a white coat”.

He said he fears the brazen nature of Mr Cheng’s brutal and methodical pattern of alleged assaults suggests he may have targeted other patients.

“For someone to rise to this level where you are drugging and raping a person, that doesn’t happen overnight,” Mr Liakas told NBC New York.

Many of the women later woke with no memory of what had happened, prosecutors said.

‘A fundamental betrayal’

The gastroenterologist’s prosecution follows the high-profile sentencing of another doctor who worked at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital.

Robert Hadden, a gynaecologist believed to have abused 245 women over two decades, was jailed for 20 years in June.

Angela Karafazi, a spokesman for NewYork-Presbyterian, said Mr Cheng’s alleged conduct was “heinous, despicable and a fundamental betrayal” of patients’ trust.

The hospital intends to review its patient safety policies and implement additional training for all employees, she said.

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For decades, that mostly meant the rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union. More recently, during a period when Beijing’s profile on the continent was sharply rising, it was U.S. interests versus China’s. And now, following the coup in Niger, writers have been rushing out analyses about a seesaw battle between Washington and Moscow in Africa’s Sahel region, with the added wrinkle of the shadowy Russian mercenary outfit known as the Wagner Group.

The years may come and go, but the main question asked in the rich world seems to never change: How will the rise of the latest authoritarian government on the block that doesn’t hew closely to Europe or Washington threaten to reduce U.S. or Western influence and power?

As persistent as it is, this pattern of assessments can only continue so long as the writers only think in the short term and fail to ask bigger questions. For starters, that might include looking into why, if Africa supposedly matters so much to Washington (or Europe), it hasn’t built more solid relations with the countries of that continent by now, into most African countries’ seventh decade of independence and nominal sovereignty.

As in Niger in the last two weeks, the least hint of a supposedly menacing wind from any authoritarian quarter brings on all kinds of heebie-jeebies for policy people in Washington (and Paris, in this case), as well as for most Western commentators. What they never seem to get around to asking is why the United States (or the continent’s former imperial bosses) has such tenuous relations with African countries in the first place, nor what—let’s stick to Washington for now—the country’s diplomats have been doing on the continent all this time to make the arrival of a new potential partner for an African state seem so disruptive and challenging.

To pursue such questions would invite painful self-scrutiny. Washington has mostly dawdled away the decades in Africa, switching around policy slogans every few years according to the tides of fashion but mostly sticking to two messages for Africans. The first: Don’t look to us for any kind of checkbook help in terms of vitalizing your economies. We wish you well as you pursue something called “public-private partnerships,” which usually mean very little of the former and not so much from the latter, either, unless the private businesses are involved in oil and gas.

The other well-worn theme is, of course, democracy. U.S. policymakers profess to love it in Africa, but they’ve never shown much skill at figuring out how to promote it there—nor, as the Niger coup amply demonstrates, defend it when it comes under attack. Washington spends a fair amount on military assistance in friendly African countries, but this is mostly about protecting U.S. interests, such as the so-called war on terror. As this Wall Street Journal piece shows, this has proved of little help when African democracies come under internal attack.

Let’s look at the threat side of the equation for a moment, though. As China dramatically expanded its influence in Africa beginning in the 1990s, especially accelerating in the early 2000s, did this really come at Washington’s expense, as so many handwringers warned? Very few are the African states that would not welcome much more U.S. (or Western) investment today, however thriving their China ties are. And many of these would also welcome much closer political relations, for that matter, so long as they were respectful. Such things would require change in Washington, though, and there is no hint of that on the horizon.

This makes all the talk about Russian gains in the Sahel and, more broadly, in Africa sound all the shallower. Yes, it is true that Moscow or Wagner could conceivably take over operational control of some of Washington’s drone bases in this very poor and generally sparsely inhabited region of Africa—and even possibly win some mining business there, too. But if this hasn’t happened with a much more thriving and dynamic China, which but the most desperate African countries would like to lash their medium- or long-term fortunes to Russia?

One quick measure of an answer came from the attendance at the 2023 Russia-Africa forum in St. Petersburg, which took place as the Niger coup was unfolding. According to one recent assessment, African participation at the head-of-state level was significantly lower than at the first such summit in 2019. It was also lower than at the U.S.-Africa summit last December.

All of this is to say that most of the reflexive talk about which outside power is winning or losing an edge in Africa is noise largely devoid of real significance. And to the extent that the United States gets worried, it only has itself to blame for being so unambitious in its engagement with the continent for so long. This reflexive focus has another negative effect, though. It prevents outsiders, and oftentimes even Africans themselves, from seeing what truly is significant about events surrounding the Niger coup.

The real action isn’t as spectacular as an international summit or headlines about great-power rivalry, and yet the most important politics in this and many other recent African crises are squarely African politics. These often draw upon deep historical currents that too few bother to take seriously. They also highlight the realities of state capacity and, indeed, state-making in Africa like little else. Finally, they point to an unavoidable reality: Africans will ultimately make or break their continent’s geopolitical landscape—and foreign interlopers, however muscle-bound they may appear, are ultimately fated to play a secondary role.

Witness, for instance, the visit to Niger shortly after the coup of the sultan of Sokoto, Muhammadu Abubakar—a spiritual leader of Nigeria’s Muslim community—as part of a mediation delegation from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). The sultan is revered and even followed by tens of millions of people in Nigeria as well as the neighboring countries of Niger and Chad, some of whom pay him tribute.

Today’s Sokoto state, located in northwestern Nigeria, and its sultan are the remnants of an indigenous caliphate that predated colonial rule and continues to hold influence and a grip on people’s imaginations and identities. That ECOWAS chose to send Abubakar to try to mediate Niger’s crisis shows that Africa’s own past, traditions, and many of the institutions that survived colonial rule retain more relevance in the lives of the continent’s people than many, especially outsiders, realize.

I have seen similar periods of intense intra-African geopolitics during my time writing about the continent. Nigeria’s leadership of peacekeeping efforts to help end the violence in deadly and disastrous wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone in the 1990s is one example. A conflict in post-Mobutu Zaire (Congo), which I also reported on from the ground, drew in so many of that giant central African country’s neighbors as rivals that it became known as Africa’s World War.

Niger’s coup has created a truly geopolitical moment for Africans—a time when the United States, Russia, France, and China became less immediately important than Africans themselves.

This is best seen in the role of Nigeria, the region’s largest country by far, whose new president, Bola Tinubu, happens to be the sitting head of ECOWAS, the region’s most important interstate political and economic organization. Tinubu and ECOWAS loudly insisted on the restoration of Niger’s overthrown leader as well as its democratic system. And it is not because the deadline they set for that to happen came and went (probably because several West African states vowed to defend Niger’s coup leaders) that this did not seem to matter.

Africans are feeling their way forward in the Sahel. This may seem halting, but it is indispensable for the region’s, and indeed Africa’s, future that Africans increasingly take charge of their own processes—creating their own bylaws, establishing their own guardrails, and brokering their own diplomatic as well as, where need be, military solutions.

I want to suggest an idea as old as the movement that led to independence on the continent starting with leaders like Kwame Nkrumah: African countries won’t begin to have meaningful sovereignty, and perhaps not be very consequential states at all, until they become the stewards and custodians of their own regions. This idea also draws on a venerable school in political science pioneered by the late social theorist Charles Tilly. His most cited nostrum was that war makes states.

Those who take this as a suggestion that African countries must fight each other as an obligatory step toward the development of capable states, as the European nations that Tilly studied once did, will have misunderstood me. What I mean, rather, is that working out an ever-deeper sense of mutual interest in regional political development, stability, and economic cooperation through deeper statecraft and engagement is going to be required of African nations if they are to get anywhere. And relying on outsiders to play front-line roles at the first sign of trouble will always be inimical to that.

The post Niger’s Coup Is a Turning Point for Africans appeared first on Foreign Policy.

The guardians of the Congo Basin, indigenous peoples known as Pygmies, are estimated to have lived in the tropical forest for as many as 50,000 years. Some 900,000 Pygmies remain dependent on its resources to this day. As deforestation in the Congo Basin accelerates, they are losing their habitat, their history and their culture. 

Improved access to forests over the past twenty years has hastened harmful trends in a region with historically low rates of deforestation. “The countries of the Congo Basin have benefited from major development investments, notably road construction,” explains Marine Gauthier, an expert in indigenous peoples‘ rights and forest governance. “Roads have improved access to the villages, but they have also given access to people looking to farm and fell.”

‘Dependent on the forest’

An estimated 2 million hectares of forest are destroyed every year in the Congo Basin. In 2022 alone, the DRC lost more than half a million hectares, 13 percent of global deforestation. Only Brazil, which accounted for 43 percent, felled more trees. 

Estelle Ewoule Lobe, cofounder and executive secretary of Action for the Protection of Internally Displaced Persons and Environmental Migrants in Africa (APADIME), campaigns against illegal logging in Cameroon’s Congo Basin. Lobe says Central African countries have made commitments to protect forests, but these are rarely respected due to problems with political governance and security.

“In addition to violating the law and international accords, these smugglers exploit forests without authorisation and violate the rights of indigenous peoples”, says Lobe, denouncing “corruption” in Cameroonian forest management. “Some indigenous populations live in extreme poverty because logging companies don’t respect conditions in contracts that mandate building schools or water services.”

The damage done to their habitats makes it difficult for Pygmies to care for themselves, says Gauthier. “They are completely dependent on the forest for their traditional medicines,” she explains. “Cutting down the forest means depriving people of their habitat, their health and their food; everything they need to survive. They are destined to disappear.” 

Continuing to destroy the ecosystems of indigenous peoples risks losing their unique cultural traditions and identities. “Many indigenous peoples have already left the forest … some live in Kinshasa shanty towns,” says Gauthier. “When they leave their environment, they lose a part of who they are. We’re talking about a minority with an extremely fragile ecosystem. They are not safe from cultural extinction.” 

‘They must be a part of the change’

Despite this difficult picture, Gauthier says the rights of indigenous peoples are better protected today than they were a decade ago. She is pleased they are now recognised in most international agreements and points to international forest preservation organisations that are increasingly sensitive to the rights of indigenous peoples. 

When she began working in the DRC in 2011, Gauthier recalls that the term “indigenous people” was still unacceptable to some. “People said we should talk about Congolese people in general and not indigenous peoples because it would have been discrimination,” she explains. “Even the government had difficulty recognising indigenous peoples in its territory. There was a desire to deny any ethnic diversity.”

The latest example of progress is an anti-discrimination law enacted in November 2022 in the DRC. Thanks to this law – which is the fruit of work by a national network of Pygmy organisations called the Dynamique des Groupes des Peuples Autochtones (DGPA) – Pygmies benefit from free health care and legal fees. “Activists fought long and hard to support this law for over 10 years, organising demonstrations and going to parliament to defend it. It’s an enormous achievement,” says Gauthier. 

The efforts of civil society groups like the DGPA have given momentum to indigenous rights policy. Ewoule Lobe’s association is part of this network fighting for change. Every week, Lobe trains community leaders to act as intermediaries between their people, the state and associations. “We need to equip them to join the fight against environmental crime,” she says.

On this point, Gauthier couldn’t agree more. “We cannot do things for the Pygmies without the Pygmies taking part. They must be a part of the change.”

This article is a translation of the original in French.

The post ‘Dependent on the forest’: The fight for indigenous peoples’ rights in the Congo Basin appeared first on France 24.

For many in the Amhara region, which neighbours Tigray and fought in support of federal forces during the war, the deal was something very different – a stab in the back whose failure to account for Amhara concerns portended another war.

Nine months later, that forecast looks to be coming true. Fierce fighting broke out last week across Amhara between local Fano militiamen and federal forces, leading the government to declare a state of emergency and rush troops to the front lines.

As clashes rage across cities, both sides appear to agree on the stakes – nothing less than the survival of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government.

Fano is an informal militia with no publicly-known command structure that draws volunteers from the local population.

“The Fano, with the support of farmers and Amhara public will attempt to defeat the federal security forces and their alliance and ultimately remove Abiy from power,” said Tewodrose Tirfe, chairman of the Amhara Association of America, a lobby group that supports the Fano cause.

Temesgen Tiruneh, Ethiopia’s spy chief who oversees enforcement of the state of emergency, said that Fano’s goal was “overthrowing the regional government by force and then advancing to the federal system”.

Spokespeople for Abiy and Ethiopia’s government did not respond to requests for comment. Fano representatives could not be reached for comment.

MAJOR THREAT

With its vast size and population and its position as one of Africa’s largest economies, Ethiopia carries huge weight in the continent’s geopolitics. Its problems, whether wars or droughts, tend to have consequences beyond its borders. It has also been a major security partner for Western countries in the volatile Horn of Africa region.

The two-year war in Tigray wrought devastation, killing tens of thousands of people. It drew in troops from neighbouring Eritrea and forced tens of thousands to flee into eastern Sudan.

In that war, federal forces faced battle-hardened fighters loyal to Tigray’s ruling party, who at one point advanced hundreds of kilometres towards the capital Addis Ababa.

While Fano is not nearly as well-equipped or organised, it could seriously threaten the government if its struggle draws widespread support, analysts said.

Amhara is Ethiopia’s second most populous region, with more than three times as many people as Tigray, and parts of Amhara lie just only about 50 km (30 miles) from Addis Ababa.

“Abiy’s government is unlikely to survive a sustained mass uprising in the Amhara region, especially given the mounting political and economic crisis around the country,” said Addisu Lashitew, a fellow at the Brookings Institution think tank.

Amhara residents said Fano fighters had inflicted some losses on the better-equipped federal forces, and the government’s Temesgen acknowledged on Monday the militiamen had captured some towns.

BUILDING ANGER

Abiy came to power in 2018 promising to bring Ethiopians together across ethnic and regional lines and won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 for his peacemaking efforts with Eritrea.

After several tumultous years, he finally seemed to be making some progress in the past year toward calming internal conflicts.

Following the Tigray deal, his government held preliminary talks with rebels in the Oromiya region, Ethiopia’s largest, about ending a decades-long insurgency.

But anger was building in Amhara, where the Tigray deal deepened existing suspicions of Abiy’s government.

Despite the crucial backing to federal forces that Fano fighters and regional security forces provided during the conflict, Amharas from outside Abiy’s political party were not included in the negotiations.

The deal confirmed Amhara hardliners’ worst fears. It said the status of lands claimed by both Amhara and Tigray, which Amhara forces captured during the war, should be resolved “in accordance with the constitution”.

The constitution, drafted by a former Tigrayan-led administration, recognises the lands as belonging to Tigray.

Subsequent events, including arrests of Amhara activists and militiamen, raised tensions. Then in April, Abiy ordered that regional security forces be integrated into the police or federal military, prompting a week of violent demonstrations.

Protesters saw the move saw as aimed at undermining Amhara’s security, a charge the government denied.

Now that armed conflict has broken out, analysts said they expected the response to be uncompromising.

“Abiy is a tactician in consolidating power,” said Befekadu Hailu, a human rights activist and writer in Addis Ababa. “I think this is, therefore, just another one of those struggles for him.”

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

West & Central Africa correspondent investigating human rights abuses, conflict and corruption as well as regional commodities production, epidemic diseases and the environment, previously based in Kinshasa, Abidjan and Cairo.

The post Ethiopia just ended one war. Is another one beginning? appeared first on Reuters.

Then, it was still deep enough for sailing. Now a long drought has nearly emptied it.

“We have never seen (it) so low,” the 79-year-old local resident told Reuters at the reservoir, which is only 20% full.

People sunbathed on the reservoir’s newly-exposed shore, where a few specks of grass have cropped up. Some visitors tried to paddle-surf.

Catalonia’s authorities last week imposed new water usage restrictions on 22 villages around the reservoir, near the French border, as the aquifer supplying them is also emptying.

Spain registered the driest start to a year in the first four months of 2023 since records began in the 1960s, with Catalonia and southern Spain’s Andalusia being the most affected.

Several heatwaves recorded in Spain and wider Europe this summer have worsened the drought, lowering reservoirs’ levels as water evaporation and consumption increased, said Ruben del Campo, spokesperson for Spain’s meteorological agency AEMET.

The 22 villages, plus two others in southern Catalonia, which account for around 25,000 residents in total, are in a state of water emergency.

This means they must lower their consumption to a daily average of 200 litres of water per resident from a prior cap of 230. Authorities are not limiting water for human consumption yet, but watering for agricultural purposes will be largely banned, and water use for industrial and recreational purposes has to drop by 25%.

The village of Agullana with 900 residents has been keeping its water usage below the 200-litre cap for several months, but its mayor said further steps will be implemented.

“We’ll reduce to zero the irrigation of gardens, the football field, the grass by the swimming pool, which we’ll see turning yellow as if burnt,” Josep Jovell said. No water will be used to clean the streets, only dry sweeping, he added.

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

The post Drought in Spain empties reservoirs, forces limits on water use appeared first on Reuters.

The riots were met by a forceful police response.

Hundreds of people were arrested and hundreds of police officers were wounded.

But there has never been any confirmation of a member of the security forces or a protester losing their life during the events.

The five police officers, all members of the elite Raid unit, were detained in Marseille for questioning in the probe over the death of Mohamed Bendriss, prosecutors said.

Several civilians and police are also giving evidence as witnesses, the prosecutors added.

The incident took place during the night of July 1-2 during violent protests in the centre of Marseille sparked by the death of Nahel M., 17, who was shot dead by a policeman on June 27 during a traffic check.

Bendriss, a married father of one, whose widow is now expecting a second child, lost his life after feeling unwell while riding a scooter.

His autopsy showed traces on his chest of what could be the impact of a shot from a blast ball – known in French as an LBD and commonly used by the country’s police.

The investigation is the latest controversy to target Marseille police.

Earlier this summer, a 22-year-old man called Hedi had to have part of his skull amputated after being beaten up and fired on with an LBD on July 21 by a group of men suspected to be police officers.

Four Marseille police officers have been charged over the incident.

Three have been released under judicial supervision.

The fourth has been remanded in custody for the duration of the investigation. His detention caused huge controversy within the French police.

Officers across the country went on sick leave en masse as a sign of protest but a court last week rejected the appeal against his detention.

The officer admitted in court to firing a blast ball round, reversing an earlier denial, but said he did not see anybody injured. His lawyer added that there was no proof it was his round that had wounded Hedi.

The powerful police union, Alliance, said the ruling was “incomprehensible and very unfair”.

(AFP)

The post Five French police officers detained over death of a man during Nahel riots appeared first on France 24.

Daniel Sancho Bronchalo, 29, appeared in court on Monday after police arrested him for the brutal death and dismemberment of his lover Dr Edwin Arrieta Arteaga, a 44-year old Colombian plastic surgeon.

The pair were on holiday on the southern Thai island of Koh Pha Ngan – famed for its picturesque beaches, laid-back lifestyle and wild “full moon” parties – when an argument over “sex and money” turned deadly, according to local police.

But the officers have said there are signs the grisly crime was premeditated.

“He admitted it,” Panya Niratimanon, the police chief of Koh Pha Ngan, told AFP. 

“The victim and the suspect knew each other before they came to Thailand, and his dubious activities indicate that he might murder the victim.”

According to local media reports, Mr Sancho – the son of Spanish actors Rodolfo Sancho Aguirre and Silvia Bronchalo, and a well-known social media chef in his home country – reported his lover missing after attending a full moon party with friends. The pair had known each other for a year.

But on Friday, Mr Sancho was detained shortly after body parts, including hips and thighs, were found by shocked locals at a landfill site on the island.

It has since been alleged that the YouTuber cut Arteaga’s body into 14 pieces, discarding some in the rubbish dump and using a kayak to cast others out to sea in a suitcase – including the surgeon’s head. 

On Sunday, Mr Sancho travelled with police to seven sites where he is accused of ditching the body parts.

Police Major-General Saranyu Chamnanrat told Reuters that DNA tests have proved the remains are Arteaga’s, and that Mr Sancho has been charged with “premeditated murder and secretly moving or destroying a corpse to conceal a death or the cause of death”.

Other media outlets have reported that Mr Sancho had been purchasing knives, plastic bags and cleaning supplies at various convenience stores across Koh Pha Ngan.

On Sunday, Mr Sancho’s family released a statement asking for “maximum respect, both for Daniel Sancho himself and for the whole family, in these delicate moments of maximum confusion”.

Police said the chef was in court on Monday, with police seeking his continued detention as investigations continue.

The post YouTuber ‘chopped up boyfriend and dumped his head in sea’ appeared first on The Telegraph.

Victoria Nuland, acting deputy secretary of state, held two hours of talks with the new military junta after it defied an ultimatum from a regional power bloc to relinquish power or face armed intervention.

But Ms Nuland, the most senior Western figure to travel to Niger since the coup, met stiff resistance in what appeared to be tense discussions in Niamey, the capital.

She said she had struggled to “get traction” during an “extremely frank and at times quite difficult” summit with Gen. Moussa Salaou Barmou, the head of Niger’s special forces who worked closely with US troops before the coup.

“They are quite firm in their view on how they want to proceed, and it does not comport with the constitution of Niger,” she said.

The delegation was not allowed to meet Mohamed Bazoum, the democratically elected president, who she said was “under virtual house arrest”.

Ms Nuland said she presented coup leaders a number of options to exit the crisis, but was not “in any way taken up on that offer”.

She also warned Gen. Barmou of the risks of cosying up to Wagner, the Kremlin-backed militia supporting neighbouring juntas in Africa.

She said: “Of course I raised Wagner and its threat to those countries where it is present, reminding them that security gets worse, that human rights get worse when Wagner enters.

She said the coup leadership “understand very well the risks to their sovereignty when Wagner is invited in”.

Western officials have said there is no evidence that Russia was behind the coup, but the Kremlin could take advantage of the crisis.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of the Wagner group, has already hailed the coup as good news and offered his services.

Speaking after Ms Nuland’s visit, Mr Prigozhin said the US would do anything, “even recognising” the military junta, as long as they did not have to deal with Wagner.

He said he would be happy to take a phone call from Ms Nuland “at any time convenient”.

Wagner ‘taking advantage’ of instability

Heads of state from the Economic Community of West African States are preparing for a summit on Thursday to discuss their standoff with the Niger junta, which defied an Aug 6 deadline to reinstate Mr Bazoum.

The possibility of military intervention will be on the table.

Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, said on Tuesday that diplomacy is the “best way” to resolve the situation in Niger. He declined to comment on a possible withdrawal of US soldiers from Niger.

He also warned that Wagner was “taking advantage” of the instability. “Every single place that this Wagner group has gone, death, destruction and exploitation have followed,” Mr Blinken said.

Niger’s turmoil follows military takeovers in Sudan, Mali, Chad and Burkina Faso in the past few years, creating a coast to coast ‘coup belt’ across Africa in countries already battling instability from jihadist terrorism, poverty and climate change.

The takeovers have kicked out several Western-friendly governments and the new rulers in Mali and the Central African Republic have instead turned to the Wagner group for military support.

Mr Bazoum’s government had been a key Western ally in the region, hosting American military bases and receiving significant aid to control northward migration toward Europe.

The post Top US diplomat holds ‘difficult’ talks with coup leaders in Niger appeared first on The Telegraph.

On Tuesday, Helen Schneider, the Australian Federal Police commander, said 13 children had been rescued from the clutches of the “dangerous” network, which used “sophisticated” knowledge of the dark web to evade police for up to 10 years.

A government employee in Canberra is among 98 men accused of sharing exploitative images of children.

Among the alleged offenders was a man who is accused of filming himself abusing a toddler. There were allegedly 800 child victims in videos and pictures on the man’s hard drives on which officers also found instructions on how to deceive police under questioning.

“The longer people like this avoid detection, the longer the cycle of abuse continues. This was a sophisticated network,” Ms Schneider said.

Two of the 19 men were convicted and sentenced to prison terms of almost 15 years in the Australian Capital Territory and five years in New South Wales state, Ms Schneider added.

The men, aged between 32 and 81 years old, distributed images and videos of child-abuse material, chatted on message platforms and allegedly used encryption to avoid detection.

Most of the Australian offenders were employed in jobs that required a high degree of knowledge of internet networks. Some are accused of having produced their own child abuse material, police said.

The long-running investigation made headlines in 2021, when FBI special agents Daniel Alfin and Laura Schwartzenberger were gunned down as they prepared to search the home of reclusive paedophile David Lee Huber.

Huber, a 55-year-old father and experienced computer programmer, had watched through the doorbell camera as the agents approached his apartment in Sunrise, near Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

He killed Agent Alfin and Agent Schwartzenberger with an automatic rifle, and injured three others, before turning the weapon on himself.

Evidence on Huber’s computer led police to expand their investigation across the US and to Australia.

“Criminals using encryption and the dark web are a challenge for law enforcement, but Operation Bakis shows that when we work together we can bring alleged offenders before the courts,’’ said Ms Schneider, who commanded the operation.

Nitiana Mann, the FBI’s legal attaché in Canberra, said: “The complexity and anonymity of these platforms means that no agency or country can fight these threats alone.”

Ms Mann said 79 people had been arrested in the United States as part of the same investigation and 43 had been convicted of child abuse offences.

The post Police break up ‘sophisticated’ global paedophile network appeared first on The Telegraph.

Pence had initially appeared to be at risk of not making the debate, which is only open to those who have garnered the support of 40,000 individual donors.

The Pence campaign said it told Fox News – which is hosting the debate – on Monday that it had met the target. Pence is stuck in single digits in opinion polls, far behind former President Donald Trump, who has said he plans to skip the debate.

“Mike Pence made quick and easy work of the donor threshold and he’s looking forward to a substantive debate,” spokesman Devin O’Malley said in a statement. “Hopefully, former President Trump has the courage to show up.”

As well as Trump, Pence and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, at least five other candidates appeared to be on track to qualify: former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, U.S. Senator Tim Scott and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy.

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

The post Former US Vice President Pence has qualified for Republican debate -team appeared first on Reuters.

Pakistan’s former prime minister was arrested last weekend and transferred to Attock prison, 53 miles west of the capital Islamabad, after being sentenced to three years for corruption charges from the unlawful sale of state gifts.

The 70-year-old is sleeping on a mattress on the floor with little daylight and a fan but no air conditioner in a cramped cell, according to his spokesman.

Raoof Hasan said: “He is being held in deplorable conditions not fit for any human, but he is in good spirits. He said to ‘tell the people that I will not compromise on my principles’.”

Naeem Panjutha, his lawyer, told Reuters: “It is a small room which has got an open washroom, where he said there were flies in the daytime and insects in the night.”

Khan’s team complained that he was being denied privileges normally afforded to political prisoners, including access to television, newspapers and books. He was being held in an ordinary cell instead.

Pakistan’s prisons can be highly stratified, with different prisoners kept in different conditions depending on their crime and even their social status.

Khan, who was also a cricketer before turning to politics, insisted that the charges are politically motivated to keep him from contesting a general election due later this year.

He has been waging a vociferous campaign against Pakistan’s government and its powerful military leadership since he was kicked out of power by a no confidence vote 15 months ago.

A crackdown against his party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, has intensified in recent months after protests led to significant violence in May and state installations were attacked.

Scores of legal cases have been brought against Khan and hundreds of his supporters have been rounded up in recent weeks.

Shehbaz Sharif, who replaced Khan as prime minister, is this week expected to call for parliament to be dissolved, paving the way for a general election by November.

The political crisis has played out alongside an economic one. Last month, the International Monetary Fund’s board approved a £2.4 billion bailout to help Pakistan tackle an acute balance of payments crisis and dire shortage of central bank reserves.

The post Imran Khan held in ‘dirty, insect-filled cell with no air conditioning’ appeared first on The Telegraph.

Zelenskyy conceded Ukraine’s counteroffensive is proceeding more slowly than some observers may prefer, but he also said he knows patience is required to fend off an increasingly exhausted enemy like the Russian military. After all, he said, “Russia, unlike us, can end this war faster, without unnecessary casualties.” Read more from that interview published Sunday by Argentina’s La Nacion, here.

• By the way, Ukrainian intelligence officials arrested a woman they allege was trying to sell details of Zelenskyy’s precise location to the Russians. The BBC has more on that case, here.  

Developing: Some Ukrainian troops appear to be growing skeptical of the U.S. ways of war, which include an emphasis on synchronized movement of air, land, and sea forces. Said one Ukrainian in the south to Carlotta Gall of the New York Times, “They fought in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the enemy there is not like the Russians.” 

But U.S.-provided cluster bombs are helping clear a path through the initial approaches into Russian-occupied territory, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday from Zaporizhzhia. However, “Ukraine still hasn’t reached the most formidable Russian defenses, a series of trenches, tank traps and other barriers. Military experts say Ukraine likely will need its Leopard 2 tanks and other Western-provided armored vehicles to push through those lines.”

One of the oft-praised benefits of cluster bombs is its ability to shred a section of trees, eliminating cover for Russian forces in occupied territory. During one such use of the weapons, “there was no tree left above waist height,” a soldier told the Journal. 

Worth noting: Ukraine and Russia are still conducting prisoner exchanges, including another such instance on Monday, according to the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War. Ukrainian officials said they received 22 prisoners from Russia, but they did not say how many Russian prisoners were returned to their homeland. 

Related reading: 

• “UAE, a US Alley, Looks to China and Russia for Deeper Ties,” the New York Times reported Tuesday from Dubai and Abu Dhabi; 
• “China assures Russia it remains ‘impartial’ on Ukraine war after attending Saudi peace talks,” CNN reported Tuesday from Hong Kong; 
• “After attacking Ukraine wheat exports, Russia faces own shipping challenge,” Reuters reported Tuesday from London; 
• “German arms maker takes Finland to market court over rifle choice,” Reuters reported separately on Tuesday from Helsinki.

Welcome to this Tuesday edition of The D Brief, brought to you by Ben Watson with Bradley Peniston. If you haven’t subscribed to this newsletter yet, you can do that here. On this day in 1998, Taliban fighters attacked an Iranian consulate in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif, killing 10 diplomats and a journalist. 

Eleven military vessels from China and Russia were found to be operating near the Aleutian Islands last week; they were met by four U.S. destroyers, Alaska’s two U.S. senators said in a Sunday statement. USA Today has a bit more.

DOD’s BG Ryder on Monday: “NORAD and NORTHCOM monitored their presence.  They were in international waters. At no point in time were they deemed to pose a threat. And so like any country, they are free to conduct exercises in international airspace, international waters. We will continue to monitor but, you know, I think that it’s no surprise to anyone that China and Russia continue to look at ways to cooperate and we’ll continue to monitor this situation and act appropriately.”

“The scale and complexity of this Russian and Chinese naval deployment is unprecedented,” Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., said in a statement Monday. “While I am glad the U.S. Navy deployed four destroyers and a P-8 aircraft to monitor the fleet, the exercise serves as a stark signal that generational investments in U.S. shipbuilding and ship maintenance to maintain deterrence are more necessary than ever.” 

China hacked Japan’s defense networks in 2020—and then did it again, officials say. Washington Post: “The 2020 penetration was so disturbing that Gen. Paul Nakasone, the head of the NSA and U.S. Cyber Command, and Matthew Pottinger, who was White House deputy national security adviser at the time, raced to Tokyo. They briefed the defense minister, who was so concerned that he arranged for them to alert the prime minister himself.”

Japan took steps to harden its defenses—but the following year, the Chinese hackers were discovered to still be in the country’s defense networks. “Since then, under American scrutiny, the Japanese have announced they are ramping up network security, boosting the cybersecurity budget tenfold over the next five years and increasing their military cybersecurity force fourfold to 4,000 people.” Read on, here.

China releases TV documentary highlighting Taiwan-invasion wargames. The eight-part series, “Chasing Dreams,” aired by state broadcaster CCTV earlier this week, “features military drills and testimonials by dozens of soldiers, of which several express their willingness to die in a potential attack against Taiwan,” AP reports.

Tensions rise as China demands Philippines move a grounded warship. Days after Chinese vessels blocked a resupply ship headed to a Philippine outpost on a South China Sea shoal, Beijing is demanding that Manila remove it. Reuters, here.

And lastly: There is still a fledgling resistance movement fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan, the New York Times reported Tuesday. Many of the soldiers holed up in a safehouse somewhere in northern Afghanistan, near the Salang Pass. They called themselves the Afghan Freedom Front. Read on for their fate, here.  

For the record: “The United States remains the largest donor to the Afghan people, having appropriated more than $2.35 billion since the Taliban takeover in August 2021,” America’s watchdog agency for Afghanistan reconstruction said in its 60th and most recent quarterly report (PDF), published Tuesday. And perhaps unsurprisingly, “the Taliban are comfortable accepting foreign support insofar as they can closely monitor the organizations, including restricting and controlling them, and claim some credit for the provision of the benefits,” the special inspector general said. 

Taliban interference with NGO work in the country has also recently escalated, “leading to a steady decline in humanitarian access in 2023, with a 32% increase in incidents between January and May 2023 as compared to the same period in 2022,” SIGAR said. 

And the group continues to show “no signs of bending to pressure for reform or compromise,” and its leaders “are unchecked by any meaningful political opposition,” according to UN officials. Read over the full report or comb through any of the previous 59 editions, here.

The post Today’s D Brief: Counteroffensive cluster bombs; China, Russia off Alaska; Japan military, hacked; Afghan resistance; And a bit more. appeared first on Defense One.

The Republican-backed constitutional measure would raise the threshold to approve an amendment from 50% to 60% of the vote, while also implementing more stringent standards for amendments to get on the ballot in the first place.

Tuesday’s ballot question, known as Issue 1, does not specifically address abortion, but the timing is no accident. If it passes, a super-majority of voters would be required to approve a November referendum that seeks to enshrine abortion rights into the state constitution.

Polls have found that the percentage of voters who favor the abortion amendment is just shy of 60%, suggesting Issue 1 could determine the outcome. Political groups on both sides of the abortion issue have poured millions of dollars into the state ahead of the vote.

Tuesday’s election, scheduled by the Republican-controlled legislature, is the latest statewide battle over abortion more than a year after the U.S. Supreme Court eliminated a nationwide right.

Ballot initiatives have become powerful tools for abortion rights activists in states where abortion opponents, usually Republicans, control the legislature or hold the governor’s office.

Voters in Kansas and Kentucky, both solidly conservative states, rejected measures last year that would have declared that their state constitutions do not protect abortion rights.

Early voting turnout in Ohio appeared to be extraordinarily high for an August special election. As of Friday, more than 575,000 early votes had been tallied, according to the Ohio secretary of state’s office, already nearing the total number of ballots cast in last year’s August primary election for state legislative seats.

There were long lines at some polling locations over the weekend, according to local news reports.

Early voter turnout in Ohio appeared to be extraordinarily high for an August special election. The Ohio secretary of state’s office said more than 575,000 early votes were cast as of Friday, already nearing the total number of ballots cast in last year’s August primary election for state legislative seats.

Some polling locations were reported to have long lines over the weekend.

MILLIONS IN SPENDING

Republican Governor Mike DeWine signed a six-week abortion ban into law in 2019, which went into effect following the Supreme Court’s decision. The ban was put on hold in September after a legal challenge from abortion clinics; the Ohio Supreme Court has agreed to decide the case.

Some groups opposed to Tuesday’s ballot question have emphasized that the referendum goes beyond abortion, arguing it is simply undemocratic to curb citizens’ power.

“This is much larger than one issue; it’s much larger than one party or one election,” said Jen Miller, the executive director of the League of Women Voters of Ohio. “This is about a freedom that Ohioans have had for more than a century.”

For instance, good government groups are working on a ballot question for 2024 that would amend the constitution to prevent gerrymandering, the process by which one party manipulates district lines to entrench power. If Tuesday’s referendum succeeds, getting that issue on the ballot would be far more challenging.

Last year, Ohio Republicans drew sharply partisan state legislative and congressional maps and defied court orders to revamp them; November’s elections were held using maps that had been ruled unconstitutional.

Abortion rights opponents have called the November referendum extreme, claiming its vague language would allow minors to get abortions and gender-affirming surgery without parental consent.

Supporters note that the amendment makes no mention of gender-affirming treatment or parental consent.

Tuesday’s election has drawn millions in outside spending, including from so-called “dark-money” groups that are not required to disclose their donors.

Illinois Republican mega-donor Richard Uihlein has donated at least $4 million to the pro-Issue 1 campaign, according to campaign filings. Other groups supporting Tuesday’s referendum have collected funds from Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America and The Concord Fund, a conservative dark-money group.

The anti-Issue 1 side has gotten support from the Tides Foundation, a California-based social justice organization, and the Sixteen Thirty Fund, a liberal dark-money group.

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Photographs from the scene showed how the grey Toyota Corolla had smashed into the house and become stuck there with its rear wheels hanging out of an upstairs room.

Firefighters attending the incident in Decatur Township, central Pennsylvania, said a rescue team stabilised the house while the driver was transferred to Geisinger Lewistown Hospital for treatment.

It took emergency crews approximately three hours to remove the Toyota from the home.

Photos posted to social media showed the severe damage the car left behind, with most of the upper front corner of the house obliterated.

Miraculously, no one else was injured in the crash.

Rescue crews helped cover up the damaged walls and roof of the house ahead of a looming storm, the fire company said.

The Junction Fire Company said the fire chief arrived at the home within minutes of the crash on Sunday afternoon.

It was not immediately clear how the bizarre incident occurred.

Junction Fire officials initially speculated that the driver may have struck a culvert and lost control of the vehicle, local media reported.

But police in Lewistown said the driver was “attempting to inflict self-harm due to a mental health episode”.

Criminal charges will be filed against the driver, a spokesperson said.

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