Cameroon put the internet back on in its English-speaking regions on Wednesday (Jan. 17) after nearly four months.

But it only lasted for 48 hours. It was the latest example of a political strategy by the government to try and have it both ways. This week it switched on the internet ahead of a visit from a Confederation of African Football (CAF) delegation to towns in its troubled South West region. The delegation was there to examine the readiness of stadia and other facilities needed to host next year’s African Cup of Nations, the continent’s most high profile sporting event.

 After the CAF delegation moved out of the city of Limbe on Thursday (Jan.18), the internet left with them. The delegation visited the towns of Buea and Limbe over two days. During their stay in the region, local internet users could access internet normally. But soon after the delegation moved out of the city of Limbe on Thursday (Jan.18), the internet left with it. People in the region said that later in the evening the region still had internet but it was slow to the extent that nothing could be downloaded or uploaded.

Since Jan. 17, 2017, the internet in Cameroon’s South West and North West regions has been completely off or severely slowed down for a total of 206 days as of Jan. 19 this year, according to Internet Sans Frontieres.

The shutdown is part of a wider effort by the Cameroon government to clamp down on local activists in the English-speaking regions who have been protesting against what they say are injustices and economic depravity being imposed by the dominant Francophone government.

Otto Akam of the Buea Silicon Mountain hub of young digital startup owners said they had been expecting the internet to be switched off when the delegation left. He said the same thing happened when the Commonwealth secretary-general, Patricia Scotland, visited the region in December to meet religious, political and traditional leaders to find a way out of the ongoing crisis which has degenerated into an armed conflict. “We had 24 hours of smooth internet connectivity. It was completely switched off when she left. We returned to using other means of bypassing the blockage” he said.

Local journalists in the region, who asked not to be named, confirmed both events. The belief is that the temporary reinstatements are attempts to reassure important international guests like CAF and the Commonwealth that there are no issues with internet connectivity in the troubled region.

The internet was switched off in English-speaking Cameroon, on Oct. 1 when the region self-declared its independence with the formation of an interim government. Since then, citizens in the region have been using virtual private networks (VPN) to access the and bypass the blockage. A message circulated on WhatsApp groups while the internet was on advised internet users in the crisis region not to uninstall VPNs from their mobile devices because the internet reinstatement might last only two days; it did.

Source: Quartz Media

Russia says the United States has been leaking to the media the confidential financial data of the Russian diplomats based in America, thereby violating their privacy and diplomatic immunity.

US media outlet Buzzfeed reported Wednesday that US officials investigating allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election in the US were inspecting newly uncovered financial transactions between the Russian government and people or businesses inside the US.

Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement the following day that the transactions that had been leaked contained nothing except routine payments but that hey were being twisted to make them appear suspicious.

“It’s obvious that this could not have happened without the knowledge of the authorities of that country (the United States),” the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Thursday. “In other words, this intrusion on the sanctity of the accounts of the [Russian] embassy and its staff, who have diplomatic immunity, is the work of Washington officialdom.”

The ministry criticized Washington for “not ensuring the appropriate conditions for the functioning of Russia’s diplomatic missions,” saying the pressure on the diplomats “continues and is growing.”

The ministry demanded that Washington “immediately stop the unlawful distribution of confidential information… and hold responsible those who are to blame, including those who hold relevant posts in the American state administration.”

The US Justice Department’s special counsel, Robert Mueller, has been leading a team of investigators looking into allegations of Russian interference in the presidential election that put Donald Trump into office. Both Moscow and the White House have repeatedly dismissed the allegations.

Investigators are now looking into a number of transactions between the government in Moscow and entities in the US flagged to the Treasury Department as suspicious.

A spokesman for the Russian Embassy, Nikolay Lakhonin, told Buzzfeed on Wednesday that the embassy’s transactions in America were in compliance with the law and said that the leaked activity reports were intended to “discredit Russian official missions.”

Source: Presstv

The last three years were the hottest on record, the United Nations weather agency said Thursday, citing fresh global data underscoring the dramatic warming of the planet.

Consolidated data from five leading international weather agencies shows that “2015, 2016 and 2017 have been confirmed as the three warmest years on record”, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said.

It added that 2016 remains the hottest year ever measured due to the warming effect of El Nino, while 2017 was the warmest non-El Nino year, beating out 2015 by less than one hundredth of a degree.

“The long-term temperature trend is far more important than the ranking of individual years, and that trend is an upward one,” WMO secretary-general Petteri Taalas said in a statement.

The 21st century has so far been a period of the hottest weather, accounting for 17 of the 18 warmest years on record.

“And the degree of warming during the past three years has been exceptional,” Tasslas added.

The WMO also highlighted the intensification of weather and climate related disasters, which hit record levels in the United States last year, while multiple countries were devastated by cyclones, floods and drought.

The WMO findings were based on data provided by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, US space agency NASA, Britain’s Met office, the European Center for medium range weather forecasts and the Japan Meteorological Agency.

Using those inputs, the UN said that the average global surface temperature last year was 1.1 degrees Celsius (1.98 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.

Reacting to the results, experts warned that the planet was moving closer to a set of red lines laid out in the historic 2015 Paris climate agreement.

That treaty calls for capping global warming at “well under” two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit).

“When even ‘colder’ (non-El Nino) years are rewriting the warmest year record books we know we have a problem,” said Dave Reay, the Carbon Management chair at the University of Edinburgh.

“Global temperatures will continue to bob up and down from year to year, but the climate tide beneath them is rising fast.”

‘Focus’ needed

There is mounting global consensus on the need to slash CO2 and methane emissions, improve energy efficiency, and develop technologies to remove CO2 from the air.

But US President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris accord has rattled the international community and complicated efforts at forging joint action — even though many US state governments insist they remain committed to cut emissions.

Since industrialization took off in the early 19th century, CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere have increased by nearly half, from 280 parts per million to 407 parts per million.

Trump will head to the World Economic Forum in Davos next week, an annual gathering of global elite, where he will confront some of the political and civil society leaders who fought hard for the Paris deal.

“Collaborative efforts” to combat unprecedented shared challenges will be a major theme of meeting, WEF boss Klaus Schwab said this week.

“The record temperature should focus the minds of world leaders, including President Trump, on the scale and urgency of the risks that people, rich and poor, face around the world from climate change,” said Bob Ward, policy director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment and the London School of Economics.

(Source: AFP)

Two weeks after their arrest in Nigeria, Interim Government of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia have alleged that its leaders have been denied access to their lawyers and family members by the head of the DSS Lawal Daura. Ambazonian Secretary for Communication and IT, the Right Honorable Chris Anu, issued the alarm in a statement in Abuja.

The Interim Government hinted that the Buhari administration had no right to arrest their leaders since most of them were on refugee status in Nigeria. The statement noted:“The interim government of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia (the former British Southern Cameroon) notes with dismay the fact that since abducted at gunpoint on January 5, 2018, President Julius Tabe and 10 other members of his cabinet have not been granted access to any lawyers and family members by the Nigerian Government which we are now aware that in complicity with the Cameroon regime in Yaounde, engineered their abduction.

“We condemn vehemently, the fact that the Nigerian Government, more than a week after the abductions has not as much considered a press statement on the abductions even when the majority of those abducted are duly registered refugees in Nigeria. “Nigeria is a signatory to international conventions on human rights and to be acting recklessly as it is doing in this case is a breach of those conventions.”

The Ambazonian leaders – Sikiku Ayuk Tabe, Prof. Che Awasum, Barrister. Nalowa Bih, Dr. Fidelis Che, Dr. Nfor Nfor, Dr. Henry Kimeng, Prof. Che Awasum, Mr Tassang Wilfred, Dr. Ojong Okonghor, Barrister Shufai Berinyuh, Barrister Eyambe Elias and Dr. Cornelius Kwanga – were arrested at Nera hotel by the DSS in Abuja on January 5 while holding a meeting.

By Kinsley Betek with files from the Nigerian Vanguard