Headline News

11, March 2019

Ethiopian Airlines launches forensic probe into crash ⁰

Ethiopian Airlines says it has teamed up with all stakeholders including international organizations to conduct forensic investigations to the cause of Sunday’s accident.

The probe it said will also help identify victims of those who perished in the crash.

In a statement posted to twitter, the airline said a committee made up of Ethiopian airlines, Ethiopian Civil Aviation Authority and the Transport Authority has been set up to carry out the probe.

Ethiopian Airlines will release further information as soon as it is available through its website and social media pages.

The airline said it has contacted families of the victims to inform them of the tragic accident.

It added that once the identities of the deceased are established, their bodies will be delivered to their families and loved ones.

‘‘Ethiopian Airlines will release further information as soon as it is available through its website and social media pages’‘, it added.

Africa News

11, March 2019

FIFA President warns Oceania against abuse of the beautiful game ⁰

FIFA president Gianni Infantino on Saturday issued a final warning to the Oceanic Football Federation (OFC) while in New Zealand to attend its convention and elect a new president.

Infantino’s message came a few weeks ago following an investigation into the World Cup in Russia.

“The time when football was being abused for personal ends is gone, but from what I’ve seen, I’m sure the message has definitely gone because it’s the last chance for Oceania. and I think that from now on, and with the reforms that have been made in the last six months, in terms of good governance in the Confederation, we can really focus on football “, he said.

Last week, the world football governing body suspended Oceania President, David Chung for six years of corruption over $10 million OFC building project in Auckland.

Oceania is made up of largely small Pacific island nations and the smallest of FIFA’s six continental confederations.

The confederation has a long history of governance problems, although the new president, Lambert Matlock of Vanuatu, has said that they have embarked on “huge reforms” since David Chung’s resignation last year.

AFP

11, March 2019

US: Sentor Sanders says Trump ‘does not know the difference between truth and lies’ ⁰

US Senator Bernie Sanders, who announced he is running for president again in the 2020 elections, has lashed out at US President Donald Trump, calling him a “pathological liar,” who “embarrasses” the United States daily.

Speaking at a campaign rally in in Concord, New Hampshire on Sunday, the Independent senator from Vermont who caucuses with Democrats, accused the president of constantly defending authoritarianism, and added that Trump “does not know the difference between truth and lies.”

“As many of you know, all over the world today, there is a great struggle taking place between a growing or authoritarianism and democracy. And Trump is consistently on the wrong side of that struggle,” he said.

“Time and time again he has words of praise and affection for those leaders who despise democracy, while picking fights with longtime democratic allies. Democracy is about serious debate over public policy, not having a president who is a pathological liar and has told thousands of blatant lies since he is in office,” he stated.

“Now I don’t care, people in a democracy have different points of view — and all of us have conservative friends that we argue –we have a debate. But it is not acceptable to me and I think not acceptable to vast majority of the American people no matter what their political perspective is, that we have a president who simply does not know the difference between truth and lies,” he added.

Sanders continued that “Trump told the world very clearly how he feels about democracy and dissent, when he refused to criticize Saudi Arabia after that despotic regime murdered a journalist in cold blood.”

The 77-year-old lawmaker described as beyond disgraceful Trump’s reference to the American media as enemies of the people.

The Vermont senator stressed that such attitude is that of a demagogue who instead of accepting responsibility for his actions, claims that what everyone is saying about him is a lie.

Sanders, who has been a relentless critic of Trump, has also called him “the most dangerous president in modern American history.”

“We are running against a president who is undermining American democracy as he leads us in an authoritarian direction,” Sanders said in an email to Reuters last month after announced his 2020 election campaign.

Trump has in turn railed against what he claims is the Democratic Party’s turn to socialism, citing the rising popularity of Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, both self-proclaimed democratic socialists.

Sanders

A former mayor of Burlington, Vermont, Sanders won a US House of Representatives seat in 1990, making him the first independent elected to the House in 40 years. In 2006, he won a US Senate seat and in 2018 was voted in for a third six-year term.

Sanders made an unsuccessful bid for the presidency in 2016, losing out to Hillary Clinton, who was in turn defeated by Trump.

His call for universal health care, a $15 minimum wage and free public university education has gained huge strong support among young liberals.

He mounted a fierce challenge to Clinton as he spoke to swelling crowds and garnered passionate support on social media. His 2016 campaign also rejected the use of corporate money and instead relied on small-dollar donations.

Presstv

10, March 2019

UK: Prime Minister May faces heavy Brexit defeat in parliament ⁰

British Prime Minster Theresa May’s Brexit deal faces a heavy defeat in parliament on Tuesday because she has so far secured no major changes from the European Union, the leaders of two major eurosceptic factions in parliament said on Sunday.

Just 19 days before the United Kingdom is due to leave the EU on March 29, May’s is scrambling – so far unsuccessfully – to secure last-minute changes to an EU exit agreement before a vote on Tuesday on whether to approve the deal.

If she fails, lawmakers are expected to force May to seek a delay to Brexit that some fear could see the 2016 decision to leave the bloc reversed. Others argue that without a delay Britain faces chaos if it leaves without a deal on March 29.

Nigel Dodds, the deputy leader of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) which props up May’s minority government, and Steve Baker, a leading figure in the large eurosceptic faction of her Conservative party, warned “the political situation is grim”.

“An unchanged withdrawal agreement will be defeated firmly by a sizeable proportion of Conservatives and the DUP if it is again presented to the Commons,” they wrote in the Sunday Telegraph.

The Sunday Times said May was battling to save her job as aides were considering persuading her to offer to resign in a bid to get the deal approved. The newspaper also said cabinet ministers have spoken about whether to insist she goes as early as this week.

Parliament rejected May’s deal by a record margin in January, prompting the British leader to return to Brussels in search of changes to address the so-called Irish backstop – an insurance policy designed to prevent the return of a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland.

UK parliament

Many British lawmakers object to the policy on the grounds that it could leave Britain subject to EU rules indefinitely and cleave Northern Ireland away from the rest of the country.

But, May’s attempts to get the clause rewritten have so far failed to yield any result, with EU negotiators unwilling to meet her demands, and Britain rejecting a compromise offer.

Britain’s opposition Labour Party should support staying in the EU if there is a second referendum, the party’s Brexit spokesman, Keir Starmer, said on Sunday.

“If there’s a public vote that would operate as a lock, if you like, on any deal that Theresa May get through. If that is the position, then in my view, the default ought to be ‘remain’,” Starmer told Sky News.

However, Starmer said the party would not be seeking to secure support in parliament for a second referendum on Tuesday.

(Source: Reuters)

10, March 2019

President Erdogan says US angered by Turkey’s independence ⁰

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says the United States is pressuring Turkey to cancel an arms agreement with Russia because Washington is angered by Ankara’s independence.

“The issue is not about (the Russian defense system) S-400. It is because Turkey takes action of its own will regarding regional developments, particularly in Syria,” President Erdogan said in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir on Saturday.

Turkey has been maintaining military presence in Syria to ward off Kurdish militants, whom it associates with anti-Ankara separatists. The US, which has also been present on Syrian soil, has been arming those Kurds under the pretext of helping them fight the Takfiri terror group of Daesh. Ankara has been at loggerheads with Washington over that support.

Russia and Turkey finalized an agreement on the delivery of Russian S-400 missile defense systems in December 2017. Turkey is expected to take delivery of the systems between later this year and early next year. The US has been selling its own Patriot missile systems to regional countries to push back against Russia’s expanding influence among them.

A day before Erdogan made the comments, the US Department of Defense warned Turkey of “grave consequences” if it took delivery of the Russian equipment. “They (the Turks) would not have access to Patriot and the F-35,” acting Pentagon spokesman Charlie Summers said, also referring to an advanced American fighter jet that the Turks plan to purchase.

PressTV-US warns Turkey of 'grave consequences' over S-400 deal

The US was about to sell the Patriots to Turkey before Ankara chose to purchase the Russian systems. It is also contracted to deliver 100 F-35 stealth warplanes to Turkey. Washington claims that members of the Western military alliance of NATO, including Turkey, should be using certain weapons to ensure “interoperability.”

Erdogan, however, said, “Everyone knows that this issue has nothing to do with either NATO and the F-35 project nor the security of the US.”

Turkish-US tensions are at a peak mainly due to Washington’s support for the Kurds and Turkey’s subsequent imprisonment of an American pastor.

Last year, Ankara also imposed tariffs on US goods in response to American tariffs on Turkish-supplied steel and aluminum.

The two sides are separately at odds over Washington’s refusal to extradite Fetullah Gulen, a Pennsylvania-based Turkish cleric accused of masterminding an abortive 2016 coup against the Turkish government.

The situation was not defused despite Turkey’s release of the pastor, whom it had detained over alleged links to anti-Ankara outfits.

Source: Presstv

10, March 2019

Colombia: Plane crash leaves 14 people dead ⁰

Fourteen people were killed in a plane crash in the Colombian plains province of Meta on Saturday, the country’s civil aviation agency said.

The Special Administrative Unit of Civil Aeronautics said there were no survivors of the crash, which occurred after the DC-3 aircraft made a distress call at 10:40 a.m. local time (1540 GMT).

The plane, which is owned by Laser Aereo airlines, was en route from the southern city of San Jose del Guaviare to central Villavicencio, the agency said.

It crashed about midway through its flight, in San Carlos de Guaroa municipality.

The airline said it had no immediate comment.

In a later statement posted on Twitter, the agency named those who had died, including the mayor of a small town in the jungle province of Vaupes.

The aircraft’s navigability permissions were up-to-date, as were the medical certifications of its crew, the agency added.

(Source: Reuters)

10, March 2019

Cameroon and Nigeria Uproot Thousands from Safe Haven ⁰

An estimated 30,000 refugees have been uprooted by officials in Cameroon and Nigeria this month and sent to known hotbeds of insurgents including Boko Haram on the Nigerian side of the border.

Humanitarian groups including Action against Hunger are questioning the wisdom of forcing refugees to move to the city of Rann in Borno state, the epicentre of the decade-long insurgency that has killed more than 27,000.

“Reports from sources on the ground indicate that these people are in dire need of aid,” a UN briefing note stated.

There were also questions about whether the returns complied with international law on refugees, which require returns to be voluntary, the Agence France Press reported.

International and national humanitarian organizations abandoned Rann in January due to ongoing insecurity.

Shashwat Saraf, the country director of Action Against Hunger in Nigeria, said it was “difficult to imagine” it being safe for anyone to return. “Alarming” levels of severe acute malnutrition were found among children under five, he said.

The mass movement of internally displaced people comes as President Muhammadu Buhari takes office for a second term, having been declared the winner of February 23 national election marred by mechanical errors with the voter card readers, a weeklong postponement, reports of vote-buying, and extremist attacks in the northeast.

Voter turnout was at a historic low at 35.6 percent of the population.

“The numbers alone are indicting,” said Adewunmi Emoruwa of The Election Network. “We have witnessed a record number of cancelled votes – more than double the numbers from the previous poll – and which is only a reflection of the widespread irregularities across every part of the country. We all observed as thugs had a field day unleashing terror on demographically profiled voters, which led to the suppressed turnout that has been recorded.”

Buhari won in 19 states – including the two most populous, Lagos and Kano – while the opposition candidate, Atiku Abubakar, was victorious in 17.

The two men are both northern Muslims in their 70s who have long been in politics. Buhari is seen by many as a strict, inflexible but personally incorruptible figure, while many hoped Atiku, a wealthy businessman and former vice-president, would enact policies to help boost Nigeria’s struggling economy.

Source: Indepthnews.net

10, March 2019

Constitutional crisis worsens in Cameroon ⁰

What started as a struggle for sovereignty by citizens of southern Cameroon has spiraled into a full-blown crisis. Rebel groups seeking an end to what they consider domination of the anglophone south by the francophone north have taken up weapons against the government’s security forces, causing hundreds to die while tens of thousands are forced from their homes.

Factories have been shuttered, roads have become impassable, warehouses have been destroyed, and truck drivers are routinely kidnapped for ransom.

The current crisis heated up in 2016 when activists in Cameroon’s western provinces protested the official use of the French language in these predominantly anglophone regions.
In the past two years, those protests have turned deadly.

A prominent Cameroonian scholar and professor at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, Achille Mbembe, observes that Anglophone Cameroonians “don’t feel there is a place for them in the current administrative and political order in the country.”

People complain about being marginalized because the administration doesn’t speak their language, Mr. Mbembe says, adding that the controversy over language is an expression of deeper, long-held grievances around good governance and equitable political and social representation.

Humanitarian problems

UN Secretary-General António Guterres in September 2017 urged Cameroonian authorities to “promote measures of national reconciliation aimed at finding a durable solution to the crisis, including by addressing its root causes.”

In her report to the 39th session of the UN’s Human Rights Council last September, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet mentioned the crisis in Cameroon: “Fighting has intensified in the so-called anglophone regions between security forces and armed groups.

“The government has not acted to promote the conference on dialogue suggested by religious leaders, and there is still no mechanism in place which could envisage a halt in hostilities in the short term.”

Approximately 437,000 people are internally displaced across the affected provinces, said David Malan of the local Norwegian Refugees Council Office in an interview with Africa Renewal.
Most displaced people are taking refuge in remote rural areas or in surrounding bushlands and forests, several humanitarian agencies confirmed. Mr. Malan added that “getting them needed help has proved challenging.”

Business

Cameroon’s GDP growth had been projected to reach 3.8% this year, a rebound from the previous year, due to an increase in natural gas production. That goal is now likely unattainable.
The country’s economic growth “depends on the government’s ability to successfully handle the violent secessionist conflict in the two anglophone regions,” the World Bank stated last October.

The western provinces, hotbed of the crisis, produce cocoa and coffee, the country’s two main agriculture exports. Oil production, which accounts for an estimated 40% of the country’s GDP, mostly takes place in the coast of the Southwest Region.

Groupement inter-patronal du Cameroun (GICAM), an association of business leaders, declared in September that violence in two anglophone regions in the west of the country was forcing companies to halt operations.

Due to the crisis, GICAM estimates total loss of revenue as of October 2018 to be about $470 million, while 13,000 jobs, mostly in the agricultural sector, have been or are about to be lost.

Regional concerns

While fighting so far is within Cameroonian borders, there are fears its escalation could destabilize all of Central Africa and parts of West Africa.

Cameroonian refugees have begun moving to border communities in Cross River State in the south of neighboring Nigeria. They arrive nearly destitute and eke out a living in low-wage jobs.
They are mostly young people and women who have witnessed violence firsthand. “I could not take any clothes. There was shooting—they killed my uncle and shot my cousin,” a 39-year-old mother of four told UNHCR, in a story published on the refugee agency’s website.

Janet Obi, who used to trade in cocoa and clothes back home in Cameroon, is now tending cornfields in a village in Nigeria, the Qatar-based media company Al Jazeera reported in August.
“I get paid between 500 to 1,000 naira [$2 to $4] a day,” Stella Obi (no relation of Janet) told Al Jazeera as she worked the soil in a small vegetable field. “I never tasted this kind of suffering when I was in my village in Cameroon.”

These refugees are “employed as cheap day labourers, mostly in cocoa fields,” Chiara Cavalcanti of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCR) told Africa Renewal. Just as it is for western Cameroon, cocoa is Cross River State’s main commercial agricultural product.

Meantime, rights groups continue to denounce both the activities of the separatists and the central government’s tough response. Political observers warn that government crackdowns may exacerbate the situation.

Cameroon gained independence in 1961 and operated a federal system comprising two former UN trusteeship territories: French Cameroun and British Southern Cameroon. In 1972, the federal state was abrogated in favour of the United Republic of Cameroon, which was later renamed Republic of Cameroon.

In 1990, the first All Anglophone Conference was held in Buea, the historic capital of British Southern Cameroon. The participants called for a return to a federal state by April 1993, deeming the federal arrangement a better option than the prevailing unitary system.

The dream of a federal government did not materialize, sparking complaints over the years by people in the western regions that they were being marginalized by the central government.
Although the government has made efforts to address the situation by promising an inclusive approach to governance, few or no actions seem to have been taken, which prompted the latest protests and the ensuing violence.

The Catholic Church steps in

The Catholic Church recently renewed its calls for dialogue. “The Catholic Church can help break this dangerous stalemate,” suggests the Brussels-based international policy research group International Crisis Group (ICG).

Some 30% of the Cameroonian population is Catholic, giving the religious body clout to bring the warring parties to a peace table, the ICG believes.

Still, there appears to be divisions between anglophone and francophone clergies. Those divisions “stand in the way of [the Catholic Church] playing a constructive role,” notes the ICG.
To resolve the crisis and bring stability to the country, Mr. Guterres indicated his preference for a “genuine and inclusive dialogue between the government and the communities in the South-West and North-West regions.”

Culled from NewsGhana

9, March 2019

US: White House communications director and ex-Fox executive Shine resigns ⁰

White House deputy chief of staff and de facto communications director Bill Shine has stepped down after just eight months leading President Donald Trump’s communications team, the White House has announced.

Shine, a former top Fox News executive, will work as a senior adviser to Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement on Friday.

Sanders added that President Trump accepted Shine’s resignation on Thursday night.

“Bill Shine has done an outstanding job working for me and the administration,” Trump said in a statement. “We will miss him in the White House, but look forward to working together on the 2020 presidential campaign, where he will be totally involved. Thank you to Bill and his wonderful family!”

Shine joined the White House in July 2018. So far five men, including Shine, have resigned from this post under Trump. He was brought on in an attempt to burnish Trump’s image.

“Serving President Trump and this country has been the most rewarding experience of my entire life,” Shine said in a statement. “To be a small part of all this president has done for the American people has truly been an honor. I’m looking forward to working on President Trump’s reelection campaign and spending more time with my family.”

PressTV-Fears of 'brain drain' hit White House amid staff exits

Shine, 55, had been scheduled to travel with President Trump to Vietnam for the second North Korea summit but suddenly dropped off the trip two days before, according to reports.

He has kept a low profile throughout his time in the White House.

Presstv

9, March 2019

Yaounde to promote work opportunities for women in digital sector ⁰

Cameroon will make efforts to enhance the skills of and opportunities for women in the digital business as part of the measures to draw more young girls to the sector, said its telecommunications minister on Thursday.

“The more women we have in digital business, the better for the emancipation and growth of women,” said Minister of Post and Telecommunications Minette Libom Li Likeng.

“Digital economy is the future for our country and Africa. It plays a very important role in economies in developing countries. We will look for efficient and effective ways to encourage young digital entrepreneurs,” Likeng said while meeting with young female digital entrepreneurs at the National Advanced School of Post and Telecommunications.

The event was part of the activities to mark the International Women’s Day on March 8. Over 2,900 female students have been trained by the school with government support, Likeng said, calling for efforts to enroll more girls to the school.

Xinhuanet