24, April 2018
Macron in US for 3 days, will attend first Trump state dinner 0
French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife have arrived in Washington for a three-day state visit as US President Donald Trump hosts his administration’s first official state visit of his presidency.
Impressed by the warm welcome he received for the Bastille Day ceremony last July in Paris, the US president has returned the favor by making Macron the first foreign leader of the Trump-era to receive a state visit.
The Macrons arrived at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington to the playing of both the French and American national anthem, where Macron said he was looking forward to the “very important” visit.
“This is a great honor and I think a very important state visit given the moment of our current environment,” Macron said Monday as he briefly spoke to reporters outside the plane, first conversing with the crowd in English and then in French.
The couple then took a motorcade into Washington, DC, and were spotted walking around downtown, just blocks from the White House.
“Is this agreement perfect and this JCPOA a perfect thing for our relationship with Iran? No,” Macron said on “Fox News Sunday,” before his trip to the US. “But for nuclear, what do you have as a better option? I don’t see it. What is the what-if scenario or your plan B? I don’t have any Plan B for nuclear against Iran. So that’s a question we will discuss.”
Melania Trump plans dinner menu, Democrats not invited
Donald Trump is the first president since Calvin Coolidge in the 1920s to end his first year in office without hosting a foreign leader on a state visit. But now Trump and his wife are preparing for a pomp display of hospitality. The US first lady has selected specific decor, entertainment and food options for Tuesday night’s state dinner, the White House said.
The menu will consist of three courses, which will include American dishes with French influences. The main course will be a rack of spring lamb with Carolina gold rice jambalaya.
In a break with tradition, AP has reported that Trump has invited no Democratic members of Congress or journalists. But at least one Democrat will be in the crowd: the office of Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards confirmed his attendance. Louisiana is a state with a strong French cultural heritage.
Approximately 150 guests will take their seats in the State Dining Room on Tuesday, making for a more intimate affair than those held by President Barack Obama. Obama’s guest lists numbered into the hundreds, requiring that the event be held in a tented pavilion erected on the South Lawn because no room in the White House can accommodate that many people.
Culled from Presstv
24, April 2018
Belo: French Cameroun forces killed, raped and burned civilians alive 0
The French Cameroun army caused mayhem over the weekend in Djichami, a small community in the Belo municipality Boyo Division. For the past three weeks, inhabitants of Belo, Anyajua, Dzikfin, and other small villages have been targeted by the Francophone dominated Cameroon military with scores of houses burnt down. It should be recalled that the Raster man (Sam Sawyer) who was infamously beheaded by the cowardly soldiers from French speaking Cameroun was from Belo.
Cameroon Intelligence Report sources on the ground revealed that the beheading of Sam Sawyer changed the phase of the revolution as the young men in his community enrolled massively in to the resistance army. Many of the Belo young men and women openly told our correspondent that they prefer to die fighting, than to be killed like Sam Sawyer whom they say was never involved in an armed resistance before his demise.
We understand that last week, a gendarme officer in Belo left his colleagues and went out with his gun raping women and young girls. The officer our informant noted was captured by unknown gun men, and shortly after pictures of him with hands tied ,soaked in his blood were circulating on social media. The Francophone administrators in the constituency were quoted as saying that the beheading of the officer prompted the killing Sam Sawyer. A position denied by many Ambazonians contacted by our reporter.
In retaliation to the abduction and killing of the said gendarmerie officer, French Cameroun troops invaded the neighboring communities’ and moved right as far as Njinikom, torturing and killing innocent civilians. The inhabitants of Belo have abandoned their ancestral homeland because of the continuous French Cameroun military incursions taking along with them their livestock. The French Cameroun army has been stealing goats, chicken and other foodstuffs in order to sustain their campaign in the area. With Belo now a ghost settlement, the inhabitants of Djichami reportedly destroyed the only bridge linking Belo and Djichami to prevent the blood thirsty French Cameroun soldiers from penetrating their neighborhoods.
This preventive measure could not protect the people of Djichami as the Francophone soldiers used the back corridor passing through Ndawara over the weekend and on Sunday morning killed 12 people. Homes were set on fire and an old man and his son were burnt alive. At the time of filing this report, we gathered that some armed men attacked the Gendarmerie Brigade down town Belo, but we are yet to confirm the casualties on the side of the French Cameroun army.
By Ntam Charles Ngeh in Bonn, Germany with files from Sama Ernest