US President Barack Obama has held a brief meeting with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to talk about the situation in Syria and Ukraine.

Sunday’s short talk on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Lima, Peru, was the first one the two world leaders had since Donald Trump won the US presidency and believed to be the last one to be held in person.

The US president called on Russia to be committed to the Minsk deal, aimed at controlling the crisis in eastern Ukraine, while stressing the need for continuation of talks on Syria, according to the White House.

“The president urged President Putin to uphold Russia’s commitments under the Minsk agreements, underscoring the US and our partners’ commitment to Ukraine’s sovereignty,” AFP quoted a White House official as saying.

Obama also “noted the need for Secretary (John) Kerry and Foreign Minister (Sergei) Lavrov to continue pursuing initiatives, together with the broader international community, to diminish the violence and alleviate the suffering of the Syrian people.”

The four-minute meeting was held during Obama’s last foreign trip as the president. In the run-up to the 2016 presidential election held on November 8, Trump, the GOP nominee, called for a “very, very good relationship” with Putin, saying he is a better leader than Obama.

As Obama prepares to leave the White House, ties between Moscow and Washington remain at the lowest point since the Cold War, most notably over the situation in Syria and Ukraine.

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US President-elect Donald Trump has agreed to pay $25 million in order to settle the lawsuit against Trump University, according to New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. Schneiderman made the announcement Friday, saying that the settlement amounted to “a major victory for the over 6,000 victims of his fraudulent university.”

The settlement includes all the three lawsuits filed against the university. Trial for one of the cases was slated to begin on November 28. The money would be split among the suing students. According to Schneiderman, Trump would also pay an extra $1 million in penalties to the state of New York.

The university, which operated between 2004 and 2010, has been accused of being a sham aimed at ripping off students, who claim they were tricked into believing that the New York businessman would handpick the instructors. Apparently, the students were initially lured through free seminars, where the instructors steered them into higher cost ones.

Later on Friday, Trump’s office confirmed the announcement, saying that Trump agreed to settle the case in order to focus on his presidency. “We are pleased to announce the complete resolution of all litigation involving Trump University,” the Trump organization said. “While we have no doubt that Trump University would have prevailed at trial based on the merits of this case, resolution of these matters allows President-Elect Trump to devote his full attention to the important issues facing our great nation.”

During the presidential campaign, Trump had accused the federal judge overseeing the case of being hostile to him. “I believe he happens to be Spanish, which is fine. He is Hispanic, which is fine. And we haven’t asked for recusal, which we may do,” He said in May. “But we have a judge who is very hostile. Should’ve been thrown out. Wasn’t thrown out.”

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The remains of the former Secretary General of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) and President of the Cameroon Red Cross (CRC) will leave the Yaoundé General Hospital mortuary on the 24^th of November 2016 for its final resting place.

According to a program published by the Cameroon Red Cross, the late William Aurélien Eteki Mboumoua, will embark on his last journey from Yaoundé to Douala on 24 November, where he will be buried on Saturday the 26th of November at the Bois de Singes cemetery. A ceremony will be held at the Yaoundé General Hospital in the presence of numerous political figures, members of the government, the great family of the International Committee of the Red Cross including administrative, traditional and religious authorities.

William Aurélien Eteki Mboumoua had a meteoric rise in the Cameroon political system. He was Minister of National Education, Minister of Youth and Sports, Minister of Culture, Chancellor of the University of Yaoundé, Special Advisor to the President of the Republic, Minister of Missions at the Presidency of the Republic, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Member of the Executive Council and Vice-President of UNESCO, Secretary General of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), Member of the Advisory Committee of the United Nations for Disarmament Studies and National President of Cameroon Red Cross.

Born at the Bonadibong neighborhood in Douala, Aurélien Eteki Mboumoua died on Wednesday the 26^th of October at the age of 83.

By Chi Prudence Asong

Several Turkish soldiers at NATO’s central command in Ramstein has sought asylum in Germany in the wake of Turkey’s widespread crackdown against military personnel, journalists and political activists. According to a German official, quoted by the dpa news agency, family members of the soldiers stationed at the airbase insouthwestern Germany have also applied for asylum.

Paul Junker, a regional official in nearby Kaiserslautern, said the asylum requests had come from “more than one family,” but declined to say how many individuals were involved. German Interior Ministry spokesman Johannes Dimroth said last month that 35 Turkish diplomatic passport holders had formally applied for asylum in Germany. The actual figure of the asylum seekers, he said, could be higher.

Relations between Turkey and Germany have strained following the July 15 botched coup, which Ankara claims to have been organized by US-based opposition cleric Fethullah Gulen. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier often clashed with Turkish officials during a visit to Ankara this week, reflecting tough times in their relations.

After 11 years of negotiations, Turkey’s prospects of joining the EU look more remote than ever, with Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu telling Steinmeier on Tuesday that Turkey was “fed up” with the European Union.  “We are truly fed up of these statements degrading Turkey. The criteria are clear but there are double standards and a two-faced approach. This is what we don’t like,” Cavusoglu told a joint news conference. Over 240 people were killed and more than 2,100 others injured in the coup attempt, which Gulen has strongly condemned and denied any involvement in.

Tens of thousands of people, including military personnel, judges and teachers, have been suspended, dismissed or detained as part of the post-coup crackdown. International rights groups argue that Ankara’s crackdown has gone far beyond the so-called Gulenists and targeted Kurds as well as government critics.

Turkey detains, suspends mayors over PKK links

On Thursday, Turkish officials arrested and suspected three mayors in the Kurdish-majority southeastern part of the country over alleged links to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militant group.

Unnamed security sources said police detained the mayor of Van city, Bekir Kaya, and four other municipal officials early Thursday.

The sources said the mayors of Mardin and Siirt citties, identified as Ahmet Turk and Tuncer Bakirhan respectively, had also been discharged and replaced with administrators appointed by the Interior Ministry. Earlier this month, 13 legislators from the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) were arrested after being accused of links to Kurdish militants.

Party leaders Selahattin Demirtaş and Figen Yüksekdağ remain in custody along with eight others, waiting to stand trial on terrorism-related charges. A shaky ceasefire between the PKK, which has been calling for an autonomous Kurdish region since 1984, and the Turkish government collapsed in July 2015. Ever since, attacks on Turkish security forces have soared.

Over the past few months, Turkish ground and air forces have been carrying out operations against PKK positions in the country’s troubled southeastern border region as well as Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan region and northern Syria.

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Russia has decided to withdraw its signature from the founding statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), saying the tribunal has failed to live up to the hopes of the international community. In a statement issued on Wednesday, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said it would pull out from the ICC following a decree by President Vladimir Putin, who decided for Moscow not to be “a participant in the ICC statute.”

The statement said the main reason for the withdrawal was the ICC’s way of treating Russia’s brief war with neighboring Georgia in 2008, adding that the international tribunal had ignored Georgia’s aggression against pro-Moscow civilians in the separatist region of South Ossetia. “In these conditions one cannot speak of trust in the International Criminal Court,” the ministry said, calling the ICC’s work as “one-sided and inefficient.”

The statement also slammed the ICC’s lack of independence in dealing with war cases, saying “The court did not live up to the hopes associated with it.” Russia has yet to ratify the Rome Statute that set up the ICC, the world’s first permanent war crimes court. The government has only been a signatory to the treaty since 2000.

The decision by Moscow to pull out from the ICC could further complicate the situation surrounding the court as several African members, such as South Africa and Burundi, have already decided to withdraw from the tribunal, saying it is biased and lacks justice. Gambia has also notified the United Nations that it would leave the ICC next week.

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The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has been allowed to run child pornography websites as an attempt to track their users, court documents reveal. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has obtained an affidavit that states the bureau has run at least 23 websites in its operations to hunt down pedophiles and promoters of child abuse, the New York Daily News reported Sunday.

The new revelation means that the extent of FBI’s secret sting was beyond the initial assessments. It was revealed last year that FBI agents had operated a child porn site for 13 days  and used it in an international operation. The websites were all located in the so-called dark web, meaning that special software were needed to access them. The FBI oversaw the sites via its “network investigative technique” (NIT), the document noted.

Interestingly, all of the websites were operating from a “government facility,” so that NIT could collect the users’ “request data” more easily, the affidavit added. FBI spokesman Christopher Allen told tech news website Ars Technica that it is “patently not true” to assume that the bureau is commonly running child porn websites. However, he did not deny the existence of FBI-run websites either.

The report came less than a week after a former official with the US Defense Intelligence Agency was sentenced to 20 years in prison for producing child pornography. Army Lieutenant Colonel Steven Frederiksen, 42, received the term on November 8, after admitting to luring six girls, aged between 14 and 17, into producing indecent photos and videos through social media. He used his government laptop for the purpose.

According to the Crimes Against Children Research Center, child pornography is one of the fastest growing underground business online, with an estimated revenue of $3 billion. The Association of Sites Advocating Child Protection (ASACP) states that the US has the largest share of commercialized child pornography websites, hosting nearly half of world’s child porn sites.

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Demonstrators have again taken to the streets in cities across the United States to protest against Republican nominee Donald Trump’s victory in the November 8 presidential election, voicing concerns that he will strike a blow against civil rights.

In the state of California, hundreds of high school and university students on Thursday walked out of classes to join other protesters who held demonstrations in the cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco. Police arrested dozens of protesters in both cities. Similar rallies were held in Minneapolis, New York, Washington, DC, and Texas.

A number of demonstrators marched from the White House, where Trump held his first transition meeting with President Barack Obama on Thursday, to the Trump International Hotel some blocks away. The protesters were carrying signs against racism and in favor of unity. They were also chanting “love Trumps hate.”

“This generation deserves better than Donald Trump,” said Lily Morton, 17, who joined classmates from the Georgetown Day School. “The queer people, colored people, women, girls, everyone that is going to be affected by this, we need to protest to help them.”

Tens of thousands of protesters, including school and college students, held demonstrations in more than a dozen major US cities, including in New York, Los Angeles and Oakland, California on Wednesday. The protesters slammed Trump’s controversial campaign rhetoric about undocumented immigrants, Muslims and other groups. They expressed their anger and sadness at the shocking victory of Trump by putting his effigies on fire in California, Philadelphia, Boston and Portland, Oregon, and Washington.

Trump took to twitter late on Thursday to hit back at protesters, calling them “professionals incited by the media.” Trump supporters say the protesters are not respecting the democratic process. This tweet also comes after The New York Times reported his aides took control of his Twitter account during his presidential campaign hoping to tame his controversial Internet presence.

Trump stunned the world on Wednesday by defeating heavily favored Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton in Tuesday’s presidential election, sending the United States on a new, uncertain path.

Trump’s election campaign had been marred by his disparaging remarks against minorities in the US. His comments include a call to ban all Muslims from coming to America as well as stopping Mexican migrants by building a long wall along the US-Mexico border.

He has also sought for a database to track Muslims across the United States and said that the US would have “absolutely no choice” but to close down mosques.

Trump’s proposal was widely condemned by Muslim and human rights groups as well as his Democratic rivals and many of his Republican proponents who describe the proposal as divisive, counterproductive and contrary to American values.

Culled from Presstv

US President Barack Obama has called his newly-elected successor Donald Trump to congratulate him on his election victory and invite him to the White House to discuss the transition of power.

Obama made the call on early Wednesday, when Trump had secured enough electoral votes to beat his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, the White House said. The two were slated to meet on Thursday.

Obama also called Clinton, his former secretary of state between 2009 and 2013, to express his “admiration for the strong campaign she waged throughout the country,” according to a statement by White House press secretary Josh Earnest. The president officially endorsed Clinton in June and hit the campaign trail to garner support for the former first lady.

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Talks on climate change and the implementation of the landmark Paris climate agreement have started in Morocco, amid a threatening rise in global temperatures and greenhouse gases to new heights. Negotiations over global warming and climate change kicked off in the western Moroccan city of Marrakesh on Monday, with diplomats from 196 countries across the world discussing the planet-saving deal reached in the French capital last December. As many as 15,000 negotiators, CEOs and environment activists settle in for the 12-day talks from November 7-18.

The Paris Agreement seeks to wean the world economy off fossil fuels in the second half of the century and cap the global average rise in temperatures below two degrees Celsius (36 degrees Fahrenheit). “We have made possible what everyone said was impossible,” French Environment Minister Segolene Royal said at the opening ceremony, adding that 100 countries had ratified the climate deal, which entered into force last Friday.

US election overshadowing climate meeting

The climate meeting this year is heavily impacted by the US presidential election and its outcome, as Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, has said he will “cancel” the deal if he wins the election which takes place on November 8.

This is while Trump’s Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, has vowed to uphold domestic energy policies and international climate commitments already set by President Barack Obama’s government.

In the meantime, United Nations climate chief Patricia Espinosa also stressed the need for concerted effort in implementing the Paris deal.

“The agreement has entered into force and we are all obliged to deliver on those commitments,” Espinosa said. “No politician or citizen, no business manager or investor” can doubt that the world is determined to shift toward a “low-emission, resilient society,” she noted.

A report by the UN Environment Program released on Thursday said annual emissions must be kept below 42 billion tons of CO2 (carbon dioxide) by 2030 for the world to have a chance to meet the goals set out in the Paris Agreement.

Even if emission-cutting pledges under the Paris Agreement are fully implemented, the predicted 2030 emissions could put the world on track for a temperature rise of 2.9 to 3.4 degrees Celsius this century, the report said.

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