President Barack Obama has nominated the first-ever Muslim American to serve as a federal judge in the US capital, according to a report. Abid Riaz Qureshi, a partner in a Washington law firm, was nominated to the US District Court for the District of Columbia, The Huffington Post reported on Tuesday.

“I am pleased to nominate Mr. Qureshi to serve on the United States District Court bench,” Obama said in a statement. “I am confident he will serve the American people with integrity and a steadfast commitment to justice.”

Muslim rights advocates hailed the historic nomination. “A judiciary that reflects the rich diversity of our nation helps ensure the fair and just administration of the law, and it is vital for American Muslims to be included,” Farhana Khera, executive director of Muslim Advocates, a legal advocacy organization, told The Post.

However, it is unlikely that Qureshi’s nomination will be confirmed before Obama leaves office in January. Senate Republicans have promised not to hold any hearings on Obama’s nominees since he picked Judge Merrick Garland to serve in the US Supreme Court in March.

That nomination was intended to replace late Justice Antonin Scalia, who died earlier this year. Qureshi’s nomination comes amid a particularly tense presidential election campaign in which anti-Muslim rhetoric has been a dominating theme.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has made a series of controversial policy proposals on how the US should treat Muslims, including banning Muslims entering the country and establishing a database to register all Muslims. The New York businessman has also suggested that a Muslim judge could be unfit for the job.

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US President Barack Obama has canceled a planned meeting with his Filipino counterpart Rodrigo Duterte after the latter insulted him with vulgar and undiplomatic language.   The two leaders were scheduled to meet on the sidelines of the 28th Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit on Tuesdayafternoon in Vientiane, the capital of Laos.

White House officials previously said Obama would confront Duterte about his country’s handling of drug dealers, including alleged extrajudicial killings. Hours later, a US spokesman announced the cancellation of the meeting after Duterte lashed out at Obama for wading into his campaign against drugs.

“President Obama will not be holding a bilateral meeting with President Duterte of the Philippines this afternoon,” US National Security Council spokesman Ned Price said in Washington, DC. Price said the US president, who is in Laos for meetings with South Asian leaders, instead will meet with South Korean President Park Geun-hye.

Hours earlier, the outspoken Filipino leader harshly criticized the US president and said, “I am no American puppet. I am the president of a sovereign country and I am not answerable to anyone except the Filipino people.”

“You must be respectful. Do not just throw away questions and statements. Son of a b***, I will curse you in that forum,” Duterte told reporters when asked about his message for Obama whose country is a former colonial ruler of the Philippines.

Duterte said that he would not be lectured by the US leader on human rights, and blamed Washington for causing unrest in the southern Philippines. Obama learned about the insult while emerging from the G20 summit in Hangzhou, China.

Duterte expresses regret

Later on Tuesday, Duterte issued a statement, expressing regret for his undiplomatic remarks. “While the immediate cause was my strong comments to certain press questions that elicited concern and distress we also regret it came across as a personal attack on the US president,” the statement said.

Duterte’s statement said Philippine and American officials would hold face-to-face talks “at a later date”. “Our primary intention to chart an independent foreign policy while promoting closer ties with all nations especially the US with which we have a long standing partnership,” the statement said.

“We look forward to ironing out differences arising out of national priority perceptions and working in mutually responsible ways for both countries,” it added.

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A majority of young white Americans now say they support Black Lives Matter, a protest movement calling for police accountability in the deaths of African Americans. A new GenForward poll shows that 51 percent of white adults between the ages of 18 and 30 “strongly” or “somewhat” support the anti-racism movement, a 10-point increase since June.

Forty-two percent of the white youth said they do not support the protest movement, according to the survey conducted by the Black Youth Project at the University of Chicago with the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Black Lives Matter enjoys widespread backing among the African-American community, with 85 percent of young blacks expressing support for the protesters. Sixty-seven percent of Asian and 62 percent of Hispanic young adults agreed with that sentiment. Young African-American, Hispanic and Asian adults had already expressed majority support for the movement in the June version of the poll.

Some respondents interviewed by the AP said watching police brutality against African Americans online helped cement their support for Black Lives Matter. “The fact is that the police target blacks and they discriminate against blacks,” said Sean Bradley, 26, of Clearwater, Florida.

“Because of how they’ve treated blacks over the years, of course they (blacks) don’t trust them and I know for a fact that some of the things the police do are illegal. I would be upset as well,” he added.

The Black Lives Matter movement first emerged in 2012 after unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin was shot and killed by Florida neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman, who was later acquitted by a grand jury.

The protest movement gathered strength in ensuing years following the high-profile deaths of a number of African Americans at the hands of white police officers in New York City, Baltimore, Ferguson and elsewhere.

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The UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon has congratulated the Gabonese leader, Ali Bongo following his electoral victory in the recent presidential election. In a telephone conversation on Sunday with President Ali Bongo Ondimba, Ban noted that “After a series of false information disseminated on many networks, I and the UN recognize you as the elected president.”

Ban Ki Moon also urged the losing candidate Jean Ping to use exclusively peaceful and legal means to seek recourse in any dispute relating to the outcome of the presidential election. The UN diplomat told the Gabonese President to take steps to end the violence that followed the disputed presidential election.

The Secretary General welcomed the release of 27 pro-Ping Jean militants and regretted the loss of life that occurred. Ban Ki Moon has asked his Special Representative for Central Africa, Abdoulaye Bathily, “to continue to work with the parties to defuse the tensions.”

By Chi Prudence Asong

US Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s lead over her Republican rival Donald Trump has slimmed in a new national poll. The Morning Consult poll, released Sunday, shows the former secretary of state has 42 percent of the votes as compared to the New York billionaire having a 40 percent support. The survey has the same — 2 percentage points — margin of error.

Clinton was leading Trump by 7 points in the same poll, 44 percent to 37 percent, only three weeks ago. Clinton maintained her 2 points lead over Trump in the poll in a four-way match-up that included Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson and Green Party nominee Jill Stein. She received 38 percent to his 36 percent. In that scenario, Johnson earned 9 percent, while Stein bagged 4 percent.

Approximately 13 percent of likely voters have not decided yet or say they prefer another candidate. The poll was conducted on September 1-2 of 2,001 registered voters. Clinton has led Trump throughout most of the 2016 presidential campaign. But her lead in recent polls has slimmed.

Rather, in the Rasmussen poll, released on Friday, Trump took over Clinton in terms of national support. The Rasmussen poll put Trump ahead of Clinton by a tiny 1-point lead, 40 percent to 39 percent. But according to the RealClearPolitics average of polls, Clinton still leads Trump by about 4 points nationally.

Trump has been trying to refocus his campaign over the past weeks, laying out in detail his immigration plans and economic policies. He has also directed fierce attacks against Clinton regarding an email fiasco, as well as her allegedly declining health.

Clinton, on the other hand, has been trying to fend off criticism about the lack of clarity surrounding the Clinton foundation. Trump’s campaign has accused her of engaging in “pay-for-play” with the family foundation’s donors.

The organization has come under bipartisan fire for its foreign funding and the suspicious nature of its activities over the past years. In early August, newly released emails from Clinton’s time as the former secretary of state raised questions about possible links between the department and the Clinton Foundation.

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President Barack Obama has said the US and Russia remain deeply divided over the Syria crisis, adding it is difficult to “get to the next phase.” “We have grave differences with the Russians in terms of both the parties we support but also the process that is required to bring about peace in Syria,” Obama said in a joint press conference with UK Prime Minister Theresa May in Hangzhou, China, on the sidelines of the Group of 20 economic summit. “We’re not there yet,” he said. “I think it’s premature for us to say there’s a clear path forward, but there’s the possibility at least for us to make some progress.”

His remarks come as US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov are negotiating a deal to boost military cooperation between the two countries in the fight against Daesh in Syria. According to a senior US State Department official, Washington is close to a deal with Russia, but some issues remain to be resolved.

The inability to achieve a deal will bring another missed deadline for the UN special envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, to get the Syrian government and “moderate” militants back to the negotiating table. Moscow maintains its airstrikes have targeted “legitimate” terrorist targets, while Washington says they have hit “moderate” US-backed militants.

During the press conference, Obama said the US and the UK must cooperate to ensure that their ongoing trade links do not unravel after Britain leaves the European Union. “I’ve committed to Theresa that we will consult closely with her as she and her government move forward on Brexit negotiations to make sure we don’t see adverse effects in our trading and commercial relationship.”

Trade “is not going to stop,” Obama said. “We’re going to do everything we can to make sure that the consequences of the [Brexit] decision don’t end up unraveling what is already a very strong and robust economic relationship.” “But first things first. The first task is figuring out what Brexit means with respect to Europe.”

The UK prime minister said she had used her first meeting with Obama to discuss the Brexit process and what it meant to the UK’s relationships with the US and European countries. “The UK has always been a strong partner for the US and that will remain to be the case. We have a thriving economic relationship,” May said. Nearly 52 percent of British voters opted to leave the EU in a referendum on June 23, in hopes of taking back control over their borders and having more economic freedom.

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Turkish Interior Minister Efkan Ala has quit his post in the wake of apparent intelligence failures and public criticism over a string of militant attacks as well as the failed July 15 coup attempt.

Prime Minister Binali Yildirim announced the resignation in a brief statement broadcast on Turkish television channels, without providing any reason for the decision.

The announcement followed an unscheduled meeting between President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Yildirim at the presidential palace in the capital city of Ankara on Wednesday evening.

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Amnesty International has once again indexed Cameroon in its practices in the context of countering terrorism. Indeed, on the occasion of the International Day of the Disappeared, celebrated Tuesday, August 30, 2016, the NGO again challenged the ruling CPDM government about 130 detainees missing since their arrest in December 2014.

The world body insisted that the Cameroonian authorities must reveal the whereabouts of the 130 men and boys still reported missing 20 months after their arrest during a crackdown against suspected members of Boko Haram.

Cameroon government spokesman and Minister of Communication, Issa Tchiroma Bakary had since claimed that only 70 were arrested 70 and 25 died the same night and 45 were transferred to the Maroua prison. The fact that Cameroon government officials continue to refrain from revealing their location is insulting to the families who have been waiting a long time to find out what happened to their loved ones.

Cameroon has reportedly used the fight against the Nigerian Islamic sect, Boko Harm as an argument to justify gross human rights violations.  Cameroon Concord News is aware that Amnesty International submitted the list of names of the missing Cameroonians to the Ministers of Defence and Justice, as well as head of military operations in the north. The authorities announced that an internal investigation had been opened at the Ministry of Defence to shed light on events.

By Sama Ernest

Disturbing video has been released showing police officers pepper spraying an 84-year-old black woman inside her home in the US state of Oklahoma. The footage, taken on August 7, shows Muskogee police officers kicking in Geneva Smith’s front door apparently in pursuit of her son, Arthur Paul Blackmon, Fox 23 News reported. Blackmon, 56, had allegedly run a stop sign and refused to pull over when ordered by police. Officers followed Blackmon to his mother’s home and demanded he come outside. They applied a Taser on him when he refused to comply even though he had his hands up in the air.

A female officer then turned towards the elderly woman, yelling at her to turn around or she would spray. The footage then goes on to show Smith being sprayed in the face. She falls to the floor and her hands are secured behind her back. “I just came out and asked what was going on and they just pepper sprayed me,” she later told the media. Smith, who suffered a panic attack while in police custody, has accused the officers of using excessive force. She said she was getting a lawyer and planning to take legal action against police.

Muskogee police chief Rex Eskridge has not apologized and stopped short of condemning the officers’ conduct. “Videos can’t give a full sense of what happened, but at the same time, they do either validate or expose any warts that you may have,” Eskridge told Fox 23.

Scott Wood, the city’s attorney, defended the officer’s decision to use pepper spray as understandable “given the totality of the circumstances.” The use of unnecessary force by police against African Americans has sparked nationwide protests in the past two years, giving birth to the anti-racism Black Lives Matter movement.

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The UN Security Council is holding secret ballots on Monday to choose a candidate to replace Ban Ki-moon who has to leave after serving two five-year terms as the United Nations Secretary General. The 15-member Security Council will cast a ballot for each of the 10 candidates, with the choices being encourage, discourage or no opinion.

The candidate chosen unanimously by the Security Council will be recommended for appointment by the UN General Assembly as the new secretary general who starts work in January 2017. Ban, who had been initially selected for the post by the Security Council in October 2006, steps down on December 31. He was the first Asian head of the organization in 35 years.

Based on the UN’s unofficial regional rotation scheme, many analysts believe there is a good chance that the next UN chief will hail from Eastern Europe, which has not produced a secretary-general as of yet. However, current tensions between Russia and Western permanent members over the conflict in Ukraine could potentially lead to a deadlock over an Eastern European nominee. In that case, one of the remaining candidates from non-Eastern European regions will assume the job.

The selection of the secretary-general is subject to the veto of any of the five permanent members of the Security Council including  China, Russia, Britain, the United States and France. The nominees for the position include five women, namely UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova of Bulgaria; former Croatian FM Vesna Pusic; Moldova’s former FM Natalia Gherman; former New Zealand PM Helen Clark, who heads the UN Development Program; Argentinian FM Susana Malcorra and former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres of Costa Rica.

There are also five male candidates. They are Montenegro FM Igor Luksic; former Slovenian president Danilo Turk; former UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres, who is also a former Portuguese prime minister; former Serbian FM Vuk Jeremic; former Macedonian FM Srgjan Kerim and Slovak FM Miroslav Lajcak.

The UN’s first official secretary-general was Trygve Lie from Norway who was appointed in February 1946 and stayed in the job until November 1952. Lie was preceded by Gladwyn Jebb from the United Kingdom who served as the acting United Nations secretary-general from October 1945 to February 1946. The second secretary-general  was Sweden’s Dag Hammarskjold who stayed in office for eight years. He was followed by Asia’s U Thant from Burma who served for 10 years after his appointment in 1961 as the third secretary-general.

Kurt Waldheim from Austria took the office from 1972 to 1981. Javier Pérez de Cuéllar from Peru came after him, from 1982 to 1991. Egypt’s Boutros Boutros-Ghali served from 1992 to 1996. And, Kofi Annan from the African country of Ghana served from 1997 to 2006, before South Korea’s Ban was appointed as the secretary-general of the world body.

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