French Armed Forces Minister Florence Parly warned Monday that expected cuts to the Pentagon’s African operations would hamper efforts against jihadist groups, especially in the Sahel region.

But US Secretary of Defense Mark Esper made clear that the United States was prepared to reduce its global military footprint and that African operations could be affected — while giving no details about how severely.

“US support is critical to our operations, and its reduction would severely limit our effectiveness in our operations against terrorists,” Parly said in a joint news conference with Esper in Washington.

“Our friends in the Sahel are in a situation where our assistance is critical. And I have expressed the hope of both the United States and France will keep on supporting them,” she added.

Esper has launched a review of the US military footprint around the world and is expected to reduce the presence of US forces in West Africa, where they have partnered with the French in battling a rise in Islamic extremist groups in Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, and other countries.

The US Defense Department wants to focus its forces on what it sees as priority threats, starting with China and Russia.

Washington has been a key ally for France’s 4,500-member Barkhane operation, providing intelligence and surveillance via drones as well as in-flight refueling and logistical transport, at a cost of $45 million a year.

Esper declined to say what cuts he was considering in Africa, which according to reports could include shutting down a US drone base in the region.

“France has been a great leader in the Sahel,” Esper told reporters.

“I think it’s time for other European allies to assist as well in the region, and that could offset whatever changes we make as we consider next steps in Africa.”

Source:  AFP

The Pentagon disclosed Friday that 34 US service members had been diagnosed with traumatic brain injury following Iran’s missile strikes on an Iraqi base earlier this month, a number higher than the military had previously announced. The revelation belies US President Donald Trump’s initial claim that no Americans were harmed in the attack.

Eight of the 34 injured arrived in the US on Friday from Germany, where they and nine others had been flown days after the January 8 missile strike on Iraq’s Ain al-Asad air base. The nine still in Germany are receiving treatment and evaluation at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, the largest US military hospital outside the continental United States.

Jonathan Hoffman, the chief Pentagon spokesman, said the eight in the US will be treated at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, or at their home bases. The exact nature of their injuries and their service and unit affiliations were not disclosed.

Trump and other top officials initially said Iran’s retaliatory strikes for the January 3 killing of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards commander Qassem Soleimani had not killed or injured any US service members.

The military said symptoms of concussion or traumatic brain injury were not immediately reported after the strike and in some cases became known only days later. Many were in bunkers before nearly a dozen Iranian ballistic missiles exploded.

Trump: ‘I heard they had headaches’

Last week, US military officials said 11 troops had been treated and transferred out of Iraq for concussion symptoms after the attack on the Ain al-Asad base.

Responding to the disclosure while he was in Davos Wednesday, Trump appeared to dismiss the injuries.

“I heard they had headaches,” said Trump at a news conference. “I don’t consider them very serious injuries relative to other injuries I have seen.”

Senator Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat and his party’s ranking member on the Armed Services Committee, called on Trump to apologise.

“TBI is a serious matter,” said Reed in a statement, referring to Traumatic Brain Injury. “It is not a ‘headache,’ and it’s plain wrong for President Trump to diminish their wounds. He may not have meant to disrespect them, but President Trump’s comments were an insult to our troops. He owes them an apology.”

“It’s plain wrong for President Trump to diminish their wounds,” Mr. Reed, who served as an officer in the 82nd Airborne Division, said in a statement Friday. “He may not have meant to disrespect them, but President Trump’s comments were an insult to our troops. He owes them an apology.”

Traumatic brain injury, or TBI, has become a bigger concern for the military in recent years as medical science improves its understanding of its causes and effects on brain function. It can involve varying degrees of impairment of thinking, memory, vision, hearing and other functions. The severity and duration of the injury can vary widely.

Renewed questions of US military policy on brain injuries

The question of US casualties took on added importance at the time of the Iranian strike because the degree of damage was seen as influencing a US decision on whether to counterattack and risk a broader war with Iran. Trump chose not to retaliate, and the Iranians then indicated their strike was sufficient for the time being.

Pentagon officials have said there had been no effort to minimise or delay information on concussive injuries, but its handling of the injuries following Tehran’s attack has renewed questions over the US military’s policy regarding how it deals with suspected brain injuries.

While the US military has to immediately report incidents threatening life, limb or eyesight, it does not have an urgent requirement to do so with suspected traumatic brain injury, or TBI, which can take time to manifest and diagnose.

Hoffman said US Defense Secretary Mark Esper had directed the Pentagon to review the process for tracking and reporting injuries.

“The goal is to be as transparent, accurate and to provide the American people and our service members with the best information,” Hoffman said.

Various health and medical groups for years have been trying to raise awareness about the seriousness of brain injuries, including concussions.

According to Pentagon data, about 408,000 service members have been diagnosed with traumatic brain injury since 2000.

(FRANCE 24 with AP and REUTERS)

The starkly opposed visions of US President Donald Trump and Swedish teen activist Greta Thunberg on climate change will clash in Davos on Tuesday as the World Economic Forum tries to face up to the perils of global warming on its 50th meeting.

The four-day gathering of the world’s top political and business leaders in the Swiss Alps gets under way seeking to meet head-on the dangers to both the environment and economy from the heating of the planet.

Trump, who has repeatedly expressed scepticism about climate change, is set to give the first keynote address of Davos 2020 on Tuesday morning, on the same day as his impeachment trial opens at the Senate in Washington.

Around the same time, Thunberg will also attend a meeting at the forum, where she is expected to underline the message that has inspired millions around the world — that governments are failing to wake up to the reality of climate change.

The forum’s own Global Risks report published last week warned that “climate change is striking harder and more rapidly than many expected” with global temperatures on track to increase by at least three degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) towards the end of the century.

There are no expectations that the two, who have exchanged barbs through Twitter, will actually meet, but the crowded venue and intense schedule mean a chance encounter cannot be ruled out.

When Trump and his entourage walked through UN headquarters last year at the annual General Assembly, a photo of the teenager staring in apparent fury at the president from the sidelines went viral.

‘No turning point’

Sustainability is the buzzword at the forum, which began in 1971, with heel crampons handed out to participants to encourage them to walk on the icy streets rather than use cars, and the signage paint made out of seaweed.

Trump’s opposition to renewable energy, his withdrawal from the Paris climate accord negotiated under his predecessor Barack Obama, and the free hand extended to the fossil fuel industry puts him at odds with the entire thrust of the event.

“Climate change is a hot topic at Davos,” said Chris Williamson, chief business economist at IHS Markit, adding there had been a “change in the atmosphere” and realisation that climate change represented a downside risk for the economy.

EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said at a welcome ceremony in Davos that “for too long, humanity took away resources from the environment and in exchange produced waste and pollution”.

Business leaders attending the forum will be keen to tout their awareness on climate change but are likely also to be concerned by the state of the global economy whose prospects, according to the IMF, have improved but remain brittle.

The IMF cut its global growth estimate for 2020 to 3.3 percent, saying that a recent truce in the trade war between China and the US had brought some stability but that risks remained.

“We are already seeing some tentative signs of stabilisation but we have not reached a turning point yet,” said IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva.

‘Healthy balance’

Activists meanwhile will be pressing for much more concrete action to fight inequality, after Oxfam issued a report outlining how the number of billionaires has doubled in the past decade and the world’s 22 richest men now have more wealth than all the women in Africa.

Other key priorities will be exploring how to battle biodiversity loss, narrow the digital divide between the internet haves and have nots and step up the fight against pandemics in the face of vaccine hesitancy and drug resistance.

“I am angry about the state of the world but I am also determined to engage and provide solutions and deliver,” WWF director general Marco Lambertini told AFP. “There needs to be healthy balance between these two sentiments.”

The risk of global conflict will also loom large after the spike in tensions between the United States and Iran, following the killing of Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani in a US drone strike.

But a planned appearance by Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif — which could have paved the way for a showdown or even meeting with Trump — has been cancelled.

Venezuela’s opposition leader Juan Guaido — who declared himself acting president last year — will be attending the forum in defiance of a travel ban imposed by the regime of President Nicolas Maduro.

Source: AFP

The world’s billionaires have doubled in the past decade and are richer than 60 percent of the global population, the charity Oxfam said Monday.

It said poor women and girls were at the bottom of the scale, putting in “12.5 billion hours of unpaid care work each and every day,” estimated to be worth at least $10.8 trillion a year.

“Our broken economies are lining the pockets of billionaires and big business at the expense of ordinary men and women. No wonder people are starting to question whether billionaires should even exist,” Oxfam’s India head Amitabh Behar said.

“The gap between rich and poor can’t be resolved without deliberate inequality-busting policies,” Behar said ahead of the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, where he will represent Oxfam.

Oxfam’s annual report on global inequality is traditionally released just before the forum opens on Tuesday in the Swiss Alpine resort.

It had some astonishing statistics.

“The 22 richest men in the world have more wealth than all the women in Africa,” it said.

If the world’s richest one percent paid just 0.5 percent extra tax on their wealth for 10 years, it would equal the investment needed to create 117 million new jobs in elderly and child care, education and health, Oxfam said.

Oxfam’s figures are based on data from Forbes magazine and Swiss bank Credit Suisse, but they are disputed by some economists.

The numbers show that 2,153 billionaires now have more wealth than the 4.6 billion poorest people on the planet.

Women and girls are burdened in particular because they are most often care givers that keep “the wheels of our economies, businesses and societies moving,” Behar said.

They “often have little time to get an education, earn a decent living or have a say in how our societies are run,” and “are therefore trapped at the bottom of the economy,” he added.

“Across the globe, 42 percent of women cannot get jobs because they are responsible for all the caregiving, compared to just six percent of men,” Oxfam figures showed.

(Source: AFP)

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says Turkey is starting deployment of troops to Libya in support of the embattled United Nations-recognized Government of National Accord (GNA) and in line with agreements relating to maritime border demarcation and enhanced security cooperation. 

“We signed an agreement with Libya to delineate maritime borders. It is no longer legally possible to conduct exploration and drilling activities or to run pipelines in the region between the Turkish and Libyan coasts without the approval of both countries,” Erdogan announced in the Turkish capital Ankara on Thursday.

He added, “In 2020, we are licensing these areas and starting the search and drilling as quickly as ever. After the licensing work, for the first time the Oruc Reis seismic research vessel will conduct seismic studies in the region. We are sending our troops to this country to ensure the survival and stability of the legitimate government in Libya.”

Erdogan remarks came only two days after Libya’s renegade military commander Khalifa Haftar left Moscow without signing a binding truce that would have halted his nine-month campaign to seize the GNA’s base of Tripoli, and would have formalized a tentative ceasefire in the war-wracked North African country.

 “The draft [agreement] ignores many of the Libyan army’s demands,” Haftar was quoted as saying by the Saudi-owned and Arabic-language al-Arabiya television news network.

Fayez al-Sarraj, the heads of the GNA, had already signed the truce proposal after indirect talks in the Russian capital on Monday. 

Last week, Turkey and Russia urged Libya’s warring parties to declare a ceasefire after a recent escalation in fighting around Tripoli and the strategic coastal city of Sirte.

Erdogan has said Turkey would not refrain from “teaching a lesson” to Haftar if his eastern-based forces continue attacks against the Tripoli-based GNA.

“If the putschist Haftar’s attacks against the people and legitimate government of Libya continue, we will never refrain from teaching him the lesson he deserves,” the Turkish president said in a speech to his AK Party legislators in parliament on Tuesday.

“It is our duty to protect our kin in Libya,” he said.

Erdogan said Turkey had deep historical and social ties with Libya, asserting that Haftar would have taken over the entire nation if Ankara had not intervened.

Turkey will join Germany, the United Kingdom and Russia at Libyan peace talks in Berlin next Sunday, he said.

“The putschist Haftar did not sign the ceasefire. He first said yes, but later, unfortunately, he left Moscow, he fled Moscow,” Erdogan said.

“Despite this, we find the talks in Moscow were positive as they showed the true face of the putschist Haftar to the international community,” the Turkish president added.

On January 2, Turkey’s parliament has approved a bill to deploy troops to Libya.

Parliament Speaker Mustafa Sentop said at the time that the legislation had been passed with a 325-184 vote. 

Back in late November last year, Libya’s GNA and Turkey signed security and maritime agreements in opening the path to the Turkish troop deployment. The accords also drew the ire of Mediterranean countries, including Greece and Cyprus, which were eyeing energy resources in the area.

Libya’s eastern-based parliament later voted unanimously against the deals.

Libya plunged into chaos in 2011, when a popular uprising and a NATO intervention led to the ouster of long-time dictator Muammar Gaddafi and his execution by unruly fighters.

The North African country has since been split between two rival administrations based in the east and west amid a conflict drawing increasing involvement from foreign powers.

According to the latest UN tally, more than 280 civilians and roughly 2,000 fighters have been killed since Haftar launched his offensive in April to seize Tripoli. An estimated 146,000 Libyans have been displaced.

Source: Presstv

A Delta Airlines jet making an emergency landing at Los Angeles International Airport dumped fuel on the playground of an elementary school in the flight path on Tuesday, inflicting minor injuries on 17 children and nine adults, local and federal authorities said.

All of the injuries at Park Avenue Elementary School in suburban Cudahy were said to be minor and none of the victims needed hospitalization, the Los Angeles County Fire Department said on Twitter.

“Shortly after takeoff, Flight 89 from LAX to Shanghai experienced an engine issue requiring the aircraft to return quickly to LAX. The aircraft landed safely after a release of fuel, which was required as part of normal procedure to reach a safe landing weight,” Delta said in a written statement.

“We are in touch with Los Angeles World Airports and the L.A. County Fire Department and share concerns regarding reported minor injuries to adults and children at a school in the area,” the airline said.

The Federal Aviation Administration said in a separate statement that it was “thoroughly investigating the circumstances” behind the incident and suggested the flight may not have followed fuel-dumping rules.

“There are special fuel-dumping procedures for aircraft operating into and out of any major US airport,” the agency said. “These procedures call for fuel to be dumped over designated unpopulated areas, typically at higher altitudes so the fuel atomizes and disperses before it reaches the ground.”

The fire department said it had confirmed that jet fuel was the substance dropped on the school’s playground while students were at recess and that 70 firefighters were on the scene treating the injured.Other students had been evacuated from the elementary school following the incident, a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s spokeswoman said.

Parents were notified to pick up their children near the school, which is about 16 miles east of the airport. Two streets were closed during the emergency response.

The mayor of Cudahy, Elizabeth Alcantar, said on Twitter the city had opened an emergency response center following the incident and would conduct a “townhall” meeting to provide more information.

(Source: Reuters)

Waves of ballistic missiles, soldiers hunkered down in bunkers for hours, intense shock waves — a top US commander said he reacted to Iran’s unprecedented attack against an Iraqi base with “disbelief”.

In an exclusive interview with AFP at the Ain al-Asad airbase in western Iraq, Lt. Colonel Tim Garland said his superiors had given him “a couple hours of advance warning” last Tuesday night that an attack by Iran was coming.

“My first reaction was shock, initial disbelief,” he said, sceptical that Iran would be capable, and willing, to conduct a bold attack on Ain al-Asad.

The airbase was targeted in retaliation for the US killing top Iranian general Qasem Soleimani in a drone strike in Baghdad on January 3.

The base is one of the largest in Iraq, with 1,500 US troops making up the bulk of a coalition presence directly adjacent to thousands of Iraqi forces.

Getting those forces to safety was an act of quick thinking and coordination across the army and air force commanders at Ain al-Asad, Garland said.

By 11:00pm (2000 GMT), US and coalition forces had evacuated from their sleeping quarters and offices, and were hiding out either in fortified bunkers or dispersed across the base.

They waited, tense, for over two hours.

But not even their commander expected the strength of the blasts that came next.

“When the first round came in, it was the loudest, most powerful noise I’ve ever heard,” Garland told AFP.

– Shockwave ‘bowed door’ –

“There’s something unnatural about the air. The way it moved, the way it heated up; the shock wave that came in and bowed the door in and bowed it back out,” he said.

Starting at 1:35am and for the next three hours, around five volleys of ballistic missiles slammed into the base at varying intervals.

“I have not been that scared for a long time. It’s been a while,” said Garland, who has served multiple tours in Iraq.

“We didn’t know what it was going to look like — if there was going to be a carpet bombing effect,” he added.

When the strikes quietened around 4:00am, commanders and soldiers emerged from their bunkers to fires burning across the base, more than a dozen impact sites but — miraculously — no casualties.

Two soldiers who had been in guard towers were blown out of their positions but only suffered concussion, the commander said.

“How they survived was a miracle of God,” Garland remarked.

He said the volleys that hit the base were timed in such a way as to trick soldiers into thinking the bombing was over.

“It was just enough time to make you feel safe. It was my opinion that it was intended to inflict casualties,” said Garland.

Hossein Salami, commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, said on Sunday the missiles it fired in the early hours of Wednesday were not aimed at killing American personnel.

By Monday, most of the impact sites had been cleared.

A bulldozer was piling up the last of the twisted metal and debris from the last site, located by the base’s airfield.

A soldiers’ living quarters had been totally pulverised and still smelt of charred metal.

Soldiers who lived there told AFP they had lost all their personal belongings — clothes, books, pictures of their families and mementos they had carried through more than a decade in the military.

But given the intensity of the strikes, Garland said, they were lucky.

“Theatre ballistic missile strikes. That’s unprecedented,” he said.

Source: AFP

Britain’s Prince Charles and Prime Minister Boris Johnson joined regional leaders in Oman on Sunday to offer their condolences to the royal family after the death of long-reigning Sultan Qaboos.

A ceremony at Muscat’s Alam Palace drew figures from across political divides in the Middle East, including Abu Dhabi’s Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed and Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani.

Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif was among those who met the new sultan, along with Tunisian President Kais Saied, Kuwait’s Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah, and Yemeni President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi.

Former French leader Nicolas Sarkozy was also in attendance at the ceremony, which took place a day after the new royal ruler Haitham bin Tariq was selected and sworn in.

Haitham is a cousin of Qaboos, who never married and died Friday at the age of 79 without an heir apparent.

It was Sultan Qaboos’ policy of neutrality and non-interference that elevated Oman’s standing as a “Switzerland of the Middle East” and won it respect in the region and beyond.

It maintains healthy relations with the United States as well as with regional powers Iran and Saudi Arabia, in what many diplomatic observers see as a model of balance.

Sultan Qaboos, who ruled for half a century, came to power in 1970 when he overthrew his father in a coup with British support.

As a young man, he attended Britain’s elite Sandhurst Royal Military Academy, after which he joined a British infantry battalion in Germany.

British premier Johnson is to meet with the new sultan and senior Omani officials during his visit, his office said in a statement.

“The UK and Oman have a broad and long-standing bilateral relationship that goes back over 200 years,” it said. “Our countries have deep economic ties and shared defence and security interests.”

As ruler, Qaboos modernised his country but also forged a broader role as a go-between in regional and international crises.

Under his reign, Oman refrained from taking sides in the Saudi-led blockade of Qatar as well as a military intervention in Yemen led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

The sultan’s death comes amid increased tensions between Tehran and Washington, following the US killing of a top Iranian commander in Iraq that raised fears the region was sliding into war.

The late sultan’s standing has been recognised with warm tributes from across the world, including from US President Donald Trump who said Qaboos was a “true partner and friend to the United States”.

Source: AFP

Iran on Saturday said its armed forces had “unintentionally” shot down the Ukrainian airliner which crashed outside Tehran.

The admission came a day after the country’s civil aviation chief had denied that the plane was brought down by a missile.

The Boeing 737 crashed on Wednesday, killing all 176 passengers and crew on board, shortly after Iran launched missiles at American forces in Iraq in response to the killing of top Iranian general Qasem Soleimani in a US drone strike in Baghdad.

Here is a recap of other planes hit by missiles over the past four decades:

– 298 killed, Ukraine –

July 17, 2014: Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 is shot down over rebel-held eastern Ukraine en route to Kuala Lumpur from Amsterdam.

All 298 people aboard the Boeing 777 are killed, including 193 Dutch nationals.

The Kiev authorities and separatist pro-Russian rebels, who are battling for control of eastern Ukraine, accuse each other of firing the missile that downed the flight.

– 11 killed, Somalia –

March 23, 2007: An Ilyushin Il-76 cargo aircraft belonging to a Belarusian airline is shot down by a rocket shortly after takeoff from the Somalian capital Mogadishu, killing 11 people. The plane was transporting Belarusian engineers and technicians who had travelled to the country to repair another plane hit by a missile two weeks earlier.

– 78 killed, Black Sea –

October 4, 2001: 78 people, mostly Israelis, were killed when their Siberia Airlines Tupolev Tu-154, flying from Tel Aviv to Novosibirsk, exploded mid-flight over the Black Sea. The crash happened less than 300 kilometres (190 miles) from the Crimean coast. A week later Kiev admitted that the disaster was due to the accidental firing of a Ukrainian missile.

– 290 killed, Gulf –

July 3, 1988: An Airbus A-300 belonging to Iran Air, flying from Bandar Abbas in Iran to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, was shot down in Iran’s territorial waters in the Gulf shortly after takeoff by two missiles fired from a US frigate patrolling the Strait of Hormuz, apparently mistaking it for a fighter aircraft.

The 290 passengers on board were killed. The United States paid Iran $101.8 million in compensation.

– 269 killed, Sakhalin –

September 1, 1983: A Boeing 747 belonging to Korean Air (then called Korean Air Lines) was shot down by Soviet fighter jets over the island of Sakhalin, after veering off course. All 269 people on board were killed. Soviet officials acknowledged five days later that they had shot down the South Korean plane.

– 108 killed, Sinai Desert –

February 21, 1973: A Libyan Arab Airline Boeing 727 flying from Tripoli to Cairo was shot down by Israeli fighter jets over the Sinai Desert. All but four of the 112 people on board were killed. The Israeli air force intervened after the Boeing flew over military facilities in the Sinai, then occupied by Israel. Israeli authorities said fighters opened fire when the plane refused to land.

Source: AFP