Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has arrived in Washington for a meeting with US President Trump, deliver a speech to America’s biggest pro-Israel group and resume his critique of the Iran nuclear deal, even as a corruption scandal involving Netanyahu grows in Israel.

Trump and First Lady Melania Trump greeted Netanyahu and his wife Sara outside the South Portico of the White House shortly after 12:00 pm on Monday.

Netanyahu is expected to encourage Trump to counter Iran in Syria and express his concerns about the Iran nuclear agreement signed during the administration of former US President Barack Obama.

A warm welcome at the White House, and a speech to a receptive audience at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) could distract Netanyahu momentarily from the graft allegations in Israel.

The visit comes as both Trump and Netanyahu face politically damaging investigations but Netanyahu finds himself in a far more precarious position than Trump.

Israeli police say they have enough evidence to indict Netanyahu on bribery, fraud and breach of trust in two cases, and the attorney general there is deciding whether to file charges, a process that could take months.

The prime minister’s visit to Washington follows the US president’s announcement that Washington recognizes Jerusalem al-Quds as Israel’s capital and plans to move the American embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to the holy city.

“Many presidents were discussing whether or not to make that decision, and they promised it in their campaigns but they never were able to do what they should have done so I was able to do it,” Trump told Netanyahu.

Trump also told reporters that he may visit Jerusalem al-Quds as work begins on the new embassy in that city expected to open in May.

Netanyahu hailed Trump’s decision as “historic,” saying it would be “remembered by our people through the ages.”

Source: Presstv

Ankara has been seeking to expand its influence in Africa in the face of tensions with Egypt, where calls are growing for a public boycott of Turkish goods.

Ties between Ankara and Cairo strained in 2013, when then Egyptian army chief Abdel Fattah el-Sisi toppled the country’s first democratically-elected president, Mohamed Morsi, of the Muslim Brotherhood movement.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan described Sisi’s rise to power as a “coup” an accused the UN of having done “nothing but watch the events such as overthrowing the elected president in Egypt.”

Recently, Erdogan wrapped up a five-day tour of the African countries of Algeria, Mauritania, Senegal and Mali with a large business delegation and a diplomatic entourage.

“We want to walk with Africa while a new world order is being established,” he tweeted at the end of his trip.

This is while a public boycott of Turkish goods has been launched in Egypt to protest what its leaders call  Erdogan’s “anti-Egyptian policies.”

The boycott campaign has become the hottest trending topic on Egyptian social media, with 12,000 tweets including #boycott Turkish products, privately-owned Egyptian daily Youm7 reported on Sunday.

Social media users called on the Egyptian government to take action against businessmen importing products from Turkey, saying that purchase of Turkish goods would “contribute to the killing of Egyptians.”

“Turkey acts against Egypt’s political interests everywhere,” said Hisham Baker, a legal expert who initiated the boycott campaign with his friends. “This is why Egyptians have a national and moral obligation to stop buying its products.”

Turkey and Egypt have also been at odds over the latter’s maritime demarcation deal with Cyprus in a potential struggle over resources in the gas-rich eastern Mediterranean.

Additionally, Cairo is concerned about Turkey’s close economic and military ties with Sudan.

Relations between Egypt and Sudan have been soured in recent months by disputes over the ownership of the “Halayeb Triangle” border territory, and over the broader issue of use of water from the River Nile that passes through their territories.

The triangle lies between Egypt and its southern neighbor and the borders have been contested by Sudan since 1958. Cairo says it is Egyptian territory.

Source: Presstv

Cameroon Concord News holds the considered opinion that the appointment of Paul Atanga Nji by the ailing and demented demonic dictator Paul Biya of neighbouring French Cameroun as his Minister of territorial administration is one step further in fine-tuning his genocidal war strategy against Southern Cameroons/Ambazonia.  The appointment of Atanga Nji is aimed at maximizing the ongoing extermination of the Southern Cameroons ’civilian population. Cameroon Concord News can confidently state that Paul Biya by the appointment intended to send mixed signals and to confuse and confound.

He intended to deflate criticisms that he has never appointed Southern Cameroonians to a key ministry of state sovereignty. With that, he hoped to hoodwink slave status Southern Cameroonians at the marginal fringes of the CPDM crime syndicate to believe that at long last he has rehabilitated his colonized Southern Cameroons slaves who have been agitating and clamouring for rehabilitation, recognition and a place on the master’s table.

In the coming days, motions of support will be sent by paid agents and collaborators from supposed Fons, Chiefs and elites from the Northern Zone and South West Zones of Ambazonia. So-called elite associations will join in praising and calling on the 86 years old demented Paul Biya to decree unto himself eternal life and eternal presidency.   Cameroon Concord News Group invites these categories of slave status worshippers to be extremely cautious of the harm their gullibility may bring to the endangered people of the Southern Cameroons and themselves.  Atanga Nji’s mission is to oversee the genocide machinery of death that has claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Ambazonia civilians.  Any one cheering his appointment and sending motions of support to the murderer Paul Biya is cheering the genocide which he is appointed to oversee its implementation.

Paul Biya removed Rene Sadi who has until now overseen the genocide of Ambazonia, the abduction of the President of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia and members of the interim government in Abuja Nigeria and the terrorization of Southern Cameroon and replaced him with the traitor Atanga Nji his Secretary of his National Security Council.   Paul Biya intended to distance one of his potential heirs apparent from these crimes from near Paul Biya and place the responsibility for the crimes on Atanga Nji.  Paul Biya will command the execution of the crimes through the remote control of Rene Sadi who by him, will through Paul Atanga Nji coordinate the genocide and crimes against humanity.  The criminal responsibility will fully fall on a ruthless, robot and nitwit Atanga Nji. Any Ambazonian celebrating this appointment and the appointment of other Southern Cameroonians into the government of an alien enemy and country that is slaughtering armless civilians, torching civilian settlements, raping students and women, looting our economy and terrorizing the citizenry, qualifies to be an enemy of the Ambazonia people.  

Cameroon Concord News reminds Ambazonians that the network of terror which French Cameroun used to oversee the colonization of the Southern Cameroons/ Ambazonia over the past fifty-six years was placed under the superintendence of the Minister of territorial administration. The Minister of territorial administration oversees elections rigging, enforcement of curfews and states of emergency, abduction and disappearance of persons and enforces all repressive legislation.  Paul Atanga Nji like Nalova Lyonga supervised or ordered the massacre of civilians and students.  Their appointment is a reward for the murder of innocent persons which will haunt their consciences for ever if at all their consciences are alive.  The appointments have a higher purpose of rewarding murder, treachery and criminality.  In effect, it is a reward for impunity.

Paul Atanga Nji, has always occupied a place of honour in Paul Biya’s crime laboratory. He was always his cherished hitman. He is an old hand in the job which he is appointed to do in Paul Biya’s crime syndicate. He operated from the shadows and was a key player in the abduction of the President of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia in Nigeria, members of his interim government as well as the abduction of Captain Guerandi Mbaya a former French Cameroun army captain who along with Isa Tchiroma and others took part in a failed coup in French Cameroun.

Paul Atanga Nji also has a mandate of a political nature. He is to make sure that elections that have been banned in the territory of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia take place on the blood of hundreds of thousands. He has a mandate to make sure that divisional officers use every available force at their disposal to make sure the supposed opposition candidates are prevented from holding campaign meetings. They must make sure the elections are rigged in favour of Paul Biya and the CPDM crime syndicate.  The appointment of a man from the crime underground to oversee a genocide and the rigging machinery makes the months ahead potentially dangerous.   Cameroon Concord News calls on citizens of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia to reject these appointments and to concentrate on contributing to the interim government to to expel the enemy from our territory. 

Cameroon Concord News recalls the crimes that French Cameroun has committed against us for the past fifty-six years supervised by its so-called Minister of territorial administration. It is the Minister of territorial administration of French Cameroun who directly administered the Southern Cameroons from when it was annexed and renamed West Cameroon through a Federal Inspector of Administration, criminally disregarding our Prime Minister and our state institutions. The so-called Federal Inspector of Administration oversaw the effective annexation and dismantling of the Southern Cameroons state institutions through a reign of terror, abductions, disappearances, corruption, and engineered treachery by some of our own leaders.  French Cameroun relies on French Cameroun divisional officers under the control of the Minister of territorial administration to terrorize the colonized territory of the Southern Cameroons and supervise the looting and pillage of its natural resources for the benefit of French Cameroun France colonial master and the crime syndicate in power in the French vassal state.

Cameroon Concord News Group identifies the following among many  instruments of state terror that Paul Atanga Nji like his French Cameroun’s counterparts will use to humiliate Southern Cameroonians: The institution of a permanent state of emergency in the territory of Ambazonia; press censorship, calle calle, rape, torture, cultural genocide, humiliation, land grab, murder, corruption, spying, assimilation, and destruction of all symbols of Southern Cameroons national and cultural identity.  

Cameroon Concord News Group holds the opinion that at this moment when the Southern Cameroons revolution and resistance to the reign of terror has forced the colonial strangulation of the Southern Cameroons/Ambazonia to be collapsing on its own weight, all citizens of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia must stand resolutely behind the interim government of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia to free our land from external aggression and genocide, and our President, members of the interim government and all Ambazonians under colonial detention.   Only fools cheer their own genocide.  As our ongoing revolution signifies, Ambazonians are not fools and will not cheer the death machinery put in place by French Cameroun and its criminal appointees or even condone them.  Cameroon Concord News therefore strongly holds that cheering the appointments of renegades, traitors and enemy collaborators to support the enemy genocide war effort against our own people and our territory must be considered an act of treachery and thus banned from the territory of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia.

To this I put my name

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

The Governor of the US state of Ohio John Kasich says the two-party system that has dominated US politics for over a century might be nearing its end.

“We may be beginning to see the end of a two-party system,” Kasich, a Republican, told ABC News on Sunday. “I’m starting to really wonder if we are going to see a multiparty system at some point in the future in this country because I don’t think either party is answering people’s deepest concerns and needs.”

The governor, who ran a failed bid Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential primaries, said the Republican Party was his “vehicle” and not his “master.”

However, asked would he run as an independent if he was to mount another White House bid, the 65-year-old said he would not because he was still a Republican.

He is rumored to be preparing for a possible 2020 bipartisan bid with Colorado’s Democratic governor, John Hickenlooper, as his running mate.

Kasich has been a firm critic of Trump ever since he launched his presidential campaign and defeated all Republican and Democratic candidates to become president.

He did not have high hopes for his own party in 2018, the year both Republicans and Democrats face the fateful mid-term congressional elections.

The governor predicted that Democrats were going to have a better year overall despite lacking a clear agenda.

It was this lack of agenda on both sides that could ultimately lead to a collapse of the two-party system, he further argued.

“That’s exactly why I’m saying that our young people are fed up and why I’m saying that the prospect of a multiparty system in this country is a real possibility,” Kasich said.

The Republican and Democratic Parties are able to take turns electing US presidents and controlling Congress because the American political system discourages people from supporting third parties, such as the Greens and Libertarians.

Third party candidates face major challenges in the United States, such as the failure to meet the criteria for ballot access. Due to debate access rules, they are even often excluded from participating in presidential debates.

According to political observers, the two major US political parties are heavily influenced by corporate money and the financial markets and lack the power to implement meaningful reforms in the country.

Source: Presstv

A majority of Americans think the direction of the United States has worsened over the last year, mainly due to a surge in racism and violence fueled by President Donald Trump, according to a new survey.

Some 53 percent say the country’s overall direction is pretty grim, despite improvements in the economy, according to a poll released Friday by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Despite that gloomy outlook, Americans are more likely to see the US economy as having improved rather than worsened in the past 12 months, 39 percent to 24 percent, the poll found.

“Well, I hold a job again,” said 67-year-old David Peterson of Torrance, California, a quality assurance manager at an aerospace company who was forced to work at a security job for a year. “But recent events would point toward things getting worse. … It’s a lot of violence in the news. A lot of violence in the country. A lot of natural disasters.”

Americans’ view of the nation has darkened in the 13 months since Trump took office, amid devastating mass shootings, a deadly race riot in Charlottesville, Virginia, record-setting hurricanes and Trump’s volatile White House and his feud with North Korea.

The poll also found that most people, nearly two-thirds, continue to disapprove of how Trump is handling his job as president, while just 35 percent approve.

Even among Democrats, just 8 percent of whom say they approve of how Trump is handling his job overall, 21 percent say they approve of his handling of the economy. Among Republicans, three-quarters approve Trump’s overall performance while 82 percent back his performance on the economy.

A recent US poll released last month showed that most Americans think Trump’s first year in office was a failure and that he has divided the nation.

Trump ended his first year in office in January with the lowest average approval rating of any elected president in his first year.

Source: Presstv

A top adviser to the detained President of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia has dubbed the United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres as a “henchman” of France and by extrapolation La Republique du Cameroun after he expressed support for the fake dialogue called for by President Biya.

The President Ayuk Tabe aide who opted for anonymity told Cameroon Concord News that the deliberate silence maintain by Mr. Guterres ever since he met the French Cameroun dictator in Paris, France demonstrates an absurd sophistry inappropriate to his duty as secretary general of the United Nations.

Discussing the long-running Southern Cameroons crisis, Guterres has only echoed the position of France and French Cameroun in resolving the conflict. Southern Cameroonians had denounced remarks made by Guterres and the Secretary General of the Commonwealth as ill-minded.

The UN Security Council is yet to apply sanctions on the Biya regime over its genocide campaign that has claimed the lives of hundreds of Southern Cameroonians. We gathered that the UN was responsible for the abduction and subsequent extradition of the Ambazonia Interim Government in Abuja, Nigeria.

By Chi Prudence Asong

The President of the Council of Ministers Saad Hariri received this evening at the “Center House” the candidate for the Presidential elections in Cameroon, barrister Akere Muna heading a delegation.

After the meeting, Akere Muna said: “The relations between the Lebanese residing in Africa and the countries they are living in must be upgraded to an institutional level. As a Presidential candidate in my country, we must find ways to raise this relationship to this level, especially with the challenges that Lebanon faces at this stage.”

Earlier, Hariri chaired at the Grand Serail the meeting of the Ministerial Committee tasked with studying the draft budget.  The meeting was attended by Deputy Prime Minister Ghassan Hasbani, Ministers Ali Hasan Khalil, Michel Pharaon, Mohamed Fneich, Jamal Jarrah, Raed Khoury, Ayman Choucair and Youssef Fenianos and the Secretary General of the Council of Ministers Fouad Fleifel.

After the meeting, Minister Khalil said: “We completed most of the items of the budget draft, including some of the reform related items and we will continue the discussions with numbers on Monday.”  He added: “If the political forces and the representatives of the committee bear their responsibility and if we work on decreasing the numbers to be able to reduce the deficit, this will be very important.”

He said: “New taxes were not discussed, contrary to what was said today, and the issue that was raised during the meeting had to do with increasing the electricity tariff when it would be supplied 24 hours a day. There are no numbers from outside the draft and all expenses should be from within the budget.”

Source: NNA

Australia’s scandal-hit deputy leader Barnaby Joyce announced Friday he was quitting and moving to the backbench amid claims of sexual harassment and controversy over an affair with a now-pregnant former aide.

Joyce, whose National Party rules alongside Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s Liberals, has been front-page news in Australia for two weeks since it emerged he had left his wife of 24 years for his younger former media adviser, who is now expecting their baby boy.

The 50-year-old had insisted he would ride out the storm but his position became untenable on Friday when a sexual harassment complaint against him, which he denies, was lodged with the party.

“I will say on Monday morning at the party room (meeting), I will step down as the leader of the National Party and deputy leader of Australia,” Joyce said at a press conference in Armidale, his country New South Wales electorate.

Joyce was due to be the acting prime minister this week with Turnbull meeting US President Donald Trump in Washington, but opted to take leave.

With Foreign Minister Julie Bishop also out of the country, the role has been assumed by Senate leader Mathias Cormann, who said ahead of Joyce’s decision that any harassment claim must be taken seriously.

“Any allegation of sexual harassment is a very serious allegation,” he told reporters.

Joyce called the allegation “spurious and defamatory” and said he wanted it investigated by the authorities.

“I have asked that that be referred to the police,” he said, while admitting it had been “the straw that broke the camel’s back.”

His decision to quit came with colleagues reportedly growing increasingly frustrated with his handling of the love-child scandal.

Joyce had opted to give several media interviews this week, at a time when he was expected to be on leave and out of the spotlight and two of the party’s backbenchers had publicly called on him to resign.

A furious Turnbull, who relies on the smaller National Party to govern, slapped a formal ban on sex between cabinet members and their staff in the wake of the Joyce affair.

He twice declined to offer support for his deputy when asked by reporters in Washington on Thursday.

Junior Nationals minister David Gillespie has indicated he would be a candidate for the vacancy, while reports said Veterans Affairs Minister Michael McCormack had significant backing.

The new Nationals leader will automatically become deputy prime minister, under a coalition agreement between the two major parties of the center-right.

The daily media headlines on the scandal have riveted the Australian public and sparked debate about workplace culture amid the global #MeToo movement against sexual harassment.

But it has also highlighted the perilous state of the coalition government, which just a few months ago survived a crisis over lawmakers’ dual citizenship that threatened its wafer-thin parliamentary majority.

(Source: AFP)

Separatists in Cameroon’s restive English-speaking regions have faced a violent crackdown since declaring the creation of “Ambazonia”, a self-proclaimed republic independent from the majority French-speaking country.

The violence has helped fuel support for a growing separatist movement, including armed groups, who in turn have carried out a string of attacks on police and the military. Dozens on both sides have died, and tens of thousands have fled into neighbouring Nigeria.

ENGLISH

The political drive for the separatist cause began in 2016 after police broke up demonstrations by English-speaking lawyers and teachers who protested against working in French.

The Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium (CACSC), locally known as “the Consortium”, was formed to campaign against what they viewed as discrimination and marginalisation by the francophone majority.

Although it campaigned for federal ties — not secessionism — the campaign met with unyielding opposition from octogenarian President Paul Biya.

The Consortium was dissolved in January 2017, two of its leaders were arrested, and within the anglophone protest movement, the pendulum began to swing in favour of independence.

On October 1, prominent leader Sisiku Ayuk Tabe declared the self-proclaimed republic of “Ambazonia”, named after Ambas Bay on the Atlantic Ocean. The state has not been recognised internationally.

Biya countered with a crackdown and enlisted the help of neighbouring Nigeria in denying a haven to the “terrorists”.

ASYLUM

In January, Ayuk Tabe and 46 of his supporters were extradited by Nigeria to Cameroon despite claims that many of them had lodged asylum applications.

In this climate of spiralling mistrust and revenge, calls for separatism, rather than federalism, are dominant.

The loudest calls have come from the Southern Cameroons Ambazonia Consortium United Front (SCACUF), headed by Ayuk Tabe, which advocates peaceful means to advance independence.

Many of its members are activists with a background in teaching, law or farming, but it also counts former leaders of the outlawed Southern Cameroon National Council (SCNC), which began the campaign for independence back in 1995.

“Negotiations are our best weapon,” said Millan Atam, a SCACUF leader.

But since the crackdown and the roundup of Ayuk Tabe, the peaceful stance is being outflanked by radicals, some of whom advocate taking up arms against “the colonialist occupying forces”.

KIDNAPPING

The International Crisis Group (ICG) estimates that there are likely to be several hundred fighters.

On February 11, these groups and some other separatist movements gathered in an umbrella organisation called the Ambazonia Recognition Collaboration Council (ARCC).

Its most prominent member is a firebrand former student trade unionist, Lucas Cho Ayaba, who heads an armed group that calls itself the Ambazonia Defence Forces (ADF).

The ADF claimed responsibility for kidnapping a government official on Sunday in Batibo, a town near the Nigerian border.

It says it has “thousands of fighters,” although commentators say the figure more likely to be around a hundred or so.

“We have a bloc defence strategy — every village, every group of young people can fight for Ambazonia, and we are ready to help them,” he told AFP.

FORCE

Another armed group is Southern Cameroons Defence Forces (SOCADEF), led by Ebenezer Akwanga, like Cho Ayaba an ex-student trade unionist.

In the late 1990s, the two were allies in challenging the moderate strand of separatism, taking their slogan about “the force of argument” and reversing it, to “the argument of force.”

The ADF and SOCADEF have claimed responsibility for most of the attacks in the anglophone areas. Other smaller, armed factions are also engaged in the conflict, such as the Tigers of Ambazonia, Vipers and the Ambaland Forces, but their impact is unclear.

Attempts have been made to unite the various independence groups, with at least four “conclaves” in Nigeria. The groups have so far failed to unite behind a single leader or structure.

“Today, we are divided, it can not work like this,” a leader said via the WhatsApp messenger service.

Source: AFP

Democratic lawmakers in the US House of Representatives are attempting to give a national platform to President Donald Trump’s sexual harassment accusers if they win back the lower chamber of Congress in November’s midterm elections.

As the snowballing sexual harassment allegations sweep the US, toppling powerful men in business, entertainment, the media and a handful of lawmakers in Congress, a growing number of Democrats think Congress should lend a voice to Trump’s accusers if their political party controls the House next year.

“I think it would be most appropriate,” said Representative Steve Cohen, a Democrat from Tennessee who is among the handful of Democrats pushing to impeach Trump.

“I mean, this is the most unusual circumstance that you have a president with over a dozen accusers of sexual harassment occupying the most prestigious position in the country.”

Several Democratic lawmakers in the upper chamber of Congress have called for congressional hearings for Trump’s accusers, who number at least 19.

“The President has shown through words and actions that he doesn’t value women. It’s not surprising that he doesn’t believe survivors or understand the national conversation that is happening,” said Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a Democrat from New York.

“If he wants due process for the over dozen sexual assault allegations against him, let’s have Congressional hearings tomorrow,” she tweeted. “I would support that and my colleagues should too.”

Sexual harassment accusations have swirled around Trump long before he was elected president in November 2016.

Nearly 20 women have accused Trump of sexual misconduct dating back decades, ranging from unwanted touching to groping to assault. Trump has denied any wrongdoing. The White House has called his accusers liars.

Source: Presstv