5, September 2020

Tennis: Serena headlines day six at the US Open ⁰

Serena Williams takes on 2017 US Open winner Sloane Stephens for a place in the last 16 at Flushing Meadows on Saturday.

The third-round match is the drawcard event on day six at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in New York.

Stephens dumped Williams out of the 2013 Australian Open during her sensational run to the semi-finals as a 19-year-old.

“She’s a great competitor,” Williams said of her fellow American, who is seeded 26th.

“It’s an incredibly interesting match, because she’s actually a US Open champion. She’s a great player. You can’t win a Grand Slam and not be really, really, really, really, really good.”

Williams, the tournament’s third seed, is seeking a 24th singles Grand Slam title that would equal Margaret Court’s record.

It has been more than three years since Williams won her 23rd Grand Slam title at the 2017 Australian Open — when she was already pregnant with daughter Olympia.

The 38-year-old has come close since, reaching four major finals only to come away empty handed.

A tournament victory next week would also see her break away from Chris Evert, on six titles, as the most decorated US Open champion of the women’s game in the modern era.

In the men’s draw Saturday, second seed Dominic Thiem takes on 2014 US Open champion Marin Cilic for a place in the last 16.

And third seed Daniil Medvedev appears against American wildcard J.J. Wolf in a last-32 match.

Source: AFP

5, September 2020

Niger soldiers executed dozens of civilians, probe says ⁰

Soldiers in Niger executed dozens of civilians during the counterinsurgency campaign against jihadists in the country’s troubled Tillaberi region earlier this year, a probe into the deaths reported.

The West African nation has suffered years of conflict with Islamic militants operating in the vast and inhospitable Sahel desert, with thousands of soldiers and civilians killed to date.

The national armies of Niger and its neighbours Mali and Burkina Faso have been accused of war crimes in their response operations, including forced disappearances and extrajudicial killings.

Niger’s National Commission on Human Rights was investigating reports by Amnesty International and other rights groups that 102 civilians had gone missing in the western province between March 27 and April 2 after an army operation.

“There have indeed been executions of unarmed civilians and the mission discovered at least 71 bodies in six mass graves,” said Abdoulaye Seydou, the president of the Pan-African Network for Peace, Democracy and Development, which participated in the probe, on Friday.

“It is elements of the Defence and Security Forces (FDS) which are responsible for these summary and extrajudicial executions,” he added, saying those killed were attacked with bladed weapons and small arms.

But he said the investigation was unable to establish whether senior levels of the military hierarchy were responsible for the deaths.

Jihadist violence resulted in 4,000 deaths in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso last year, the United Nations has said.

The UN has condemned what it said was a spike in criminal acts by national armies in the Sahel at the beginning of this year, including more than 100 extrajudicial executions by the Malian army between January and March.

Amnesty International reported in June that the armies of Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso had been responsible for nearly 200 disappearances in the space of a few months.

Source: AFP

5, September 2020

US: Charges dropped against black man tried six times for one crime ⁰

US prosecutors dropped charges Friday against a black man who was tried six times and spent more than 20 years in prison for the same murders.

Curtis Flowers served 23 years for a quadruple murder committed in Mississippi in 1996. He has always maintained his innocence.

The prosecutor in all six trials was ultimately accused last year by the US Supreme Court of trying hard to keep black people off the jury and eventually resigned from the case.

Flowers — who has been sentenced to death four times in the case — was released on bail in December, although another trial was still possible. But on Friday Mississippi’s attorney general dismissed the charges against him.

“I am finally free from the injustice that left me locked in a box for 23 years,” Flowers said in a statement.

“The day I’ve prayed for is here at last.”

Under US law, a suspect acquitted of a crime cannot be tried again. Still, Flowers was tried six times.

His case became well known in a podcast called “In the Dark.”

Each of the convictions and death sentences in the first three trials was overturned by the Mississippi Supreme Court for prosecutorial misconduct. The next two ended in hung juries.

In 2010 Flowers was convicted a final time and sentenced to death.

But this decision was overturned in 2019 by the US Supreme Court because of what it called a prosecutor’s “relentless, determined effort to rid the jury of black individuals.”

That prosecutor, Doug Evans, had been on the case from the outset.

In January he agreed to step down from the case and the state attorney general Lynn Fitch started the proceedings from scratch.

She asked that the case be thrown out, and a judge agreed.

Source: AFP

4, September 2020

Southern Cameroons civilians accuse Cameroon government military of brutality ⁰

Cameroon’s military has detained hundreds of people in the country’s troubled northwest as they search for separatists following the killing of a police officer this week. Locals accuse the military of carrying out revenge attacks, including looting and burning shops, in the English-speaking region — a charge the military denies.

Thirty-four-year old fish seller Ernestine Sahmo says she has decided to temporarily leave the English-speaking northwestern town of Bamenda due to what she says is military brutality.

Sahmo says she was forced out of her shop by armed soldiers who detained 80 other women at a police station for three days.

“The military entered the whole market and was removing everybody,” she said. “They will break into your store and then start brutalizing you, asking you to go out. They succeeded to remove everybody from the food market to the mobile police station. We were being asked to sit on the ground. Some women were collapsing. The way they terrorized us, we never knew we would come back alive.”

Sahmo says store owners’ goods were either looted or torched by the military.

Last Monday, the government said separatist fighters in Bamenda killed a policeman in active service. The military was then deployed to hunt for the killers.

Residents said troops started arresting people indiscriminately, forcing some either to undress or to sit on the floor for several hours.

Scared civilians escaped to neighboring villages and French-speaking towns including Mbouda and Bafoussam. The government said at least two civilians were killed but did not say if separatists or troops were responsible.

General Valere Nka, the commander of government troops fighting the separatists in the English-speaking northwest regions, says the military has not committed any atrocities. He says his troops have remained professional.

He says his troops fully obey instructions given by the military hierarchy for civilians to be protected and their human rights respected. Nka says he expects civilians who have been assured of total protection by the military to denounce all suspected separatist fighters in their localities.

Mka pledged to kill all fighters who do not drop their weapons and seek forgiveness.

Rights groups and opposition political parties have condemned the military for what they say are excesses and torture of civilians in handling the crisis.

Prince Ekosso, president of the opposition United Socialist Party, says civilians are scared of the military. He says some of the abuses inflicted by troops on civilians are unbearable.

“These are the things that we have decried for too long,” he said. “The people of the northwest and the southwest region cannot continue to suffer like this. You don’t go and punish innocent people for the crimes of another person. The military continues to terrorize the people.”

Last week, a Cameroonian rights group, the Center for Human Rights and Democracy in Africa, released what it said is a list of atrocities committed in the English-speaking regions between May and August.

The group accused the military of atrocities including extra-judicial executions, arbitrary arrests, unlawful detention, looting and extortion, poor prison conditions, and inhumane and degrading treatment of detainees.

The human rights body called for an investigation to be carried out and those found guilty to be punished.

Unrest broke out in Cameroon’s English-speaking regions in 2016, when teachers and lawyers protested the dominance of the French language and French-speaking officials.

Rebels took up arms a year later, demanding a separate English-speaking state they call the Federal Republic of Ambazonia.

Source: VOA

4, September 2020

UN condemns deadly attack on internally displaced people in French Cameroun ⁰

UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, strongly condemns an attack which killed seven people and wounded 14 others at Koyapé, a village hosting internally displaced people in Cameroon’s Far North Region on 1 September.

The suicide bomb attack took place near Kolofata, close to the border with Nigeria, where some 18,000 internally displaced people (IDPs) have sought safety over the past seven years. It comes just a month after 18 people died and 15 were injured in an attack by an armed group attack against the Nguétchéwé IDP site on the second of August.

“We are horrified by these senseless attacks on people who have been torn from their villages, fleeing violence perpetrated by armed gangs which rage in the region, only to be stripped of safety again after they just found refuge elsewhere,” said Olivier Guillaume Beer, UNHCR Representative in Cameroon.

“The killing of innocent civilians has to stop. This is contrary to international humanitarian law and human rights law. We call on armed groups to respect the rights and lives of civilians populations.”

An estimated 7,000 Cameroonians from Kordo and Guérédou villages near the country’s border with Nigeria have fled their homes since 11 August, seeking safety in neighbouring areas.

The displaced population has been targeted in relentless attacks, forcing them to flee.

Recent attacks follow a significant rise in violent incidents in Cameroon’s Far North Region, including looting and kidnapping by Boko Haram and other armed groups active in the region. Brutal violence has plagued the Lake Chad Basin, killing more than 30,000 people and forcing over three million to flee. Some 2.7 million people are now displaced internally in Northeast Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad and Niger. Another 300,000 Nigerian refugees have fled into neighbouring countries.

Culled from UNHCR

4, September 2020

October 1: Vice President Yerima urges Ambazonian unity against French Cameroun military ⁰

The Vice President of the Southern Cameroons Interim Government has strongly urged all Ambazonia Restoration Forces in Ground 1 and in Ground Zero including their leadership in the West to sew up their differences and prepare to confront the French Cameroun occupational army on October 1.

Dabney Yerima made the comments on Thursday in Holland, after he reportedly had a joined plenary meeting of his fellow Southern Cameroons leaders.

“As we prepare to celebrate our national day this coming October, all Southern Cameroons Self Defense Groups must come together to tell the world that the Federal Republic of Ambazonia will forever remain united against French Cameroun colonialism” he said.

Vice President Yerima noted that the Federal Republic of Ambazonia and its people are going through an unprecedented and dangerous stage of their struggle with French Cameroun political elites attempting to distract Southern Cameroonians with their so-called regional elections.

The Southern Cameroons exiled leader pointed out that 35, 000 Southern Cameroonians were not killed for the purpose of staging a French Cameroun teleguided regional election in the Federal Republic of Ambazonia.

Dabney Yerima again condemned the fledgling trend of détente between some Southern Cameroons traditional rulers and Minister Paul Atanga Nji and his occupying French Cameroun regime.

By Isong Asu in London

3, September 2020

US: President Trump tells supporters to try to vote twice ⁰

US President Donald Trump on Thursday renewed his call for supporters to try to vote twice on November 3, a potentially illegal act that he claimed is the only way to be sure that a ballot is counted.

Trump said Americans should first try to vote by mail, if that option is offered in their state, then also go to the polling station on election day to check that their ballot has been counted — and, if not, vote again.

“YOU ARE NOW ASSURED THAT YOUR PRECIOUS VOTE HAS BEEN COUNTED,” he said in a Twitter thread.

Intentionally voting twice is illegal.

Facebook and Twitter, which are under growing pressure not to allow misinformation ahead of the election, put warning labels on the president’s posts about the matter.

“We placed a public interest notice on two Tweets in this thread for violating our Civic Integrity Policy, specifically for encouraging people to potentially vote twice,” Twitter said.

However, White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany said Trump had been taken out of context and just wanted voters to verify that their first vote had been registered.

He “does not condone unlawful voting,” she said.

Whatever Trump meant, the tweets were his latest assault on the credibility of mail-in voting, which is being rapidly expanded across the country in response to fears of Covid-19 contagion in crowded polling stations.

Despite Trump’s relentless challenges, the mail-in practice is already widespread and largely trouble-free in the United States.

He himself uses the absentee mail-in option to vote in Florida while living in the White House.

While Trump says that increased mail-in voting will allow mass ballot tampering and rigging of the result, elections experts say there is no evidence of significant danger.

However, polls show Democrats are far more likely than Republicans to vote by mail, leading Trump’s opponents to fear that he is trying to suppress Biden’s vote — or set the stage for disputing the results.

– Election day worries –

Trump first aired the idea of casting a precautionary second vote on Wednesday during a trip to North Carolina.

“If you get the unsolicited ballots, send it in, and then go — make sure it counted. And if it doesn’t tabulate, you vote,” he said. “So, send it in early, and then go and vote.”

The recommendation prompted the election board in the state, which Democrat Joe Biden hopes to snatch from Trump, to issue a statement pointing out: “It is illegal to vote twice in an election.”

“Soliciting someone to do so also is a violation of North Carolina law,” the board’s director, Karen Brinson Bell, added.

Polls currently show Biden on course to defeat Trump.

But experts warn that the country faces a confusing and potentially tense aftermath of the voting on November 3, due to the unusual circumstances.

Given the larger than ordinary number of mailed-in ballots, few expect there will be a clear-cut result that evening, with mailed ballots possibly taking days if not weeks to finish counting.

Under one scenario, Trump could be shown to have won on the basis of ballots cast during the day, but mail-in ballots, once counted days later, would then put Biden over the top.

Trump has repeatedly refused to declare he will accept the results of the election.

Source: AFP

3, September 2020

French Cameroun Military Intervention in Southern Cameroons: Some Economic Consequences ⁰

Yaounde says the economies of its troubled English-speaking western regions are collapsing as a result of the country’s four-year separatist conflict.  Officials say the ongoing fighting has made tax revenues in the English-speaking Northwest region drop from $800,000 annually to just $1,000 last year. The lack of government funds has had devastating effects on the region. 

Fotso Dominique, the most senior government economic official in the English-speaking Northwest region, says separatist fighters have succeeded in chasing customs and tax officials from almost all crossing points along the border with Nigeria.

Speaking on Cameroon state television, Dominique said there has been a 90% drop in imports of building materials, drugs, vehicles, electronics and basic commodities from Nigeria. This, he says, while civilians have been deprived of basic supplies and state coffers left with huge shortfalls.

“Before 2016, the customs duty collection was more than 200 million Francs [$ 363,000] in Donga Mantung and about 150 million [$ 273,000] from Menchum Division giving us a total of about 305 million [$552,000] per annum. As we talk, Donga Mantung last year collected less than 500,000 [$ 900] and nothing was collected from the Menchum area,” he said.

Cameroon’s government this month reported that the country’s second largest employer — the Cameroon Development Corporation — had abandoned most of its banana, palm oil, and rubber plantations. It owes as much as a year’s worth of backpay to 6,000 of its 22,000 workers.

The Palm Oil Company PAMOL and other agro industrial companies say they are now heavily in debt.

Microfinance institutions that power the economies of Cameroon’s English-speaking regions say they are unable to recover $50 million in loans.

Merchants have either escaped to safer areas in the French-speaking regions or can not repay loans because their businesses are closed due to the fighting.

The separatists have said on social media that their intention is to ruin Cameroon government state coffers. Fighters say they want to make the English-speaking regions ungovernable until they obtain their independence. 

Residents and businesspeople say anyone who disobeys the fighters’ calls for a lockdown or is seen paying taxes is subject to retribution.

Businessman Protus Awnaga says he almost lost his life for disobeying instructions from fighters not to go on a business trip on the week a lockdown was imposed.

“That is the most awful moment I have ever had in my life. Face to face with gunmen like this. And they ordered us out of the car. We saw our things being burnt, but we were even thankful to God because they should have burnt us with the car. It is terrible. It is deplorable,” he said.

Economist Tasoh Gerald says the consequences of the crisis weighs on the government but it is civilians who are caught in the fighting who suffer most. They include people whose businesses were either torched by separatists for disobeying their instructions to not pay taxes or those whose property was burnt by the military, which accused them of supporting the fighters.

“It has discouraged investments in this region. A fall in investments implies a rise in unemployment and a general fall in the standards of living. Also, most of the councils in these regions find it difficult to settle their debts and pay their workers,” he said. “Another consequence is the near collapse of the tourism sector. Most of the recreational areas and tourist sites are abandoned. Most of those in the working age group have migrated to other regions leaving behind the old and the young in the villages. This high migration implies less farm labor and consequently a fall in agricultural productivity in these regions.” 

The suffering has not deterred neither the government nor the fighters. Both have maintained their positions for the past four years. The separatists are asking for the creation of a breakaway English-speaking state while the government maintains that Cameroon cannot be divided.

The United Nations says the conflict has killed more than three thousand people and displaced more than 500,000. Fifty thousand others are asylum seekers in neighboring Nigeria.

Source: VOA 

3, September 2020

7 Killed in Suicide Bomb Attack in French Cameroun ⁰

At least seven people were killed and 14 others wounded in suicide bomb attack in a village hosting internally displaced people in Cameroon’s Far North region, the second of such attack in a month, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said on Wednesday.

The attack on Tuesday took place in Goldavi, close to the border with Nigeria, where some 18,000 people fleeing the violent insurgency, had sought refuge.

The UN agency said the recent attacks follow a significant rise in violent incidents in Cameroon’s Far North Region, including looting and kidnapping by Boko Haram and other armed groups active in the region.

A spokesman for Cameroon’s government was not immediately available to comment.

Suspected militants from Islamist group Boko Haram killed at least 18 people and wounded seven early last month in a grenade attack on a camp for displaced people in northern Cameroon.

The UNHCR said that an estimated 7,000 Cameroonian villagers near the border with Nigeria have fled their homes since 11 August, seeking safety in neighbouring areas.

“The displaced population has been targeted in relentless attacks, forcing them to flee,” it said, adding that the decade-long Boko Haram insurgency has killed over 30,000 in the Lake Chad Basin, and forced over three million to flee their homes.

Source: Reuters

3, September 2020

US prepares for pre-election Covid-19 vaccine rollout ⁰

The US has urged states to get ready for a potential Covid-19 vaccine rollout two days before the presidential election, it emerged Wednesday, as France prepared to present a mammoth spending plan for its virus-hit economy.

Across the world, governments are hoping to announce a vaccine as soon as possible to reopen economies shuttered to contain an illness that has killed more than 850,000 people and infected over 25 million.

In a widely circulated letter, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention asked states to sweep away red tape that could prevent a network of vaccine distribution centers being “fully operational by Nov. 1, 2020.”

That is two days before voters head to the polls in an election clouded by the virus and the economic crisis it provoked, sparking concerns President Donald Trump’s administration is rushing to have a vaccine before November 3.

“The normal time required to obtain… permits presents a significant barrier to the success of this urgent public health program,” CDC head Robert Redfield told states in the August 27 letter.

“CDC urgently requests your assistance in expediting applications for these distribution facilities.”

Priority will be given to essential workers, national security officials, seniors and members of vulnerable racial and ethnic groups, according to The New York Times.

Three Western drug makers are progressing with their Phase 3 clinical trials, involving tens of thousands of participants.

AstraZeneca is partnering with Oxford University in England while Moderna is collaborating with the US National Institutes of Health. Pfizer and BioNTech are partnering on the third candidate.

– ‘Dangerous’ –

Under normal procedures, test administrators must wait — probably for months — to verify that vaccine candidates work and are safe.

The US Food and Drug Administration however has raised the possibility that a vaccine might be given emergency authorization before the end of trials.

The FDA has faced mounting criticism from the medical community that it is bowing to political pressure from Trump, who is behind Democratic challenger Joe Biden in the polls and has said one might be ready before the election.

“This means mass vaccination nationwide could start in 59 days. FIFTY-NINE DAYS. Is any #COVID19 #vaccine likely to have completed Phase 3 safety and efficacy clinical trials, and gone through full scientific and @US_FDA review in 59 days?” award-winning epidemiology writer Laurie Garrett asked on Twitter.

“To my knowledge, none of the US #COVID19 #vaccines have finished even enrolling test subjects for Phase 3 trials. Rushing this to completion within 59 days is DANGEROUS.”

FDA chief Stephen Hahn, however, has denied he is acting under pressure from Trump, arguing that any vaccine approval would be a “science, medicine, data decision.”

The US has registered more than six million Covid-19 cases — almost a quarter of the global total — and 185,000 deaths.

Shutdowns have taken a toll on livelihoods across the globe as business revenues plunge and millions are forced out of work.

In Europe, where GDP plunged 12.1 percent in the three months to June, fears are growing of more lockdowns and disruption this autumn and winter as the virus resurges.

The French economy has been pushed into its worst downward spiral since 1945, with GDP down 13.8 percent in the second quarter, after a drop of more than five percent in the first.

– Venice festival tribute –

Paris, hoping to ward off the threat of mass layoffs, has earmarked 100 billion euros ($120 billion) to counter the devastating impact of the coronavirus.

Some critics say the money may come too late to save many companies, while others say high hopes for President Emmanuel Macron’s green revolution in the French economy are likely to be dashed.

Economists have welcomed the departure from the kind of austerity measures seen after the 2008 crisis which were “a huge error,” said Philippe Martin, who heads up the CAE think tank, which advises the government.

Unlike the post-2008 crisis response, much of the new plan targets the supply and investment side of the economy, namely businesses.

The measures over the next two years include 10 billion euros’ worth of corporate tax cuts.

Youth employment is also a major target of the spending, with 6.5 billion euros aimed at encouraging hiring for millions of new entrants on a depressed job market.

In Australia, the government announced a record contraction of seven percent despite authorities providing billions of dollars in support to struggling firms.

New Delhi reported that growth suffered a historic 23.9 percent decline in the second quarter, while Brazil’s economy contracted by a record 9.7 percent.

And to add insult to injury for the sports-mad South American nation, football icon Neymar was one of three Paris Saint-Germain stars to have contracted the coronavirus, a well-placed source told AFP.

“Three Paris Saint-Germain players have confirmed positive Sars CoV2 tests and are subject to the appropriate health protocol,” PSG said in a statement.

When contacted by AFP, the club declined to confirm the identity of the players in question.

The virus failed to put the brakes on the Venice film festival in Italy, which opened Wednesday with a tribute to those who lost their lives from coronavirus.

The festival, rolling out on the glitzy beachfront Lido through September 12, is the first major international festival to take place since Covid-19 shuttered theaters, halted production and drove millions of moviegoers around the world to their television sets.

Source: AFP