A tanker with 22 Indian crew members on board has gone missing off West Africa, in waters plagued by piracy, officials said Sunday.

The Panama-registered MT Marine Express, loaded with 13,500 tonnes of petrol, had been anchored off the Benin City of Cotonou before authorities lost contact with the vessel on Thursday.

“Our mission in Abuja (Nigeria) is in touch with the authorities in Benin and Nigeria for their help in locating the ship and is constantly monitoring the situation,” Indian Foreign Ministry spokesman Raveesh Kumar said.

The Hong Kong-based Anglo-Eastern shipping company, which manages the tanker, said the last contact with the crew was made on Thursday.

“Authorities have been alerted and are responding. Our top priority is the safety of the crew, whose families have been contacted,” it said on Twitter.

Local media reports said it was the second ship to go missing from the area in the last month.

In January, MT Barret went missing, but the crew, most of them Indians, were released six days later after reportedly paying a ransom.

Several ships have been targeted by pirates in the Gulf of Guinea, seriously disrupting the international shipping route and costing the global economy billions of dollars.

(Source: AFP)

Germany’s BfV domestic intelligence agency has said that North Korea has been purchasing parts for its missile program via its embassy in Berlin.

BfV head Hans-Georg Maassen made the announcement in a program to be aired on NDR on Monday. Pyongyang is yet to comment on the matter.

“We determined that procurement activities have been carried out from there that are, in our view, done with a view to the missile program and sometimes also for the nuclear program,” said Maassen in comments released ahead of the broadcast.

He noted that the purchases were usually so-called dual use goods, which can be utilized for military and civilian activates.

Maassen noted that German authorities usually block such activities, but “We can’t guarantee that we can detect and prevent this in all cases.”

Pyongyang has defied years of multilateral and bilateral sanctions in relation to its nuclear and missile programs.

The United States and its allies in the West and in Asia engineered tough UN sanctions on North Korea last year when Pyongyang test-fired two missiles in July and then carried out its most powerful nuclear test in August.

However, many said the sanctions would not deter North Korea from pursuing its nuclear and missile program, which Pyongyang insists is part of its defense policy against the United States. Critics have repeatedly warned that sanctions would more affect North Korean people rather than its military and the government.

Source: Presstv

US President Donald Trump has defended a recent recent release of once-classified congressional memo on FBI, saying it “totally vindicates” him in an investigation into his presidential campaign’s alleged collusion with Russia.

The president took to Twitter on Saturday morning to once again deny any such collusion or obstruction.

“This memo totally vindicates ‘Trump’ in probe,” he wrote. “But the Russian Witch Hunt goes on and on. Their (sic) was no Collusion and there was no Obstruction (the word now used because, after one year of looking endlessly and finding NOTHING, collusion is dead). This is an American disgrace!”

On Friday, he approved the public release of a memo written by House Intelligence Committee member Devin Nunes that alleges the FBI abused its surveillance authority.

The release of the four-page document prompted senior Democrats to denounce the controversial memo as an inaccurate and misleading portrait intended to undermine the probe. They warned Trump, in a written statement, not to use it as a “pretext” to fire special counsel Robert Mueller or the deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein.

Trump reportedly ordered f Mueller the firing of Mueller in June. Democrats, said in a statement that, the memo release is an attempt to undermine the integrity of Mueller’s investigation, warning that such action could trigger a constitutional crisis not seen since the 1970s, when then President Richard Nixon gave orders to fire justice officials involved in the Watergate scandal.

“We write to inform you that we would consider such an unwarranted action as an attempt to obstruct justice in the Russia investigation,” the statement said.

The memo’s central allegation is that the FBI and US Justice Department had been spying on a former Trump campaign adviser, Carter Page.

GOP memo release sends ‘terrible message’ to US allies

Former CIA director Leon Panetta also warned that Trump’s approval of the congressional memo sends a “terrible message” to US allies to be worry about sharing classified information with Washington.

Panetta, who was discussing the memo release with the CBS News on Friday, described it as an “unprecedented” move, which could have far-reaching effects on Washington’s foreign policy.

“All of this sends a terrible message to our allies who are going to worry about sharing classified information that is so easily released as part of this political effort,” said the former CIA director.

He also called Trump’s move as “a breakdown in the fundamental trust that is important to the institutions of our democracy.”

There are currently several investigations into alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, but Trump has consistently denied any ties with Moscow. Analysts, however, say Trump’s attempts to hinder the probe, including his attempts to sack Mueller, suggests that he has something big to hide.

Source: Presstv

The Pentagon has released a new nuclear arms policy that aims to revamp US nuclear arsenal and develop new low-yield atomic weapons.

The latest policy was revealed on Friday in a Pentagon policy statement known as the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR).

The new thinking, which came largely to counter Russia, effectively ends Obama-era efforts to reduce the size and scope of the US arsenal and minimize the role of nuclear weapons in defense planning.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said in an introductory note that the changes reflect a need to “look reality in the eye” and “see the world as it is, not as we wish it to be.”

“This is a response to Russian expansion of their capability and the nature of their strategy and doctrine,” Mattis added.

The Pentagon believes Moscow considers US nuclear weapons as too big to be used, meaning they are no longer an effective deterrent; therefore, developing smaller nukes would challenge that presumption.

Although low-yield weapons are smaller, less powerful bombs with a strength below 20 kilotons, they are still devastating.

Low-yield nuclear weapons known as “tactical” nukes can be as destructive as the bombs the US dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II.

The US already has a massive nuclear arsenal which includes 150 B-61 nukes stored across multiple European countries.

Those weapons, which can be configured for low-yield options, would be launchable from submarines or ships, so would not need to be stockpiled in Europe.

“The US and NATO require a wider range of credible low-yield nuclear options to do a very specific thing: to convince the Russian leadership that if they initiate limited nuclear use, in a war with the alliance, our response will deny them the objective they seek and impose costs that far outweigh those benefits they can achieve,” said Greg Weaver, the deputy director of strategic capabilities for the military’s Joint Staff.

The NPR, the first update to the military’s nuclear strategy since 2010, outlines the Pentagon’s nuclear ambitions under President Donald Trump, but marks a sobering break from the vision for America’s atomic future under his predecessor Barack Obama.

“The strategy develops capabilities aimed at making use of nuclear weapons less likely,” Trump said in a statement. “It enhances deterrence of strategic attacks against our Nation, and our allies and partners, that may not come in the form of nuclear weapons.”

During his presidential campaign, Trump promised to expand and strengthen US nuclear capabilities, unlike Obama who, during a famous speech in Prague in 2009, called for the elimination of nuclear weapons.

Barry Blechman, co-founder of the Stimson Center, a nonpartisan anti-nuclear proliferation think tank in Washington, has warned that the US is “on the cusp of a new era of nuclear proliferation.”

“This is the great nuclear danger raised by the new” nuclear policy, Blechman added.

The US is also considering upgrading its fleet of long-range strategic bombers such as B-2 and B-52 to deploy its arsenal of more than 7,000 nuclear warheads to any target around the world.

Source: Presstv

Cameroon Concord News Group strongly supports the ultimatum issued by the Interim Government of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia giving French Cameroun and Nigeria until Monday 5th February 2018 to prove that our interim president Sisiku Ayuk Tabe and 11 other members of the Interim Government who were abducted in Abuja, Nigeria on January 5, 2018 are alive. Cameroon Concord News Group supports the statement made by the Communication Secretary of the Interim Government, Hon. Chris Anu that past that dateline, if prove that they are alive is not provided, then the reaction that proceeded the genocide in Rwanda will look like a child’s play. For Cameroon Concord News Group, there could hardly be a better way of painting the picture of the potential reaction to the provocation and the international conspiratorial genocide against Ambazonia that has culminated in the abduction of our leaders in a supposed democratic Nigeria.   This abduction in Abuja, the seat of power in Nigeria clarifies at long last, the dubious role played by some members of the Nigerian Government as the God fathers of the international crime cartels that have brought the countries of the African Sahel and the Gulf of Guinea on their knees. This international crime is a stain on the conscience of the supposed democratic Federation of Nigeria. The French slave territory of French Cameroun is the well-known Al Capone crime paradise in the Gulf of Guinea that preys on the blood and sweat of the Southern Cameroons.

Cameroon Concord News Group has read with dismay some timid attempt at condemning this strong statement made by the Interim Government, alleging that it amounted to an apology of genocide. This accusation which the criminal regimes to which the ultimatum has been shying to make is regrettable and unfortunate. Cameroon Concord News Group is tempted to suspect that such a timid statement is intended to benefit the genocidal regime and the abductors of our interim leaders. The statement of the Interim Government delivered by Hon. Chris Anu was not responsible for the genocide in Manyu, Kwakwa and other parts of Ambazonia. The statement was not responsible for the genocide perpetrated on November 22 and October 1, 2017 which was widely celebrated by the government of French Cameroun, members of the CPDM and Members of the Senate and National Assembly of French Cameroun. It was not responsible for the genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes that have decimated hundreds of thousands of Southern Cameroons/ Ambazonian citizens for the past fifty-seven years. That statement was not responsible for the widespread and systematic rape of our girls in schools and universities, torching of civilian settlements and deportation of our people from our ancestral lands. It was not responsible for the hundreds of thousands of our refugees in foreign lands.  It is regrettably the absence of statements of this nature and action to implement that provided cattle fodder to the impunity with which these crimes have been committed so far. It is the preplanned genocide of our people and the abduction of our leaders that the ultimatum promises a strong response worse than that occurred under similar genocidal circumstances in Rwanda.

For these reasons we strongly endorse the statement and urges the Interim Government to extend the ultimatum to include the immediate and unconditional release of our leaders if they are alive, the immediate and unconditional halt to the genocide and withdrawal of all French Cameroun’s terrorist forces from our territory, the divestment of French Cameroun’s colonial administrators and all symbols of colonial governance from our territory. That a person laying claims to leadership in the Southern Cameroons struggle should come out in times like these to condemn this strong statement calls for legitimate suspicion. It is regrettable that this individual and others have so far not come out strongly to condemn the genocide in the Southern Cameroons like the Roman Catholic Bishops, the International Crisis Group, Amnesty International and the African Bar Association have boldly done. Rather they have turned their weapons inward to attack and delegitimize every effort to confront the enemy comprehensively and decisively.   We in the Cameroon Concord News Group hold that this strong statement is appropriate in the circumstances. French Cameroun and its corrupt co-conspirators in the Nigerian Government will bear the consequences of the escalation of the genocidal war of choice they have declared against Ambazonia and its consequences in the entire Gulf of Guinea.

We strongly condemn any betrayal of the revolution and its leadership and support the self-defense efforts of Ambazonians at home and abroad. Those who cannot provide a strong response to the ongoing crimes against our people or bold enough to strongly condemn the crimes should spare the people the pains and provocations of timid statements that benefit our adversaries.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Chairman and Editor-in-Chief

Cameroon Concord News Group