Monthly Archives: August 2023

2, August 2023

Nigeria cuts electricity to Niger following coup ⁰

Nigeria has cut its electricity supply to Niger after West African neighbours imposed sanctions on the junta that ousted the country’s elected leader last week, a Niger power company source has told AFP.

“Since yesterday, Nigeria has disconnected the high-voltage line transporting electricity to Niger,” a source at Niger’s power company Nigelec said.

Niger depends on Nigeria for 70 percent of its power.

Source: France 24

2, August 2023

Pope Francis arrives in Portugal for World Youth Day ⁰

Pope Francis headed to Portugal on Wednesday to open the first post-pandemic edition of World Youth Day, hoping to inspire the next generation of Catholics.

More than 1 million young people from around the world were expected to attend the gathering in Lisbon, which takes place over several days. Busloads of pilgrims started arriving before Tuesday despite temperatures forecast to hit 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit) by the weekend’s final papal Mass.

“Stay hydrated!” read a slogan promoted by the Portugal’s General Directorate for Health for the event. Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa advised youth day volunteers Monday to keep with them “a lot of water, because it’s very hot, and a hat.”

Cardinal-elect Americo Aguiar, a Lisbon bishop who is organizing the festival, said two years of COVID-19 lockdowns made this year’s edition of World Youth Day unique. He said it was an important encounter for Catholic youths, especially with war raging now in Europe and economic uncertainties around the globe.

“The pope always says this event is the joy and the possibility of coming together, of the culture of coming together,” Aguiar said in an interview. “After such limitations and difficulties, young people from all over the world will be able to meet again, with certain freedom.”

Francis arrives Wednesday and is scheduled to spend the morning meeting with Portuguese officials at the Belem National Palace, the official presidential residence west of Lisbon, from where Portugal’s maritime explorers of the 15th and 16th centuries set sail.

In the afternoon, Francis makes his way to the 16th century Jeronimos Monastery and church, arguably Portugal’s greatest monument. There, he is set to meet with the Portuguese Catholic hierarchy, which recently began the process of reckoning with its legacy of clergy sexual abuse.

Meeting with sex abuse survivors

Francis is widely expected to meet in private with abuse survivors this week and could well refer to the problem in his public remarks, as he has done during past foreign trips. Portuguese bishops were widely criticized for their initial response to the findings of an independent commission, which reported in February that at least 4,815 boys and girls were abused in the country since 1950, most of them ages 10-14.

The bishops long insisted there were only a handful of cases, and they initially balked at suspending active members of the clergy who were named in the commission’s report. They also flip-flopped on paying reparations to victims, at first insisting they would only pay if ordered to by court rulings.

The Portuguese Catholic Church also promised in March to build a memorial to victims that would be unveiled during World Youth Day, but organizers scrapped the plan a few weeks ago.

In its place, victims’ advocates have launched a campaign called “This is our memorial” and plan to put up billboards around Lisbon this week reading “4,800+ Children Abused.”

St. John Paul II launched World Youth Day in the 1980s as a way to invigorate the next generation of Catholics in their faith, and the event is returning to European soil for the first time since 2016.

Ukrainian and Russian youths were expected to attend, and the war in Ukraine will likely take center stage Saturday when Francis visits Fatima, the Catholic shrine which for over a century has been associated with an apocalyptic prophecy about peace and Russia.

“I think World Youth Day brings hope, after the pandemic, after being locked down, not able to live our faith as we were used to, as we wished for,” Alfredo Hernandez, a World Youth Day volunteer from Guatemala, said. “The event gives a ray of hope to get out on the streets again.”

Coping with the heatwave

Hot weather could be an issue during the five-day visit, given temperatures in Lisbon are expected to hit 35 C (95 F) on Sunday. Many young people were expected to camp out in the vast, unshaded Tagus Park starting Saturday afternoon, first to participate in an evening vigil and then to be in place Sunday morning for Francis’ final Mass.

Organizers said they installed 32 water tanks with 640 taps for filling water bottles, while the Lisbon City Council says it doubled the number of drinking fountains in the city to around 400.

Registered participants are receiving reusable water bottles and sunhats in their welcome knapsacks, but some were more worried for Francis, given his weakened condition: The 86-year-old Argentine pope was hospitalized for nine days in June to repair a hernia and remove scar tissue from previous intestinal surgeries.

Francis, who travels with a doctor and nurse on his foreign trips, is likely to refer to the heat given his repeated alarm about climate change, including as recently as last week, when he urged action in the face of wildfires ravaging Greece.

“I’m going to pray that he is going to be OK,” Theresa Guettler, a nurse from Florida who is volunteering at the event, said. She recommended that Francis stay hydrated and follow his medical team’s advice. “I trust that he has good doctors and good people taking care of him.”

Source: AP

2, August 2023

US: Trump indicted for efforts to overturn results of 2020 presidential election ⁰

Donald Trump was charged Tuesday in a Justice Department investigation into his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in the run-up to the violent riot by his supporters at the US Capitol.

The charges include conspiracy to defraud the United States government and witness tampering.

The indictment, the third criminal case brought against the former president as he seeks to reclaim the White House in 2024, follows a long-running federal investigation into schemes by Trump and his allies to subvert the peaceful transfer of power and keep him in office despite a decisive loss to Joe Biden.

Even in a year of rapid-succession legal reckonings for Trump, Tuesday’s criminal case was especially stunning in its allegations that a former president assaulted the underpinnings of democracy in a frantic and ultimately failed effort to cling to power.

Federal prosecutors say Donald Trump was “determined to remain in power” in conspiracies that targeted a “bedrock function of the United States federal government: the nation’s process of collecting, counting and certifying the results of the presidential election.” Trump is due in court on Thursday before US District Judge Tanya Chutkan.

The criminal case comes while Trump leads the field of Republicans vying to capture their party’s presidential nomination. It is sure to be dismissed by the former president and his supporters – and even some of his rivals – as just another politically motivated prosecution. Yet the charges stem from one of the most serious threats to American democracy in modern history.

Refusal to accept loss

They focus on the turbulent two months after the November 2020 election in which Trump refused to accept his loss and spread lies that victory was stolen from him. The turmoil resulted in the US Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, when Trump loyalists violently broke into the building, attacked police officers and disrupted the congressional counting of electoral votes.

In between the election and the riot, Trump urged local election officials to undo voting results in their states, pressured former Vice President Mike Pence to halt the certification of electoral votes and falsely claimed that the election had been stolen – a notion repeatedly rejected by judges.

The indictment had been expected since Trump said in mid-July that the Justice Department informed him he was a target of its long-running Jan. 6 investigation. A bipartisan House committee that spent months investigating the run-up to the Capitol riot also recommended prosecuting Trump on charges, including aiding an insurrection and obstructing an official proceeding.

The mounting criminal cases against Trump – not to mention multiple civil cases – are unfolding in the heat of the 2024 race. A conviction in this case, or any other, would not prevent Trump from pursuing the White House or serving as president.

In New York, state prosecutors have charged Trump with falsifying business records about a hush money payoff to a porn actor before the 2016 election. The trial begins in late March.

In Florida, the Justice Department has brought more than three dozen felony counts against Trump accusing him of illegally possessing classified documents after leaving the White House and concealing them from the government. The trial begins in late May.

Trial to be held in Washington

The latest federal indictment against Trump focuses heavily on actions taken in Washington, and the trial will be held there, in a courthouse located between the White House he once occupied and the Capitol his supporters once stormed. No trial date has been set.

Prosecutors in Georgia are investigating efforts by Trump and his allies to reverse his election loss to Biden there in 2020. The district attorney of Fulton County is expected to announce a decision on whether to indict the former president in early August.

The investigation of Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election was led by Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith. His team of prosecutors has questioned senior Trump administration officials before a grand jury in Washington, including Pence and top lawyers from the Trump White House.

Rudy Giuliani, a Trump lawyer who pursued post-election legal challenges, spoke voluntarily to prosecutors as part of a proffer agreement, in which a person’s statements can’t be used against them in any future criminal case that is brought.

Prosecutors also interviewed election officials in Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan and elsewhere who came under pressure from Trump and his associates to change voting results in states won by Biden, a Democrat.

Focal points of the Justice Department’s election meddling investigation included the role played by some of Trump’s lawyers, post-election fundraising, a chaotic December 2020 meeting at the White House in which some Trump aides discussed the possibility of seizing voting machines and the enlistment of fake electors to submit certificates to the National Archives and Congress falsely asserting that Trump, not Biden, had won their states’ votes.

For Trump, this is a witch hunt

Trump has been trying to use the mounting legal troubles to his political advantage, claiming without evidence on social media and at public events that the cases are being driven by Democratic prosecutors out to hurt his 2024 election campaign.

The indictments have helped his campaign raise millions of dollars from supporters, though he raised less after the second than the first, raising questions about whether subsequent charges will have the same impact.

A fundraising committee backing Trump’s candidacy began soliciting contributions just hours after the ex-president revealed he was the focus of the Justice Department’s Jan. 6 investigation, casting it as “just another vicious act of Election Interference on behalf of the Deep State to try and stop the Silent Majority from having a voice in your own country.”

Attorney General Merrick Garland last year appointed Smith, an international war crimes prosecutor who also led the Justice Department’s public corruption section, as special counsel to investigate efforts to undo the 2020 election and Trump’s retention of hundreds of classified documents at his Palm Beach, Florida, home, Mar-a-Lago. Although Trump has derided him as “deranged” and suggested that he is politically motivated, Smith’s past experience includes overseeing significant prosecutions against high-profile Democrats.

The Justice Department’s investigation into the efforts to overturn the 2020 election began well before Smith’s appointment, proceeding alongside separate criminal probes into the Jan. 6 rioters themselves.

More than 1,000 people have been charged in connection with the insurrection, including some with seditious conspiracy.

Source: AP

1, August 2023

Hamburg: Youssoufa Moukoko’s family leave mansion to live in refugee home ⁰

The mother and siblings of Borussia Dortmund youngster, Youssoufa Moukoko, are reportedly residing in a refugee home.

On the field, the Cameroon-born forward holds Bundesliga records as the youngest debutant and scorer, with his age is officially listed as 18.

On a personal note, Moukoko has been dogged by claims of age-cheating and most recently, heartbreaking reports about the current state of his family.

Earlier in the year, a birth certificate was made public from his adoptive father, indicating that he was born in the year 2000 – which would make him much older than 18.

In addition, German newspaper, BILD, has recently released images of Marie Moukoko, aged 35, escorting her son and daughter – who happen to be siblings of the player – to a refugee home on the outskirts of Hamburg.

According to the newspaper, Youssoufa’s family made the move to the refugee home as he ceased to provide financial support for their rent, despite his annual earnings of £5.1 million from Borussia Dortmund.

The report further states the 3,767-square-foot villa, where the family had resided, is now up for sale.

Despite being under the mother’s name and her having six children, the property is being seized due to outstanding debts amounting to £442,277.

Marie declined to criticise her son, per the Daily Star:

“It’s not an issue; he’s still young. After all, I have not just one child, but six children. The municipality found good accommodation for us – that’s all right. And I work too.”

Joseph, the father of the Dortmund prodigy, added:

“Our son no longer supports us. But do you think I would speak badly of him?”

Youssoufa was reportedly born in Yaounde, Cameroon, in November 2004 before moving to live in Germany in 2014.

Source: Sportsbrief

1, August 2023

Cameroon under Biya on path toward collapse, fragmentation ⁰

The Vice President of the Ambazonia Interim Government says the 40-year-old French Cameroun far-right regime’s insistence on pushing ahead with its war in Southern Cameroons-Ambazonia has put Yaoundé on the path to collapse.

Dabney Yerima made the remarks in a Sunday conversation with Cameroon Concord News London Bureau Chief Asu Isong after the 90-year-old President Biya posthumously elevated on Saturday the late SDF Chairman Ni John Fru Ndi to the rank of Grand Cordon of Merit.

“Granting Fru Ndi that honour in a very dusty Southern Cameroons village has been the worst day in the history of the Yaoundé regime,” Yerima said, adding, “This is what puts Biya and his Francophone regime on the path of collapse, fragmentation, and disappearance.”

Dabney Yerima noted that ever since Biya declared war against the people of Southern Cameroons, some 6,000 Cameroon government army soldiers have been killed by Ambazonia Restoration Forces and that the notion of the Biya regime’s invincibility with French support has started to change in French Cameroun.

“La Republique and its backers are now facing a cascade of crises and they are all over Europe begging for money to sustain their criminality, we see that it is on the path toward collapse,” Yerima furthered.

Biya went to Russia to beg as usual, using the Russia-Africa Summit as an excuse or a pretext but left the Russian capital, Moscow, with a bloodshot eye.

Russia may be in need of allies but it does not have money to give to irresponsible governments like the Yaoundé government which has been on a begging spree for decades.

By Ewang Miriam Metchane

1, August 2023

Yaoundé: Women protest Ambazonia war, cost of living ⁰

Hundreds of women and activists marched in the capital of Cameroon Monday, calling for an end to the country’s separatist crisis and for the government to provide more help to reduce the high cost of living. The march coincides with the observance of Pan African Women’s Day.

Several hundred women at a courtyard in the neighborhood of Tsinga listen or sing along with the song “Family Love” by singer Kareyce Fotso.

The song urges families to sincerely love each other and be united as they try to overcome difficulties caused by several crises Cameroon is experiencing.

Anne Anaba, one of the coordinators of Monday’s march, says the women assembled at the courtyard afterward to demand an end to the separatist war in Cameroon’s Northwest and Southwest regions.

The war has killed about 6,000 people and displaced 700,000 others.

The march was also part of activities marking the annual observance of Pan African Women’s Day. The holiday, declared by the African Union, is observed every July 31.

Anaba says poverty and hardships triggered by armed conflicts and unprecedented spikes in commodity prices have impacted families from building foundation stones for solid African societies. She says conflicts kill or displace men from communities and women spend time running for safety instead of teaching children to love, live together in peace and socially develop their communities.

She said women are the most affected by Cameroon’s separatist crisis.

Women and children are also deeply affected by food insecurity along the northern borders with Chad and Nigeria where an Islamist insurgency has left more than 36,000 people dead, and 3 million displaced.

Cameroon women say besides the armed conflicts, they are finding it extremely difficult to cope with the rising prices of goods— which they blame on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The government says since the Russian war began in February 2022, prices of rice, wheat, fuel and fertilizer have increased by between 40 to 60%.

Kiven Juliet, the president of Wheat Farmers in Cameroon’s Center region, says she followed the Russia-Africa summit on July 27 when Russian President Vladimir Putin said Moscow will begin free deliveries of 25,000 to 50,000 tons of grain to some African countries.

But Kiven says Cameroon can ensure sufficiency by growing its food at home.

“I heard during the Russia-Africa summit that Russia will be giving wheat to African countries free of charge, but that is not what we want. Our governments should give subsidies for farmers to buy fertilizers and produce the wheat themselves,” she said.

Marie-Therese Abena Ondoa, Cameroon’s minister of women’s empowerment, says in 2022, President Paul Biya ordered the disbursement of over $15 million to grow wheat in the central African state. She says women who apply will have funding for fertilizer, wheat and rice seeds.

“Women represent an essential agricultural workforce and undeniably contribute to [the] fight against hunger and poverty,” she said. “Women contribute significantly to the stability of life in the countryside and reduce the scale of rural exodus. They take care of their children, are involved in domestic and agricultural works to ensure food and nutrition for families and communities. They are also known for their support of movements for democracy, human rights and peace.”

Biya was among the African leaders who attended the summit in St. Petersburg. He asked Putin to help Africa by increasing investment and canceling debt from loans.

Source: VOA