US Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump may have avoided federal income taxes for up to 18 years, according to a report. The business mogul declared a $916 million loss on his 1995 income tax returns and the tax deduction was so substantial that could have allowed him to legally avoid paying taxes for years to cancel out the loss, records obtained by The New York Times show.

The records are indicative of the extraordinary tax benefits that Trump derived from the financial wreckage he left behind in the early 1990s due to his mismanagement of three Atlantic City casinos, his wretched foray into the airline business and his ill-timed purchase of the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan.

Tax experts hired by The Times said that the loss was large enough that — according to tax rules especially advantageous to affluent filers – it would have made it possible for Trump to wipe out more than $50 million a year in taxable income over this period.

“He has a vast benefit from his destruction” in the early 1990s, said one of the experts, Joel Rosenfeld, an assistant professor at New York University’s Schack Institute of Real Estate. In a statement, the Trump campaign said that the tax document was obtained illegally and that the paper was operating on behalf of the presidential campaign of Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.

“Mr. Trump is a highly-skilled businessman who has a fiduciary responsibility to his business, his family and his employees to pay no more tax than legally required,” the statement said. “That being said, Mr. Trump has paid hundreds of millions of dollars in property taxes, sales and excise taxes, real estate taxes, city taxes, state taxes, employee taxes and federal taxes.”

In another anti-Trump move, The Times called on Latinos to vote for Clinton and help defeat the business mogul on November 8. The call came in an editorial Saturday which drew on Trump’s pledge to build a wall on the border with Mexico to prevent migrants from coming to the US and his insults against Mexicans and other minorities throughout the campaign.

“In addition to defeating a bully, Latinos have plenty of reasons to enthusiastically support Mr. Trump’s main rival,” said the editorial, which was also published in Spanish. Strong Latino turnout could help change how US political parties treat and perceive Hispanic voters in the future, the paper said.

“America’s 56 million Latinos – one third of whom are under 18 – are helping to shape America’s future in classrooms, workplaces and neighborhoods. It is only a matter of time before their mark on the nation’s politics matches their contributions in other spheres,” the editorial said.

A new poll showed that Clinton had reopened a comfortable lead over Trump, a likely consequence of the two candidates’ first debate on Monday. According to the Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Friday, the former secretary of state was enjoying a 4 percentage-point lead over Trump with 42 percent support.

Presstv

President Paul Biya has chosen not to make the trip to Jerusalem for the funeral of Shimon Peres, although he is currently in Europe. Biya, reported a sister publication, Cameroon-info.net has decided that Lejeune Mbella

Mbella, the Minister of External Relations should represent him in Israel. The Republic of Cameroon has maintained close relations with Israel for many years. After taking the decision to entrust his personal protection to the Israelis following the failed coup of 1984, Paul Biya has received the late Shimon Peres several times in Yaounde.

Shimon Peres, former Israeli President and Nobel Peace Prize winner seen by some as a war criminal, died Wednesday, September 28, 2016 as the result of a stroke at the age of 93. Forty Heads of State and Government are expected to participate at his funeral scheduled for this Friday in Jerusalem.

By Sama Ernest with files from CIN

Protests have erupted in the US state of California following the fatal shooting of another unarmed black man by police as tensions grow over police violence across the country. Demonstrators gathered in El Cajon on Wednesday to condemn the police shooting of 38-year-old Alfred Olango who was reportedly mentally ill.

The Ugandan-born man was killed by officers on Tuesday after police received a report about a man acting erratically and walking in traffic.   The rally continued into the night with hundreds of people marching from the shooting scene to El Cajon City Hall and back again, shouting Olango’s name, insulting police and disrupting traffic.

Civil rights activists and several hundred protesters gathered outside the police department during the day, chanting “murder,” “justice for Alfred Olango” and “black lives matter.” The protesters demanded the US Justice Department to investigate the fatal police shooting.

“We are not going to stop until we get justice,” the Reverend Shane Harris, president of the National Action Network’s San Diego chapter, said at the demonstration. “We do not trust local prosecutors to investigate local police.”

A video taken moments after the shooting and posted on social media shows Olango‘s sister crying in anguish, “Oh my God. You killed my brother. I just called for help and … you killed him.” The police killing came days after two African American men were killed by police in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Tulsa, Oklahoma, sparking protests against US police brutality.

A state of emergency and curfew were imposed by authorities to quell unrest in Charlotte. Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, El Cajon Police Chief Jeff Davis appealed for calm. “I implore the community to be patient with us, work with us, look at the facts at hand before making any judgment,” he said.

Presstv

The United States Department of Defence has awarded Cessna a $24 million contract to supply six Caravan aircraft for Cameroon, Chad and the Philippines. They will be configured for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR). This follows two contracts in May this year covering the modification of Caravans to ISR configuration for Cameroon, Chad, Niger and the Philippines.

The US Department of Defence on 21 September said Cessna will provide six Cessna 208B Grand Caravan EX aircraft, three spare Pratt & Whitney PT6A-140 engines, and aircraft spares and ground handling equipment to the US Africa Command and Pacific Command areas of responsibility in support of counterterrorism measures in Chad, Cameroon, and the Philippines.

Work is expected to be complete by 30 September 2017. Under the May 2016 contracts, L-3 Communications Corporation – Communication Systems West was awarded a $14 185 927 contract for ISR equipment and spares. North American Surveillance Systems of Titusville, Florida, was awarded $39 983 647 for the modification of the aircraft and integration of ISR capabilities, together with training and field support. Financing for both contracts came from Fiscal Year 2016 counter-terrorism partnership funds.

The contract announcements did not indicate how many aircraft each country would be getting, but it now appears Cameroon and Chad will each receive two. The US military in September 2014 awarded Cessna a $13.67 million contract to provide three Grand Caravan EX aircraft to Niger, Kenya and Mauritania in support of counter-terrorism operations, but it is believed this contract is unrelated to the most recent ones. L-3 Communications Systems West also received a $31.2 million contract in 2014 to add intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities to the three Cessna 208Bs.

The United States has donated a number of Caravans to African countries in support of peacekeeping and counter-terror operations. The Niger Air Force received two donated Cessna 208Bs in July 2013, but configured for transport tasks. In June 2014 the US government donated two new Caravans to the Mauritania Islamic Air Force to boost its capacity to conduct patrols to counter maritime crimes and regional terrorist groups.

Another recipient of Caravans from the United States is Uganda, which received two aircraft on 16 March 2015, to support the Ugandan contingent battling al Shabaab militants in Somalia. The aircraft, worth $15 million including spare parts and training, were donated by the US Department of Defence.

Culled from Defenseweb

Over the next year, Russian Helicopters will deliver Mi-8/17 transport and Mi-24/35 attack helicopters to Nigeria, Mali, Angola and Sudan. This is according to Yury Demchenko, Rosoboronexport delegation head for the Africa Aerospace and Defence (AAD) exhibition, which took place at Air Force Base Waterkloof between 14 and 18 September. He said that Russia exported helicopters to Angola, Sudan, Uganda and Rwanda over the last five years. “In 2016-2017, we plan to continue exporting these helicopters to Angola, Mali, Sudan, Nigeria. Our position in the African helicopter market is solid, so we are optimistic about the prospects of cultivating it further.”

Nigeria is set to receive 12 Mi-35M helicopters by 2018, according to Anatoly Punchuk, deputy head of Russia’s Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation. He told RIA Novosti that the helicopters were ordered in October 2015. Demchenko said during AAD that he predicts further business from Africa, especially with regard to peacekeeping missions on the continent. He also sees the defence and security market growing due to terrorism, piracy, smuggling and trafficking.

“The share of Africa in the world export of weapons is relatively small. For instance sub-Saharan Africa accounts for about 2%, but the statistics of Russian weapons sales by Rosoboronexport in Africa showed steady growth for several years. A similar situation can be observed in northern Africa, where a number of countries in recent years considerably built up purchases of Russian weapons to have entered the list of our main partners in the sphere of military-technical cooperation.

“Besides, African states have been building up their participation in regional and international peacekeeping missions,” he said. Rosoboronexport has an order backlog of more than $21 billion, Demchenko told IHS Jane’s during AAD. He added that the drop in oil prices has not affected exports to oil producing African nations.  The day before AAD, Russia and South Africa held the first bilateral seminar on defence industrial cooperation. Punchuk told TASS that “South Africa has a major industrial potential while Russia can offer a lot in the sphere of defence, security and law enforcement. We proposed long-term hi-tech cooperation.”

“We discussed what to begin with, i.e. various models of industrial cooperation, including financial aspects. We have high-tech platforms which can be integrated with existing South African systems or maybe even with future jointly created new technologies,” Punchuk said. South Africa’s Secretary for Defence, Dr Sam Gulube, said he was enthusiastic and interested in defence industrial cooperation but cautioned that contracts would only come with time.

Defenseweb