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.

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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

A white Memphis police officer, who fatally shot an African-American man, will not face federal civil rights criminal charges, a prosecutor says. On July 17, 2015, Officer Connor Schilling shot and killed 19-year-old Darrius Stewart after he engaged in a confrontation with the officer.

Schilling stopped a car for a broken headlight, issued a ticket and let the driver go, but the officer had arrest warrants for Stewart, who was sitting in the car.

Stewart was then placed in the police car and, according to prosecutors, when Schilling wanted to open the door to his car to handcuff Stewart, he kicked the door and snatched the officer’s handcuffs. The officer grabbed his own gun and shot the black man two times.

On Tuesday, US Attorney for the Western District of Tennessee Edward Stanton told reporters that a federal review found no sufficient evidence to prove the officer was guilty.

“We found insufficient evidence to support federal, criminal civil rights charges against Connor Schilling,” Stanton said, adding, “To establish willfulness, federal authorities must show that the officer acted with a deliberate and specific intent to do something the law forbids.”

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US Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton have both performed predictably at their first presidential debate, an American political analyst and activist says. “Trump was Trump. Clinton was Clinton. He bragged. He lied. He bullied,” Myles Hoenig, a Green Party candidate for Congress, told Press TV on Tuesday.

The analyst said former secretary of state Clinton was prepared. “She evaded questions regarding the emails. She hid her own history as she claimed she cared for workers, families, others.” “In the end, she stole Green Party’s Jill Stein’s usual closing line, ‘…like your life depends on it, because it does,” he stated.

During the debate at Hofstra University in Hampstead, New York, Trump attacked Clinton over her use of a private email server as secretary of state and she criticized him for not releasing his tax history. “I’m not going to make any excuses, it was a mistake,” Clinton said referring to her use of private email.
She also said Trump is “trying to hide” his tax history, adding, “it must be something really important, even terrible.” Trump reacted by saying, “I will release my tax returns against my lawyer’s wishes when she releases her 33,000 emails that have been deleted.”

Green Party presidential nominee Stein and Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson were not invited to participate in the debate by the Commission on Presidential Debates. The commission said the two candidates had failed to garner the 15 percent support in five polls required to qualify for the debate. But Stein rejected the standards set by the commission and staged her own live stream Q&A session on social media on Monday evening from outside the presidential debate venue in New York.

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Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani has held some regional countries and world powers liable for the ongoing crisis in Syria, saying terrorism must be fought in practice and on the ground and not on paper. “The fight against terrorism will not be possible through statements and genuine measures must be carried out in practice,” Larijani said in a meeting with Syrian Parliament Speaker Hadiya Khalaf Abbas in Tehran on Monday. Pointing to Riyadh’s support for militants wreaking havoc in Syria, he added, “Unfortunately, Saudi Arabia has created many problems in the region and is not behaving correctly.”

He said the Islamic Republic has always contended that the crisis in Syria can be solved through political approaches and Syrian-Syrian negotiations. Larijani stressed the importance of reinforcing unity among Muslim nations to solve problems in the Muslim world and said, “Only major and colonial powers benefit from the existing divisions among Muslim states to serve their own interests.”
The top Iranian parliamentarian emphasized that Syria is on the frontline of the campaign against terrorism and Zionism and hailed the “very judicious” bids by the Syrian government and President Bashar al-Assad in particular in finding diplomatic solutions to the crisis in the country.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran’s policy is [based on] fighting terrorism and restoring security in the region,” Larijani pointed out. Pointing to “cordial and historical” relations between Tehran and Damascus, the Iranian parliament speaker said, “Iran and Syria, as two important and major countries in the region and the Muslim world which enjoy rich civilizations and history, have profound and strategic ties.”

The Syrian parliament speaker, for her part, said the Israeli regime is supporting the Jabhat Fateh al-Sham militant group, formerly known as al-Nusra Front, in the southwestern city of Quneitra. She added that the US recent airstrikes against the Syrian army indicated Washington’s support for terrorism and said the United States is pursuing double-standard policies in Syria.

Khalaf Abbas praised Iran’s full support for her country and expressed hope the Syrian people would achieve a final victory over terrorists soon. The Syrian parliament speaker arrived in Tehran on Monday at the invitation of her Iranian counterpart, Ali Larijani, to hold talks with senior Iranian officials. Earlier in the day, she attended a joint press conference with Larijani and held talks with Ali Akbar Velayati, a senior advisor to Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei.

Syria has been gripped by foreign-backed militancy since March 2011. United Nations Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura estimates that over 400,000 people have been killed in the conflict. Back in 2014, the UN said it would no more update its death toll for Syria because it could not verify the figures that it received from various sources.

A week-long truce, brokered by Russia and the US, came to an end across Syria on September 19. Damascus refused to extend the deal after its military base was hit by US-led airstrikes near the eastern city of Dayr al-Zawr in violation of the agreement. In recent months, the Takfiri militants have suffered major setbacks as the Syrian army has managed to liberate several areas.

President Paul Biya has addressed the 71st General Assembly of the UN in New York. Cameroon state radio and television reported that his speech was based on the 17 point Sustainable Development Goals, (SDGs) which is currently guarding deliberation at the present session. The Cameroonian chief executive revealed that countries have not fully respected their engagements.

In a strongly worded message he stated that “now is not time for promises, the time to act is now” Biya specifically mentioned the 16th objective of the SDGs that deals with security and terrorism stating that in the past three years Cameroon has been fighting the Nigerian Islamic sect, Boko Haram.

He proposed the creation of an international institution to fight terrorism and insecurity especially in developing countries. He ended on a very positive note by indicating the SDGs is a universal dynamism to transform the world and if world leaders decide here and now to make available resources, the present world of turbulence shall be transformed to a world of peace.

CRTV

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has said that US airstrikes on Syrian troops on Saturday were “intentional” and lasted for nearly one hour. In an interview with the Associated Press conducted Wednesday, Assad said the attack targeted a “huge” area constituting of many hills, “so it was definitely intentional, not unintentional as they claimed.”

The US Central Command has said it may have unintentionally struck the Syrian airbase in Dayr al-Zawr while carrying out a raid against Daesh and that the strikes were stopped in less than five minutes when Russia called the US to halt it.

Daesh militants briefly overran government positions in the area until they were beaten back. “How could they (Daesh) know that the Americans are going to attack that position in order to gather their militants to attack right away and to capture it one hour after the strike?” Assad asked.

“It wasn’t an accident by one airplane… It was four airplanes that kept attacking the position of the Syrian troops for nearly one hour, or a little bit more than one hour,” he said.  “You don’t commit a mistake for more than one hour,” Assad said in the interview.

US behind collapse of ceasefire 

Assad also blamed the US for the collapse of a ceasefire deal brokered with Russia. The strikes contributed to the collapse of the truce and cast serious doubt on chances for implementing an unprecedented US-Russian agreement to jointly target Daesh.

Assad said Washington “doesn’t have the will” to join the fight against Daesh, which the US, Turkey and their allies have cited as the reason for their military intervention in Syria.

Syrians who fled the country could return within a few months if the US, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar stopped backing militants, he added.

Assad said the war, now in its sixth year, is likely to “drag on” because of what he said was continued external support for Takfiri terrorists and numerous militant groups.

“When you talk about it as part of a global conflict and a regional conflict, when you have many external factors that you don’t control, it’s going to drag on.”

‘US lies’ about aid convoy attack

Assad also rejected accusations that Syrian or Russian planes struck an aid convoy in Aleppo and denied that his troops were preventing food from entering the militant-held part of the city.

“If there’s really a siege around the city of Aleppo, people would have been dead by now,” Assad said, asking how militants were able to smuggle in arms but apparently not food or medicine.

The attack on the aid convoy outside Aleppo took place Monday night, hitting a warehouse as aid workers unloaded cargo and triggering huge explosions.

US officials have oscillated between blaming the Syrian government and the Russian military for the attack. At one point, they have described a sustained barrage that included barrel bombs.

One Thursday, however, the AP quoted an unnamed “senior US administration official” who claimed a Russian-piloted aircraft carried out the strike. Assad dismissed the claims, saying whatever American officials say “has no credibility” and is “just lies.”

Russia has called for an independent investigation into the attack and has published a footage from a drone which apparently shows a militant vehicle towing a mortar alongside the aid convoy.

On Wednesday, Russia’s Defense Ministry said an armed US drone was in the vicinity of the humanitarian aid convoy that was hit by the airstrike.

War ‘savage’

Assad also brushed aside what is often described as eyewitness accounts to accuse the Syrian army, while acknowledging the war had been “savage”.

“Those witnesses only appear when there’s an accusation against the Syrian army or the Russian (army), but when the terrorists commit a crime or massacre or anything, you don’t see any witnesses.”

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Police in the US state of California have released video footage of a deadly encounter between officers and a mentally ill African American man, who was killed after being shot 14 times. The violent confrontation happened on July 11, when two police officers fired 18 rounds at 50-year-old Joseph Mann, after he failed to heed to their warnings. Disturbing footage from three police dash cams and a nearby surveillance camera, released Tuesday, showed the officers slowly chasing Mann for a few minutes and asking him to drop his knife before gunning him down from about 15ft (6 meters) away.

Sacramento Police Chief Sam Somers confirmed the news on Tuesday, saying the footage were released after conversations with City Manager John Shirey and Mayor Kevin Johnson. According to the videos, Mann’s arms were raised and he did not seem to threaten the officers with any weapon when he was shot. He collapsed and could be heard shouting in pain as the cops opened fire.

Prior to the incident, police had received distress calls about a man dwelling Del Paso Heights while holding a knife and gun in his hands. The knife was later found at the scene but Mann’s alleged firearm was never recovered by police. According to the media, the 911 callers had clearly pointed to Mann’s mental illness but the dispatch had failed to inform the officers of the matter.

“There’s a man outside of my apartment with a gun and a knife,” a 911 caller said in the recording. “There’s children all around, and he’s mentally ill.” Mann’s family has filed a civil lawsuit against the police and the city, alleging that the officers should not have resorted to lethal force because he was experiencing a mental crisis. “Any reasonable police officer should have noticed that he was mentally impaired” John Burris the Mann family’s lawyer said.

Mann’s family members described him as a smart college graduate who succeeded in several careers before deteriorating into mental illness about five years ago. The case is expected to stir more controversy and anti-police sentiments in the US, amid a public outrage against law enforcement agencies due to their unjustified killings of unarmed African Americans over the past months.

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