Tag: Military and defense

Mutinous soldiers in Gabon say they’ve ousted president whose family has ruled for 55 years

LIBREVILLE, Gabon — Mutinous soldiers in Gabon said Wednesday they were seizing power to overturn the results of a presidential election, and claimed to have arrested the president, whose family has held power for 55 years.

Crowds took to the capital’s streets celebrating the possible ouster of a family that’s grown rich while the oil-rich country’s economy has stagnated.

The coup attempt came hours after the central African country’s President Ali Bongo Ondimba, 64, was declared winner of an election criticized by international observers and marred by fears of violence.

Within minutes of the announcement, gunfire was heard in the center of the capital, Libreville. Later, a dozen uniformed soldiers appeared on state television and announced that they had seized power.

Crowds took to the city’s streets to celebrate the end of Bongo’s reign, singing the national anthem with soldiers.

“Thank you, army. Finally, we’ve been waiting a long time for this moment,” said Yollande Okomo, standing in front of soldiers from Gabon’s elite republican guard.

Shopkeeper Viviane Mbou offered the soldiers juice, which they declined.

“Long live our army,” said Jordy Dikaba, a young man walking with his friends on a street lined with armored policemen.

There’s been widespread discontent with the Bongo family for years and a coup attempt is not surprising, said Maja Bovcon Africa, senior analyst at Verisk Maplecroft, a risk assessment firm. But she said more immediate inspiration likely came from a recent spate of coups in the Sahel, where military officers have shown that they can seize power without repercussions.

Gabon’s coup leaders can also play to doubts about the electoral process, Africa, the analyst, said. The vote was not transparent and practically held behind closed doors, she said.

Every vote held in Gabon since the country’s return to a multi-party system in 1990 has ended in violence. Clashes between government forces and protesters following the 2016 election killed four people, according to official figures. The opposition said the death toll was far higher.

“Gabon’s electoral laws and framework do not ensure credible elections,” Freedom House said in its 2023 country assessment.

The soldiers who claimed power Wednesday planned to “dissolve all institutions of the republic,” said a spokesman for the group. He said that Bongo’s “unpredictable, irresponsible governance” risked leading the country into chaos.

Gabon is a member of the OPEC oil cartel, with a production of some 181,000 barrels of crude a day, but its over 2 million people face high unemployment and rising prices. Nearly 40% of Gabonese ages 15-24 were out of work in 2020, according to the World Bank.

Several French companies said they were suspending operations and moving to ensure the safety of their staff, and a man who answered the phone at the airport said flights were canceled Wednesday. The private intelligence firm Ambrey said all operations at the country’s main port in Libreville had been halted, with authorities refusing to grant permission for vessels to leave.

A second statement by the coup leaders, who came from the gendarme, the republican guard and other elements of the security forces, said the president was under house arrest in his residence, surrounded by family and doctors. People around him have been arrested for “high betrayal of state institutions, massive embezzlement of public funds (and) international financial embezzlement” said the military, among other charges.

There has been no word from the president.

Several members of the Bongo family are under investigation in France, and some have been given preliminary charges of embezzlement, money laundering and other forms of corruption, according to French media reports.

The coup attempt came about one month after mutinous soldiers in Niger seized power from the democratically elected government, and is the latest in a series of coups that have challenged governments with ties to France, the region’s former colonizer. Gabon’s coup, if successful would bring the number of coups in West and Central Africa to eight since 2020.

Unlike Niger and two other West African countries run by military juntas, Gabon hasn’t been wracked by jihadi violence and had been seen as relatively stable.

In his annual Independence Day speech Aug. 17, Bongo said “While our continent has been shaken in recent weeks by violent crises, rest assured that I will never allow you and our country Gabon to be hostages to attempts at destabilization. Never.”

At a time when anti-France sentiment is spreading in many former colonies, the French-educated Bongo met President Emmanuel Macron in Paris in late June and shared photos of them shaking hands.

The mutinous officers vowed to respect “Gabon’s commitments to the national and international community.”

France has 400 soldiers in Gabon leading a regional military training operation. They’ve not changed their normal operations today, according to the French military.

French government spokesperson, Olivier Veran, said Wednesday: “France condemns the military coup that is underway in Gabon and is closely monitoring developments in the country, and France reaffirms its wish that the outcome of the election, once known, be respected.”

When asked about Gabon Wednesday, the EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell said it would be discussed by EU ministers this week. Defense ministers from the 27-nation bloc are meeting in Spain on Wednesday, and foreign ministers on Thursday. Borrell will chair both meetings, and Niger will also be a focus.

“If this is confirmed, it’s another military coup, which increases instability in the whole region,” he said.

A spokesperson for China’s foreign ministry, Wang Wenbin, said Wednesday that China was closely following Gabon’s situation and called on the parties to resolve the issue peacefully, keeping in mind the interests of the nation and its people.

Bongo has served two terms since coming to power in 2009 after the death of his father, who ruled the country for 41 years. Another group of mutinous soldiers attempted a coup in January 2019, while Bongo was in Morocco recovering from a stroke, but was quickly overpowered.

Bongo faced an opposition coalition led by economics professor and former education minister Albert Ondo Ossa, whose surprise nomination came a week before the vote.

Reached Wednesday, Ossa said he wasn’t ready to comment on the attempted coup and was waiting for the situation to evolve.

After the vote, the Central African nation’s Communications Minister, Rodrigue Mboumba Bissawou, announced a nightly curfew from 7 p.m. to 6 a.m., and said internet access was being restricted indefinitely to quell disinformation and calls for violence.

NetBlocks, an organization tracking internet access worldwide, said internet service saw a “partial restoration” in Gabon after the coup.

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Mednick reported from Dakar, Senegal. Associated Press reporters Cara Anna in Nairobi, Kenya, Jamey Keaten in Geneva; Angela Charlton in Paris; and Jon Gambrell and Malak Harb in Dubai, United Arab Emirates contributed.

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August 30, 2023
Russian military says Ukrainian drones targeted 5 Russians regions in biggest drone attack on Russian soil in 18 months

Russian military says Ukrainian drones targeted 5 Russians regions in biggest drone attack on Russian soil in 18 months

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August 29, 2023
Putin is not planning to attend the funeral for Wagner chief Prigozhin, the Kremlin says

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia — President Vladimir Putin is not planning to attend the funeral for Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Kremlin said, following reports that the mercenary chief who challenged the Russian leader’s authority would be buried Tuesday.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov wouldn’t say where or when the chief of the Wagner Group military company would be buried, adding that he couldn’t comment on a private family ceremony.

St. Petersburg’s Fontanka news outlet and some other media said the 62-year-old Prigozhin could be laid to rest as early as Tuesday at the city’s Serafimovskoye cemetery, which has been used for high-profile military burials. Heavy police cordons encircled the cemetery, where Putin’s parents are also buried, but no service was immediately held and increased police patrols also were seen at some other city cemeteries.

Later in the day, a funeral was held at St. Petersburg’s Northern Cemetery for Wagner’s logistics chief Valery Chekalov, who died in the Aug. 23 crash alongside Prigozin. Several hearses were seen driving from a central hall used for memorial ceremonies to Beloostrovskoye cemetery on the city’s outskirts, but they later drove away.

The tight secrecy and confusion surrounding the funeral of Prigozhin and his top lieutenants reflected a dilemma faced by the Kremlin amid swirling speculation that the crash was likely a vendetta for his mutiny.

While it tried to avoid any pomp-filled ceremony for the man branded by Putin as a traitor for his rebellion, the Kremlin couldn’t afford to denigrate Prigozhin, who was given Russia’s highest award for leading Wagner forces in Ukraine and was idolized by many of the country’s hawks.

Putin’s comments on Prigozhin’s death reflected that careful stand. He noted last week that Wagner leaders “made a significant contribution” to the fighting in Ukraine and described Prigozhin as a ”talented businessman” and “a man of difficult fate” who had “made serious mistakes in life” but “achieved the results he needed — both for himself and, when I asked him about it, for the common cause, as in these last months.”

Although both were from St. Petersburg, Prigozhin and the Russian leader were not known to be particularly close.

Prigozhin, an ex-convict who earned millions and his nickname “Putin’s chef” from lucrative government catering contracts, served Kremlin political interests and helped expand Russia’s clout by sending his mercenaries to Syria, Libya, the Central African Republic and other countries. Wagner, one of the most capable elements of Moscow’s forces, played a key role in Ukraine where it captured the Ukrainian eastern stronghold of Bakhmut in late May.

Sergei Markov, a pro-Kremlin political analyst, noted that Prigozhin has become a legendary figure for his supporters who are increasingly critical of the authorities.

“Prigozhin’s funeral raises an issue of communication between the bureaucratic Russian government system that doesn’t have much political potential and politically active patriotic segment of the Russian public,” Markov said.

The country’s top criminal investigation agency, the Investigative Committee, officially confirmed Prigozhin’s death on Sunday.

The committee didn’t say what might have caused Prigozhin’s business jet to plummet from the sky minutes after taking off from Moscow for St. Petersburg. Just before the crash, Prigozhin had returned from a trip to Africa, where he sought to expand Wagner Group’s activities.

Prigozhin’s second-in-command, Dmitry Utkin, a retired military intelligence officer who gave the mercenary group its name based on his own nom de guerre, was also among the 10 people who died in the crash.

A preliminary U.S. intelligence assessment concluded that an intentional explosion caused the plane to crash, and Western officials have pointed to a long list of Putin’s foes who have been assassinated. The Kremlin rejected Western allegations the president was behind the crash as an “absolute lie.”

The crash came exactly two months after Prigozhin launched a rebellion against the Russian military leadership. The brutal and profane leader ordered his mercenaries to take over the military headquarters in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don and then began a march on Moscow. They downed several military aircraft, killing more than a dozen pilots.

Putin denounced the revolt as “treason” and vowed to punish its perpetrators but hours later struck a deal that saw Prigozhin ending the mutiny in exchange for amnesty and permission for him and his troops to move to Belarus.

The fate of Wagner, which until recently played a prominent role in Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine and was involved in a number of African and Middle Eastern countries, is uncertain.

Putin said Wagner fighters could sign a contract with the Russian military, move to Belarus or retire from service. Several thousand have deployed to Belarus, where they are in a camp southeast of the capital, Minsk.

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August 29, 2023
Workers exposed to extreme heat have no consistent protection in the US

RENO, Nev. — Santos Brizuela spent more than two decades laboring outdoors, persisting despite a bout of heatstroke while cutting sugarcane in Mexico and chronic laryngitis from repeated exposure to the hot sun while on various other jobs.

But last summer, while on a construction crew in Las Vegas, he reached his breaking point. Exposure to the sun made his head ache immediately. He lost much of his appetite.

Now at a maintenance job, Brizuela, 47, is able to take breaks. There are flyers on the walls with best practices for staying healthy — protections he had not been afforded before.

“Sometimes as a worker you ask your employer for protection or for health and safety related needs, and they don’t listen or follow,” he said in Spanish through an interpreter.

A historic heat wave that began blasting the Southwest and other parts of the country this summer is shining a spotlight on one of the harshest, yet least-addressed effects of U.S. climate change: the rising deaths and injuries of people who work in extreme heat, whether inside warehouses and kitchens or outside under the blazing sun. Many of them are migrants in low-wage jobs.

State and federal governments have long implemented federal procedures for environmental risks exacerbated by climate change, namely drought, flood and wildfires. But extreme heat protections have generally lagged with “no owner” in state and federal governments, said Ladd Keith, an assistant professor of planning and a research associate at the University of Arizona.

“In some ways, we have a very long way to catch up to the governance gap in treating the heat as a true climate hazard,” Keith said.

There is no federal heat standard in the U.S. despite an ongoing push from President Joe Biden’s administration to establish one. Most of the hottest U.S. states currently have no heat-specific standards either.

Instead, workers in many states who are exposed to extreme heat are ostensibly protected by what is known as the “general duty clause,” which requires employers to mitigate hazards that could cause serious injury or death. The clause permits state authorities to inspect work sites for violations, and many do, but there are no consistent benchmarks for determining what constitutes a serious heat hazard.

“What’s unsafe isn’t always clear,” said Juanita Constible, a senior advocate from the National Resources Defense Council who tracks extreme heat policy. “Without a specific heat standard, it makes it more challenging for regulators to decide, ‘OK, this employer’s breaking the law or not.’”

Many states are adopting their own versions of a federal “emphasis” program increasing inspections to ensure employers offer water, shade and breaks, but citations and enforcement still must go through the general duty clause.

Extreme heat is notably absent from the list of disasters to which the Federal Emergency Management Agency can respond. And while regional floodplain managers are common throughout the country, there are only three newly created “chief heat officer” positions to coordinate extreme heat planning, in Miami-Dade County, Phoenix and Los Angeles.

Federal experts have recommended extreme heat protections since 1972, but it wasn’t until 1997 and 2006, respectively, that Minnesota and California adopted the first statewide protections. For a long time, those states were the exception, with only a scattering of others joining them throughout the early 2000s.

But as heat waves get longer and hotter, the tide is starting to change.

“There are a lot of positive movements that give me some hope,” Keith said.

Colorado strengthened existing rules last year to require regular rest and meal breaks in extreme heat and cold and provide water and shade breaks when temperatures hit 80 degrees Fahrenheit (26.7 degrees Celsius). Washington state last month updated 15-year-old heat safety standards to lower the temperature at which cool-down breaks and other protections are required. Oregon, which adopted temporary heat protection rules in 2021, made them permanent last year.

Several other states are considering similar laws or regulations.

Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs recently announced new regulations through the heat emphasis program and declared a state of emergency over extreme heat, allowing the state to reimburse various government entities for funds spent on providing relief from high temperatures.

Nevada also adopted a version of the heat emphasis program. But a separate bill that would define what constitutes extreme heat and require employers to provide protections ultimately failed in the final month of the legislative session.

The measure faltered even after the temperature threshold for those protections was increased from 95 degrees Fahrenheit (35 degrees Celsius) to 105 (40.5 degrees Celsius). Democratic lawmakers in Nevada are now trying to pass those protections through a regulatory process before next summer.

The Biden administration introduced new regulations in 2021 that would develop heat safety standards and strengthen required protective measures for most at-risk private sector workers, but the mandates are likely subject to several more years of review. A group of Democratic U.S. Congress members introduced a bill last month that would effectively speed up the process by legislating heat standards.

The guidelines would apply to all 50 states and include private sector and select federal workers, but leave most other public sector workers uncovered. Differing conditions across states and potential discrepancies in how the federal law would be implemented make consistent state standards crucial, Constible said.

For now, protections for those workers are largely at the discretion of individual employers.

Eleazar Castellanos, who trains workers on dealing with extreme heat at Arriba Las Vegas, a nonprofit supporting migrant and low-wage employees, said he experienced two types of employers during his 20 years of working construction.

“The first version is the employer that makes sure that their workers do have access to water, shade and rest,” he said in Spanish through an interpreter. “And the second type of employer is the kind who threatens workers with consequences for asking for those kinds of preventative measures.”

Heat protection laws have faced steady industry opposition, including chambers of commerce and other business associations. They say a blanket mandate would be too difficult to implement across such a wide range of industries.

“We are always concerned about a one-size-fits-all bill like this,” Tray Abney, a lobbyist for the National Federation of Independent Businesses, told Nevada legislators.

Opinions vary on why the Nevada bill failed after passing the Senate on party lines. Some say it was a victim of partisan politics. Others say there were too many bills competing for attention in a session that meets for just four months every other year.

“It all comes down to the dollar,” said Vince Saavedra, secretary-treasurer and lobbyist for Southern Nevada Building Trades. “But I’ll challenge anybody to go work outside with any of these people, and then tell me that we don’t need these regs.”

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This version corrects the university affiliation of Ladd Keith. He is an assistant professor and research associate at the University of Arizona, not Arizona State University.

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Stern is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America places journalists in local newsrooms across the country to report on undercovered issues. Follow Stern on Twitter: @gabestern326.

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August 27, 2023
Ukraine investigates incident that killed 3 pilots while Russia attacks with cruise missiles

KYIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian authorities have launched an investigation after a midair collision between two warplanes in the west of the country killed three pilots.

Ukraine’s air force spokesman Yuri Ihnat told Ukrainian television on Sunday it wasn’t immediately clear how long the probe would take.

According to the air force’s Telegram page, two L-39 training military aircraft collided on Friday during a combat mission over Ukraine‘s western Zhytomyr region. Three pilots were killed, including Andriy Pilshchykov, a well-known pilot with the nickname “Juice” who was an outspoken advocate for Ukraine getting F-16 fighter jets.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in his nightly address on Saturday paid tribute to Pilshchykov, describing him as a “Ukrainian officer, one of those who helped our country a lot.”

Ukraine’s Vasilkiv tactical aviation brigade on Sunday identified the other two pilots killed in the collision as Viacheslav Minka and Serhiy Prokazin.

Russian forces, in the meantime, targeted central and northern regions of Ukraine with cruise missiles overnight. Ukraine’s air force on Sunday reported air defenses successfully intercepted four of them. In the Kyiv region surrounding the Ukrainian capital, the falling debris damaged a dozen private homes and wounded two people, Ukraine’s Interior Ministry said.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said in a statement Sunday that it targeted — and successfully hit — an airfield in the Kyiv region. Ukrainian officials did not immediately comment on the claim.

In Kyiv, relatives of soldiers captured by Russian forces in Mariupol, a port city in eastern Ukraine Moscow’s army besieged and seized early on in the war, gathered for a rally marking 500 days since their family members were in captivity. They demanded that the Ukrainian authorities bring their loved ones home.

In Russia, the Defense Ministry reported bringing down two drones over the Bryansk and Kursk regions that border Ukraine. The drones, the ministry said, were launched by “the Kyiv regime” in “yet another attempt at terrorist attacks” on Russian soil.

Kursk Gov. Roman Starovoit, however, reported that a drone slammed into a multistory residential building in the region’s namesake capital. It wasn’t immediately clear if it crashed after being shot down by air defenses, like the Defense Ministry reported, or was targeting the building. Starovoit said no one was hurt, but a number of windows were shattered.

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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

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Dasha Litvinova contributed to this report from Tallinn, Estonia.

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August 27, 2023
Russian mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin challenged the Kremlin in a brief mutiny

Yevgeny Prigozhin made his name as the profane and brutal mercenary boss who in June mounted an armed rebellion that was the most severe and shocking challenge to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s rule.

Prigozhin was aboard a plane that crashed north of Moscow on Wednesday, killing all 10 people on board, according to Russia’s civil aviation agency. On Sunday, Russia’s Investigative Committee said forensic and genetic testing identified all 10 bodies recovered from the crash, and the identities “conform with the manifest.”

The 62-year-old’s extraordinary journey took him from prisoner and hot dog vendor to elegant St. Petersburg restaurateur, and then from propaganda wars to the grisly battlefields in Ukraine.

As an instrument to project Russian power globally, his soldiers-for-hire were deployed to Africa to provide security for warlords and fought in Syria to shore up the regime of President Bashar Assad.

In May, they seized the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut in a rare victory for Russia in the war, but Prigozhin complained bitterly about the Defense Ministry’s conduct of the fight, saying it had denied ammunition to his forces.

As the war slogged on, Prigozhin dropped his public reticence and began releasing social media videos in which he lauded his troops and increasingly denounced Russia’s defense establishment for alleged mismanagement of the war and denying weapons and ammunition to his forces.

He abruptly escalated his scathing criticism in June by calling for an armed uprising to oust Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.

On June 23, his forces left Ukraine and seized the military headquarters in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don. He ordered them to roll toward Moscow, saying it was “not a military coup, but a march of justice” to unseat Shoigu.

He called off the action less than 24 hours later in a deal struck by Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko.

In a televised address, Putin had vowed to punish those behind the armed uprising led by his onetime protege. He called the rebellion a “betrayal” and “treason.”

But under the deal allowing Prigozhin and his forces to go free, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov later said Putin’s “highest goal” in the deal with the Wagner chief was “to avoid bloodshed and internal confrontation with unpredictable results.”

Prigozhin lived most of his life in the shadows. The owner of a high-end restaurant, he won Kremlin catering ventures that earned him the nickname of “Putin’s chef,” but he was mostly known only in the rarefied circles of the elite.

As the head of the Internet Research Agency, a “troll farm” that focused on interfering in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, he was barely visible.

But he barged into world view when mercenaries from his Wagner Group entered the war in Ukraine in 2022, becoming infamous both for their bloodthirsty fighting and their miserable treatment as cannon fodder in the eastern city of Bakhmut.

As part of the deal to defuse the crisis, an investigation into his mutiny was dropped, and he agreed to move to Belarus. He later appeared in videos, saying his soldiers would be deployed to Africa.

A recruitment video released earlier this week showed him at an undisclosed desert site in military fatigues and holding an assault rifle as he said his company was seeking “real warriors” and “continuing to fulfill the tasks” it had promised to carry out.

Prigozhin and Putin had long ties. Both were born in Leningrad, now St. Petersburg.

During the final years of the Soviet Union, Prigozhin was in prison — a decade by his own admission — although he never said for what crimes.

Afterward, he owned a hot dog stand and then fancy restaurants that drew interest from Putin. In his first term, the Russian leader took then-French President Jacques Chirac to dine at one of them.

“Vladimir Putin saw how I built a business out of a kiosk. He saw that I don’t mind serving to the esteemed guests because they were my guests,” Prigozhin recalled in an interview published in 2011.

His catering businesses expanded significantly, and in 2010, Putin helped open Prigozhin’s factory, which was built on generous loans from a state bank. In Moscow alone, his company Concord won millions of dollars in contracts to provide meals to public schools.

He also organized catering for Kremlin events and provided meals and utility services to the Russian military.

In 2014, Prigozhin co-founded the Wagner Group, even though private military companies are technically illegal in Russia. It came to play a central role in Putin’s projection of Russian influence in global trouble spots, first in Africa and then in Syria.

Wagner fighters reportedly provided security for African leaders or warlords in exchange for lucrative payments, often including a share of gold mines or other natural resources. U.S. officials say Russia may have used Wagner’s work in Africa to support the war in Ukraine.

In 2017, opposition figure and corruption fighter Alexei Navalny accused Prigozhin’s companies of violating antitrust laws by bidding for $387 million in Defense Ministry contracts.

In December 2021, the European Union accused Wagner of “serious human rights abuses, including torture and extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions and killings,” and of carrying out “destabilizing activities” in the Central African Republic, Libya, Syria and Ukraine.

An online video surfaced in November 2022 that showed a former Wagner contractor, who allegedly had gone over to the Ukrainian side but was later recaptured by Russia, beaten to death with a sledgehammer. The Kremlin turned a blind eye to it, despite public outrage and demands for an investigation.

His troops captured Bakhmut in what was likely the bloodiest and longest battle of the war. Prigozhin has said that 20,000 of his men died there, about half of them inmates recruited from Russia’s prisons.

As his forces fought and died en masse in Ukraine, Prigozhin repeatedly raged against Russia’s military brass.

In a May 2023 video, Prigozhin stood next to rows of bodies that he said were those of Wagner fighters. He accused Shoigu, the defense minister, and the chief of the general staff, Gen. Valery Gerasimov, of incompetence and of starving his troops of the weapons and ammunition they needed.

“These are someone’s fathers and someone’s sons,” Prigozhin said. “The scum that doesn’t give us ammunition will eat their guts in hell.”

His remarks were unprecedented for Russia’s tightly controlled political system, in which only Putin could air such criticism.

Asked about a media comparison of him to Grigory Rasputin, a mystic who gained influence over Russia’s last czar by claiming to have the power to cure his son’s hemophilia, Prigozhin once snapped: “I don’t stop blood, but I spill blood of the enemies of our Motherland.”

After Prigozhin’s rebellion fizzled and he decamped to Belarus, Putin said the Kremlin “fully funds” Wagner. He added that authorities would investigate whether Prigozhin might have diverted any of the 80 billion rubles ($936 million) in state funds he allegedly received in 2023 for delivering food to the Russian army.

Prigozhin first gained attention in the U.S., when he and a dozen other Russian nationals and three Russian companies were charged with operating a covert social media campaign aimed at fomenting discord ahead of Donald Trump’s 2016 election victory.

They were indicted as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian election interference. The U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Prigozhin and his associates repeatedly in connection with both his election interference and his leadership of the Wagner Group.

He responded to the 2018 indictment with sarcasm, which was typical for the outspoken mercenary leader.

“Americans are very impressionable people; they see what they want to see. I treat them with great respect. I’m not at all upset that I’m on this list,” the RIA Novosti news agency quoted him as saying. “If they want to see the devil, let them see him.”

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Associated Press writer Dasha Litvinova in Tallinn, Estonia, contributed to this report.

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August 27, 2023
Workers exposed to extreme heat have no consistent protection in the US

RENO, Nev. — Santos Brizuela spent more than two decades laboring outdoors, persisting despite a bout of heatstroke while cutting sugarcane in Mexico and chronic laryngitis from repeated exposure to the hot sun while on various other jobs.

But last summer, while on a construction crew in Las Vegas, he reached his breaking point. Exposure to the sun made his head ache immediately. He lost much of his appetite.

Now at a maintenance job, Brizuela, 47, is able to take breaks. There are flyers on the walls with best practices for staying healthy — protections he had not been afforded before.

“Sometimes as a worker you ask your employer for protection or for health and safety related needs, and they don’t listen or follow,” he said in Spanish through an interpreter.

A historic heat wave that began blasting the Southwest and other parts of the country this summer is shining a spotlight on one of the harshest, yet least-addressed effects of U.S. climate change: the rising deaths and injuries of people who work in extreme heat, whether inside warehouses and kitchens or outside under the blazing sun. Many of them are migrants in low-wage jobs.

State and federal governments have long implemented federal procedures for environmental risks exacerbated by climate change, namely drought, flood and wildfires. But extreme heat protections have generally lagged with “no owner” in state and federal governments, said Ladd Keith, an assistant professor of planning at Arizona State University.

“In some ways, we have a very long way to catch up to the governance gap in treating the heat as a true climate hazard,” Keith said.

There is no federal heat standard in the U.S. despite an ongoing push from President Joe Biden’s administration to establish one. Most of the hottest U.S. states currently have no heat-specific standards either.

Instead, workers in many states who are exposed to extreme heat are ostensibly protected by what is known as the “general duty clause,” which requires employers to mitigate hazards that could cause serious injury or death. The clause permits state authorities to inspect work sites for violations, and many do, but there are no consistent benchmarks for determining what constitutes a serious heat hazard.

“What’s unsafe isn’t always clear,” said Juanita Constible, a senior advocate from the National Resources Defense Council who tracks extreme heat policy. “Without a specific heat standard, it makes it more challenging for regulators to decide, ‘OK, this employer’s breaking the law or not.’”

Many states are adopting their own versions of a federal “emphasis” program increasing inspections to ensure employers offer water, shade and breaks, but citations and enforcement still must go through the general duty clause.

Extreme heat is notably absent from the list of disasters to which the Federal Emergency Management Agency can respond. And while regional floodplain managers are common throughout the country, there are only three newly created “chief heat officer” positions to coordinate extreme heat planning, in Miami-Dade County, Phoenix and Los Angeles.

Federal experts have recommended extreme heat protections since 1972, but it wasn’t until 1997 and 2006, respectively, that Minnesota and California adopted the first statewide protections. For a long time, those states were the exception, with only a scattering of others joining them throughout the early 2000s.

But as heat waves get longer and hotter, the tide is starting to change.

“There are a lot of positive movements that give me some hope,” Keith said.

Colorado strengthened existing rules last year to require regular rest and meal breaks in extreme heat and cold and provide water and shade breaks when temperatures hit 80 degrees Fahrenheit (26.7 degrees Celsius). Washington state last month updated 15-year-old heat safety standards to lower the temperature at which cool-down breaks and other protections are required. Oregon, which adopted temporary heat protection rules in 2021, made them permanent last year.

Several other states are considering similar laws or regulations.

Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs recently announced new regulations through the heat emphasis program and declared a state of emergency over extreme heat, allowing the state to reimburse various government entities for funds spent on providing relief from high temperatures.

Nevada also adopted a version of the heat emphasis program. But a separate bill that would define what constitutes extreme heat and require employers to provide protections ultimately failed in the final month of the legislative session.

The measure faltered even after the temperature threshold for those protections was increased from 95 degrees Fahrenheit (35 degrees Celsius) to 105 (40.5 degrees Celsius). Democratic lawmakers in Nevada are now trying to pass those protections through a regulatory process before next summer.

The Biden administration introduced new regulations in 2021 that would develop heat safety standards and strengthen required protective measures for most at-risk private sector workers, but the mandates are likely subject to several more years of review. A group of Democratic U.S. Congress members introduced a bill last month that would effectively speed up the process by legislating heat standards.

The guidelines would apply to all 50 states and include private sector and select federal workers, but leave most other public sector workers uncovered. Differing conditions across states and potential discrepancies in how the federal law would be implemented make consistent state standards crucial, Constible said.

For now, protections for those workers are largely at the discretion of individual employers.

Eleazar Castellanos, who trains workers on dealing with extreme heat at Arriba Las Vegas, a nonprofit supporting migrant and low-wage employees, said he experienced two types of employers during his 20 years of working construction.

“The first version is the employer that makes sure that their workers do have access to water, shade and rest,” he said in Spanish through an interpreter. “And the second type of employer is the kind who threatens workers with consequences for asking for those kinds of preventative measures.”

Heat protection laws have faced steady industry opposition, including chambers of commerce and other business associations. They say a blanket mandate would be too difficult to implement across such a wide range of industries.

“We are always concerned about a one-size-fits-all bill like this,” Tray Abney, a lobbyist for the National Federation of Independent Businesses, told Nevada legislators.

Opinions vary on why the Nevada bill failed after passing the Senate on party lines. Some say it was a victim of partisan politics. Others say there were too many bills competing for attention in a session that meets for just four months every other year.

“It all comes down to the dollar,” said Vince Saavedra, secretary-treasurer and lobbyist for Southern Nevada Building Trades. “But I’ll challenge anybody to go work outside with any of these people, and then tell me that we don’t need these regs.”

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Stern is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America places journalists in local newsrooms across the country to report on undercovered issues. Follow Stern on Twitter: @gabestern326.

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August 26, 2023
Russia’s Wagner mercenaries face uncertainty after the presumed death of its leader in a plane crash

The Wagner Group’s presence extends from the ancient battlegrounds of Syria to the deserts of sub-Saharan Africa, projecting the Kremlin’s global influence with mercenaries accused of using brutal force and profiting on mineral riches they seized.

But that was under Yevgeny Prigozhin, who in what could have been his final video released earlier this week appeared in military fatigues and held an assault rifle from an unidentified dry and dusty plain as he boasted that Wagner is “making Russia even greater on all continents and Africa even more free.”

On Wednesday, a private jet carrying Prigozhin and his top lieutenants of the mercenary group crashed northwest of Moscow, two months after he led an armed rebellion that challenged the authority of President Vladimir Putin. There is wide speculation that Prigozhin, who is presumed dead, was targeted for his uprising, although the Kremlin has denied involvement.

That crash has raised questions about the future of the Wagner Group.

In African countries where Wagner provided security against groups like al-Qaida and the Islamic State, officials and commentators predict Russia will likely maintain its presence, placing the forces under new leadership.

Others, however, say Prigozhin built deep, personal connections that Moscow could find challenging to replace quickly.

Africa is vitally important to Russia — economically and politically.

This summer, Wagner helped secure a national referendum in the Central African Republic that cemented presidential power; it is a key partner for Mali’s army in battling armed rebels; and it contacted the military junta in Niger that wants its services following a coup.

Expanding ties and undercutting Western influence in Africa is a top priority as the Kremlin seeks new allies amid its war in Ukraine, where Wagner forces also helped win a key battle. Africa’s 54 nations are the largest voting bloc at the U.N., and Moscow has actively worked to rally their support for its invasion.

Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., said Friday that Wagner’s forces “are destabilizing, and we’ve encouraged countries in Africa to condemn their presence as well as their actions.”

On Thursday, the Republican Front in the Central African Republic, allied with the ruling party, reiterated its support for Russia and Wagner, saying they were “determined to fight alongside the African people as they struggle for self-determination.”

Wagner forces have served as personal bodyguards for President Faustin Archange Touadera, protecting the capital of Bangui from rebel threats and helping secure a July 30 constitutional referendum that could extend his power indefinitely.

Central African activist and blogger Christian Aime Ndotah said the country’s cooperation with Russia would be unaffected by new leadership with Wagner, which has been “well-established” there for years.

But some in the Central African Republic denounce the mercenaries, and the U.N. peacekeeping mission there criticized them in 2021 for human rights abuses.

“A state’s security is its sovereignty. You can’t entrust the security of a state to a group of mercenaries,” said Jean Serge Bokassa, former public security minister.

Nathalia Dukhan, senior investigator at The Sentry, predicted the Kremlin will try to bring Africa closer into its orbit.

“Wagner has been a successful tool for Russia to expand its influence efficiently and brutally,” she said. “In the midst of all the turmoil between Putin and Prigozhin, the Wagner operation in Central Africa only deepened, with increased direct involvement by the Russian government.”

High-ranking Wagner operatives have built relationships in Mali and the Central African Republic and understand the terrain, said Lou Osborn of All Eyes on Wagner, a project focusing on the group.

“They have a good reputation, which they can sell to another Russian contender. It wouldn’t be surprising if a new organization took them over,” Osborn said, noting that Russian military contractors in Ukraine, such as Redut and Convoy, have recently expressed a desire to do business in Africa.

Redut was created by the Russian Defense Ministry, which has sought to put Wagner under its control. Following the June mutiny, Putin said the mercenaries could sign contracts with the ministry and keep serving under one of the group’s top commanders, Andrei Troshev. It wasn’t clear how many troops accepted, but media reports put the number at a few thousand.

The Kremlin still could face challenges in keeping the strong presence in Africa that Prigozhin helped establish.

Former Putin speechwriter Abbas Gallyamov argued Prigozhin may have been allowed to continue his post-activities because Russian authorities had to find people who would take over his work.

“Time was needed to create the new channels, new mechanisms of control over those projects,” he said. “And it’s not a fact that they have been successful in that. It’s possible that they have failed and the Kremlin may lose some of those projects.”

Britain’s Defense Ministry said Prigozhin’s demise “would almost certainly have a deeply destabilizing effect on the Wagner Group.”

“His personal attributes of hyper-activity, exceptional audacity, a drive for results and extreme brutality permeated Wagner and are unlikely to be matched by any successor,” it said.

On Friday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov refused to comment on Wagner’s future.

For Prigozhin, who created Wagner in 2014, its missions weren’t simply about advancing Russia’s global clout. His contractors in Syria, Libya, Sudan and elsewhere tapped the mineral and energy wealth of those countries to enrich himself.

Central African Republic lawmaker and opposition leader Martin Ziguélé said Wagner was active in gold mining, timber and other industries — without paying taxes.

“We can only conclude that it’s plundering,” he said.

Prigozhin reached a deal with Putin after the rebellion that saw Wagner mercenaries move to Belarus in exchange for amnesty, and the mercenary boss spoke repeatedly since then about expanding his activities in Africa. He was seen courting African officials at a recent summit in St. Petersburg.

He quickly welcomed last month’s military coup that toppled Niger President Mohamed Bazoum. The junta reached out to Wagner, but the group’s response was unclear and there’s no visible presence of Russian mercenaries there — other than crowds waving Russian and Wagner flags at protests.

While U.S. officials didn’t confirm that Russia or Wagner had any role in the coup, there are fears the Kremlin could exploit it to weaken Western positions in West Africa, where the mercenaries already have a presence in Mali and Burkina Faso.

Niger’s residents say Prigozhin’s presumed death won’t stop Russia from trying to expand its influence.

“Our belief is that Russia wants to get a base here and to be popular. It’s obvious they want to be here,” Niamey tailor Baraou Souleimanin told The Associated Press. Since the coup, he said he’s sewn more than 150 Russian flags in a month.

“We pray that Allah strengthens the relationship with (Wagner) to continue the deal. If the relationship is good and strong, it’s possible they’ll continue with the deal even after his death,” he said Thursday.

In neighboring Mali, a military junta that seized power in 2020 expelled French troops, diplomats, and media, and ordered an end to a decade-long U.N. peacekeeping mission.

Though not officially recognized by Malian authorities, Wagner forces have been known to operate in the rural north, where rebel and extremist groups have eroded state power and tormented communities.

Human Rights Watch says Mali’s army, together with suspected Wagner mercenaries, committed summary executions, looting, forced disappearances and other abuses.

“What we have experienced through Wagner is the massacre of our people,” said Ali Nouhoum Diallo, former president of the national assembly.

Timbuktu resident Youba Khalifa said Wagner’s presence in Mali wouldn’t change after Prigozhin because “they’re going to replace him with another leader.”

Although Prigozhin had told his troops in Belarus their new mission would be in Africa, several thousand of them trained the Belarusian army near the Polish border, prompting Warsaw to bolster forces there. There were signs, however, the mercenaries were preparing to pull back to Russia.

Belarusian Hajun, a group monitoring Russian troops in Belarus, said Thursday that satellite images showed more than a third of the tents at a Wagner camp had been dismantled, a sign of a possible exodus. Still, President Alexander Lukashenko insists his country will host about 10,000 troops.

That draws strong objections from the Belarusian opposition, which demands their withdrawal.

“Prigozhin’s death should put an end to Wagner’s presence in Belarus, which will reduce the threat for our country and its neighbors,” exiled opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya told AP.

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Sam Mednick in Niamey, Niger; Zane Irwin in Dakar, Senegal; Jean Fernand Koena in Bangui, Central African Republic; Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations; Baba Ahmed in Bamako, Mali; and Yuras Karmanau in Tallinn, Estonia, contributed.

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August 25, 2023
The US and allies clash with North Korea, China and Russia over failed satellite launch and tensions

UNITED NATIONS — The United States and its allies clashed Friday with North Korea, Russia and China over Pyongyang’s failed attempts to launch a spy satellite and who is responsible for escalating tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

The open Security Council meeting called by the U.S., Albania, Ecuador, France, Japan and Malta to condemn the attempted launch, which used banned ballistic missile technology, was attended by North Korea’s United Nations ambassador for just the second time since 2017.

Ambassador Kim Song, who also addressed the council in July, told members the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea — the country’s official name — has “an independent and legitimate right” as a sovereign country to launch a satellite for “self-defense to deter the ever-increasing hostile military acts of the United States and its followers.”

The North’s space agency said Thursday its reconnaissance satellite, Malligyong-1, failed for a second time to go into orbit, blaming an error in its third-stage flight. Pyongyang said it will make a third attempt in October to achieve a key military goal of its leader, Kim Jong Un.

U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said the DPRK had again defied Security Council resolutions by pursuing its unlawful ballistic missile program. She said 13 of the 15 Security Council members oppose the DPRK’s unlawful actions and have called for an end to the country’s pursuit of nuclear weapons and its tests — and for unity of the council.

Song said the DPRK has never recognized Security Council resolutions, which he claimed infringe on “the rights of a sovereign state and will never be bound by them in the future.”

He accused the United States and South Korea’s “military gangsters” of “turning the Korean Peninsula into a potential area of an immense thermal nuclear war” while clamoring for regime change in the DPRK and waging large-scale joint military exercises that he said feature “nuclear preemptive strikes on our state as a fait accompli.”

Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia called the council meeting “a cynical, hypocritical attempt by the U.S. and its allies to step up pressure on Pyongyang and to detract attention from the reckless escalatory actions of Washington and its allies in the region, who represent the real sources of threats to international peace and security.”

He called the expansion of U.S.-led military exercises “blatantly provocative,” saying they further complicate prospects for starting a dialogue, which is necessary to strengthen regional security.

China’s deputy U.N. ambassador Geng Shuang accused the United States of “a long-standing hostile policy towards the DPRK,” telling the council that Washington’s continuous pressure, including sending a nuclear-armed submarine to the peninsula in July, makes the North feel “increasingly insecure.”

He said the Security Council should not intensify tension but take practical actions to respond to the DPRK’s legitimate concerns and create conditions to relaunch talks.

Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador, rejected “the disingenuous claims by Russia and China that the U.S. is acting in a hostile manner,” calling the military exercises routine, lawful and defensive.

“And unlike the DPRK’s ballistic missile launches, they are not prohibited by U.N. Security Council resolutions,” she said.

Thomas-Greenfield also reiterated the U.S. commitment to diplomacy, saying that the Biden administration publicly and privately has repeatedly urged the DPRK to engage in dialogue without preconditions. “But the DPRK has still not responded to our offers,” she said.

China’s Geng retorted that the military exercises are “at a record level,” pointing to U.S. bombers and Marines taking part, and noting more U.S. sanctions on the DPRK. “I would like to ask in this context, how can the dialogue be really resumed?” he said.

The council meeting also saw a heated exchange between Japan and the DPRK and China over Tokyo’s release of treated radioactive water from the tsunami-wrecked Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into the Pacific Ocean.

North Korea’s Song first raised the issue, saying the Security Council should denounce “Japan’s heinous crime against humanity,” which he said is jeopardizing the safety and security of all people and the marine ecological environment.

Japan’s U.N. Ambassador Kimihiro Ishikane rejected the “baseless allegations,” saying that scientific evidence has said the discharges are safe.

But China’s Geng, whose country has banned seafood from Japan, reiterated Beijing’s strong opposition, saying the discharge of “nuclear-contaminated water” into the ocean is “transferring the nuclear threat to the whole world.”

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August 25, 2023
Ukraine marks Independence Day and vows to keep fighting Russia as it remembers the fallen

KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine on Thursday marked its second Independence Day since Russia’s full-scale invasion, with officials vowing to keep up their fight to drive out the Kremlin’s forces and local people remembering their fallen loved ones.

The national holiday coincided with the war’s 18-month milestone, giving a somber mood to the commemorations.

“We remember everyone who gave their lives for freedom and independence, for the free future of Ukraine,” Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a social media post.

He said that an independent Ukraine is “what we are fighting for.”

In the northeastern Kharkiv region, families visited a cemetery where fallen Ukrainian soldiers are buried.

Kateryna Krotchenko, the mother of Serhii Krotchenko who was killed near Bakhmut, cleaned his grave.

“He was an ordinary boy who loved life and dreamed of something,” she told The Associated Press. “Therefore, he did not accept the fact that war had come to our land and decided to (sign up) voluntarily,” she said. “We agreed with his decision. We didn’t think it would be like this.”

European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said Ukraine was fighting for “the values we all stand for:” sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity.

That battle has earned the support of foreign allies, especially NATO alliance member countries that have provided Kyiv with sophisticated new weaponry. The new weapons have allowed Ukraine to launch a grinding counteroffensive.

Ukraine’s defense ministry marked the day with a series of social media videos that mixed gratitude with wry humor to thank those allies individually for their support.

The United States’ video was set to Frank Sinatra’s “Our Love is Here to Stay” and ended with a cheeky “thanks for the F-16s” and the words “too soon?” The U.S. has agreed its allies can send Ukraine the fighter jets, but the lengthy process has been a source of frustration to Kyiv.

Britain was thanked to the tune of The Clash’s punk classic “London Calling,” while Canada received gratitude for sniper rifles, howitzers, armored vehicles — and long underwear. France was sent a message of love to the strains of Serge Gainsbourg’s “Je t’aime … moi non plus.”

The more than 20 clips were tagged UkraineSaysThankYou — perhaps a riposte to British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace’s suggestion last month that Kyiv should express more gratitude and not treat its allies like Amazon’s delivery service.

More gloomily, the holiday was observed against a backdrop of continued fighting.

Ukrainian intelligence units together with the Ukrainian navy landed on the western side of Russia-occupied Crimea to strike at Russian military assets there, according to Ukrainian military intelligence spokesman Andrii Yusov.

In Ukraine’s southern Kherson region, meanwhile, a Russian strike severely injured a 7-year-old girl whose home was hit, Gov. Oleksandr Prokudin said.

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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

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August 24, 2023
Niger junta’s 3-year transition plan is a ‘provocation,’ says West African regional bloc

NIAMEY, Niger — The West African bloc ECOWAS rejected the proposal by Niger’s mutinous soldiers for a three-year transition to democratic rule, with a commissioner describing the slow timeline as a provocation.

The door for diplomacy with Niger’s junta remained open but the bloc is not going to engage in drawn-out talks that lead nowhere, Abdel-Fatau Musah, the ECOWAS commissioner for peace and security, told The Associated Press in an interview Wednesday.

“It is the belief among the ECOWAS heads of state and also the commission that the coup in Niger is one coup too many for the region and if we allow it then we are going to have a domino effect in the region and we are determined to stop it,” Musah said. While direct talks and backchannel negotiations are ongoing, he said the door to diplomacy wasn’t open indefinitely.

“We are not going to engage in long, drawn out haggling with these military officers … We went down that route in Mali, in Burkina Faso and elsewhere, and we are getting nowhere,” Musah said.

His comments came days after an ECOWAS delegation met the head of Niger’s military regime, Gen. Abdourahmane Tchiani, for the first time since the mutinous soldiers ousted President Mohamed Bazoum in July.

After last week’s meetng, Musah said the ball is now in the junta’s court.

The junta has been keeping Bazoum and his wife and son under house arrest, and ECOWAS has demanded Bazoum be freed and constitutional order restored.

ECOWAS has used Niger as a red line against further coups after several in the region, including two each in Mali and Burkina Faso since 2020.

The bloc has imposed severe economic and travel sanctions and threatened the use of military force if Bazoum is not reinstated, but the junta has dug in. It has appointed a new government and said it will return the country to democratic rule within several years.

Niger was seen as one of the last democratic countries in the Sahel region below the Sahara Desert that Western nations could partner with to beat back a growing jihadi insurgency linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group. France, other European countries and the United States have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into providing equipment and training for Niger’s military and in the case of France have conducted joint operations.

Since the coup those military operations have been suspended while both sides decide what to do. France and the U.S. have some 2,500 military personnel in the country and the U.S. operates two key drone and counter-terror bases.

Musah said ECOWAS was not discussing military plans with any external partners and everything it was planning is based on the resources of member states. Earlier this month, ECOWAS said 11 of its 15 member states had agreed to intervene militarily if talks didn’t work.

ECOWAS is banking on a combination of external pressure through sanctions and internal unrest within Niger’s security forces and the fact that Tchiani, the junta’s leader, met with ECOWAS face to face after multiple attempts, is a sign that the coup leaders are feeling the pressure, said Nate Allen, an associate professor at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies.

“Nonetheless, it is clear that the two sides remain very far apart and the risk of conflict is high,” he said.

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August 24, 2023
UN Security Council — minus China and Russia — condemns Myanmar military’s killing of civilians

UNITED NATIONS — Members of the U.N. Security Council – minus China and Russia – condemned the “unrelenting violence” and killing of civilians in Myanmar and again urged its military rulers to stop attacks, release ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi and respect human rights.

Thirteen of the 15 council members on Wednesday backed a joint statement that said there had been “insufficient progress” on implementing the first-ever Security Council resolution on Myanmar that was adopted last December. In that 12-0 vote, China and Russia, which have ties to the military that seized power from Suu Kyi’s elected civilian government in February 2021, abstained along with India whose two-year term on the council has ended.

Britain’s deputy U.N. ambassador James Kariuki read the statement, flanked by diplomats from the other countries, after the council was briefed at a closed meeting by U.N. humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths on his recent visit to Myanmar and by Assistant Secretary-General Khaled Khiari on efforts to resolve the crisis.

The statement reiterates demands from the December 2022 council resolution that still require implementation: the immediate release of all “arbitrarily detained” prisoners including ousted leader Suu Kyi and president Win Myint, restoring democratic institutions, respecting human rights and “the democratic will of the people,” and upholding the rule of law.

It also calls for the full implementation of the plan by the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations that Myanmar’s rulers agreed to in April 2021 but have made little progress in fulfilling. It includes an immediate cessation of violence, a dialogue among all parties mediated by an ASEAN envoy who is also to visit Myanmar and meet all parties. Envoys have visited but not been allowed to meet Suu Kyi.

The 13 council members said the military’s actions have left over 18 million people in Myanmar in need of humanitarian assistance – over 15 million of them without regular access to adequate food – and 2 million people displaced.

Members also expressed ongoing concern about the plight of nearly a million Rohingya Muslims who fled Buddhist-majority Myanmar following a military crackdown in northern Rakhine state in August 27 to Bangladesh and other countries. They urged Myanmar “to address the fundamental causes of the crisis and restore the rights of Rohingya.” Almost all Rohingyas are denied citizenship and their movements are restricted.

At the council meeting, diplomats discussed a report this month by U.N. independent investigators who said Myanmar’s military and affiliated militias are committing increasingly frequent and brazen war crimes.

The Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar, established in 2018 by the Geneva-based U.N. Human Rights Council, said it also found strong evidence during the year ending in June of the indiscriminate and disproportionate targeting of civilians with bombs, mass executions of people detained during military operations, and large-scale burning of civilian houses.

Nicholas Koumjian, head of the investigative group, said: “Our evidence points to a dramatic increase in war crimes and crimes against humanity in the country, with widespread and systematic attacks against civilians, and we are building case files that can be used by courts to hold individual perpetrators responsible.”

U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield cited the group’s report in a statement saying “the regime’s horrific atrocities must stop.” Given the military’s “intransigence and continued human rights abuses,” she said the Security Council needs to take action beyond last December resolution.

Myanmar’s U.N.-accredited ambassador, Kyaw Moe Tun, who represented the Suu Kyi government, urged the council to adopt a resolution banning the supply of weapons, jet fuel, and financial flows to the military.

“The people of Myanmar demand the removal of the military from politics and the establishment of a civilian, federal, democratic union,” he said.

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August 23, 2023
ABC News – Breaking News, Latest News and Videos

Bipartisan federal legislation is being introduced that would protect U.S. Coast Guard Academy cadets who report a sexual assault from being disciplined for minor collateral misconduct, such as underage drinking

NEW LONDON, Conn. — Bipartisan federal legislation was introduced Tuesday that would protect cadets at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy who report a sexual assault from being disciplined for minor collateral misconduct, such as underage drinking.

The change would put the Connecticut service academy in line with policies at Department of Defense military academies. The U.S. Coast Guard is overseen by the Department of Homeland Security.

The legislation comes amid recent revelations that the service did not widely disclose a six-year internal investigation it conducted, known as Operation Fouled Anchor, into dozens of cases of sexual assault and misconduct between 1988 and 2006. The Coast Guard also apologized for not taking “appropriate action” years ago when it failed to adequately handle cases of sexual assault and harassment at the academy in New London.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney, whose district includes the academy, noted in a statement how the Department of Defense “swiftly implemented” a policy change preventing cadets at its service academies from receiving punishment for minor offenses when they report sexual assault or harassment. He said such protections must be extended to the Coast Guard Academy cadets as well.

“This is one step in the process to care for our cadets as I continue to engage with Coast Guard leadership on the path forward following its failure to disclose the investigation into its history of sexual assault and harassment at the Coast Guard Academy,” Courtney said.

He co-sponsored the legislation with Republican U.S. Rep. Trent Kelly of Mississippi and Democratic Reps. Rick Larsen of Washington and Salud Carbajal and Nanette Diaz Barragan of California.

“I know how important it is for our Coasties to have the same rights and protections against sexual misconduct as other members of our military,” Carbajal, a veteran and the top Democrat on the House subcommittee overseeing the U.S. Coast Guard, said in a statement. “This bill is simple and straightforward, bringing all military service academies under the same umbrella of safety and accountability to protect the next generation of servicemembers.”

The National Defense Authorization Act in 2021 required the Department of Defense to implement the Safe-to-Report Policy for a midshipman or cadet who is a victim of an alleged sexual assault at a DOD miliary academy and has committed a minor offense such as underage drinking or violating curfew.

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August 22, 2023
More than 200 former Afghan officials and security forces killed since Taliban takeover, UN says

ISLAMABAD — More than 200 extrajudicial killings of former Afghan government officials and security forces have taken place since the Taliban took over the country two years ago, according to a U.N. report released Tuesday.

The groups most targeted by the Taliban have been former army, police and intelligence forces, according to the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan.

UNAMA documented at least 800 human rights violations against former Afghan government officials and security forces between Aug. 15, 2021, when the Taliban seized power, and the end of June 2023.

The Taliban swept across Afghanistan as U.S. and NATO troops were in the final weeks of their withdrawal from the country after two decades of war. The U.S.-trained and backed Afghan forces crumbled in the face of the Taliban advance and former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fled the country.

“Individuals were detained by the de facto (Taliban) security forces, often briefly, before being killed. Some were taken to detention facilities and killed while in custody, others were taken to unknown locations and killed, their bodies either dumped or handed over to family members,” the report said.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said in a press release issued alongside the report that it “presents a sobering picture of the treatment of individuals affiliated with the former government and security forces.”

“Even more so, given they were assured that they would be not targeted, it is a betrayal of the people’s trust,” Turk said. He urged Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers — the country’s “de facto authorities” to uphold their “obligations under international human rights law by preventing further violations and holding perpetrators to account.”

Since their takeover, the Taliban have faced no significant opposition and have avoided internal divisions.

The Taliban-led Afghan foreign ministry dismissed the report, saying it was unaware of any cases of human rights violations committed by Taliban officials or employees.

“Murder without trial, arbitrary arrest, detention, torture, and other acts against human rights by the employees of the security institutions of the Islamic Emirate against the employees and security forces of the previous government have not been reported,” it said in a statement.

The report said former Afghan soldiers were at greatest risk of experiencing human rights violations, followed by police and intelligence officials. Violations were recorded across all 34 provinces, with the greatest number recorded in Kabul, Kandahar and Balkh provinces.

The majority of violations took place in the four months following the Taliban takeover, with UNAMA recording almost half of all extrajudicial killings of former government officials and Afghan security forces during this period. But rights violations continued even after that, with 70 extrajudicial killings recorded in 2022, the report added.

The report documented at least 33 human rights violations against former police officers in southern Kandahar province, accounting for over a quarter of all human rights violations against former police members nationwide.

UNAMA documented at least 14 instances of forced disappearance of former government officials and Afghan security force members.

On Oct. 2, 2021, Alia Azizi, the former head of a women’s prison in western Herat province, did not return home from work and her whereabouts remain unknown. Despite reportedly initiating an investigation into her disappearance, the Taliban have not released any information about her whereabouts, the report said.

The U.N. documented more than 424 arbitrary arrests and detentions of former government officials and members of the Afghan security forces while more than 144 instances of torture and ill-treatment were documented in the report, including beatings with pipes, cables, verbal threats and other abuse.

The Taliban initially promised a general amnesty for those linked to the former government and international forces, but those pledges were not upheld.

The failure of the Taliban authorities “to fully uphold their publicly stated commitment and to hold perpetrators of human rights violations to account may have serious implications for the future stability of Afghanistan,” the report said.

While the Taliban announcement of a general amnesty in August 2021 “was a welcome step, it continues to not be fully upheld, with impunity for human rights violations prevailing,” said Roza Otunbayeva, the head of the U.N. mission in Afghanistan.

She urged the Taliban to show “”a genuine commitment to the general amnesty. This is a crucial step in ensuring real prospects for justice, reconciliation and lasting peace in Afghanistan.”

Despite initial promises of a moderate administration, the Taliban have enforced harsh rules, banning girls’ education after the sixth grade and barring Afghan women from public life and most work, including for nongovernmental organizations and the U.N. The measures recalled the previous Taliban rule of Afghanistan in the late 1990s, when they also imposed their interpretation of Islamic law, or Sharia.

The edicts prompted an international outcry against the already ostracized Taliban, whose administration has not been officially recognized by the U.N. and the international community. ……………..

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August 22, 2023
More than 200 former Afghan officials and security forces killed since Taliban takeover, UN says

ISLAMABAD — More than 200 extrajudicial killings of former Afghan government officials and security forces have taken place since the Taliban took over the country two years ago, according to a U.N. report released Tuesday.

The groups most targeted by the Taliban have been former army, police and intelligence forces, according to the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan.

UNAMA documented at least 800 human rights violations against former Afghan government officials and security forces between Aug. 15, 2021, when the Taliban seized power, and the end of June 2023.

The Taliban swept across Afghanistan as U.S. and NATO troops were in the final weeks of their withdrawal from the country after two decades of war. The U.S.-trained and backed Afghan forces crumbled in the face of the Taliban advance and former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fled the country.

“Individuals were detained by the de facto (Taliban) security forces, often briefly, before being killed. Some were taken to detention facilities and killed while in custody, others were taken to unknown locations and killed, their bodies either dumped or handed over to family members,” the report said.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said in a press release issued alongside the report that it “presents a sobering picture of the treatment of individuals affiliated with the former government and security forces.”

“Even more so, given they were assured that they would be not targeted, it is a betrayal of the people’s trust,” Turk said. He urged Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers — the country’s “de facto authorities” to uphold their “obligations under international human rights law by preventing further violations and holding perpetrators to account.”

Since their takeover, the Taliban have faced no significant opposition and have avoided internal divisions.

The Taliban-led Afghan foreign ministry dismissed the report, saying it was unaware of any cases of human rights violations committed by Taliban officials or employees.

“Murder without trial, arbitrary arrest, detention, torture, and other acts against human rights by the employees of the security institutions of the Islamic Emirate against the employees and security forces of the previous government have not been reported,” it said in a statement.

The report said former Afghan soldiers were at greatest risk of experiencing human rights violations, followed by police and intelligence officials. Violations were recorded across all 34 provinces, with the greatest number recorded in Kabul, Kandahar and Balkh provinces.

The majority of violations took place in the four months following the Taliban takeover, with UNAMA recording almost half of all extrajudicial killings of former government officials and Afghan security forces during this period. But rights violations continued even after that, with 70 extrajudicial killings recorded in 2022, the report added.

The report documented at least 33 human rights violations against former police officers in southern Kandahar province, accounting for over a quarter of all human rights violations against former police members nationwide.

UNAMA documented at least 14 instances of forced disappearance of former government officials and Afghan security force members.

On Oct. 2, 2021, Alia Azizi, the former head of a women’s prison in western Herat province, did not return home from work and her whereabouts remain unknown. Despite reportedly initiating an investigation into her disappearance, the Taliban have not released any information about her whereabouts, the report said.

The U.N. documented more than 424 arbitrary arrests and detentions of former government officials and members of the Afghan security forces while more than 144 instances of torture and ill-treatment were documented in the report, including beatings with pipes, cables, verbal threats and other abuse.

The Taliban initially promised a general amnesty for those linked to the former government and international forces, but those pledges were not upheld.

The failure of the Taliban authorities “to fully uphold their publicly stated commitment and to hold perpetrators of human rights violations to account may have serious implications for the future stability of Afghanistan,” the report said.

While the Taliban announcement of a general amnesty in August 2021 “was a welcome step, it continues to not be fully upheld, with impunity for human rights violations prevailing,” said Roza Otunbayeva, the head of the U.N. mission in Afghanistan.

She urged the Taliban to show “”a genuine commitment to the general amnesty. This is a crucial step in ensuring real prospects for justice, reconciliation and lasting peace in Afghanistan.”

Despite initial promises of a moderate administration, the Taliban have enforced harsh rules, banning girls’ education after the sixth grade and barring Afghan women from public life and most work, including for nongovernmental organizations and the U.N. The measures recalled the previous Taliban rule of Afghanistan in the late 1990s, when they also imposed their interpretation of Islamic law, or Sharia.

The edicts prompted an international outcry against the already ostracized Taliban, whose administration has not been officially recognized by the U.N. and the international community. ……………..

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August 22, 2023
More than 200 former Afghan officials and security forces killed since Taliban takeover, UN says

ISLAMABAD — More than 200 extrajudicial killings of former Afghan government officials and security forces have taken place since the Taliban took over the country two years ago, according to a U.N. report released Tuesday.

The groups most targeted by the Taliban have been former army, police and intelligence forces, according to the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan.

UNAMA documented at least 800 human rights violations against former Afghan government officials and security forces between Aug. 15, 2021, when the Taliban seized power, and the end of June 2023.

The Taliban swept across Afghanistan as U.S. and NATO troops were in the final weeks of their withdrawal from the country after two decades of war. The U.S.-trained and backed Afghan forces crumbled in the face of the Taliban advance and former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fled the country.

“Individuals were detained by the de facto (Taliban) security forces, often briefly, before being killed. Some were taken to detention facilities and killed while in custody, others were taken to unknown locations and killed, their bodies either dumped or handed over to family members,” the report said.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said in a press release issued alongside the report that it “presents a sobering picture of the treatment of individuals affiliated with the former government and security forces.”

“Even more so, given they were assured that they would be not targeted, it is a betrayal of the people’s trust,” Turk said. He urged Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers — the country’s “de facto authorities” to uphold their “obligations under international human rights law by preventing further violations and holding perpetrators to account.”

Since their takeover, the Taliban have faced no significant opposition and have avoided internal divisions.

The Taliban-led Afghan foreign ministry dismissed the report, saying it was unaware of any cases of human rights violations committed by Taliban officials or employees.

“Murder without trial, arbitrary arrest, detention, torture, and other acts against human rights by the employees of the security institutions of the Islamic Emirate against the employees and security forces of the previous government have not been reported,” it said in a statement.

The report said former Afghan soldiers were at greatest risk of experiencing human rights violations, followed by police and intelligence officials. Violations were recorded across all 34 provinces, with the greatest number recorded in Kabul, Kandahar and Balkh provinces.

The majority of violations took place in the four months following the Taliban takeover, with UNAMA recording almost half of all extrajudicial killings of former government officials and Afghan security forces during this period. But rights violations continued even after that, with 70 extrajudicial killings recorded in 2022, the report added.

The report documented at least 33 human rights violations against former police officers in southern Kandahar province, accounting for over a quarter of all human rights violations against former police members nationwide.

UNAMA documented at least 14 instances of forced disappearance of former government officials and Afghan security force members.

On Oct. 2, 2021, Alia Azizi, the former head of a women’s prison in western Herat province, did not return home from work and her whereabouts remain unknown. Despite reportedly initiating an investigation into her disappearance, the Taliban have not released any information about her whereabouts, the report said.

The U.N. documented more than 424 arbitrary arrests and detentions of former government officials and members of the Afghan security forces while more than 144 instances of torture and ill-treatment were documented in the report, including beatings with pipes, cables, verbal threats and other abuse.

The Taliban initially promised a general amnesty for those linked to the former government and international forces, but those pledges were not upheld.

The failure of the Taliban authorities “to fully uphold their publicly stated commitment and to hold perpetrators of human rights violations to account may have serious implications for the future stability of Afghanistan,” the report said.

While the Taliban announcement of a general amnesty in August 2021 “was a welcome step, it continues to not be fully upheld, with impunity for human rights violations prevailing,” said Roza Otunbayeva, the head of the U.N. mission in Afghanistan.

She urged the Taliban to show “”a genuine commitment to the general amnesty. This is a crucial step in ensuring real prospects for justice, reconciliation and lasting peace in Afghanistan.”

Despite initial promises of a moderate administration, the Taliban have enforced harsh rules, banning girls’ education after the sixth grade and barring Afghan women from public life and most work, including for nongovernmental organizations and the U.N. The measures recalled the previous Taliban rule of Afghanistan in the late 1990s, when they also imposed their interpretation of Islamic law, or Sharia.

The edicts prompted an international outcry against the already ostracized Taliban, whose administration has not been officially recognized by the U.N. and the international community. ……………..

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August 21, 2023
Divisive Thai ex-Prime Minister Thaksin returns from exile as party seeks to form new government

BANGKOK — Divisive ex-Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra returned to Thailand on Tuesday after years of self-imposed exile to face possible criminal penalties on the same day that a party affiliated with him plans to start forming a new government.

Thaksin has said his decision to return has nothing to do with an expected vote in Parliament later in the day on a candidate from the Pheu Thai party for prime minister. But many believe his arrival is connected to the party’s pursuit of power.

Thaksin flew from Singapore in his private jet and landed at Don Mueang International Airport around 9 a.m. local time. Thai broadcasters aired live footage of him walking out of the airport’s private jet terminal with his three children including his youngest daughter, key Pheu Thai member Paetongtarn Shinawatra. His grandchildren were also seen.

After walking out, Thaksin placed a flower wreath and prostrated before a portrait of Thailand’s king and queen at the gate of the terminal. He spent a moment greeting supporters and the media waiting in front of the terminal but did not speak.

Hundreds of his supporters gathered outside of the airport hours ahead of his arrival, donning red, a color long associated with Thaksin, and holding sign with welcoming messages. They showed their devotion to him with songs and chants, then raised raucous cheers when he appeared at the entrance.

“I feel fulfilled that I traveled here today to pick him up. If possible I want to hug him. Everyone has tears, tears coming out of their eyes,” said Makawan Payakkae, a 43-year-old from Maha Sarakham province.

The 74-year-old billionaire promoted populist policies and used his telecommunications fortune to build his own Thai Rak Thai party and be elected prime minister in 2001 and easily reelected in 2005, before being ousted in a military coup in 2006 and fleeing into exile a few years later.

Paetongtarn posted family photos with Thaksin in the middle on Facebook with a message thanking people who went to the airport to welcome her father, saying “me and my family are very grateful.”

His convoy first went to the Supreme Court, where a news release from the body said he would formally inform him of earlier convictions issued in absentia for which he was sentenced to a total of 10 years imprisonment. The convoy left the court an hour later and went to Bangkok’s main prison. Thaksin was convicted in absentia for several criminal cases after he fled that he claimed were politically motivated.

Pheu Thai is the latest in a string of parties affiliated with Thaksin. The military coup that ousted him triggered years of upheaval and division that pitted a mostly poor, rural majority in the north that supports Thaksin against royalists, the military and their urban backers.

Less than a week before May elections, Thaksin announced he would like to return before his birthday in July, but the plan was repeatedly delayed, with he and Paetongtarn citing both post-election uncertainties and his health.

Pheu Thai came in second in the elections but took over leadership in forming a new government after the surprise winner, the progressive Move Forward Party, was repeatedly rejected by conservative senators appointed by a previous military government.

Move Forward’s reform agenda appealed deeply to many Thais, particularly younger voters who were disenchanted by nearly a decade of military-backed rule, but was seen as a threat by the country’s conservative elites.

After more than three months without a new government for Thailand, Parliament convened on Tuesday to attempt to choose a prime minister again. Pheu Thai’s candidate, former property developer Srettha Thavisin, was the only name nominated by his party leader Chonlanan Srikaew. Pheu Thai launched the bid to form the government after it assembled an 11-party coalition including two parties allied with its former military adversaries, holding 314 seats in the 500-member House of Representatives.

Srettha needs some support from the non-elected Senate, appointed by a previous military government, to achieve a majority in the combined parliamentary vote. Both houses of Parliament vote together for the prime minister under the military-implemented constitution, in an arrangement designed to protect conservative military-backed rule. Senators, like the army, see themselves as guardians of traditional conservative royalist values.

House Speaker Wan Muhammad Noor Matha has allocated time for lawmakers to debate on the nomination before the vote takes place in the afternoon. Srettha did not run for office and the law does not require a prime ministerial candidate to be an elected lawmaker. Parliament also does not require him to be present at the vote.

Pheu Thai has been heavily criticized by some of its supporters for backtracking on a pre-election pledge not to join hands with pro-military parties. Party officials have defended the decision by saying it was necessary to break the political deadlock and seek reconciliation after decades of deep political divisions.

Thaksin was ousted while he was abroad in 2006. He came back briefly to Thailand in 2008 to face a court trial before fleeing the country. He has avoided returning over concerns he would not be treated fairly by the military-backed government and establishment that has long held a sharp animosity toward him.

He has remained active in Thai politics, however, often making video calls to rallies of his supporters and parties backed by him.

“Thaksin’s plans to return to Thailand were postponed after the election results were announced — this implies a strong connection between the election, formation of coalitions, and selection of the prime minister on one hand, and Thaksin’s personal agenda on the other,” said Napon Jatusripitak, a political science researcher and visiting fellow at Singapore’s ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute.

“Thaksin has managed to make this election about himself personally, and the direction of a Pheu Thai-led coalition heavily depends on his personal whims.”

Thaksin could wind up serving prison time unless he receives a royal pardon. Deputy Prime Minister Wissanu Krea-ngam of the outgoing military-linked government has said that Thaksin is eligible to request a pardon and could receive special treatment because of his age.

Napon said Thaksin’s decision to return now suggests that “he has received assurances that he will not have to serve a prison sentence in full.”

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Find more of AP’s Asia-Pacific coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/asia-pacific

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August 21, 2023
North Korea tells Japan of launch plan, a possible 2nd try to put up spy satellite, Japan media say

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea has told Japan it plans to launch a satellite in the coming days, possibly a second try to put a military spy satellite into orbit, Japanese media said Tuesday.

In late May, North Korea tried to launch its first spy satellite, but the rocket carrying the satellite plunged into the sea soon after liftoff. North Korea vowed to make a second attempt after studying what went wrong with the first launch.

Kyodo News cited Japan’s coast guard as reporting it was notified that North Korea intends to launch a satellite between Thursday and Aug. 31. Kyodo said the plan is believed to be the North’s retry of a military reconnaissance satellite launch.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida instructed related government agencies to analyze the plan as much as possible and coordinate with the United States and South Korea to urge Pyongyang not to carry out the launch, Kyodo said.

Japan’s coast guard said it was notified that North Korea would designate three maritime danger zones — two to the west of the Korean Peninsula and the third to the east of the Philippines island of Luzon. The three are outside Japan’s exclusive economic zone.

The North’s reported launch plan comes a day after the U.S. and South Korean militaries kicked off annual military exercises that North Korea has called a rehearsal for invasion.

The 11-day “Ulchi Freedom Shield” drills are computer-simulated command post training. During this year’s training period, the allies also plan more than 30 field training exercises.

This month’s drills come after the leaders of the U.S., South Korea and Japan met for their first stand-alone trilateral summit at Camp David on Friday and agreed on a set of steps to increase their defense cooperation to deal with North Korea’s increasing nuclear and military threats.

North Korea’s state media warned Tuesday that its rivals’ drills are deepening the danger of a nuclear war on the Korean Peninsula.

“If the agreements fabricated at the Camp David Resort are additionally put into practice in the war drill involving human and material resources of the U.S. and other hostile forces and even the vassal forces, the possibility of outbreak of a thermonuclear war on the Korean Peninsula will become more realistic,” the North’s official Korean Central News Agency said.

It said the current, prevailing situation is compelling North Korea to take “offensive, overwhelming” steps, but didn’t elaborate.

On Monday, KCNA said leader Kim Jong Un had watched the test launches of strategic cruise missiles and underscored the need to bolster efforts to modernize naval weapons systems.

South Korea’s spy agency said last week that North Korea was taking steps needed for the test flights of intercontinental ballistic missiles and shorter-range nuclear-capable missiles as well as a spy satellite launch.

A spy satellite is among an array of high-tech weapons systems North Korea’s leaaer has publicly vowed to acquire as he looks to expand his nuclear arsenal.

The United States and its allies condemned the North’s first spy satellite launch for raising tensions and violating U.N. Security Council resolutions that ban the country from engaging in ballistic launches.

The failed launch in May also caused security jitters in the region, with South Korea and Japan briefly warning people in some areas to take shelter.

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August 21, 2023
Global aid official appeals for funds to help Sudanese trapped in war between generals

CAIRO — A global aid official urged the international community Sunday to provide more funds to help Sudanese citizens trapped by a monthslong military conflict between rival generals in the African nation.

Jagan Chapagain, the secretary-general of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said his organizations have received only 7% of the $45 million they appealed for to help those inside Sudan. The war pits the military against the powerful paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.

“The needs are real,” he told The Associated Press in an interview in Cairo. “Sudanese people need urgent support, urgent solidarity and urgent interest.”

Sudan was plunged into chaos in April when simmering tensions between the military, led by Abdel Fattah Burhan, and the RSF, commanded by Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, exploded into open fighting in the capital, Khartoum, and elsewhere.

The conflict has turned Khartoum and other urban areas into battlefields. Many residents live without water and electricity, and the country’s health care system has nearly collapsed. The sprawling region of Darfur saw some of the worst bouts of violence in the conflict, and the fighting there has morphed into ethnic clashes with RSF and allied Arab militia targeting ethnic African communities.

Clashes also intensified earlier this month in the provinces of South Kordofan and West Kordofan. A rebel group attacked Kadugli, the provincial capital of South Kordofan and clashed with the military, killing and displacing civilians, according to the U.N. mission in Sudan.

In al-Fula, the provincial capital of West Kordofan, fighting erupted for days between the military and the RSF before local officials helped stop the clashes, the U.N. mission, known as UNITAMS, said Sunday. But government offices, banks and the offices of the U.N. and other aid agencies were looted, it said

More than 3.4 million people were forced to flee their homes to safer areas inside Sudan, according to the United Nations’ migration agency. Over a million crossed into neighboring countries, including Egypt, Chad, South Sudan, Ethiopia and Central African Republic, the agency added.

Chapagain called for the international community to show the same solidarity with Sudanese people they showed last year when they rushed to help those who fled Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“I see the humanitarian side of the Ukraine is a good example. That’s how the world community can come together. We need a similar solidarity for Sudan now,” he said.

Along with the $45 million needed to help those inside Sudan, Chapagain said another $35 million is needed to provide assistance to those who fled the fighting to Sudan’s neighboring countries.

His comments came following a trip to the Egyptian border with Sudan, where he met with customs officials and Sudanese refugees who fled the fighting in Khartoum. Egypt received more than 272,000 Sudanese as of Aug. 1, according to official figures.

Although the operations at the Egyptian side of the border were organized, he said, there were long lines for people on the Sudanese side waiting to be allowed into Egypt. He said between 400 and 600 people are crossing daily into Egypt compared to thousands in the first weeks of the war.

The Egyptian government had allowed women and children to cross without visas in the first weeks of the war, but in June it began requiring visas for all Sudanese citizens despite objections from activists and rights groups.

Chapagain said the Egyptian government is under economic pressure as they are hosting more than 9 million migrants, including Sudanese, Syrians and others, as well as the country’s growing population of over 105 million.

“They want to be generous. They want to be welcoming,” he said. “But at the same time, they do have concern in the sense that … they are still a developing country.”

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August 20, 2023
Suspected Palestinian shooting attack at West Bank car wash kills 2 Israelis

HAWARA, West Bank — Two Israelis were killed in a suspected Palestinian shooting attack on a car wash in a volatile stretch of the occupied West Bank on Saturday, the latest outburst of violence to rock the region.

The Israeli military said it was searching for suspects and setting up roadblocks near the town of Hawara, a flashpoint area in the northern West Bank, which has seen repeated attacks including one deadly shooting that triggered a rampage by Jewish West Bank settlers who torched Palestinian property.

Saturday’s shooting attack came after Palestinian medics reported that a 19-year-old Palestinian died of wounds sustained in an Israeli military raid into the West Bank on Wednesday.

The latest attack is part of a relentless spiral of violence that has fueled the worst fighting between Israel and the Palestinians in the West Bank in nearly two decades. Since spring last year, Israel has launched near-nightly raids in Palestinian towns in response to deadly Palestinian attacks.

Nearly 180 Palestinians have been killed since the start of this year and some 29 people have been killed by Palestinian attacks against Israelis during that time, according to a tally by The Associated Press. Israel says most of the Palestinians killed were militants. But stone throwing youths protesting the incursions and those not involved in the confrontations have also been killed.

Israeli paramedics said that when they arrived at the Hawara car wash, two Israeli males, aged 60 and 29, were found unconscious with gunshot wounds. Israeli media reported the two were father and son and identified them as Shay Silas Nigreka and his Aviad Nir from the southern Israeli city of Ashdod.

Underscoring the severity of the attack, the country’s military chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, visited the scene.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sent his condolences to the family and vowed that the military would track down the shooter.

“The security forces are working diligently to find the murderer and settle accounts, just as we have done with all the murderers so far,” Netanyahu said.

Videos circulating online showed Israeli soldiers walking across a pool of blood at the car wash to help move two bodies on stretchers to awaiting ambulances.

Several Israelis have been killed in Hawara in the current round of fighting. The death of two brothers, residents of a nearby settlement, last February set off a rampage by settlers through the town. Crowds of settlers torched dozens of cars and homes in some of the worst such violence in decades.

Similar settler mob violence has taken place elsewhere in the West Bank since. Israeli rights groups say settler violence has worsened and that radical settlers have become emboldened because Israel’s far-right government has settler leaders in key positions who have vowed to take an especially hard line against the Palestinians.

After the deadly February shooting in Hawara, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a firebrand settler supporter, called for Israel to “erase” the town from the map. He later walked back the remark after fierce criticism.

Palestinian militant groups praised the shooting attack, with Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad congratulating the perpetrators. Hamas spokesman Abdel Latif Al-Qanou called the attack a “heroic shooting operation.” But the groups stopped short of claiming responsibility for the attack.

Also on Saturday, 19-year-old Palestinian militant Mohammad Abu Asab died of a gunshot wound to the head suffered Wednesday during an Israeli military raid on the Balata refugee camp near the northern West Bank city of Nablus, the Palestinian Red Crescent said. At the time, the Israeli military had said that it raided Balata seeking to destroy an underground weapons factory when a gunfight erupted. The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, an armed offshoot of the secular Fatah party, claimed Abu Asab as a member.

Israel says the raids are meant to dismantle militant networks and thwart future attacks. Palestinians say the raids undermine their security forces, inspire more militancy and entrench Israeli control over lands they seek for a hoped-for future state.

Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war, along with east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. Some 700,000 Israelis live in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, while Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005. The Palestinians seek those territories for their hoped-for independent state.

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McNeil contributed from Jerusalem.

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August 19, 2023