South Sudan peace talks face collapse over a new security law as country gears up for first election
South Sudan peace talks face collapse over a new security law as country gears up for first election/node/2546921/world
South Sudan peace talks face collapse over a new security law as country gears up for first election
South Sudanese President Salva Kiir Mayardit, left, shakes hands with Pagan Amum Okiech, leader of the Real-SPLM group, during the launch of high-level peace talks for South Sudan at State House in Nairobi, Kenya on May 9, 2024. (AP)
South Sudan peace talks face collapse over a new security law as country gears up for first election
Kenya has been hosting the high-level meetings since May between government representatives and rebel opposition groups who were not part of a 2018 agreement
Updated 10 July 2024
AP
JUBA, South Sudan: South Sudan peace talks that almost reached completion faced a stumbling block with opposition groups demanding a newly passed bill allowing the detention of people without an arrest warrant scratched out in order to sign a proposed agreement.
Kenya has been hosting the high-level meetings since May between government representatives and rebel opposition groups who were not part of a 2018 agreement that ended a five-year civil war, leaving about 400,000 people dead and millions displaced. Despite the agreement, violence often erupted in the country of 9 million.
Pagan Amum Okiech, negotiating on behalf of the South Sudan Opposition Movement Alliance, told the Associated Press Tuesday night that it would be “meaningless to sign any agreement if the draconian National Security Act is signed into law by the president.”
Last week, parliament voted in favor of the 2015 bill and President Salva Kiir will have to approve it within 30 days for it to become a law. This comes ahead of the country’s first-ever election on Dec. 22.
“This law violates the fundamental rights and freedoms of South Sudanese citizens, it eliminates civic and political space,” Amum said. “There can be no peace or democracy under such a law.”
Attending the peace talks is the executive director of the Community Empowerment for Progress Organization, a non-profit that engages university students and fresh graduates. Edmund Yakani criticized the security bill and said it “created a negative spirit for the negotiations.”
Human Rights Watch has also called on Kiir to reject the controversial bill saying that it will further undermine human rights and strengthen national security agencies that have a history of longstanding rights abuses.
The talks — dubbed Tumaini, Swahili for hope — have resulted in a draft agreement proposing to extend the country’s transitional period and postpone the coming election to allow finishing up the country’s constitution and electoral laws, as well as set up constituency borders and a unified security force as proposed in the 2018 peace talks.
Some Western envoys also recommend delaying the poll “to guarantee a free and fair election.”
Kiir has been adamant about having the election in December and called out the envoys.
Seven people killed in stampede at a music concert in Congo’s capital, authorities report
The stampede occurred at the Stade des Martyrs stadium where gospel singer Mike Kalambayi was performing, says governor
Updated 16 sec ago
AP
KINSHASA, Congo: Seven people were killed and many others were injured during a stampede at a music concert in Congo’s capital Saturday, authorities said.
The stampede occurred at the 80,000-capacity Stade des Martyrs stadium in the heart of Kinshasa where Mike Kalambayi, a popular Congolese gospel singer, was performing, Kinshasa Gov. Daniel Bumba said.
State television RTNC said seven people were killed in the chaos and some of those injured were admitted to intensive care.
Authorities did not comment on what caused the stampede, saying an investigation into the incident was underway. However, the local music management company that organized the event said the chaos erupted when “the security services tried to neutralize some troublemakers.”
An estimated 30,000 people attended the concert, which featured several other musicians and pastors, the management company Maajabu Gospel said in a statement.
Videos that appeared to be from the scene and broadcast of the event showed large crowds gathered outside the stadium in front of barricades as they waited to enter. Inside, people could be seen rushing to the center stage.
Congo has witnessed such stampedes in past years, often blamed on poor crowd control measures such as excessive use of force. Eleven people died in a similar crush at the same stadium last October during a music concert.
US-Japan security talks focus on bolstering military cooperation amid rising China threat
Talks include deploying atomic weapons amid growing nuclear threats from Russia and China
Japan has been accelerating its military buildup and has increased joint operations with the US, as well as with South Korea
Updated 11 min 56 sec ago
AP
TOKYO: Japanese and US defense chiefs and top diplomats will meet in Tokyo on Sunday for talks aimed at further bolstering their military cooperation, including by upgrading the command and control of US forces and strengthening American-licensed missile production in Japan, amid a rising threat from China.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will join their Japanese counterparts, Yoko Kamikawa and Minoru Kihara, at the Japan-US Security Consultative Committee, known as “2+2” security talks, to reaffirm their alliance following President Joe Biden ‘s withdrawal from the November presidential race.
For the first time, the ministers will hold separate talks to reaffirm the US commitment to “extended deterrence,” which includes atomic weapons — a shift from Japan’s earlier reluctance to openly discuss the sensitive issue in the world’s only country to have suffered nuclear attacks — amid growing nuclear threats from Russia and China.
The ministers are expected to discuss plans to upgrade command and control structures for US forces in Japan by bringing in higher-ranked officers with commanding authority to create a US counterpart for Japan’s unified command currently set for inauguration in March.
Japan is home to more than 50,000 US troops, but a commander for the US Forces Japan headquartered in Yokota in the western suburbs of Tokyo, tasked with managing their bases, has no commanding authority. Instead that comes from the Indo-Pacific Command in Hawaii. The plan to upgrade USFJ’s command and control capability is designed to help smooth joint exercises and operations, officials say.
Ahead of the 2+2 talks, Kihara was to meet with South Korean Defense Minister Shin Won-sik in their first bilateral defense ministerial talks in Japan in 15 years. Austin will later join them for three-way talks.
Japan has been accelerating its military buildup and has increased joint operations with the US, as well as with South Korea, while trying to strengthen its largely domestic defense industry.
Japan has significantly eased its arms export restrictions and in December accommodated a US request for shipment of surface-to-air PAC-3 missile interceptors produced in Japan under an American license to replenish US inventories, which have decreased due to its support for Ukraine.
The ministers are also expected to discuss increased Japanese production of PAC-3 interceptors for export to the United States.
Japan and the US have been accelerating arms industry cooperation following an April agreement between Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Biden. The two sides have set up working groups for missile co-production and for the maintenance and repair of US Navy ships and Air Force aircraft in the region.
While Japan’s role is largely designed to help US weapons supply and keep its deterrence credible in the Indo-Pacific amid continuing conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine, Japanese officials say it will help strengthen the Japanese defense industry.
China tells US it denies charges it is helping Russia’s war effort in Ukraine war
The US has imposed sanctions on Chinese companies that sell Russia equipment that could help the war effort
China says the US and other Western countries are fueling the war by arming Ukraine
Updated 31 min ago
AFP
VIENTIANE, Laos: China’s foreign minister told his US counterpart Saturday that Beijing denies charges that it is helping Russia’s war effort in Ukraine.
Wang Yi, meeting with Secretary of State Antony Blinken in the capital of Laos, also said his country would take “forceful measures” to defend Chinese interests, according to a statement from the Chinese Foreign Ministry.
China’s already strong economic, diplomatic and military ties with Russia were further strengthened after Russia invaded its pro-Western neighbor Ukraine in February 2022.
Now China has sought to paint itself as a mediator in Russia’s invasion, sending envoy Li Hui to Europe on multiple rounds of shuttle diplomacy.
China says the United States and other Western countries are fueling the war by arming Ukraine.
NATO, for its part, has branded Beijing a “decisive enabler” of the war.
But Beijing has rebuffed claims it is supporting Russia’s war effort, insisting last week that its position was “open and above board.”
The United States has imposed sanctions on Chinese companies that sell Russia equipment which Washington says could help the war effort.
“The US should stop indiscriminate unilateral sanctions and long-arm jurisdiction,” Wang told Blinken, according to the statement.
“China is opposed to being smeared and to false accusations being made against it, does not accept pressure and blackmail, and will take resolute and forceful measures to safeguard its major interests and legitimate rights,” Wang added.
The two diplomats met on the sidelines of a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
China has never condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine and it accuses NATO of ignoring Russia’s security concerns.
But last year China called for respect for the territorial integrity of all countries, including Ukraine.
“China’s position on the Ukrainian issue is candid and we will continue to promote peace talks” between Russia and Ukraine, said Wang.
In a sign of China’s weight in trying to end the war, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba this week made his first trip to China since the war started.
Early this month, President Xi Jinping called on the international community to “create conditions” for direct talks between Russia and Ukraine.
China regularly calls for an end to fighting in Ukraine, a position that in effect would allow Russia to hold on to the Ukrainian territory it has seized by force.
Blinken pays respects in Vietnam after death of Communist Party leader
Blinken conveyed Biden’s condolences to Trong’s family, met with Met with President To Lam and PM Pham Minh Chinh
US reaffirmed commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific region amid China's increasing assertiveness
Updated 49 min 18 sec ago
Reuters
HANOI: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Vietnam on Saturday to pay his respects following the death of Communist Party chief Nguyen Phu Trong, underlining warmer ties between the countries a half-century since they fought a brutal war. Blinken arrived in Hanoi late on Saturday after attending a regional summit in Laos and visited the family home of Trong, a Marxist-Leninist ideologue who as party chief was Vietnam’s most powerful figure for 13 years. He died last week aged 80.
Trong’s “bamboo diplomacy” trod a delicate balancing act between rival superpowers the United States and Communist neighbor China, helping to elevate Vietnam’s ties with its two biggest trade partners.
Blinken greeted Trong’s family before lighting an incense stick in front of a shrine displaying the general secretary’s photo. He then stood for a moment with his hands clasped in a show of respect.
He wrote a page-long message in a condolence book and during conversations with Trong’s family, conveyed the condolences of President Joe Biden. Trong’s two-day state funeral, which ended on Friday, drew more than 250,000 mourners in ceremonies in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City and his home in Dong Anh on the outskirts of the capital, state media reported.
Ngo Thi Man (front L), the wife of the late general secretary of the Communist Party Nguyen Phu Trong, Vietnam's Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh (front 2nd L) and Vietnam's President To Lam (front C) stand in front of the coffin during his funeral in Hanoi on July 26, 2024. (POOL via AFP)
‘Visionary leader’
Blinken’s brief visit comes at a sensitive time for US-Vietnam relations, which have improved given shared concerns about China’s growing regional clout and interest from US investors in a country with an economy that grew an average 5.8 percent annually during Trong’s time in office. During a visit by Biden to Hanoi last year, the countries upgraded ties to a comprehensive strategic partnership and US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has promoted Vietnam as a “friend-shoring” destination to shift US supply chains away from China. The US Commerce Department is due to announce by Friday whether to upgrade Vietnam to market-economy status, something Hanoi has long sought.
The upgrade is opposed by US steelmakers, Gulf Coast shrimpers, honey farmers and members of the US Congress representing them, but backed by retailers and some other business groups. After visiting Trong’s home, Blinken also met Vietnam President To Lam, the former internal security agency chief who has assumed Trong’s duties, and Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh.
Blinken told Lam that Trong was a “visionary leader” who built a lasting bridge between the two countries and showed the world they could move forward despite their difficult past.
In his meeting with the prime minister, Blinken said one of the highlights of the Biden administration was its elevation of its strategic ties with Hanoi.
Readouts of Blinken’s Hanoi meetings from State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller referred to “a partnership at the highest level.”
In the meeting with Chinh, both sides “welcomed the progress the United States and Vietnam have made together in implementing the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership,” he said.
“The Secretary reaffirmed the United States’ commitment to working with Vietnam to advance our shared vision for a free and open Indo-Pacific region and supporting a strong, independent, prosperous, and resilient Vietnam,” he said.
Life and death in the heat. What it feels like when Earth’s temperatures soar to record highs
As the warming Earth sizzled through a week with four of the hottest days ever measured, the world focused on cold, hard numbers that showed the average daily temperature for the entire planet
Updated 28 July 2024
AP
BENI MELLAL, Morocco: In the unrelenting heat of Morocco’s Middle Atlas, people were sleeping on rooftops. Hanna Ouhbour needed refuge too, but she was outside a hospital waiting for her diabetic cousin who was in a room without air conditioning.
On Wednesday, there were 21 heat-related deaths at Beni Mellal’s main hospital as temperatures spiked to 48.3 degrees (118.9 degrees Fahrenheit) in the region of 575,000 people, most lacking air conditioning.
“We don’t have money and we don’t have a choice,” said Ouhbour, a 31-year-old unemployed woman from Kasba Tadla, an even warmer city that some experts say is among the hottest on Earth.
“The majority of the deaths were among people suffering from chronic diseases and the elderly, as the high temperatures contributed to the deterioration of their health condition and led to their death,” Kamal Elyansli, the regional director of health, said in a statement.
This is life and death in the heat.
As the warming Earth sizzled through a week with four of the hottest days ever measured, the world focused on cold, hard numbers that showed the average daily temperature for the entire planet.
But the 17.16 degrees Celsius (62.8 degrees Fahrenheit) reading recorded on Monday doesn’t convey how oppressively sticky any one particular place became at the peak of sunshine and humidity. The thermometer doesn’t tell the story of warmth that just wouldn’t go away at night so people could sleep.
The records are about statistics, keeping score. But people don’t feel data. They feel the heat.
“We do not need any scientists to tell us what the temperature is outside as this is what our body tells us instantly,” said Humayun Saeed, a 35-year-old roadside fruit seller in Pakistan’s cultural capital of Lahore.
Heatstroke patients receive treatment at a hospital in Karachi, Pakistan, on July 25, 2024. (AP)
Saeed had to go to the hospital twice in June because of heat stroke.
“The situation is much better now, as it was not easy to work in May and June because of the heat wave, but I have been avoiding the morning walk,” Saeed said. “I may resume it in August when the temperature will go further down.”
The heat was making Delia, a 38-year-old pregnant woman standing outside a Bucharest, Romania, train station, feel even more uncomfortable. Daytime was so hot she was drowsy. With no air conditioning at night, she considered sleeping in her car like a friend had.
“I’ve really noticed a very big increase in temperatures. I think it was the same for everyone. I felt it even more because I am pregnant,” said Delia, who only provided her first name. “But I guess it wasn’t just me. Really everyone felt this.”
Self-described weather nerd Karin Bumbaco was in her element, but then it became just a little too much when Seattle had day after day of much warmer than normal heat.
“I love science. I love the weather. I have since I was a little kid,” said Bumbaco, the deputy state climatologist for Washington. “It’s sort of fun to see daily records get broken. ... But in recent years just living through it and actually feeling the heat has become just more miserable on a day-to-day basis.”
“Like this recent stretch we’ve had. I wasn’t sleeping very well. I don’t have AC at my home,” Bumbaco said. “I was watching the thermostat every morning be a little warmer than the previous warm morning. It was just building up the heat in the house and I just couldn’t wait for it to be over.”
For climate scientists around the world, what had been an academic exercise about climate change literally hit home.
“I’ve been analyzing these numbers from the cool of my office, but the heat has started to affect me as well, causing sleepless nights due to warmer urban temperatures,” said Roxy Mathew Koll, a climate scientist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology in Pune, Maharashtra, which normally has a relatively mild climate.
“My children return home from school during the peak hours exhausted,” Koll said. “Last month one of my colleagues’ mother died from heat stroke in north India.”
A stop sign warns tourists of extreme heat at Badwater Basin on July 8, 2024, in Death Valley National Park, California. (Las Vegas Review-Journal via AP)
Philip Mote, a climate scientist and dean of the graduate school at Oregon State University, had moved in junior high to California’s Central Valley and its triple digit summer heat.
“I pretty quickly figured I didn’t like a hot dry climate,” Mote said. “And that’s why I moved to the Northwest.”
For decades, Mote worked on climate issues from the comfort of Oregon, where people feared that with global warming the Northwest “would be the last nice place to live in the US and everybody would move here and we’d have overpopulation.”
But the region was hit by nasty fires in 2020 and a deadly heat wave in 2021, causing some people to flee what was supposed to be a climate haven.
In the second week of July, the temperature hit 104 degrees (40 Celsius). As a member of a masters’ rowing club, Mote practices on the water Tuesdays and Thursday evenings, but this week they decided to just float down the river in tubes.
In Boise, Idaho, tubing in the heat that has hovered between 99 and 108 degrees Fahrenheit (37 to 42 degrees Celsius) for 17 days has become so popular there’s a 30-minute to an hour wait to get into the water, said John Tullius, general manager for Boise River Raft & Tube.
“I think it’s been record numbers these last 10 days in a row,” Tullius said, adding that he worries about his outdoor workers, especially the physical toll on those who pick up rafts at the end of the trek.
He erected special shade structure for them, added more workers to ease the load and urges them to hydrate.
In Denver’s City Park, the swan-shaped pedal boat rental shop isn’t that busy because it’s beastly hot outside and those brave souls who do go out have to sit on hot fiberglass seats.
There’s not much shade for the workers, “but we do hide in our little shack,” said employee Dominic Prado, 23. “We also have a very strong fan in there that I like to raise my shirt over it just to cool down.”
