Blinken says US ‘appalled’ by execution of British-Iranian national

Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks during a news conference with British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly, in the Benjamin Franklin Room at the State Department, Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2023, in Washington. (AP)

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Updated 18 January 2023

Reuters

January 18, 2023 02:29

Blinken says US ‘appalled’ by execution of British-Iranian national

Akbari, 61, a British-Iranian national who once served as Tehran’s deputy defense minister, was handed a death sentence on charges of spying for Britain

Updated 18 January 2023

Reuters

January 18, 2023 02:29

WASHINGTON: The United States is appalled by Iran’s execution of Alireza Akbari, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said, vowing that Tehran’s abuses in its crackdown of widespread demonstrations will not go unpunished.
“We were appalled by the execution of Mr. Akbari just as we’ve been appalled by everything we’ve been seeing on the streets of Iran over the last months since these protests began: mass arrests, sham trials, the executions, the use of sexual violence as a tool for protests’ suppression,” Blinken said at a news conference.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken with British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly, speaks during a news conference in the Benjamin Franklin Room at the State Department, Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2023, in Washington. (AP)

“These abuses will not go without consequence. Together with many other countries, we’ve been moving forward with a variety of unilateral actions, multilateral measures, using UN mechanisms, to try to hold Iran to account,” he added.
Akbari, 61, a British-Iranian national who once served as Tehran’s deputy defense minister, was handed a death sentence on charges of spying for Britain.
London has said the charges against him were politically motivated. It repeatedly called for his release. Following the execution, it imposed sanctions on Iran’s Prosecutor General
The execution drew widespread condemnation and looks set to further worsen Iran’s long-strained relations with the West, which have deteriorated since talks to revive its 2015 nuclear deal hit deadlock and after Tehran unleashed a deadly crackdown on protesters last year.
At the same news conference, British foreign minister James Cleverly said the United Kingdom would not limit itself to the response that it had already announced, although he declined to detail what more it might do.

Topics: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken Iran Alireza Akbari

ADB unveils capital moves to boost lending by $100 bln over a decade for Asia-Pacific

Updated 7 sec ago

Reuters

September 29, 2023 07:30

ADB unveils capital moves to boost lending by $100 bln over a decade for Asia-Pacific

World Bank said on Thursday it was proposing new capital measures to add over $100 billion in new lending
This is on top of $50 billion yielded by previous measures including use of debt-like hybrid capital

Updated 7 sec ago

Reuters

September 29, 2023 07:30

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) unveiled new capital reforms on Friday that will unlock $100 billion in new financing capacity over 10 years as the lender expands its development and anti-poverty mission to tackle climate change and other global crises.

The Manila-based lender said it was adjusting its risk appetite and reducing its minimum-level of capitalization in a way that preserves its top tier AAA credit rating while allowing it to expand its lending commitments by nearly 40 percent to about $36 billion annually.

ADB’s move to stretch its balance sheet follows similar measures announced by the World Bank earlier this year that will yield a $50 billion increase in lending over a decade. But the ADB’s effort will yield twice the new lending on an “apples to apples” comparison, ADB Managing Director General Woochong Um told Reuters in an interview.

ADB has traditionally taken a more conservative approach, maintaining a higher risk-adjusted capital ratio than the World Bank and other multilateral development banks, said Roberta Casali, vice president for finance and risk management.

So as ADB took a more “granular” approach to analyzing risks, and adjusting downward estimates of unexpected losses, the lender had more room to squeeze new lending from its capital structure than some other banks had, Casali said.

Aiding the effort — and providing some comfort to credit ratings agencies — is the creation of a new, $12 billion Countercyclical Lending Buffer fund that can be used to aid ADB member countries in times of unexpected crises, helping to stabilize them and help avoid loan losses.

The World Bank said on Thursday it was proposing new capital measures that would add more than $100 billion in new lending over a decade on top of the $50 billion yielded by previous measures. These include use of debt-like hybrid capital and increased use of loan portfolio guarantees.

Discussions on expanding lending to fight climate change, pandemics, food insecurity and fragility will be a dominant topic at World Bank-IMF annual meetings in Marrakech, Morocco Oct. 9-15.

But with an estimated $3 trillion in annual climate transition financing needs in developing countries, far more capital, private sector participation and innovation will be needed, ADB officials said.

“At the end of the day, developing Asia needs trillions of dollars, so we need to go from billions to trillions,” Um said. “All of us — the World Bank, ADB — need to do everything we can to squeeze as much money as possible from our balance sheets.”

Shutdown looms as US Senate, House advance separate spending plans

Updated 29 September 2023

Reuters

September 29, 2023 06:11

Shutdown looms as US Senate, House advance separate spending plans

House Republicans are demanding a $120 billion cuts in an earlier agreed $1.59 trillion in discretionary spending in fiscal 2024
They also want tougher legislation that would stop the flow of immigrants at the US southern border with Mexico

Updated 29 September 2023

Reuters

September 29, 2023 06:11

WASHINGTON: The Democratic-led US Senate forged ahead on Thursday with a bipartisan stopgap funding bill aimed at averting a fourth partial government shutdown in a decade, while the House began voting on partisan Republican spending bills with no chance of becoming law.

The divergent paths of the two chambers appeared to increase the odds that federal agencies will run out of money on Sunday, furloughing hundreds of thousands of federal workers and halting a wide range of services from economic data releases to nutrition benefits.
The House of Representatives voted 216-212 on a bill funding the State Department and other aspects of foreign affairs, the first in a series of four partisan appropriations bills that would not alone prevent a shutdown, even if they could overcome strong opposition from Senate Democrats and become law.
The Senate earlier in the day had voted 76-22 to open debate on a stopgap bill known as a continuing resolution, or CR, which would extend federal spending until Nov. 17, and authorize roughly $6 billion each for domestic disaster response funding and aid to Ukraine to defend itself against Russia.
The Senate measure has already been rejected by Republicans, who control the House.
House Republicans, led by a small faction of hard-line conservatives in the chamber they control by a 221-212 margin, have rejected spending levels for fiscal year 2024 set in a deal Speaker Kevin McCarthy negotiated with Biden in May.
The agreement included $1.59 trillion in discretionary spending in fiscal 2024. House Republicans are demanding another $120 billion in cuts, plus tougher legislation that would stop the flow of immigrants at the US southern border with Mexico.
The funding fight focuses on a relatively small slice of the $6.4 trillion US budget for this fiscal year. Lawmakers are not considering cuts to popular benefit programs such as Social Security and Medicare.
McCarthy is facing intense pressure from his caucus to achieve their goals. Several hard-liners have threatened to oust him from his leadership role if he passes a spending bill that requires any Democratic votes to pass.
Former President Donald Trump has taken to social media to push his congressional allies toward a shutdown.
McCarthy, for his part, suggested on Thursday that a shutdown could be avoided if Senate Democrats agreed to address border issues in their stopgap measure.
“I talked this morning to some Democratic senators over there that are more aligned with what we want to do. They want to do something about the border,” McCarthy told reporters in the US Capitol.
“We’re trying to work to see, could we put some border provisions in that current Senate bill that would actually make things a lot better,” he said.
The House Freedom Caucus, home to the hard-liners forcing McCarthy’s hand, in an open letter to him on Thursday demanded a timeline for passing the seven remaining appropriations bills and a plan to further reduce the top-line discretionary spending figure, among other questions.

The Senate measure has passed two procedural hurdles this week with strong bipartisan support.
“Congress has only one option — one option — to avoid a shutdown: bipartisanship,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said on Thursday. “With bipartisanship, we can responsibly fund the government and avoid the sharp and unnecessary pain for the American people and the economy that a shutdown will bring.”
Credit agencies have warned that brinkmanship and political polarization are harming the US financial outlook. Moody’s, the last major ratings agency to rate the US government “Aaa” with a stable outlook, said on Monday that a shutdown would harm the country’s credit rating.
Fitch, another major ratings agency, already downgraded the US government to “AA+” after Congress flirted with defaulting on the nation’s debt earlier this year.

Topics: US Shutdown

EU’s Mediterranean leaders meet on migration

Updated 29 September 2023

AFP

September 29, 2023 05:43

EU’s Mediterranean leaders meet on migration

UN refugee organization says more than 2,500 migrants had perished attempting to cross the Mediterranean so far this year
New impetus to reach a deal after a sharp rise in migrants landing on the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa earlier this month

Updated 29 September 2023

AFP

September 29, 2023 05:43

VALLETTA, Malta: The leaders of nine Mediterranean and southern European countries, including France’s Emmanuel Macron and Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, meet Friday in Malta for talks set to focus on migration.
The summit comes a day after the UN refugee organization said more than 2,500 migrants had perished or disappeared attempting to cross the Mediterranean so far this year — substantially more than at the same point in 2022.
But it also comes as EU interior ministers finally made headway Thursday on new rules for how the bloc handles asylum seekers and irregular migrants, with a deal expected in the coming days.
Long in the works, there was new impetus to reach a deal after a sharp rise in migrants landing on the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa earlier this month.
Meloni’s hard-right coalition government, elected on an anti-migrant ticket, has clashed with both France and Germany as she presses other EU countries to share the burden. So far this year, the number of arrivals at Lampedusa has already passed 133,000.
But Meloni and Macron have sought to ease tensions in recent days, and met Tuesday in Rome on the sidelines of the state funeral for ex-Italian president Giorgio Napolitano.
“There is a shared vision of the management of the migration question between France and Italy,” a French presidential source said.
Paris is hoping Friday’s so-called “Med9” summit will offer a “clear message” that migration requires a response at the European level, the source said.

The EU is poised to agree a revamped Pact on Migration and Asylum, which will seek to relieve pressure on frontline countries such as Italy and Greece by relocating some arrivals to other EU states.
Those countries opposed to hosting asylum-seekers — Poland and Hungary among them — would be required to pay the ones that do take migrants in.
Disagreements within the 27-nation bloc over the proposed revisions have now largely been overcome, EU home affairs commissioner Ylva Johansson said Wednesday after the interior ministers’ meeting.
A formal agreement is expected “in a few days,” she said.
Both Meloni and Macron also want to prevent boats departing from North Africa by working more closely with Tunisia, despite questions over the country’s human rights standards and treatment of migrants.
The European Commission said last week it was set to release the first instalment of funds to Tunisia — one of the main launching points for boats — under a plan to bolster its coast guard and tackle traffickers.
Italy’s Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi met with his Tunisian and Libyan counterparts in Sicily Thursday for talks on stopping the boats, the ministry said.

Rome and Paris are also keen to intensify EU controls at sea.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who will be at the Malta summit, included the possible expansion of naval missions in the Mediterranean in a 10-point action plan this month in Lampedusa.
There are fears arrivals could spiral further if instability in the Sahel affects North African countries.
The “Med 9,” which brings together Croatia, Cyprus, France, Greece, Italy, Malta, Portugal, Slovenia and Spain, is expected to call for greater investment by the bloc in the so-called Southern Neighbourhood.
Extra funding may be earmarked for countries across the Mediterranean’s southern shore in the review of the EU’s 2021-2027 long-term budget, a European diplomatic source told AFP.
The leaders will also discuss regional challenges posed by natural disasters — following a devastating earthquake in Morocco, flood disaster in Libya, and extreme weather events in Southern Europe.
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Topics: Mediterranean Malta Emmanuel Macron Georgia Meloni Med9 Summit Migrant crisis Ursula von der Leyen

US worried about worsening situation in Amhara, Blinken tells Ethiopia’s PM

Updated 58 min 15 sec ago

AFP

September 29, 2023 03:47

US worried about worsening situation in Amhara, Blinken tells Ethiopia’s PM

Updated 58 min 15 sec ago

AFP AP

September 29, 2023 03:47

WASHINGTON: The United States is worried about the situation in the region of Amhara, where the United Nations has spoken of ongoing human rights violations, Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed on Thursday.

“(He) underscored the need to promote peaceful resolution through political dialogue and protection of human rights,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a readout of their telephone conversation.

Earlier, a UN-backed international commission of human rights experts on Ethiopia warned that “violent confrontations are now at a near-national scale, with alarming reports of violations against civilians in the Amhara region and ongoing atrocities in Tigray.”

Ethiopia announced a state of emergency in the Amhara region last month, and the experts cited reports of “mass arbitrary detention of Amhara civilians,” including at least one drone strike carried by government forces.

Organizers of a prominent peace forum in Ethiopia also said the event has been postponed as clashes between the federal government and fighters from a major ethnic group continue to destabilize the region.

The Tana High-Level Forum on Security in Africa said in a statement last week that the annual gathering of African leaders, set for October, has been pushed back to April 2024 “due to unforeseen circumstances.”

The forum takes place in Ethiopia’s Amhara region, which has experienced months of clashes as the federal government tries to disarm local fighters who had been its allies in a recent two-year conflict in the neighboring Tigray region.

The Tana forum describes itself as a platform for “African-led solutions to the continent’s most pressing security challenges.” In recent years, some of those challenges have occurred in the forum’s backyard as the government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed struggles to contain ethnic groups that defy efforts to centralize power.

There are frequent reports from Amhara, Ethiopia’s second most populous region, of deadly drone strikes, shelling and other violence in regional towns including Lalibela. Fighting has also occurred in the town of Bahir Dar, where the peace forum takes place. Bahir Dar residents told The Associated Press last month they could hear military aircraft overhead and gunfire in the streets.

Calls to the Tana forum went unanswered on Friday. The non-governmental organization’s key partners include Ethiopia’s government, the Ethiopia-based African Union and the United Nations.

Ethiopia’s government often tries to cover up the extent of such violence and crackdowns, barring the UN-backed experts, human rights researchers and journalists from Tigray and other affected areas. The experts described the government’s attempt at a justice process for victims as flawed, rushed and not trusted by many, including those targeted by federal authorities and combatants.

Now Ethiopia’s government wants to end the mandate of the UN-backed inquiry, following the quiet end to a separate investigation backed by the African Union. The UN Human Rights Council is set to decide early next month whether to extend it.

On Sept. 21, some African countries spoke up at the UN council in support of Ethiopia’s belief that it can deliver justice on its own.

Topics: Ethiopia Tigray

At least ten Niger soldiers killed in militant attack

Updated 29 September 2023

Reuters

September 29, 2023 01:54

At least ten Niger soldiers killed in militant attack

Islamist militants have stepped up their attacks amid the power struggles in some countries in the Sahel region, with Niger as the latest to be hit by a coup

Updated 29 September 2023

Reuters

September 29, 2023 01:54

NIAMEY: At least ten Niger soldiers were killed in an attack by militants in the country’s southwest on Thursday morning, three security sources told Reuters.

The attack took place about 190 km (118 miles) from the capital Niamey in Kandadji, near the tri-border zone of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger that has been the epicenter of Islamist insurgencies in the Sahel region in the last few years.
The sources including a senior military officer, who requested anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the media, did not say which group was responsible. Local affiliates of Al-Qaeda and Islamic State are active in the region and wage frequent attacks on soldiers and civilians.
Two security sources said the army responded to the attack with ground troops as well as helicopters, one of which was hit but was able to return to its base.
Niger is run by a military junta that seized power in a coup in July, partly out of discontent at the worsening security situation. Neighbouring Mali and Burkina Faso have each had two coups in the last three years.
However, security analysts say attacks had been falling in Niger under ousted President Mohamed Bazoum, who had tried to engage with Islamists and the rural communities where they are rooted.
At least 17 soldiers were killed in another attack in southwestern Niger in mid-August.
France said on Sunday it would withdraw its 1,500 troops from Niger before the end of the year, after weeks of pressure from the junta and popular demonstrations against the former colonial ruler, which had forces there to fight the insurgents.
On Thursday, several hundred pro-junta supporters gathered again in front of the French military base in the capital Niamey to demand that the troops leave.

Topics: Niger Coup Niger junta Mohamed Bazoum

Blinken says US ‘appalled’ by execution of British-Iranian national

Blinken says US ‘appalled’ by execution of British-Iranian national

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ADB unveils capital moves to boost lending by $100 bln over a decade for Asia-Pacific

ADB unveils capital moves to boost lending by $100 bln over a decade for Asia-Pacific

Shutdown looms as US Senate, House advance separate spending plans

Shutdown looms as US Senate, House advance separate spending plans

Biden, US officials warn of hunger for millions in a government shutdown

White House preparing for government shutdown as House Republicans lack a viable endgame for funding

EU’s Mediterranean leaders meet on migration

EU’s Mediterranean leaders meet on migration

Pope urges Europe against treating migrants as invaders

Tunisia intercepts 2,500 migrants, arrests dozens of smugglers in 4 days

US worried about worsening situation in Amhara, Blinken tells Ethiopia’s PM

US worried about worsening situation in Amhara, Blinken tells Ethiopia’s PM

Fresh fighting erupts in Ethiopia’s Amhara region

Ethiopia conflict at a ‘national scale’: UN experts

At least ten Niger soldiers killed in militant attack

At least ten Niger soldiers killed in militant attack

France’s troop pullout announcement warmly welcomed by Niger ruling junta

Gunmen kidnap dozens in Nigerian university: Sources

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Blinken says US ‘appalled’ by execution of British-Iranian national

Blinken says US ‘appalled’ by execution of British-Iranian national

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