‘Women Farmers Are Invisible': A West African Project Helps Them Claim Their Rights — And Land

Mariama Sonko and other members of the "Nous Sommes La Solution" (We Are the Solution) movement take a census of the different varieties of rice grown in the Cassamance village of Niaguis, Senegal, Wednesday, March 7, 2024. This quiet village in Senegal is the headquarters of a 115,000-strong rural women's rights movement in West Africa, We Are The Solution...(AP Photo/Sylvain Cherkaoui)

BY JACK THOMPSON

ZIGUINCHOR, SENEGAL (AP) — Mariama Sonko’s voice resounded through the circle of 40 women farmers sitting in the shade of a cashew tree. They scribbled notes, brows furrowed in concentration as her lecture was punctuated by the thud of falling fruit.

This quiet village in Senegal is the headquarters of a 115,000-strong rural women’s rights movement in West Africa, We Are the Solution. Sonko, its president, is training female farmers from cultures where women are often excluded from ownership of the land they work so closely.

Across Senegal, women farmers make up 70% of the agricultural workforce and produce 80% of the crops but have little access to land, education and finance compared to men, the United Nations says.

“We work from dawn until dusk, but with all that we do, what do we get out of it?” Sonko asked.

She believes that when rural women are given land, responsibilities and resources, it has a ripple effect through communities. Her movement is training women farmers who traditionally have no access to education, explaining their rights and financing women-led agricultural projects.

Across West Africa, women usually don’t own land because it is expected that when they marry, they leave the community. But when they move to their husbands’ homes, they are not given land because they are not related by blood.

Sonko grew up watching her mother struggle after her father died, with young children to support.





“If she had land, she could have supported us,” she recalled, her normally booming voice now tender. Instead, Sonko had to marry young, abandon her studies and leave her ancestral home.

After moving to her husband’s town at age 19, Sonko and several other women convinced a landowner to rent to them a small plot of land in return for part of their harvest. They planted fruit trees and started a market garden. Five years later, when the trees were full of papayas and grapefruit, the owner kicked them off.

The experience marked Sonko.

“This made me fight so that women can have the space to thrive and manage their rights,” she said. When she later got a job with a women’s charity funded by Catholic Relief Services, coordinating micro-loans for rural women, that work began.

“Women farmers are invisible,” said Laure Tall, research director at Agricultural and Rural Prospect Initiative, a Senegalese rural think tank. That’s even though women work on farms two to four hours longer than men on an average day.

But when women earn money, they reinvest it in their community, health and children’s education, Tall said. Men spend some on household expenses but can choose to spend the rest how they please. Sonko listed common examples like finding a new wife, drinking and buying fertilizer and pesticides for crops that make money instead of providing food.

With encouragement from her husband, who died in 1997, Sonko chose to invest in other women. Her training center now employs over 20 people, with support from small philanthropic organizations such as Agroecology Fund and CLIMA Fund.

In a recent week, Sonko and her team trained over 100 women from three countries, Senegal, Guinea-Bissau and Gambia, in agroforestry – growing trees and crops together as a measure of protection from extreme weather – and micro gardening, growing food in tiny spaces when there is little access to land.

One trainee, Binta Diatta, said We Are the Solution bought irrigation equipment, seeds, and fencing — an investment of $4,000 — and helped the women of her town access land for a market garden, one of more than 50 financed by the organization.

When Diatta started to earn money, she said, she spent it on food, clothes and her children’s schooling. Her efforts were noticed.

“Next season, all the men accompanied us to the market garden because they saw it as valuable,” she said, recalling how they came simply to witness it.

Now another challenge has emerged affecting women and men alike: climate change.

In Senegal and the surrounding region, temperatures are rising 50% more than the global average, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the UN Environment Program says rainfall could drop by 38% in the coming decades.

Where Sonko lives, the rainy season has become shorter and less predictable. Saltwater is invading her rice paddies bordering the tidal estuary and mangroves, caused by rising sea levels. In some cases, yield losses are so acute that farmers abandon their rice fields.

But adapting to a heating planet has proven to be a strength for women since they adopt climate innovations much faster than men, said Ena Derenoncourt, an investment specialist for women-led farming projects at agricultural research agency AICCRA.

“They have no choice because they are the most vulnerable and affected by climate change,” Derenoncourt said. “They are the most motivated to find solutions.”

On a recent day, Sonko gathered 30 prominent women rice growers to document hundreds of local rice varieties. She bellowed out the names of rice – some hundreds of years old, named after prominent women farmers, passed from generation to generation – and the women echoed with what they call it in their villages.

This preservation of indigenous rice varieties is not only key to adapting to climate change but also about emphasizing the status of women as the traditional guardians of seeds.

“Seeds are wholly feminine and give value to women in their communities,” Sonko said. “That’s why we’re working on them, to give them more confidence and responsibility in agriculture.”

The knowledge of hundreds of seeds and how they respond to different growing conditions has been vital in giving women a more influential role in communities.

Sonko claimed to have a seed for every condition including too rainy, too dry and even those more resistant to salt for the mangroves.

Last year, she produced 2 tons of rice on her half-hectare plot with none of the synthetic pesticides or fertilizer that are heavily subsidized in Senegal. The yield was more than double that of plots with full use of chemical products in a 2017 U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization project in the same region.

“Our seeds are resilient,” Sonko said, sifting through rice-filled clay pots designed to preserve seeds for decades. “Conventional seeds do not resist climate change and are very demanding. They need fertilizer and pesticides.”

The cultural intimacy between female farmers, their seeds and the land means they are more likely to shun chemicals harming the soil, said Charles Katy, an expert on indigenous wisdom in Senegal who is helping to document Sonko’s rice varieties.

He noted the organic fertilizer that Sonko made from manure, and the biopesticides made from ginger, garlic and chilli.

One of Sonko’s trainees, Sounkarou Kébé, recounted her experiments against parasites in her tomato plot. Instead of using manufactured insecticides, she tried using a tree bark traditionally used in Senegal’s Casamance region to treat intestinal problems in humans caused by parasites.

A week later, all the disease was gone, Kébé said.

As dusk approached at the training center, insects hummed in the background and Sonko prepared for another training session. “There’s too much demand,” she said. She is now trying to set up seven other farming centers across southern Senegal.

Glancing back at the circle of women studying in the fading light, she said: “My great fight in the movement is to make humanity understand the importance of women.”
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The Associated Press receives financial support for global health and development coverage in Africa from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

Saving The News Media Means Moving Beyond The Benevolence Of Billionaires

BY RODNEY BENSON AND VICTOR PICKARD

For the journalism industry, 2024 is off to a brutal start.

Most spectacularly, the Los Angeles Times recently slashed more than 20% of its newsroom.

Though trouble had long been brewing, the layoffs were particularly disheartening because many employees and readers hoped the Times’ billionaire owner, Patrick Soon-Shiong, would stay the course in good times and bad – that he would be a steward less interested in turning a profit and more concerned with ensuring the storied publication could serve the public.

According to the LA Times, Soon-Shiong explained that the cuts were necessary because the paper “could no longer lose $30 million to $40 million a year.”

As one X user pointed out, Soon-Shiong could weather US$40 million in annual losses for decades and still remain a billionaire. You could say the same of another billionaire owner, The Washington Post’s Jeff Bezos, who eliminated hundreds of jobs in 2023 after making a long stretch of steady investments.

Of course, it helps if your owner has deep pockets and is satisfied with breaking even or earning modest profits – a far cry from the slash-and-burn, profit-harvesting of the two largest newspaper owners: the hedge fund Alden Global Capital and the publicly traded Gannett.

Yet, as we’ve previously argued, relying on the benevolence of billionaire owners isn’t a viable long-term solution to journalism’s crises. In what we call the “oligarchy media model,” it often creates distinct hazards for democracy. The recent layoffs simply reinforce these concerns.

Systemic market failure

This carnage is part of a longer story: Ongoing research on news deserts shows that the U.S. has lost almost one-third of its newspapers and nearly two-thirds of its newspaper journalists since 2005.

It’s become clear that this downturn isn’t temporary. Rather, it’s a systemic market failure with no signs of reversal.

As print advertising continues to decline, Meta’s and Google’s dominance over digital advertising has deprived news publishers of a major online revenue source. The advertising-based news business model has collapsed and, to the extent it ever did, won’t adequately support the public service journalism that democracy requires.

What about digital subscriptions as a revenue source?

For years, paywalls have been hailed as an alternative to advertising. While some news organizations have recently stopped requiring subscriptions or have created a tiered pricing system, how has this approach fared overall?

Well, it’s been a fantastic financial success for The New York Times and, actually, almost no one else – while denying millions of citizens access to essential news.

The paywall model has also worked reasonably well for The Wall Street Journal, with its assured audience of business professionals, though its management still felt compelled to make deep cuts in its Washington, D.C., bureau on Feb. 1, 2024. And at The Washington Post, even 2.5 million digital subscriptions haven’t been enough for the publication to break even.

To be fair, the billionaire owners of The Boston Globe and the Minneapolis Star Tribune have sown fertile ground; the papers seem to be turning modest profits, and there isn’t any news of looming layoffs.

But they’re outliers; in the end, billionaire owners can’t change these inhospitable market dynamics. Plus, because they made their money in other industries, the owners often create conflicts of interest that their news outlets’ journalists must continually navigate with care.

The way forward

While the market dynamics for news media are only getting worse, the civic need for quality, accessible public service journalism is greater than ever.

When quality journalism disappears, it intensifies a host of problems – from rising corruption to decreasing civic engagement to greater polarization – that threaten the vitality of U.S. democracy.

That’s why we believe it’s urgently important to grow the number of outlets capable of independently resisting destructive market forces.

Billionaire owners willing to release their media properties could help facilitate this process. Some of them already have.

In 2016, the billionaire Gerry Lenfest donated his sole ownership of The Philadelphia Inquirer along with a $20 million endowment to an eponymously named nonprofit institute, with bylaws preventing profit pressures from taking precedence over its civic mission. Its nonprofit ownership model has enabled the Inquirer to invest in news at a time when so many others have cut to the bone.

In 2019, wealthy businessman Paul Huntsman ceded his ownership of The Salt Lake Tribune to a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, easing its tax burden and setting it up to receive philanthropic funding. After continuing as board chairman, in early February he announced that he was permanently stepping down.

And in September 2023, the French newspaper Le Monde’s billionaire shareholders, led by tech entrepreneur Xavier Niel, officially confirmed a plan to move their capital into an endowment fund that’s effectively controlled by journalists and other employees of the Le Monde Group.

On a smaller and far more precarious scale, U.S. journalists have founded hundreds of small nonprofits across the country over the past decade to provide crucial public affairs coverage. However, most struggle mightily to generate enough revenues to even pay themselves and a few reporters a living wage.

Donors can still play a role

The crucial next step is to ensure these civic, mission-driven forms of ownership have the necessary funding to survive and thrive.

One part of this approach can be philanthropic funding.

A 2023 Media Impact Funders report pointed out that foundation funders once primarily focused on providing a bridge to an ever-elusive new business model. The thinking went that they could provide seed money until the operation was up and running and then redirect their investments elsewhere.

However, journalists are increasingly calling for long-term sustaining support as the extent of market failure has become clear. In a promising development, the Press Forward initiative recently pledged $500 million over five years for local journalism, including for-profit as well as nonprofit and public newsrooms.

Charitable giving can also make news more accessible. If donations pay the bills – as they do at The Guardian – paywalls, which limit content to subscribers who are disproportionately wealthy and white, may become unnecessary.

The limits of private capital

Still, philanthropic support for journalism falls far short of what’s needed.

Total revenues for newspapers have fallen from a historic high of $49.4 billion in 2005 to $9.8 billion in 2022.

Philanthropy could help fill a portion of this deficit but, even with the recent increase in donations, nowhere near all of it. Nor, in our view, should it. Too often, donations come with conditions and potential conflicts of interest.

The same 2023 Media Impact Funders survey found that 57% of U.S. foundation funders of news organizations offered grants for reporting on issues for which they had policy stances.

In the end, philanthropy can’t completely escape oligarchic influence.

Public funds for local journalism

A strong, accessible media system that serves the public interest will ultimately require significant public funding.

Along with libraries, schools and research universities, journalism is an essential part of a democracy’s critical information infrastructure. Democracies in western and northern Europe earmark taxes or dedicated fees not only for legacy TV and radio but also for newspapers and digital media – and they make sure there’s always an arm’s-length relationship between the government and the news outlets so that their journalistic independence is assured. It’s worth noting that U.S. investment in public media is a smaller percentage of GDP than in virtually any other major democracy in the world.

State-level experiments in places such as New Jersey, Washington, D.C., California and Wisconsin suggest that public funding for newspapers and online-only outlets can also work in the U.S. Under these plans, news outlets prioritizing local journalism receive various kinds of public subsidies and grants.

The time has come to dramatically scale up these projects, from millions of dollars to billions, whether through “media vouchers” that allow voters to allocate funds or other ambitious proposals for creating tens of thousands of new journalism jobs across the country.

Is it worth it?

In our view, a crisis that imperils American democracy demands no less than a bold and comprehensive civic response.

READ ORIGINAL STORY HERE

AP FACT CHECK: False Report Targets Colorado Justice Who Voted To Disqualify Trump From 2024 Primary Ballot

Colorado Supreme Court Justice Monica M. Marquez, front, makes a point as Chief Justice Brian D. Boatright listens during a hearing on Wednesday, Dec. 6, 2023 in Denver. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski, File)

BY MELISSA GOLDIN
Published 11:17 AM PST, December 22, 2023

CLAIM: The U.S. Marines arrested Colorado Supreme Court Justice Monica Márquez for voting to remove former President Donald Trump from the state’s presidential primary ballot.

AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. The claim originated on a website that says it publishes “humor, parody, and satire” and has previously posted similar false stories. A spokesperson for the Colorado Judicial Department confirmed that the allegation has “no legitimacy.”

THE FACTS: Following the court’s decision on Tuesday that Trump is ineligible for the White House under the U.S. Constitution’s insurrection clause, some on social media are sharing an article falsely claiming that the Marine Corps arrested one of the justices who was among the majority.

“You mean you have to be UNbiased to be a scj?!” reads one Instagram post that included a screenshot of the story and had received more than 2,000 likes as of Friday. “Who would have thought!”

But there is no truth to this claim.

The article is from Real Raw News, a site that frequently publishes fabricated stories and includes a disclaimer stating that it “contains humor, parody, and satire.” Many of its posts involve made-up stories about the Marine Corps, citing only anonymous military sources. The site did not return a request for comment.

No credible evidence was provided in the article to support its claims. It cited only an anonymous source “in General Eric M. Smith’s office,” the same reference used in numerous prior erroneous posts.

Additionally, the article includes a fanciful narrative in which Marines are sent to arrest the four justices who voted in favor of the decision, finding only Márquez, who allegedly “shrieked at the top of her lungs” when the Marines stormed her home and asked whether Trump had sent them.

Colorado Judicial Department spokesperson Rob McCallum told The Associated Press that “there is no legitimacy” to the claims made in the post.

“Justice Márquez has not been arrested by the Marines, and is not in custody,” he wrote in an email.

The Marine Corps did not respond to a request for comment.

Colorado’s highest court voted 4-3 this week that Trump is ineligible for the presidency under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment and removed him from the state’s presidential primary ballot. It is the first time in history that the clause has been used to disqualify a presidential candidate.

The court stayed its decision until Jan. 4, or until the U.S. Supreme Court rules on the case.
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This is part of AP’s effort to address widely shared misinformation, including work with outside companies and organizations to add factual context to misleading content that is circulating online. Learn more about fact-checking at AP.

Surviving Nigeria’s Pan-Fulani President With Sunday Igboho

Sunday Igboho. Image: SAIF via BBC

BY FELIX OBOAGWINA

After a house detention spanning two years, Nigeria’s Sunday Igboho earlier this month finally secured his freedom from Benin Republic. He did not return to Nigeria. He jetted out to Germany.

Igboho, 56, a Yoruba nation separatist and whose real name is Chief Sunday Adeyemo, ran afoul of that Francophone nation’s laws for attempting to secure its passport through the backdoor. They arrested him. Worldwide pleas by Yoruba people were made for his release, with even the Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, paying Igboho a visit in custody May 2022. Perhaps reluctant to court the ire of President Muhammadu Buhari, Cotonou had dilly-dallied over Igboho’s case until the Fulani-born retired-Army General’s tenure expired on May 29.

Igboho became a fugitive from Nigeria after the Department of State Services (DSS) raided his Ibadan, Oyo State home. This followed his effrontery in issuing a deadline to almighty Fulani herdsmen who for years had unleashed an orgy of kidnapping, murder and rape on rural communities in Sunday’s native Yoruba South-West. The Fulani pseudo-monarch, Seriki Fulani, served as intermediating agent for ransom payment to the kidnappers, who slew several captives and frightened farmers away from farmlands. SOS cries to security agents went unheeded. Finally, Igboho led natives on a raid of the camp of this Fulani army of occupation in Igbo-Ora, Igangan, Ibarapa and environs in Oyo State.

Reprisal came from an unexpected quarter. Clearly acting under the instructions of The Presidency and the agency’s Fulani-born CEO Yusuf Magaji Bichi, DSS operatives stormed Sunday Igboho’s home in a midnight invasion on July 1, 2021, unleashing sorrows, tears and blood in a rain of bullets. DSS slaughtered two unarmed occupants and arrested 12. The Yoruba activist himself escaped. Government froze all his bank accounts. While attempting to reach Europe through the West African country, Igboho fell into the hands of the gendarmes when he tried to arrange travel documents informally. Abuja mounted pressure for his repatriation back home. However, Buhari and his Fulani collaborators underestimated the centuries-old socio-cultural ties between Benin Republic Yoruba and Nigerian Yoruba. Those ties saved Adeyemo.

What offence did Igboho commit, except confront foreign Fulani killing Nigerians? The story began with the house-rat inviting the bush-rat to come and partake in the abundant food available at home. Perhaps because of climate change and shrinking grazing grounds in the Savannah, Fulani cowboys zeroed in on Middle-Belt and Southern Nigeria’s lush greenery. Buhari, a pan-Fulani bigot being in power, Fulani irredentism won. He threw the borders open. Unchecked, the itinerant herders arrived here in droves from all over Africa and filtered through the land. They came with their AK47s, anti-aircraft propelled rocket launchers and unleashed a new brand of terrorism. Migrant Fulani militias unleashed terror everywhere the soles of their feet marched. They still do. Videos have been seen of helicopters landing in thick forests to supply these militias with arms and provisions. This was state-backed terrorism.

Like the helplessness they displayed in Igboho’s neck of the wood in Ibarapa, security agencies made zero or half-hearted efforts to halt the Fulani militants’ evil activities nationwide. The world termed them the second deadliest terror group in the world, but pro-Fulani Buhari’s regime held back. His government sold the official false narrative that herdsmen killing unarmed rural dwellers arose from axiomatic farmers-herdsmen clashes. Such rhetoric served as white-washing PR, if not justification, for the killings, even as their body counts mounted nationwide. Buhari’s government consistently sided with the foreign aggressors.

It will not be forgotten, the ignoble role of Buhari’s spin-doctors and attack dogs: Femi Adesina, Garba Shehu and Lai Mohammed. Such names will go down in infamy as defenders of killer Fulani. Adesina once said those who failed to give up land to the Fulani should prepare to forfeit their lives –undoubtedly his pan-Fulani paymaster, Buhari’s veritable voice.

Buhari came from a Fulani father and a half Kanuri half Hausa mother. He hails from the Fulani stock in Daura, Katsina State. Also called Fulbe, the Fulani tribe originated from nomads in North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa, settling into Central and West Africa. Upon landing on Nigerian soil, and in order to secure population and numerical advantage, the Fulani heads formed a socio-political alliance with their Hausa hosts; and today, they are jointly tagged Hausa-Fulani. But when push comes to shove and competition for posts and resources becomes inevitable, Hausa and Fulani individuals resort to their separate ancient tents. Despite being less than 9 percent of Nigeria’s population, the Fulani wield much socio-political and socio-cultural superiority.

In relationship to other Nigerians, Buhari and fellow Fulani irredentists rate their foreign cousins higher. Nigerian Fulani’s affinity with cousins from Mali, Niger, Chad, Cameroun, Guinea-Bissau and Libya gives these invaders licence to infiltrate the Nigerian space.

Going by narratives from APC chieftains privy to the affair, foreign Fulani militants had been recruited to push Buhari into power in 2015. President Goodluck Jonathan saw the handwriting on the wall and quickly threw in the towel to prevent a bloodbath. The APC kingpins claimed that politicians reneged on agreements with the imported militants, which infuriated them and made them go wild. However, something else fuelled the foreigners’ daredevilry –a pan-Fulani agenda.

In his eight years, President Buhari powered that pan-Fulani agenda. The agenda drove his lopsided pro-Fulani appointments, especially in security and the entire Armed Forces. The agenda theoretically centred on rallying Fulani in Africa to migrate to Nigeria and create a monolithic nation that would subjugate other nationalities as minorities. Buhari gave the foreign Fulani traction in Nigeria. For all he cared, Nigeria’s other 370 tribes could go to hell, once the Fulani worldwide secured Nigeria as their homeland. Resultantly, Fulani foreigners flocked into Nigeria like locusts. Egged on by the likes of the then Kaduna State Governor, they unleashed a scorched earth policy on minorities in Southern Kaduna, Zamfara State, Benue State, Plateau State, Nasarawa State, Niger State and other places, and drove millions into IDP camps. Benue recently said it lost over 20,000 lives to these marauders.

The regime supported the pan-Fulani campaign with policies. It floated the rejuvenation of North-South grazing routes that his spin-doctors said farmers had encroached upon and triggered clashes. But grazing routes were a colonial era convenience that no one wanted revived; hence, the move failed to fly.

Undeterred, the government went ahead to float a malevolent Waterways Bill, which many saw as a ploy to give Fulani herdsmen unrestricted access to rivers and streams in the country. Other Nigerians collectively ensured their legislators killed what could have amounted to signing the death warrant of other sub-groups.

Buhari went on to concoct plans for “Ruga” settlements. Thousands of hectares would be reserved in each of the 36 states solely for cattle grazers. Condemned as a scheme to “fulanise” the entire country, Ruga, to its antagonists, would ultimately turn into a veritable hideout for Fulani criminals and irredentists. That idea too died suffered nationwide rejection.

Other Nigerians suspected Ruga was window-dressing Uthman-Dan-Fodio’s legendary mission to spread the Sokoto Empire throughout the Nigerian territory and “dip the Quran in the Atlantic.” Alhaji Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, Nigeria’s first Prime Minister, during the legislative council debates on March 24, 1947 openly asserted that, “If the British departed Nigeria, the Northern people would continue their interrupted conquest to the sea.” Nigeria’s history of political instability since Independence has its roots in this Fulani quest for permanent hegemony and the determination of the rest of the country to resist the Caliphate’s domination vision.

However, Buhari himself had always shown signs of a Fulani irredentist. At the onset of the Fourth Republic, he once received a stiff rebuff from now Late Oyo State’s Governor Lam Adesina over an incident. Then usually reticent Buhari had travelled all the way from Daura to lodge a protest in Ibadan because Yoruba natives killed the cows of Fulani cattle herders. Actually, the herdsmen first unleashed an orgy of raping of women, grazing on farmlands and killing of indigenes. During Buhari’s inglorious visit, the Oyo State Police Commissioner and DSS Director vilified him for the bias displayed by someone expected to play the mediatory role of an elder statesman.

Today, Fulani incursion continues to pose an existential threat to others in the Nigerian space. And the apparent apathy and compromise of the security agencies forced the likes of Retired-General Theophilus Danjuma to voice their frustration. Danjuma, a former Fulani ally, urged other tribes to expect no protection from the “colluding” Military; and he urged them to arm themselves against the invaders.

In fact, other sections have adopted protective policies. South-West governors created “Amotekun.” As constituted authorities of the South-East dilly-dallied, the separatist group IPOB created the Eastern Security Network (ESN). Ultimately, Igbo governors rallied themselves, jointly forming “Ebubeagwu” to secure their zone. Tired of waiting for Governor Godwin Obaseki to take a similar initiative, the long-suffering Esan people in Edo State unilaterally created the Atanakpa vigilante group. Benue State formed the Community Volunteer Guards.

Additionally, states in the South and Middle-Belt have followed up with anti-grazing laws, in an uncommon determination to enforce their sovereignty in the context of a Nigerian Federation. Ironically, some dominantly Fulani states, fearing the terrorism of their immigrant cousins, have enacted similar anti-grazing laws.

Clearly, Buhari’s pan-Fulani predilection kept Nigeria divided like never before. This man divided Nigeria by choice. Like Buhari, Second Republic’s President Shehu Shagari rose from the Fulani stock; but Shagari never displayed the trappings of bigotry and led Nigeria in the path of cohesion and peace.

To continue down the path of Buhari’s pan-Fulani hallucination will only devalue the Fulani themselves and make them inevitable victims. No group owns the monopoly of violence. Victims, fighting for survival, will likely resort to self-help and in time build corporate, collaborative resistance. Who does not dread the day that Nigeria’s remaining 370 tribes will be pushed to conclude that the only good Fulani is a dead Fulani? God forbid!

Buhari and his cohorts probably forgot the transient power of power. His nightmarish eight years have ended with him, even if the bitter taste lingers in the raping, kidnapping and killings that foreign Fulani continue within Nigerian forests and highways. Like Sunday Igboho, millions of Nigerians thank God for surviving their inordinately pan-Fulani President. Goodbye to divisive bigotry and ethnic chauvinism. Goodbye to rubbish.

RWANDA: Five Key Highlights From Ombudsman’s Annual Report

BY PATRICK NZABONIMPA

On October 18, the Ombudsman presented the activity report of her office for the financial year 2022-2023 to a joint Upper and Lower House sitting.

Overall, the report covers various events related to dealing with injustice and fighting corruption, in line with the office’s mandate.

The following are five key highlights from the report:

Over 2,800 cases of corruption and injustice received

While presenting the report to legislators, Ombudsman Madeleine Nirere said that her office received 2,835 cases of corruption and injustice in the financial year 2022/2023, either through written petitions or through anti-corruption and injustice outreach programme.

Of these cases, 2,306 were solved, while 488 were still being handled by various concerned institutions, and 41 by the Ombudsman.

2. Land related disputes account for majority of cases

According to the Ombudsman, five categories led in terms of complaints related to corruption and injustice that were lodged by residents.

They include land related complaints which accounted for 1,018 cases, or almost 40 per cent of the total. They were followed by disatisfaction with court case jugdments, where residents filed 442 complaints.

Non-executed court decisions came in third place with 396 complaints, grievances related to expropriation followed with 345 cases, while those concerning other properties (excluding land) amounted to 228, coming in the fith position.

3. Review of court cases over injustice grounds

Ombudsmana said that people who were not satisfied with court judgments filed 484 cases seeking their review for justice purposes – through retrial by the Supreme Court.

Lawsuits represented more than half of the cases as they were 294, followed by criminal cases and commercial cases with 77, and 57 complaints, respectively.

Nirere indicated that her office requested retrial of only 11 cases – represernting 2.3 per cent of the total – while 460 or 95 per cent were not considered for retrial because no injustice was detected in their judgements.

Meanwhile, she pointed out that 13 cases – accounting for 2.7 per cent of the total – were solved through mediation – without necessitating another legal action.

“Mediation has proven to yield good results as it helps to address disputes amicably, without causing damages including costs that would be incurred once people resort to courts for trial,” she told Senators and MPs during the abovementioned plenary sitting.

4. Over 99 per cent of public officials declared their assets

In line with transparency in sources of finance, 17,687 people declared their assets to the Ombudsman, representing 99.95 per cent of 17,695 people who were concerned by such on obligation.

“Only 8 people, or 0.05 per cent, did not declare their assets be handed a penalty of suspension from work for one month without salary as provided for by the law,” Nirere said.

5. Implementation of Ombudsman’s recommendation

In monitoring how public entities and programmes implemented 90 recommendations of the Office of the Ombudsman – made in 2021-2022 – for improved operations, an assessment by the office indicated that they were implemented at 63.3 per cent rate.

According to Nirere, 28.8 per cent of the recommendations were still under implementation, while 8.9 per cent were not yet implemented.

She pointed out that every concerned public entity explained reasons for non-implementation of the recommendations in question, and that the office will continue making a follow up to ensure they are executed.

-------------------THE NEW TIMES

Pope Visits Multicultural Marseille As Some In Europe Talk Of Fences And Blockades To Curb Migration

Pope Francis poses for a photo with a group of refugees he invited to join him on the steps of St. Peter's Basilica and holding a banner reading: "The refugees for future together" during the general audience in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican, Wednesday, June 22, 2016...(AP Photo/Fabio Frustaci, File)

BY NICOLE WINFIELD, TRISHA THOMAS AND MASHA MACPHERSON

VATICAN CITY (AP) — The French port city of Marseille, for centuries a multiethnic and multifaith melting pot, awaited the arrival Friday of Pope Francis, who plans to amplify his call for the Mediterranean region of Europe to be a place of welcome for migrants.

The pope’s position on migration is an increasingly lonely one in Europe, where some countries are emphasizing border fences, repatriations and the possibility of a naval blockade to keep a new influx of would-be refugees out.

Francis is presiding over the closing session of a gathering of Mediterranean Catholic bishops, but his two-day visit to Marseille is aimed at sending a message well beyond the Catholic faithful to Europe, North Africa and beyond.

After a prayer at the southern French city’s basilica, Francis is scheduled to hold an interfaith prayer at a monument dedicated to those who have died at sea — a number estimated to top 28,000 since 2014, according to the International Organization of Migration.

Francis, who has long lamented that the Mediterranean Sea has become “the world’s biggest cemetery,” confirmed his visit months ago, but it comes as Italy is again seeing an increasing number of people who set off in flimsy boats from Tunisia.

After the new arrivals last week on the island of Lampedusa briefly exceeded the resident population of 6,100, Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni resurrected calls for a naval blockade and announced new centers to hold those who don’t qualify for asylum until they can be sent home.

France, for its part, beefed up patrols at its southern border with Italy, a few hours’ drive from Marseille, and increased drone surveillance of the Alps to keep newcomers from crossing over. With a European Parliament election set for next year and France’s far right challenging the centrist government’s policies, French government officials stood firm.

“France will not take in migrants from Lampedusa,” Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said this week on French TV network TF1. “It’s not by taking in more people that we’re going to stem a flow that obviously affects our ability to integrate” them into French society, he said.

Marseille’s archbishop, Cardinal Jean-Marc Aveline, who was born in Algeria and moved to France as a child, said such “aggressive” measures weren’t the answer. But he said “naive” and peacenik speeches about everyone living together happily ever after weren’t helpful either.

“The church must measure these evils well and find a path that is neither naively irenic nor aggressive out of special interests, but prophetic” by being close to migrants and living among them, Aveline told reporters in Rome before the visit.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and the maritime rescue organization SOS Mediterranee, which operates a ship that assists migrants, issued Friday an “urgent call for all actors to dignify the lives of children, women and men survivors of rescues at sea.”

SOS Mediteranee co-founder Sophie Beauer said “the unfathomable death toll in the Mediterranean this year could have been prevented if the political will was there,” according to the humanitarian groups’ joint statement. “As a prominent moral and global figure ... Pope Francis will use his visit to Marseille to recall the moral imperative underlying the laws and conventions that apply at sea: no one in distress should be left to drown.”

Marseille is one of the most multicultural, multireligious and multiethnic cities on the shores of the Mediterranean, long characterized by a strong presence of migrants living together in a tradition of tolerance.

Data from France’s National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies, or INSEE, shows the city of 862,000 residents had more than 124,000 immigrants in 2019, or about 14.5% of the population. The immigrant population included almost 30,000 Algerians and thousands of people from Turkey, as well as from Morocco, Tunisia and other former French colonies in Africa.

“The pope is proposing a path, as others do, whether you’re a believer or not, whether Muslim, Jew, atheist or Catholic,” Marseille Mayor Benoit Payan said. “He’s telling us that we have something in common, and that this Mediterranean must be preserved in its biodiversity, of course, but also in its human relationships.”

About 350,000 Catholic faithful were expected in the city over the weekend, including 100,000 to attend the pope’s parade on Marseille’s major avenue ahead of a Saturday Mass at the Velodrome stadium. The city was put under high security, including through kilometers (miles) of barriers and dozens of surveillance cameras deployed along Francis’ route.

His trip comes on the eve of the Catholic Church’s annual celebration of migrants and refugees. The theme this year notes the internationally recognized right to migrate but also the right to not migrate, and to live at home safely and securely.

“They choose to leave, but because they did not necessarily have the choice to stay,” Aveline said of the intended message. “You seldom leave your country with joy in your heart.”

The Catholic Church has been working with other evangelical churches to provide legal ways for migrants to reach Europe, so-called humanitarian corridors that so far have brought more than 6,000 refugees to Italy.

Marco Impagliazzo, head of the Sant’Egidio Community that is helping organize the corridors, said the number of migrants arriving to Italy by boat this year are high but by no means constitutes an emergency.

Migration, he said, isn’t an emergency but rather “a long-term problem, a structural phenomenon that requires medium and long-term solutions” that could also be of enormous benefit to Italy, given its aging population.

Impagliazzo proposed increasing the number of humanitarian visas granted and restoring funding for local community programs to teach new migrants Italian — a relatively low-cost investment that is crucial to successfully integrating them in society.

Njifon Njiemessa, a student from Cameroon who came to Italy in May through a humanitarian corridor, said he hoped to return one day to Cameroon, but for now he hoped to integrate into Italian society.

“If there is any possibility of pushing my studies, it will be welcome, because my dream, my main dream, is to, is still to be useful for those that are back in Cameroon, because my mission is to help those that are there,” Njiemessa told reporters.

Macpherson reported from Marseille, France. AP journalist Sylvie Corbet contributed to this report from Marseille.

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

Follow AP’s coverage of global migration: https://apnews.com/hub/migration

Beer flows and crowds descend on Munich for the official start of Oktoberfest

People run to enter the 188th 'Oktoberfest' beer festival in Munich, Germany, Saturday, Sept. 16, 2023. (AP Photo/Mathias Schrader)

MUNICH (AP) — The beer is flowing and millions of people descending on the Bavarian capital to celebrate the official opening of Oktoberfest.

With the traditional cry of “O’zapft is” — “It’s tapped” — Mayor Dieter Reiter inserted the tap in the first keg at noon on Saturday, officially opening the 18-day festivities.

Revelers decked out in traditional lederhosen and dirndl dresses trooped to Munich’s festival grounds Saturday morning, filling the dozens of traditional tents in anticipation of getting their first 1-liter (2-pint) mug of beer.

Minutes before the first keg was tapped, to cheers from the crowd, Bavarian Gov. Markus Soeder asked festivalgoers if they were ready for Oktoberfest to begin.

“I can only say one thing: This is the most beautiful, biggest, most important festival in the world,” he said.

The Oktoberfest has typically drawn about 6 million visitors every year. The event was skipped in 2020 and 2021 as authorities grappled with COVID-19, but returned in 2022.

A 1-liter mug costs between 12.60 euros and 14.90 euros ($13.45 to $15.90) this year, an increase of around 6% from last year.

This year’s Oktoberfest, the 188th edition, runs through Oct. 3.

Spicy Food Challenges Have A Long History. Have They Become Too Extreme?

A package of Paqui OneChipChallenge spicy tortilla chips is seen on Thursday, Sept. 3, 2023 in Boston...(AP Photo/Steve LeBlanc)

BY WYATTE GRANTHAM-PHILIPS

NEW YORK (AP) — A tortilla chip maker’s decision to pull its extremely spicy product sold as a “One Chip Challenge” from store shelves following the death of a Massachusetts teen has renewed attention on the popularity — and risks — of similar dares marketed by brands and spread widely online.

Spicy food challenges have been around for years. From local chile pepper eating contests to restaurant walls of fame for those who finished extra hot dishes, people around the world have been daring each other to eat especially fiery foods, with some experts pointing to the internal rush of competition and risk-taking.

But extremely spicy products created and marketed solely for the challenges — and possible internet fame — is a more recent phenomenon, and teens are particularly exposed to them because of social media, associate professor of psychology at Florida International University Elisa Trucco says.

There’s a “glamorization of these challenges on social media,” Trucco said. “You see a lot of ‘likes’ or comments (indicating) social status or popularity from these challenges, but you don’t see a lot of the negative consequences — like the trips to the E.R. or other injuries.”

Alexander DePaoli, an associate teaching professor of marketing at Northeastern University, added that people may put themselves through discomfort and share it online for a sense of “in-group belonging,” similar to offline challenges as a game of truth or dare.



A YouTube series called “Hot Ones,” for example, rose to internet fame several years ago with videos of celebrities’ reactions to eating spicy wings. Meanwhile, restaurants nationwide continue to offer in-person challenges — from Buffalo Wild Wings’ “Blazin’ Challenge” to the “Hell Challenge” of Wing King in Las Vegas. In both challenges, patrons over 18 can attempt to eat a certain amount of wings doused in extra hot sauce in limited time without drinking or eating other food.

Chile pepper eating contests are also regularly hosted around the world. Last year, Gregory Foster ate 10 Carolina Reaper chillies, which Guinness World Records has named the hottest in the world, at a record time of 33.15 seconds in San Diego, California.

In most cases, people will choose to participate in challenges that they are trained for or don’t consider to be truly dangerous. But a line is crossed when someone gets hurt, DePaoli noted.

While the autopsy results for 10th-grader Harris Wolobah are still pending, the teen’s family allege that the One Chip Challenge is responsible for his Sept. 1 death. The product, manufactured by Paqui, instructs participants to eat an eponymously named chip and then see how long they can go without consuming other food and water.

Sales of the chip seem largely driven by people posting videos on social media of them or their friends taking the challenge. They show people, including teens and children, eating the chips and then reacting to the heat. Some videos show people gagging, coughing and begging for water.

Since Wolobah’s death, Paqui has asked retailers to stop selling the product and some health experts have pointed to potential dangers of eating such spicy products under certain circumstances, particularly depending on the amount of capsaicin, a component that gives chile peppers their heat.

But there are plenty of similar products that remain online and on store shelves, including Red Hot Reaper’s One Chip Challenge, Blazing Foods’ Death Nut Challenge and Tube of Terror Challenge as well as Wilder Toys’ Hot Ones Truth or Dab sauce game. The Associated Press reached out to each company after Paqui pulled its own product, but did not receive a response.

DePaoli said it’s not unusual for companies to engage in viral marketing.

“It is unusual, however, to have something where the brand actually wants you to put something into your body,” he said. Companies “don’t want to be liable for that.”

Despite warnings or labels specifying adult-use only, the products can still get into the hands of young people who might not understand the risks, Trucco added.

“There’s a reason why these challenges are appealing,” she said. “This type of marketing sells.”

In Motion: Muntu Dance Theatre Celebrates The African Diaspora Through Dance, Music, And Folklore

VIA CHICAGO READER

Muntu Dance Theatre of Chicago. Courtesy Matt Karas

Muntu Dance Theatre is a Chicago-based West African dance company that’s beloved for its commitment to innovation, community, and culture. Their stage work centers the African and African American experience, but their message is universal.

“We believe that there is merit in all cultures and that we should strive to celebrate our similarities instead of focusing on our differences,” says artistic director Regina Perry-Carr. “We’re an African American organization, but we strive to celebrate humanity.”

Muntu evolved out of a drum and dance group called Unifying Humanity Through Cultural Creativity (UHCC), whose leaders were motivated by a desire to uplift their identities and cultures as African Americans while honoring their connections to West African culture and arts. In 1974, the group officially changed its name to Muntu, a Bantu word that means “the essence of humanity.”

More than 50 years since its founding, it’s clear that Muntu has always been ahead of the curve. Perry-Carr says that under the leadership of president Joan Gray in the 1980s, the organization became the first West African dance company in the United States to pay its dancers salaries and benefits. Then in 1993, they launched the Arts for Community Empowerment (ACE) program to teach local children and teens from kindergarten through grade 12 about various aspects of the African diaspora through dance, art, and music. Through ACE, they set a bold example of how arts organizations could prioritize community engagement through youth education.

“When Muntu’s ACE program started, there really wasn’t any other system like that in the city,” Perry-Carr says. “Our founders were really forward-thinking people, and they knew innately that it was really about more than just performing. It was also about preserving [culture] through education.”

Perry-Carr herself is partially a product of Muntu Dance Theatre’s teachings. Her mother, Regina Taitts, was a dancer with the company in its early days, and the time Perry-Carr spent around the company in her childhood left a lasting impression. In 1994, Perry-Carr entered the company’s workshop training program, and by 1998, she had worked her way up the ranks to become a full-time teaching artist and dancer.

“Being able to see that kind of representation and see examples of professionalism, artistry, and people living their passion through dance [at Muntu] impacted me and developed my passion for the arts,” she says.

Perry-Carr left Muntu in 2003, but she returned in 2020 as the company’s fourth artistic director, working with executive director Sekou Conde, who also oversees the ACE program, which currently provides arts programming to six Chicago schools.

“I feel responsibility in that, a lot of times, we’re someone’s first introduction to understanding African culture,” she says.

Despite its long history and stature within the dance community, Muntu Dance Theatre has continuously battled negative public perceptions and stereotypes about West African dance, which is often not taken as seriously as other dance forms, such as ballet. Perry-Carr says Muntu aims to shift that narrative.

“When we come to spaces, there’s often still a lot of education that we have to do because of the many stereotypes that are placed on us,” she says. “West African dance in general historically has been looked at as uncivilized, and that goes way back to the transatlantic slave trade.”

In 2019, Muntu joined the Chicago Black Dance Legacy Project (CBDLP). The goal of the project is to reduce inequities that Black-led dance companies have had to navigate for decades by providing a select cohort of organizations with funding, operational support, and performance opportunities.

Muntu’s participation in CBDLP has allowed Perry-Carr to find support and connect with leaders at other companies, who often navigate similar obstacles.

“It’s been an awesome coming-together space,” Perry-Carr says. “The Chicago Black Dance Legacy Project has helped bring people together more frequently where we may not have crossed paths as often—so it’s created a space for us to build community and strength in numbers.”

In August, Muntu Dance Theatre will facilitate DanceAfrica Chicago, a three-day festival that brings together African and African American dancers and organizations from across the country for a weekend of dance, conversation, and community. Perry-Carr is optimistic that the festival will provide a much-needed space for participants to connect over their passion for the African diaspora and amplify the beauty of their art. In addition to the festival, Muntu Dance Theatre is developing a cultural exchange program with a dance company in Senegal, which will provide an opportunity for their dancers to hone their skills in West Africa.

With so many projects underway, it’s clear that Muntu Dance Theatre is on its way to becoming an artistic powerhouse on a truly global scale.

“We’re not only a voice for Muntu, but we’re a voice for all West African or African diaspora culture workers,” Perry-Carr says.

The Chicago Black Dance Legacy Project is a program of the Logan Center for the Arts at the University of Chicago. Their current cohort of local dance companies includes Chicago Multi-Cultural Dance Center & Hiplet Ballerinas, Deeply Rooted Dance Theater, the Era Footwork Collective, Forward Momentum Chicago, Joel Hall Dancers & Center, M.A.D.D. Rhythms, Move Me Soul, Muntu Dance Theatre of Chicago, NAJWA Dance Corps, and Praize Productions Inc. For more about CBDLP, visit chicagoblackdancelegacy.org, and chicagoreader.com/special/logan-center-for-the-arts-at-the-university-of-chicago

Hate Crimes In Los Angeles Rose By 15% In 2022, LAPD Report Says

CITY NEWS SERVICE

LOS ANGELES (CNS) -- Hate crimes in Los Angeles rose by 15% in 2022, according to a report shared by the Los Angeles Police Department Tuesday, which attributed the increase to expanded outreach efforts that encourage the city's most vulnerable communities to report such crimes.

The department's analysis revealed 701 hate crimes and hate incidents in 2022, compared with 610 in 2021. Ninety of those were anti-Hispanic hate crimes, a decrease of 12% from 2021; 180 were anti-Black hate crimes, an increase of 36%; and 33 were anti-Asian hate crimes, which represents a 371% increase from the seven anti-Asian hate crimes reported in 2019, prior to the coronavirus pandemic.

According to the report, the Jewish community was the largest community affected by hate crimes in the religion category, with 89 antisemitic hate crimes reported in 2022, an increase of 24% from 2021.

The most common religion-biased crimes involve vandalism, criminal threats and harassment.

Gay men were the largest community affected by hate crimes in the sexual orientation category. Crimes against gay men included aggravated and simple assault, vandalism and criminal threats.


Often suspects in these crimes confront victims regarding their sexual orientation, resulting in a verbal or physical altercation. In 2022, there were 93 anti-gay hate crimes, a decrease of 9% from 2021.

Lastly, in the gender bias category of the report, the transgender community was primarily the victim of these crimes in 2022. Similar to hate crimes committed against gay men, suspects often confront their victims regarding their gender identity, resulting in a verbal or physical altercation.

The most common gender-biased crimes are assaults and criminal threats, with more aggravated assaults than simple assaults.

There were 29 anti-transgender hate crimes in 2022, an increase of 53% from 2021.

In 2022, there was one hate crime against a street vendor compared to two cases reported in 2021.


The LAPD presented its report to the city's Police Commission on Tuesday, prompted by a prior motion from the City Council. In March, the Council instructed the LAPD to provide current data on the impact of hate crimes in the city, including crimes against Latinos and street vendors.

The report included data on hate crimes from 2017-22. In those six years, hate crimes rose by 166% in the city of Los Angeles. The report attributed the spike to an increase of reporting, and said there is no evidence of "hate groups" entering the city and performing coordinated attacks against Angelenos.

Board President William Briggs said the report emphasized hate crime data rests on investigations after the fact. He asked officers what the department is doing to raise awareness.

Detective Orlando Martinez, the department's hate crime coordinator, said officers work with advocacy groups and faith-based organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League, Jewish Federation and others to host community meetings and outreach.

The department also partners with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies to provide insight into hate crime investigations and offer resources such as information on victims rights and bystander intervention techniques.


Hate crimes are currently reported in the same manner as other crimes, which is to have victims file a report or call 911 and wait for officers to assist them, Martinez said.

"There's not a mechanism by which hate crimes and hate incidents can be reported online," Captain Scot Williams, commanding officer of the department's Robbery-Homicide Division, told the commissioners. "They require the responsible officer (to) take those reports and the department is actively trying to develop a system by which at least hate crimes can be reported online."

Commissioner Maria Lou Calanche asked how the department is addressing hate crimes or crimes against street vendors given that some victims may not report them.

"That is exactly what this current initiative is attempting to do, while at the same time not giving a false impression that the department is doing something that it's not," Martinez said. "There's a critical balance."

In addition, the department is working to obtain a dedicated land line to initiate an officer response to hate crimes, as well as a database to consolidate hate crime data, officials said.


The commissioners moved to adopt the report and share its findings with the Council's Public Safety Committee at a future date.

USC Scandals Take Center Stage At LA Mayoral Debate

 

BY SULLIVAN MARLEY, REAGAN SMITH AND JOSH FLOWERS

LOS ANGELES (USC ANNENBERG MEDIA) -- Candidates Karen Bass and Rick Caruso clashed over each others’ involvements with the university, as well as homelessness, crime and other issues.

Los Angeles mayoral candidates Karen Bass and Rick Caruso addressed their ties to USC and their roles in various university scandals in a debate Wednesday at the Skirball Cultural Center.

Following the L.A. County Sheriff debate, Caruso and Bass took the stage to present their positions on pressing issues like homelessness and safety in the community. Moderators Gabriela Teissier, Elex Michaelson and Erika D. Smith directed the debate, with some audience members having the opportunity to share questions and concerns.

Initially, the debate was supposed to take place at USC, but the university announced in August that, “accommodating the timing and logistics required to host the requested two back-to-back debates simply was not possible.”

USC student James D’Ambrosi, who works as a campaign intern for Caruso, believes the debate taking place at USC could’ve created an, “environment [in which] students don’t feel comfortable.”

The moderators questioned Caruso and Bass about conflicting information regarding their involvement with two separate USC scandals. Bass, accused of accepting a $95,000 scholarship without any formal application, claims she received the award under merit, citing her history of youth advocacy as justification for her place in USC’s social work program.

After awarding Bass the scholarship, the then-dean of USC’s School of Social Work, Marilyn Flynn, pled guilty in a federal bribery case. The investigation involved her execution of an illegal money transfer for then-LA County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas in exchange for his assistance in negotiations for a new USC telehealth contract. Bass’ scholarship was cited by prosecutors as being “critical” to demonstrating Flynn’s corrupt intent.

“The federal prosecutors have said there was no application. She got a $95,000 scholarship [and] she failed to report it in Congress,” Caruso said. “She got her degree taking less classes than her fellow students took and then worked with the dean to fashion legislation… to have taxpayer dollars go back to that same school and she is named critical in a federal bribery and corruption case.”

Bass stated that Caruso was “totally misrepresenting” the situation, but failed to explain how. Instead, Bass pivoted the spotlight back to Caruso for his handling of the scandal surrounding sexual assault allegations levied against former USC gynecologist George Tyndall.

“The victims of the gynecologist who sexually assaulted hundreds of students at USC have asked you to release the report,” said Bass. “As the Chair of the Board of Trustees, [Caruso] committed to do an investigation, to do a report and then he decided afterwards that he wasn’t going to release it.”

Caruso then accused Bass of using the subject as a deflection, asking her if she believed that federal prosecutors were lying about the questionable elements of her scholarship. When Bass responded, “No, I’m saying you are,” Caruso claimed he was reciting the words of the prosecutors, to which Bass was not given a chance to respond.

The candidates made their differences clear on other major issues, including homelessness and crime in Los Angeles. Bass accused Caruso of not having a comprehensive plan for homelessness, claiming his shelters-first approach would not keep people off the streets.

“My problem with Rick’s plan is that it just calls for shelters,” said Bass. “You have to have shelters, but you have to move people into permanent, supportive housing and then you have to mainstream them out of that.”

In response to a question from a Loyola Marymount University senior about the affordability of local college graduates staying in L.A., Caruso blamed excessive regulation for the rapidly surging cost of living in the city.

“We have over-regulated [development] in this city to the point that it’s so expensive to build in the city. People aren’t building,” Caruso said. “That’s why affordability is so upside down.”

While Bass agreed that some over-regulation exists, she first pointed a finger at the job market in Los Angeles, saying the city needs more, “decent-paying jobs that will allow you to afford a place.”

The race’s most recent polls show Bass carrying a sizable lead over Caruso. Election day is Nov. 8.

Pains Of Misgovernance Have No Tribal Marks!

BY UGOCHUKWU EJINKEONYE

Many Nigerians are stuck with zero experience of what it means to live in a decently run society. Laden with a long history of mostly inept and less-than patriotic leaders, it seems abnormal to expect any bit of improvement in their daily existence from the government. Massive infrastructural decay and regular reports of primitive accumulations of illicit wealth have since lost their capacities to shock.

In fact, most people have since adjusted their lives to perennially absorb the vicious impacts of these debilitating vices. They constantly extract some bit of comfort from continually reassuring themselves that they are in such a hopeless and helpless situation where these excruciating fallouts of leadership failure will remain the resilient, inseparable companions they are condemned to perpetually coexist with.

Those who lack the resources to obtain some form of alleviations resign themselves to fate, hoping that they would be able to sustain the capacity to continue enduring the searing rewards of successive wayward and rudderless leaderships – which will remain their perpetual sources of torments.

Even the Nigerians who reside in well-ordered societies, where leaders are accountable and basic amenities are meticulously provided and maintained, once they touch down on Nigerian soil automatically adjust their minds to endure the excruciating realities of life in Nigeria. They only derive some consolation from the fact that they would soon jet out again to where sanity and orderly existence are taken for granted.

And so, when it is election season and these disoriented Nigerians are ready to vote, they do not even bother to interrogate the antecedents, hollow promises and other antics of the candidates having concluded they all belong to the same cult of corruption and ineptitude; they would only seek to extract some ephemeral emotional satiation from lending their support to somebody who shares the same ethnic or religious identity with them. At least, they can always derive some comfort (or even animation) from the fact that their “brother” or “sister” had also joined the rampaging band of locusts, and that their votes had helped to achieve that feat for their people!

But, sadly, there is hardly any green vegetation anywhere again for the locusts to swoop on and devour. What we have all over the place are long stretches of excruciating aridity which only rewards with poverty and hardship all that are unlucky to have Nigeria as their home at this time.

Only recently, the London-based Economic Intelligence Unit, EIU, told the world what most people already knew, namely: that Nigeria’s “debt service payments in the first four months of 2022 totalled N1.9trn, which was greater than its total revenue of N1.6trn, according to the 2023-2025 Medium-Term Expenditure Framework and Fiscal Strategy Paper, MTEF/FSP, draft presented by the Finance, Budget and National Planning Minister, Zainab Ahmed, on July 21st.”

In plain language, what we are being told is that the amount being spent to service the huge debts accumulated by the Buhari regime, as a result of reckless borrowings, including the $1.96 billion foreign loan for the construction of an undesirable rail line from Nigeria to Niger Republic, has far exceeded our country’s income, forcing Nigeria into the perilous state of compounding the debt burden by borrowing more money to service debts!

The Excess Crude Account, ECA, Nigeria’s savings for the rainy day, which stood at $2.1 billion when Buhari became president, instead of increasing, has by June 2022 been brutally reduced to $35.7 million. By July, it plunged further down to $376,655. It will be a huge surprise if one cent would remain in it in the next couple of months.

And clearly at sea as to how to crawl out of the sticky pit he has dragged Nigeria into, President Buhari is still playing the profligate big brother out there, dolling out $1 million to Afghanistan a few months ago and recently approving N1.14 billion for the purchase of posh SUVs for Niger Republic to strengthen their security operations while the country he purports to rule is scarily submerged in worsening insecurity. For about six months now, the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, has been on strike due to very poor working conditions, and hapless parents are forced to watch the unsightly and devastating spectacle of their children’s future being toyed with by insensitive politicians whose own children are mostly studying in quality schools and colleges in better managed countries of the world.

Indeed, unless a competent and patriotic manager is allowed to take over the leadership in 2023 and steer her away from the path of disaster, Nigeria, already miserably broke and prostrate, will fail beyond what anyone had thought was possible in a country ruled by human beings.

At the recent national conventions of the All Progressives Congress, APC, and Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, the delegates that voted to choose their presidential candidates were reportedly bought soul and body with crispy wads of US dollars – an unwholesome indulgence that unleashed further hurt on the economy. This is apart from the hundreds of millions of naira earlier squandered to purchase nomination forms and sort out other logistics.

Now, after investing all these millions of dollars and billions of naira to secure their tickets alone and then more billions to prosecute the campaigns and buy votes from willfully impoverished Nigerians, would their first mission, if by any stroke of misfortune any of them emerges as the leader of this unfortunate country, not be to hurriedly seek to recoup their investments with rich interests?

And will Nigeria’s already bankrupt economy be able to survive such boundless looting for a few more months when they and their associates who helped them to power descend on it like starving locusts? Social media reports say that a presidential candidate has hired about 500 young people and armed them with laptops and data to market him and demonise his opponents.

It will be tragic if among these misguided lot are university students who have been at home for the past six months because government officials think it is better to pocket and squander the scarce resources of Nigeria than to use them to secure the future of the younger generation by giving them quality education.

Now, these youths would be naive to expect to return to school any time soon, after being paid for a few months to help enthrone another callous and corrupt government with a handsome fraction of the money that could have met their lecturers’ demands.

As these old parties which have since eroded their credibility and ability to inspire the populace deploy the same well-worn shibboleths to recapture power and continue Nigeria’s march to desolation, Mr. Peter Obi suddenly emerged as the presidential candidate of the Labour Party, LP, and immediately captured the widespread admiration and acceptance of Nigerians with his sterling records of transparency and competence demonstrated while he served as Anambra Governor and clear message of economic recovery.

Stunned, the politicians of the old order, rose with wild desperation, vigour and vicious determination to resist his bold move to reclaim the country for the people. They know that Nigerians have become aware that Obi has the courage, competence, resolve and unyielding patriotism to remove the feeding bottles from their greedy mouths and return Nigeria to the Nigerian people.

Not finding anything about corruption and incompetence to discredit Obi with, they have regurgitated the same old, weak tool of ethnicity and have unleashed their attack dogs to do and say anything to “Igbonize” his candidacy, even when it is so very clear that Obi is not contesting because he thinks it is the turn of the Igbo, but because of his zeal to reverse the rapid rot and turn Nigeria from a consumption country to a productive one.

If the Nigerian masses allow themselves to be deluded once again, they would all be here to suffer the consequences of their tragic decision. They are already crying because of the pepper rubbed on their eyes with the worsening hardship of last several years. The excruciating pains of corruption and incompetence do not unleash their torments with discrimination. They attack everyone irrespective of voting preferences or the tribal marks of the new misruler. Nigerians from Katsina, Buhari’s home state, can attest to that.

• Ejinkeonye, a journalist and author, wrote via: scruples2006@yahoo.com

A Nuclear War Could Starve Billions, But One Country May Be Safer Than The Rest

BY MIKE MCRAE

It starts with a single mushroom-shaped cloud the world hoped to never see again. Retaliation prompts tit-for-tat attacks, each intended to end this latest War of All Wars, until a week or so later Earth begins to shiver beneath a pall of soot and dust.

Scenarios mapping and calculating the devastation of a nuclear winter are nothing new, dating back to a time when the Cold War was nightly news. Decades on, we know a lot more about the finer effects of particulates in the atmosphere on our agriculture. And the sums remain as grim as ever. Using the latest data on crop yields and fisheries resources, a group of scientists from around the globe have proposed six scenarios approximating what we might expect of food supplies in the aftermath of a rapidly escalating nuclear conflict between warring states. Setting aside the immediate casualties in the attacks, which could be in the hundreds of millions, the mortality rate from a calories shortage crisis alone could wipe out most of the world's population. The researchers used the National Center for Atmospheric Research's Community Earth System Model to predict how weather patterns might change with the addition of soot and dust churned up by nuclear blasts. This was then used to inform estimates on how yields in crops and marine stocks would react to shifts in surface temperature, direct and diffuse light, and precipitation. The results weren't pretty. Take a relatively minor nuclear bombardment involving around 100 detonations, such as one we might anticipate should tensions between India and Pakistan boil over. By the researchers' calculations, 5 million metric tons of particulates would be cast into the atmosphere. For a comparison, the catastrophic wildfires in California in 2017 and those in Australia at the end of 2019 emitted as much as 1 million metric tons each

The consequences would mean most of us would have access to 8 percent fewer calories, with up to 255 million people succumbing to famine over the following years. Ironically, adjustments in how we feed ourselves might even lead to some communities piling more on their plates, increasing their intake by up to 5 percent. As the soot in the air builds with greater numbers of nuclear bombs, it would only get harder to find ways to meter out food resources, even for those wishing to exploit the chaos. An all-out-war that depleted US and Russian stockpiles of thousands of bombs would add 150 million metric tons of grit and dust to our planet's atmosphere, depriving the world of three-quarters of their calories. Shuffling animal feed stocks into emergency supplies and eating what we now waste would only get us so far – it would be a slow starvation for 5 billion people around the globe as they struggle to get enough food to survive over the next two years. Ready access to a food supply would depend on where a population lives. In a scenario where 250 nuclear blasts throw 27 million metric tons of material into the air, high latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere would see a drop of more than 50 percent in harvested calories, and around 20 to 30 percent decline in fishing reserves. For nations nearer to the equator, the average reduction in calories would be less than 10 percent. As witnessed in the conflict between Ukraine and Russia, trade in food would almost certainly be interrupted. Nations dependent on food shipped in from elsewhere would need to quickly adjust. For some communities, this might not be as bad as it sounds. Without an international trade supplementing their diet, Australia's population could still get at least half of their calories from spring wheat. Simulations conducted by the researchers found this crop would experience a minimal drop in yield, or perhaps even a slight gain. While Australians would still need to tighten their belts, the same level of casualties might be avoided. Likewise, New Zealand's food supply could face a smaller impact than nations that rely on crops like rice. As the researchers note, however, the sociopolitical turmoil that would inevitably follow turns relatively straight-forward predictions on food economics into a chaotic mess. "But if this scenario should actually take place, Australia and New Zealand would probably see an influx of refugees from Asia and other countries experiencing food insecurity," the authors note. While the study advances past predictions with more accurate data, there are still plenty of unknowns when it comes to ways humanity would struggle in the wake of a nuclear war. Future measures could take advantage of improved models involving more crops, or predict how systems of trade and economics would redistribute goods. Other factors, such as the loss of ozone, and deaths of pollinators, would also go some way in affecting managed and unmanaged resources. Taking these into account could see our mortality rate grow even further. Not that we'd ever want to find out for certain just how accurate our predictions might be. For now it's a hypothetical outcome we can only hope leaders of nuclear nations keep in mind

Ship Reaches Ukraine To Load Up With Wheat For Hungry Africa

FILE - A harvester collects wheat in the village of Zghurivka, Ukraine, Tuesday, Aug. 9, 2022. A ship approached Ukraine on Friday, Aug. 12, 2022, to pick up wheat for hungry people in Ethiopia, in the first food delivery to Africa under a U.N.-brokered plan to unblock grain trapped by Russia’s war and bring relief to some of the millions worldwide on the brink of starvation. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky, File)

BY SUSIE BLANN

KYIV, UKRAINE (AP) — A ship docked in a Ukrainian Black Sea port on Friday to begin loading up with wheat for hungry people in Ethiopia. It will be the first food delivery to Africa under a U.N. plan to unblock grain trapped by Russia’s war on Ukraine and bring relief to some of the millions worldwide who are on the brink of starvation.

For months, fighting in Ukraine and a Russian blockade of Ukraine’s ports meant that grain produced in Ukraine, one of the world’s key breadbaskets, piled up in silos. That sent global food prices sky-high and led to hunger in Africa, the Middle East and parts of Asia. In recent days, several ships carrying grain have left Ukrainian ports under the new deal — but most of those shipments were animal feed and went to Turkey or Western Europe under previous contracts.

U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the ship named Brave Commander will carry its wheat to the Horn of Africa nation of Djibouti, where it will be unloaded and sent on to Ethiopia.

“The wheat will go to the World Food Program’s operations in Ethiopia, supporting the Horn of Africa drought response as the threat of famine stalks the drought-hit region,” he said. “It is one of many areas around the world where the near-complete halt of Ukrainian grain and food on the global market has made life even harder for the families already struggling with rising hunger.”

The ship was expected to take on more than 23,000 metric tons, according to Ukraine’s Infrastructure Ministry — still only a tiny portion of the 20 million tons of grain languishing now in Ukraine. It docked in the port city of Yuzhne late Friday, the ministry said.

Ethiopia, along with neighboring Somalia and Kenya, is facing the worst drought in four decades in the Horn of Africa. Thousands of people across the region have died from hunger or illness this year. Forecasts for the coming weeks indicate that for the first time, a fifth straight rainy season will fail to materialize. Millions of livestock, the basis of many families’ wealth and food security, have died.

“Millions of households will struggle to cope with these shocks” in Ethiopia, according to a new assessment by the Famine Early Warning Systems Network. “Food assistance needs are at record levels, with up to 15 million people in need of food assistance.”

While one shipment won’t solve the crisis, the World Food Program still heralded it as an “important step” in getting Ukrainian grain out of the country to the worst-affected countries. Ethiopian officials did not respond to requests for comment.

Yet on Ukraine’s front lines, the fighting was incessant, especially in the eastern region of the Donbas, where much of the fighting has been centered as the war approaches the six-month mark. The town of Kramatorsk was hit by 11 rockets overnight. Seven people were killed and 14 others were wounded in and around the town, which remains cut off from gas, running water and electricity.

“Three quarters of the population of the region have already been evacuated, because incessant shelling by the Russian army doesn’t leave civilians any choice — it’s either to die from wounds, or from hunger and cold in winter,” Donetsk regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko told Ukrainian television.

The threat of a nuclear accident also loomed in southern Ukraine, where shelling has hit near Europe’s largest nuclear plant.

Shelling near the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant continued overnight. Russian forces fired more than 40 rockets at the city of Marhanets, which is across the Dnieper River from the power plant. Three people were wounded in the most recent shelling, including a 12-year-old boy. The neighboring city of Nikopol was shelled as well, said Valentyn Reznichenko, the governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region.

The U.N. nuclear chief warned late Thursday that “very alarming” military activity at the nuclear plant could lead to dangerous consequences.

International Atomic Energy Agency Director-General Rafael Grossi urged Russia and Ukraine, who blame each other for the attacks at the nuclear plant, to immediately allow nuclear experts to assess damage and evaluate safety and security at the sprawling nuclear complex. He said the situation at the plant “has been deteriorating very rapidly.”

He pointed to shelling and several explosions at Zaporizhzhia last Friday that forced the shutdown of its electrical power transformer and two backup transformers, forcing the shutdown of one nuclear reactor.

Ukrainian Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky said authorities were drafting plans to evacuate residents from towns and villages near the plant.

“There is a high-level threat, so there are plans for any possible development, including release of radiation,” Monastyrsky said Friday. “We all have seen the Russian shelling of the plant. It’s horrible.”

He said Russian forces have stationed weapons at the plant and have denied Ukrainian nuclear workers access to some areas in the complex.

“It’s hard to even imagine the scale of tragedy if the Russians continue their action there,” he said. “We have become convinced that there is no restraining factors. There is a deliberate stand declared by the Russian authorities that they are ready for any action, regardless of consequences.”

Associated Press writer Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed.

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https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine