HRW: 'Generation Robbed Of Their Rights To Education In Nigeria'

BY CHRISPIN MWAKIDEU

DEUTSCHE WELLE, APRIL 12, 2016

A new Human Rights Watch report says the Boko Haram insurgency in northeastern Nigeria has forced a million children out of school. The military is part of the problem, Mausi Segun from Human Rights Watch tells DW.

In a new report released on Tuesday, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said that that attacks carried out by the Nigerian Islamist group Boko Haram have had a devastating effect on education in the country’s northeastern region.

The report highlighted the plights of nearly 1 million children, who have not been able to go to school as a result of the violence in the region. Mausi Segun, one of the researchers of HRW has been speaking to DW about their findings.

Deutsche Welle: Can you briefly explain how bad the academic situation in northeastern Nigeria is?

Mausi Segun: The system has been devastated by the conflict, especially in Borno State and to a smaller extent in Yobe and Adamawa States. In the entire region almost one million school-aged children are out of school and many have been out of school for at least the last two years, some up to three, four years.

This means that almost an entire generation of children has been robbed of their right to education, which is an intrinsic component of their development. And so to our mind it is an emergency, a critical issue that the Nigerian authorities must pay immediate attention to in order to stem the tide of poverty and underachievement of children in this region that have lagged behind the rest of Nigeria for many years.

In your report, you say that at least 611 teachers have been deliberately killed and a further 19,000 have been forced to flee since 2009. But what about those who have been left behind? How are they coping with the security situation?

Many of them are living in displacement camps. Some who work for the government are earning small salaries even though they say it does not come in frequently. But they have many friends, families and neighbors that they have to take care of. A lot of them are deeply traumatized because they have witnessed the killings of their colleagues and family members. A few are doing some good by volunteering their time to teach children in the IDP camps, and some are setting up learning centers for children in host communities.

But you can tell the frustration and fear that still exist. They are longing to return home to the life they knew, to the profession they love and enjoy, but unable to do so because of the fear that Boko Haram would kill them upon their returning.

Boko Haram fighters as well as Nigerian security forces are turning schools into military bases, what can you tell us about that?

While children were still in school, soldiers were placed in these schools ostensibly to protect the children and the schools. Unfortunately the very presence of armed forces at a school can make the school a legitimate military target. And this thing has happened in reverse as well.

Because of the presence of Boko Haram fighters in schools, Nigerian security forces have targeted these schools. Many had to flee for their lives. For a station or a base, a school is not the best place because it might turn the school into a military target.

What about those children that have been abducted by the extremists? You mention the Chibok girls and another 300 children that were abducted. How concerned are you that they are now being used as suicide bombers?

It is a deplorable situation that would concern everyone. We are concerned at the level that we work. I can't imagine what it is like on a daily basis for the parents of the missing children, for their relatives and friends, their community members. I think for the Chibok girls, the activities of the advocates who have worked to continue to put pressure on the government have helped in some way.

Our question is: What about the other children? I think the government needs to do a lot more to give names to these people by, for example, opening up a missing persons' register, where parents can put down the names of their children. They do not know whether they are dead or just missing, or whether they have been recruited to become suicide members or whatever. Even the dead have been buried without giving them names. The government must immediately set up a mechanism to ensure that they are given names and their dignity is restored.

Mausi Segun is a researcher with Human Rights Watch in Nigeria

Interview: Chrispin Mwakideu

Ex-Boxer (Ike Ibeabuchi) Who Served Time In Nevada Now In Trouble In Arizona

ASSOCIATED PRESS

APRIL 11, 2016

PHOENIX, ARIZONA  (AP) — A former heavyweight boxer who served prison time in Nevada is now in trouble with the law in Arizona, where he also has a criminal conviction on his record.

Authorities say 43-year-old Ikemefula "Ike" Ibeabuchi (ee-bee-a-BOO'-chee) was arrested Thursday in Gilbert, Arizona, for allegedly violating conditions of his Arizona lifetime probation for a 1998 conviction in a sexual assault case.

Ibeabuchi was convicted in 2001 in Las Vegas of attempted sexual assault and battery. Nevada's prison system released Ibeabuchi in 2014, handing over the Nigerian-born man to immigration authorities. They released Ibeabuchi in late 2015 when Nigeria declined to provide travel documents.The Maricopa County Adult Probation Department says Ibeabuchi failed to begin a treatment program.

Ibeabuchi's lawyer, Todd Nolan, did not immediately return a call for comment Monday.

Texas Attorney General Charged With Federal Securities Fraud

ASSOCIATED PRESS

APRIL 11, 2016

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton speaks during a hearing in Austin, Texas. Federal securities regulators have filed civil fraud charges against Paxton, Monday, April 11, 2016, over recruiting investors to a high-tech startup before becoming the state's top prosecutor.




AUSTIN, TEXAS (ASSOCIATED PRESS) — Federal securities regulators charged Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton Monday with four civil counts of fraud, piling on more legal troubles for the Republican already under criminal indictment for allegations that he deceived friends and wealthy investors — at least once with high-pressure tactics.

The lawsuit filed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission provoked new calls from critics that Paxton should resign but no immediate response from state Republican leaders, including Gov. Greg Abbott.

Paxton, who has pleaded not guilty to two felony counts of securities fraud handed up by a Texas grand jury last summer, has said he won't step down and has faced no public pressure from state leaders to do so. But questions about his private financial dealings have made for a tumultuous first 16 months on the job.

The new federal lawsuit essentially mirrors the charges in Paxton's criminal case — that he defrauded investors in a high-tech startup called Servergy Inc. — but provides a far more detailed narrative of Paxton's alleged misdeeds than what has previously been made public.

The SEC describes how Paxton allegedly betrayed a friend, raised $840,000 and pressured one investor to make a "hasty decision" to immediately invest, thereby increasing the value of Servergy stock that Paxton received as commission. Paxton's investor recruiting took place in 2011, when he was still a state legislator.

SEC investigators say Paxton claimed he planned to invest $100,000 of his own money into Servergy but that company founder Bill Mapp refused. The lawsuit alleges Paxton said Mapp told him, "I can't take your money. God doesn't want me to take your money." Paxton claimed he accepted Servergy shares as a gift, according to the lawsuit.

But both state prosecutors and now the SEC accuse Paxton of never telling investors Servergy paid him to raise money. The investors wouldn't have invested had they "known Paxton was being paid to promote the company," the lawsuit reads.

Those same allegations led to Paxton's indictment in his hometown and facing a possible sentence of five to 99 years in prison if convicted. By filing a civil lawsuit, federal regulators aren't seeking prison time but instead want Paxton to pay back "any ill-gotten gains or unjust enrichment" and be ordered to pay additional financial penalties.

SEC investigators allege that one investor considered Paxton "a personal friend" and believed that Paxton was also investing in the company. According to the lawsuit, that investor "grew worried" when promises about product shipment failed to materialize, and that Paxton "did nothing" to determine whether those company milestones were true.

Paxton attorney Bill Mateja said he was surprised the SEC chose to file the charges a year after Paxton's criminal indictment. "Like the criminal matter, Mr. Paxton vehemently denies the allegations in the civil lawsuit and looks forward to not only all of the facts coming out, but also to establishing his innocence in both the civil and criminal matters," Mateja said.

The Texas Democratic Party, which hasn't won a statewide office in more than two decades, said in a statement that "enough is enough" and again called for Paxton to step down. A spokesman for Abbott, who was Texas' attorney general for 12 years before becoming governor, did not immediately return a message seeking comment.

Paxton took office in January 2015 with strong tea party support. A year earlier, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, now a GOP presidential candidate, called him a "tireless conservative warrior" as Paxton trounced a moderate Republican challenger on the way to becoming Texas' top law enforcement officer.

During a heated GOP primary race in 2014, Paxton admitted to breaking state securities laws by not disclosing how he received commissions for referring his private law clients to a financial planner. He paid a $1,000 fine, downplayed it as an oversight and went on to handily beat an establishment Republican who counted former President George W. Bush as a supporter.

A Dallas state appeals court is scheduled to take up the criminal indictments next month.

Follow Paul J. Weber at www.twitter.com/pauljweber and Jim Vertuno at www.twitter.com/jimvertuno

This story has been corrected to reflect that the company name is Servergy, not Severgy.

Igbo Of South Eastern Nigeria, Most Brilliant Black Africa Race — US Report

SKY TREND NEWS

APRIL 9, 2016 

Ogbuefi Ikelie blowing his elephant tusk in Iyioji festival. Image: Cyprian Ekwensi/University of Michigan, 1983 

A United States academic report for 2015 has suggested that the Igbo of South Eastern Nigeria are the most brilliant black Africa race. According to the report: “a search through the promotional materials of school for a black student – all schools and colleges would always show some black faces in their promotional materials if they have any – reveals that they have had at least one black student, and it was, unsurprisingly, a Nigerian Igbo.”

This is just as two teenage Nigerian high school students, Harold Ekeh and Augusta Uwamanzu-Nna, have broken a record of being accepted by eight Ivy League schools in the United States. Ekeh is a 17-year-old senior student at Elmont Memorial High School, Long Island while Uwamanzu- Nna is a high-school student from Long Island, New York.

Schools within the Ivy League are Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania and Yale University.

However, the feat, according to two online news portals, NBC News and MSN, revealed that both teenagers are faced with “a big decision to make soon.” For instance, Ekeh was granted admission by 13 universities, including all the eight Ivy League schools.

The NBC News reports that Ekeh is faced with the dilemma of whittling down his college prospects, having applied to 13 colleges, with the hope to “maybe” get into Stony Brook University, about an hour east of his home in Elmont, Long Island.

But, in recent weeks, the cascade of reply letters started pouring in: Harvard. Yes. Yale. Yes. Princeton. Yes. Not only did he get accepted to all of the schools he applied to, those include all eight Ivy League institutions. Speaking with NBC News, Ekeh said: “It’s very, like, stunning.

It’s like getting hit with a brick, honestly. When you see congratulations, you’re like, wow your hard work has paid off, definitely.” The straight-A student has accomplished the rare feat of getting into all of the nation’s Ivy schools, crediting his parents’ work ethic for setting an example and a desire to strive in his adopted homeland after emigrating from Nigeria 10 years ago.

“I find that I’m very over-involved,” Ekeh said, counting advanced placement classes and extracurricular activities, such as science research, school plays and being editor-inchief of his school newspaper, as filling up his time. Ekeh, who scored a 2270 out of 2400 on his SATs, said: “I do have conflicts that maybe I’ll have this programme at the same time as I have another programme and so it’s hard to choose which one to be involved in.

I expected to maybe get into Stony Brook, a couple of other safeties, just based upon the SAT and the GPA, but I was still never certain of anything. There are so many variables taken into consideration in college admissions, so I was never certain of anything at any point.”

Ekeh, one of five brothers, said he wants to study biochemistry and become a neurosurgeon. He is inspired by his grandmother, who began showing symptoms of Alzheimer’s when he was 11. He wants to find a cure. “There are so many researchers working for Alzheimer’s disease right now and many neurogenic disorders that definitely a cure can be found soon,” he said.

As for where he is going to college, he isn’t quite sure, but would like to stay close to family. “I am leaning towards Columbia right now because I’d like to stay in New York City for I guess the rest of my career and work at Mt. Sinai,” Ekeh said, adding that America has given his family a life they might never have had in Nigeria.

Meanwhile, Uwamanzu- Nna, who also had found herself in the same situation, told MSN News that she has a big decision to make soon. The Elmont High School valedictorian, who was accepted into all the eight Ivy League schools, also gained admission into Johns Hopkins University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, New York University and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Uwamanzu-Nna is the daughter of Nigerian immigrants, who said her parents instilled in her the value of education. “Though I was born here in America, I visited Nigeria many times. And I’ve seen that my cousins don’t have the same opportunities that I have.

So, definitely, whatever I do, I want to make sure that it has an impact on Nigeria,” she said. She also said her own tenacity and persistence helped shape her into becoming a great student. But as with a lot of students, she did face hardships with some classes.

“I struggled with numerous classes in the past. But I guess what allowed me to be successful, ultimately, in those classes, is my persistence and my tenacity,” she said. Though Uwamanzu- Nna hasn’t decided on which college to attend, having scored a GPA of 101.6, and with a recent invitation to the White House Science Fair, reports indicated that there’s no doubt that she would continue her academic excellence.

The report that suggested the outstanding academic performance of the Igbo revealed that if only environmental factors were responsible for the different Intelligence Quotients (IQs) of different populations, the world may expect to find some countries where Africans had higher IQs than Europeans.

The report cited empirical backup using theories propounded by eminent scholars such as Richard Lynn, a British Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Ulster and Arthur Jensen, who was a professor of educational psychology at the University of California, Berkeley.

The report’s findings also revealed that while the fact remains that black immigrants to the U.S have shown achievements that were superior to native black Americans, studies had also shown that it had been a phenomenon studied since the 1970s at the least.

Using Lynn theory, who was also an assistant editor of the controversial journal Mankind Quarterly, who is known for his views on racial, ethnic and national differences in intelligence, the report revealed that: “Failure to find a single country where this is the case points to the presence of a strong genetic factor.”

For Jensen, the report said: “Regression would explain why Black children born to high IQ, wealthy Black parents have test scores two to four points lower than do White children born to low IQ, poor White parents.” The report also stated that at first, it was just the Caribbean blacks who were a subject of this unexpected outcome.

As black Africans kept immigrating into the U.S, they showed even higher levels of achievement than the native blacks. Many scholars theorised on the reasons for these differences, from Thomas Sowell’s proposal that this disproved the validity of discrimination against native blacks as an explanation for their underachievement (Sowell, 1978), to other scholars who suggested that these immigrants were just the most highly driven members of their home countries as evidenced by their willingness to migrate to a foreign country (Butcher, 1990).

EU Threatens To Put Sanctions On Panama, Other Tax Havens

ASSOCIATED PRESS

APRIL 7, 2016

Russian President Vladimir Putin during media forum of the All-Russia People's Front in St.Petersburg, Russia, Thursday, April 7, 2016. Speaking Thursday at a media forum in St.Petersburg, Putin rejected links to offshore accounts, calling the leaks part of Western efforts to weaken Russia.


BERLIN (AP) — A European Union official threatened Thursday to sanction Panama and other nations if they don't cooperate fully to fight money laundering and tax evasion, after a leak of data showed the small country remains a key destination for people who want to hide money.

The 11.5 million documents from the Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca showed it helped thousands of individuals and companies from around the world set up shell companies and offshore accounts in low-tax havens. Because such accounts often hide the ultimate owner of assets, they are a favored tool to evade taxes, launder money or pay bribes.

So far, the scandal has brought down the leader of Iceland and raised questions about the dealings of the presidents of Argentina and Ukraine, senior Chinese politicians, famous actors, athletes and the circle of friends of Russian Vladimir Putin, who some allege has profited indirectly from such accounts. On Thursday, British Prime Minister David Cameron acknowledged he profited from his father's investments in an offshore tax haven before being elected.

"People are fed up with these outrages," said Pierre Moscovici, who heads financial affairs for the 28-nation EU. He took to task countries like Panama that facilitate such secretive, low-tax accounts.

"The amounts of money, the jurisdictions and the names associated with this affair are frankly shocking," he said. Panama is listed by the EU as a country that is not cooperative on tax issues, and Moscovici urged the country to "rethink its position in this regard." The EU has to "be ready to hit them with appropriate sanctions if they refuse to change," he said.

The Central American country's government is offering to cooperate more. On Wednesday, President Juan Carlos Varela announced the creation of an international committee of experts to recommend ways to boost transparency in Panama's offshore financial industry.

But Varela defended his country against what he called a "media attack" by wealthy nations that he says are ignoring their own deficiencies and unfairly stigmatizing Panama. Ramon Fonseca, a co-founder of the law firm at the center of the scandal and until recently a top adviser to Varela, said Thursday the only law that has been broken so far is the right to his clients' privacy. He said the biggest source of secretive shell companies is Europe and the U.S.

"If a company in England has problems nobody says anything against England, but when it happens to a firm in Panama it's a big problem and the entire world beats up on poor Panama," Fonseca told The Associated Press in an interview.

He said his firm creates about 20,000 shell companies annually but also rejects about 70 to 80 clients every year due to conflicts that crop up during due diligence. "We're not perfect and some surely escape by," he said. "But in all our years in business we've never been accused or condemned by a court."

Europe also is home to countries with a record of acting like tax havens and providing banking secrecy — Luxembourg, Switzerland, Andorra, among others. The United States has also become a haven, with several states including Wyoming and Delaware now popular places to open anonymous accounts that are cheap to maintain and pay little or no local tax.

Since the first reports based on Mossack Fonseca documents were published Sunday, prominent politicians, celebrities and businesspeople have had their offshore business dealings dragged into the spotlight. On Thursday, the German newspaper that first obtained what have been dubbed the "Panama Papers," said it won't publish all the files, arguing that not all are of public interest.

Sueddeutsche Zeitung received the documents from an unidentified source more than a year ago and shared at least parts of them with dozens of other media outlets around the world. Fonseca said his firm has hired forensic experts to investigate and have already uncovered the method used to penetrate its systems. He said the hack was probably carried out from Europe and dismissed speculation it may have been an inside job.

Sueddeutsche Zeitung and the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which helped coordinate reporting on the leak, have said they won't make the complete set of 11.5 million documents available to the public or law enforcement but rather mine the information for details of public interest.

Responding to readers' queries about the absence of prominent German or American politicians in the reports, Sueddeutsche Zeitung said such names haven't yet been found in the documents. It said the documents include copies of the passports of 200 Americans and about 3,500 shareholders in offshore companies have listed addresses in the United States.

Fonseca said his firm has only a handful of American clients, mostly expats living in Panama. He said both he and his German-born partner have longstanding ties to Europe and over the years have focused their business there and in Latin America.

Meanwhile, Britain's Cameron looks to become the next European politician ensnared by the scandal. After four days fending off headlines about his family's finances, he acknowledged Thursday that he and his wife, Samantha, sold shares worth 31,500 pounds (currently $44,300) in an offshore fund named Blairmore Holdings in January 2010 — five months before Cameron became prime minister. They had paid 12,497 pounds for the shares in 1997.

The prime minister's father, Ian Cameron, an affluent stockbroker who died in 2010, was a client of Mossack Fonseca. There's no indication the offshore fund was set up to avoid paying taxes but the revelation has reinforced the prime minister's image as a scion of wealth and undermined calls to boost transparency at a time many British overseas territories act as tax havens.

Also on Thursday, an Argentine prosecutor asked a judge to authorize an investigation into President Mauricio Macri's role in offshore companies. Federal prosecutors said an investigation is necessary to see whether Macri "maliciously" omitted his role in two offshore companies in his annual tax declarations.

In Russia, President Vladimir Putin on Thursday denied having any links to offshore accounts and described the document leaks scandal as part of a U.S.-led plot to weaken Russia. Speaking at a media forum in St. Petersburg, Putin said Western media pushed the claims of his involvement in offshore businesses even though his name didn't feature in any of the documents leaked from the Panamanian law firm.

Putin described the allegations as part of the U.S.-led disinformation campaign waged against Russia in order to weaken its government. "They are trying to destabilize us from within in order to make us more compliant," he said.

The ICIJ said the documents it obtained indicated that Russian cellist Sergei Roldugin acted as a front man for a network of Putin loyalists and, perhaps, the president himself. The ICIJ said the documents show how complex offshore financial deals channeled as much as $2 billion to a network of people linked to the Russian president.

Associated Press writer Frank Jordans reported this story in Berlin and AP writer Raf Casert reported from Brussels. AP writers Irina Titova and Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow, Joshua Goodman in Bogota, Colombia, and Jill Lawless in London contributed to this report.

Global Military Spending Nearly $1.7T Amid Mideast Conflicts

BY JON GAMBRELL

ASSOCIATED PRESS, APRIL 4, 2016

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Delegates from the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) leave the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. A report by The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute revealed that the U.S. with $596 billion in defense spending and China with an estimated $215 billion led all countries in military spending in 2015.




DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Global military spending rose in 2015 to nearly $1.7 trillion, the first increase in several years, driven by conflicts including the battle against the Islamic State group, the Saudi-led war in Yemen and fears about Iran, a report released Tuesday shows.

The study by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute also noted that the Chinese expansion in the South China Sea and Russia's annexation of Crimea and support of Ukrainian separatists also accounted for nudging spending up 1 percent in real terms, compared to 2014.

For weapons manufacturers, the nonstop pace of airstrikes targeting Islamic State fighters in Iraq and Syria, as well as Saudi-led bombing of Yemen's Shiite rebels and their allies, means billions of dollars more in sales.

But activists question continued U.S. arms deals to Saudi Arabia as its Yemen campaign has killed civilians, while American fighter jet sales to both emerging military buyer Qatar and longtime ally Kuwait appear stalled.

The United States, with $596 billion in defense spending, and China, with an estimated $215 billion, led all countries in 2015, the annual report by SIPRI said. Saudi Arabia, however, came in third with spending of $87.2 billion — double what it spent in 2006, according to the report. That fueled the first worldwide increase in military spending since 2011.

Iraq spent $13.1 billion on its military in 2015, up well over 500 percent from 2006 as it has rebuilt its armed forces following the U.S. withdrawal and rise of the Islamic State group, SIPRI said. While part of the U.S. coalition fighting the extremists, Saudi Arabia also launched a war in Yemen in March 2015 to support the country's internationally recognized government after Shiite rebels known as Houthis earlier overran the country's capital, Sanaa. The Sunni kingdom views the Houthis as a proxy of Shiite power Iran, long its regional rival.

The United Arab Emirates also is taking part in both conflicts and likely has spent billions of dollars to support its military in 2015 as well, though the Stockholm-based institute said it couldn't offer precise figures this year, senior research Pieter Wezeman said. Both the UAE and Saudi Arabia also sent troops into Bahrain to put down its 2011 Arab Spring-inspired protests.

"This clearly is a reason for these countries to improve their so-called security forces, both to be able to fight against internal uprisings, whether a more-peaceful nature or more violent, but also of course to intervene in neighboring countries," Wezeman, who took part in the report, told The Associated Press.

But the air campaign waged by the Saudi-led, U.S.-backed coalition in Yemen has been increasingly criticized by human rights activists over civilian deaths. Airstrikes account for 60 percent of the 3,200 civilians killed in the conflict, according to the United Nations, which has criticized coalition strikes that have hit markets, clinics and hospitals.

Yet arms deals continue, especially from the U.S. Asked about the civilian casualties, State Department spokesman David McKeeby said the United States remained "deeply concerned by the devastating toll of the crisis in Yemen."

"We have remained in regular contact with the Saudi-led coalition and have reinforced to them the need to avoid civilian casualties and the importance of precise targeting," McKeeby said in a statement. "We have encouraged them to investigate all credible accounts of civilian casualties as a result of coalition strikes — and to report publicly the results of these investigations."

But both the Yemen war and the fight against the Islamic State group likely will keep arms manufacturers busy into 2016. Companies that may see increased sales include Boeing. Co., General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin Corp. and Raytheon Co., aerospace and defense analyst Roman Schweizer at Guggenheim Securities wrote March 28.

"We have been bullish for the better part of a year that the Pentagon and its European and (Gulf) allies will have to refill their stocks of missiles and munitions due to the current campaign against ISIS in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and even Libya," Schweizer wrote, using an alternate acronym for the extremist group.

Meanwhile, President Barack Obama promised America's "ironclad commitment" to back its Gulf allies during a summit last May. In the time since, the U.S. has made $33 billion in arms sales to its Gulf allies, including an $11.25-billion deal with Saudi Arabia that includes four armed warships to modernize its navy, McKeeby said.

But the Obama administration has been criticized by U.S. Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican, for "failing to live to up the promises" made at the summit by allegedly stalling fighter jet sales to both Kuwait and Qatar.

"They are languishing on the shelf gathering dust," McCain said at a hearing on March 8. Tiny Qatar in the meantime has signed a deal for 6.7 billion euros ($7.6 billion) to buy 24 Dassault Rafal fighter jets from France.

Obama will visit Saudi Arabia on April 21 for a meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council, which includes Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the UAE. The jet sales likely will be a topic of discussion, as will Iran after its recently implemented nuclear deal with world powers.

Wezeman said international sanctions against Iran had seen its weapons technology lag behind its neighbors as its military spending dropped by 30 percent between 2006 and 2015. However, he acknowledged regional suspicions likely would keep Gulf military spending strong.

"Iran is, of course, perceived as an adversary and also wants to be the main player in the region, a country which will potentially use its influence over different proxy groups in the region to destabilize countries," Wezeman said. "Both the expenditure and the armament procurement by states in the Gulf are clearly aimed at kind of keeping Iran in check."

Online:

Stockholm International Peace Research Institute: www.sipri.org

Follow Jon Gambrell on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jongambrellap . His work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/jon-gambrell .

Egypt's Abuses, Crackdown On Critics Draw World Attention

ASSOCIATED PRESS

MARCH 31, 2016

Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi listens during an interview with The Associated Press at the presidential palace in Cairo. Nearly three years into a heavy crackdown overseen by President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, allegations of human rights abuses including killings, torture and secret detentions are starting to bring an international backlash from the Egyptian leader’s allies.


CAIRO, EGYPT (ASSOCIATED PRESS) — Nearly three years into a heavy crackdown overseen by President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, allegations of human rights abuses including killings, torture and secret detentions are starting to bring an international backlash from the Egyptian leader's allies.

In the past month, Egypt was rebuked over its human rights record by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, the European Union's foreign affairs arm, the European Parliament, the U.N. Council for Human Rights as well as several Western European nations, including key trade partner and EU heavyweight Germany.

The case of an Italian student kidnapped and tortured to death in Cairo has poisoned Egypt's long close ties with Italy, amid suspicions that it was carried out by members of the security agencies. Egypt denies police were involved and last week announced that a criminal gang was behind the killing of Giulio Regeni — a claim that was derided in Italy.

Also raising alarm was Egypt's reopening earlier this month of a criminal investigation into a number of non-governmental organizations — including rights groups — on suspicion of illegally taking foreign funds and aiming to "harm national security." The two cases came under heavy criticism at a session of the U.N. Human Rights council last week, along with reports of torture and forced disappearances.

"This looks like a clampdown on sections of Egyptian civil society and it must stop," the U.N. Human Rights High Commissioner Zeid Raad Al-Hassan said of the NGO case. Kerry raised concern over "deterioration" in Egypt's rights situation and "a wider backdrop of arrests and intimidation of political opposition, journalists, civil society activists and cultural figures."

Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, replied that Cairo rejects international "tutelage" on human rights. He said Egypt is "keen to implement and put into action the constitution, which stipulates respect for and commitment to human rights." Shoukry and Kerry met Wednesday in Washington on the sidelines of a nuclear security conference in talks that focused on the conflicts on Syria and Yemen — though the State Department said Kerry underlined the need for Egypt to allow rights NGOs to operate freely.

Egypt often counters that it is fighting against Islamic militancy in the form of an insurgency based in the Sinai Peninsula that has killed hundreds of policemen and soldiers the past three years. Since coming to office in 2014, el-Sissi has presented himself as at the forefront of the battle against Islamic militants, calling for reforms to encourage moderate Islam. He has become a close ally of European states in fighting the Islamic State group, particularly in Libya.

So far there's no sign that Egypt's Western allies will take any action beyond criticism. But some leading commentators in Egypt warn that the worsening rights reputation is damaging to a country that receives considerable international development aid and is struggling to repair a tourism sector vital to its economy.

"In the final analysis, we need the world more than the world needs us," wrote Abdel-Monem Said, a respected analyst who for years led Egypt's leading state-owned think tank, the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies. He said the government can't keep shrugging off criticism.

"Improving our reputation is not only the smart thing to do, but it is also possible." Veteran rights campaigner Hesham Qassim warned in a column in the Al-Masry Al-Youm newspaper that governments and development agencies might eventually scale down their dealings with Egypt, "which will gradually become ... a pariah state."

Government supporters in the media have constantly depicted the U.S. and Europeans as trying to restore the rule of the Muslim Brotherhood or undermine Egypt. After an Egyptian man hijacked an EgyptAir flight to Cyprus this week, two prominent TV personalities argued that the hijacking was a plot — presumably by foreign powers — to pressure authorities to drop the NGO case.

Since he led the military's July 2013 ouster of President Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood, el-Sissi has overseen the jailing of thousands of Islamists. Hundreds more were killed in clashes with police, mostly in 2013 and 2014. The crackdown has also targeted secular, pro-democracy activists.

Most of Egypt's Western backers were initially sharply critical of el-Sissi for his ouster of Morsi, the country's first freely elected leader. The United States even suspended part of the more than $1 billion in annual aid it gives Egypt, almost all of which goes to the military.

But the Egyptian leader heavily invested time, effort and travel to persuade allies that Morsi's removal was the wish of the millions who joined protests against his divisive rule and the domination of the Muslim Brotherhood. The U.S. and Europe largely turned to el-Sissi's side eventually, in part due to Egypt's role in the fight against militant groups.

Now with criticism on the rise again, Abdullah el-Sennawy, a prominent columnist close to el-Sissi's government, said international punitive actions are unlikely but the possibility "cannot be dismissed altogether." He wrote in a column in the Al-Shorouq newspaper that rights concerns must be addressed.

"The most important challenge facing a nation in crisis longing for some hope in the future is to improve its human rights record, restore public freedoms and declare a break with the past."

US Joins With South Korea, Japan In Bid To Deter North Korea

BY JOSH LEDERMAN

ASSOCIATED PRESS, MARCH 31, 2016

President Barack Obama meets with South Korean President Park Geun-hye, left, and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe during the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, Thursday, March 31, 2016.




WASHINGTON (ASSOCIATED PRESS) — The United States pledged Thursday to deepen cooperation with allies South Korea and Japan on deterring the North Korean nuclear threat, working to ramp up pressure following worrying provocations. Leaders of the three countries urged the world community to vigilantly enforce new U.N. sanctions.

President Barack Obama didn't disclose what further steps the countries might take as he met with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and South Korean President Park Geun-hye on the sidelines of a nuclear security summit. But he said the countries had directed their teams to work together to help bring about a denuclearized Korean Peninsula.

"We are united in our efforts to deter and defend against North Korean provocations," Obama said. "We recognize that our security is linked." Park, whose country has been repeatedly threatened by Pyongyang, warned that North Korea would face even stiffer sanctions and more isolation if it engaged in any further provocative acts. Speaking through a translator, she said the mere fact the three leaders were huddling to discuss North Korea carried "huge significance."

As a nuclear security summit opened in Washington, the U.S. said a strengthened nuclear security agreement among nations was finally set to take force, including new criminal penalties for smuggling nuclear material.

The stricter rules for protecting materials and nuclear facilities worldwide were intended to reduce the likelihood of terrorists getting their hands on ingredients for a bomb. Recent ratification by a critical mass of countries cleared the way for the changes to take effect in about a month.

Though nuclear terrorism and the Islamic State group top this year's agenda, concerns about North Korea's nuclear weapons program are also commanding focus as the two-day summit gets under way. Those long-simmering concerns have escalated of late following the North's recent nuclear test and rocket launch.

China's influence over North Korea will be front and center later in the day when Obama sits down with President Xi Jinping. The White House said that meeting was also an opportunity for Obama to press U.S. concerns about human rights and China's assertive territorial claims in waters far off its coast.

Though frictions with China remain high, the U.S. was encouraged by China's role in passing stringent new U.N. sanctions on North Korea, its traditional ally. Now the U.S. is pressing Beijing to implement those sanctions dutifully.

Hanging over the meeting were ongoing discussions about the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense system, or THAAD, although the U.S. said it didn't specifically come up. The U.S. and South Korea are weighing deploying the U.S. missile defense system in South Korea to counter the threat from the North. China has resisted that step out of concern it would also give the U.S. radar coverage over Chinese territory, and Russia opposes it as well.

In North Korea, meanwhile, the government has been churning out regular propaganda pieces condemning the U.S. and South Korea, while warning it could launch a pre-emptive strike against South Korea or even the U.S. mainland at any time.

For Obama, the summit's offers a last major chance to focus global attention on disparate nuclear security threats before the president's term ends early next year. For years, pressing security crises in the Middle East have overshadowed Obama's goal of expanding U.S. influence and engagement in Asia, with the North Korean threat another unwanted distraction. Though the U.S. and China have struck sweeping agreements on climate change, they've remained at odds on many economic issues. Obama has also been unable to get Congress to ratify the Asia-Pacific free trade deal his administration painstakingly negotiated.

Obama also planned to meet Thursday with French President Francois Hollande, amid steep concerns about terrorism in Europe following Islamic State-linked attacks in Paris and Brussels. The summit continues on Friday with a special session focused on preventing IS and other extremists from obtaining nuclear materials and attacking urban areas.

Some of the 2,000 metric tons of highly enriched uranium and separated plutonium being used in civilian or military programs worldwide could be turned into a nuclear bomb if stolen or diverted, the White House warned. Fewer than half of the countries participating in the summit have even agreed to secure sources of radiological material that could be used for a dirty bomb, though more countries are expected to announce commitments during the summit to tighten controls.

Associated Press writer Matthew Pennington contributed to this report.

Reach Josh Lederman on Twitter at http://twitter.com/joshledermanAP

Giant Rats That Can Sniff Out Tuberculosis To Be Introduced In African Prisons

'Training an animal with a strong and reliable sense of smell to help detect disease in a vast country like Tanzania could potentially offer a valuable solution'

BY SERINA SANDHU

INDEPENDENT, UK

A rat being trained to detect tuberculosis Briana Marie

Giant trained rats will be used to detect tuberculosis (TB) among inmates in crowded prisons in Tanzania and Mozambique.

Prisons are “considered incubators of tuberculosis due to their high populations and confined conditions”, according to Apopo, a Belgian non-governmental organisation which has been training African Giant Pouched Rats to carry out the mass screenings.

With funding from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the rats will be trained to distinguish the difference between positive and negative sputum samples through their strong sense of smell.

It is hoped the new method will improve the accuracy, speed and cost-efficiency of testing for TB, leading to far fewer cases going undiagnosed.

A trained rat can screen 100 samples in 20 minutes while a laboratory technician may take four days to detect TB. So far, Apopo’s programmes have screened more than 340,000 TB samples and prevented more than 36,000 further infections.

“We believe our unique TB Detection Rat technology will prove itself as an effective mass-screening tool,” said Charlie Richter, the US director of Apopo.

“We then aim to expand the programme to all prisons, shantytowns, factories and other settings in Tanzania, Mozambique and other high TB-burden countries, as well as in high-risk groups such as those individuals living with HIV/AIDS.”

Mr Richter added: “This will improve and save lives all over the globe at a low cost.”

According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the rates of TB in prisons in countries such as Tanzania can be up to 10 times higher than in the general population.

“Training an animal with a strong and reliable sense of smell to help detect disease in a vast country like Tanzania could potentially offer a valuable solution to help detecting the disease,” said Khadija Abraham, an expert at Tanzania’s National Tuberculosis programme.

So far, there are nine accredited TB rats working in Maputo, Mozambique, and 50 others have been trained in Morogoro, Tanzania.

Additional reporting by Reuters

Obama's Nuclear Security Summit In Times Of Terror -- Analyses

BY AMBASSADOR RAJIV DOGRA

SOUTH ASIA MONITOR/EURASIA REVIEW

President Barack Obama speaks to reporters at the Pentagon, Dec. 14, 2015, after a meeting with the National Security Council about the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. DoD photo by Air Force Senior Master Sgt. Adrian Cadiz

An assertion that could confidently be made about the Obama presidency is this: he would not order his strategic bombers to circle a hostile power as President Richard Nixon did nor would he wage a war impetuously like President George Bush Jr. did. Obama is simply too obsessed with his legacy to rush into wars. He may have messed up countries by his vacillation, sanctions and covert operations. But he has hesitated putting American boots on hostile ground because spilt American blood has blotted many presidential records. Obama is just too smart to add his name to that list.

In fact, Obama considers himself the smartest man in the world. And, conversely, his opinion of other leaders varies from assessing them as passable to ordinary. There are exceptions of course. He reveres the Pope, respects the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel and is indulgent towards two of the younger lot of leaders – British Prime Minister David Cameron and the Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau whom he also gives occasional advice.

With many other leaders, he is patient at best. Obama has another nine months to treat the world as he wishes. Then the world will sit in judgment on his achievements as the President of USA, or the lack of them. When that assessment is made, the outside world will not focus on his domestic record. That is for Americans to do. Foreign observers will tick-off the pluses and minuses on his slate based on the state of the world in January 2017.

That assessment might consider critically Obama’s major decisions and their impact on the world. And it will factor in aspects like his long pauses for reflection before every critical decision. It is true that leaders do, and should, introspect when considering issues that impact millions. But there is a thin line that divides the pause for reflection from indecision. Some allege that Obama’s pauses have stymied action. They add that his hesitations have ended up ceding crucial space to others; China has done so in the South China Sea, Pakistan in Afghanistan and Russia in Crimea and Syria. Still, there are areas where he deserves credit. On the plus side he should qualify for credit for some bold initiatives, thawing of relations with Cuba and Iran.

But public memory is short and Obama’s initiatives on Iran and Cuba, important though they are, may only be minor markers in a journey that had aimed to be far more ambitious. Obama had set lofty goals when he began his first term. As a matter of fact peoples’ expectations from him were pitched unrealistically high; some anointed him a messiah even before he had moved in to the White House. And he didn’t discourage this deification either; he liked being compared to American icons George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and John F Kennedy. In line with that heady feeling he declared that he would end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And he announced a new international effort to secure all vulnerable nuclear material around the world within four years.

The world knows what has become of his promise regarding Iraq and Afghanistan. As far as the nuclear issue is concerned the world has never been more unsafe nor has the nuclear material been more vulnerable to bodies like the ISIS. Yet, the world was besotted with Obama in 2009. And an admiring world gave him the Nobel Peace Prize, in anticipation.

But to be fair to him, Obama did try. The Nuclear Security Summit was his initiative. After the first in Washington in 2010, two other summits were held – Seoul (2012) followed by Hague (2014). The fourth and the final summit are being held in Washington on March 31- April 1, 2016. India has been an enthusiastic participant at these summits; Dr Manmohan Singh attended two of them and gave 1 million dollars to its fund. Some progress has been made towards setting up institutions to promote awareness about the issue and a few more facilities have come under safeguards. But these are mini steps really, and it is not the kind of progress that the presidential pledge had promised in 2009. If anything, the situation today is more worrisome; the world is more nuclear unsafe now. Some of it may be due to less than fool-proof institutional mechanism, but the really dangerous dimension of the issue is threats from non-state actors. ISIS may be just one grab away from nuclear material.

Some reports suggest that ISIS has already used the chemical Sulphur mustard against Kurdish forces and a rival rebel group. If ISIS were to acquire unconventional weapons would it hesitate to use them?

The question then is how hard would it be for the ISIS to obtain nuclear material? It would be difficult but by no means impossible. ISIS is wealthier than any other terrorist group. It has more people, more territory, and a larger global network than al-Qaida ever had, and money talks in the black market for illicit goods. Tons of nuclear explosive material is scattered around the world in less-than-secure installations. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) maintains a database that shows more than 2,000 reports of illicit trafficking in nuclear and other radioactive materials between 1993 and 2014.

Many are unaware that there was an incident many years ago at another plant where an insider brought explosives into a nuclear power plant that had not yet gone online, put the explosives on top of the steel pressure head, and detonated them. Fortunately, the plant had not been loaded with radioactive fuel at that stage. But it was a grim warning.

Take also the example of Belgium, the subject of recent terror attacks by ISIS. In August 2014 it found that someone had improperly opened a spigot to drain a turbine lubricant at its Doel Nuclear Reactor. The reactor seized and stalled, costing millions of dollars in damages and missed revenues.

In our neighbourhood, Pakistan combines having the world’s fastest growing nuclear stockpile with some of the world’s most capable terrorists – a nerve-jangling combination. To add to that it has developed a large number of tactical nuclear weapons. How secure are all these and how safe would India be from them is a question that time and destiny will dictate. Till then it might be prudent to keep our fingers crossed.

Scattered also in the world are large stockpiles of plutonium. Today there is more civilian plutonium separated from spent fuel in a form that could be used for nuclear weapons than in all the world’s nuclear weapons stockpile put together. In fact more than 100 metric tons have been produced since 1998, enough to build 20,000 nuclear weapons It is an amazing statistic. So far very little is being done either to reduce those stockpiles or limit the spread of places where plutonium is being used and handled.
So that is the background against which the leaders would be gathering in Washington. Obama had set a high bar in 2009 when he said nuclear armed terrorism was “the most immediate and extreme threat to global security.” He had promised then that he would lead an effort to lock down all vulnerable nuclear material around the world within four years.

But close to the end of his second term, over seven years later, nuclear terrorism is a much greater threat and mountains of nuclear material continue to grow.

*Amb. Rajiv Dogra is the author of the book “Where Borders Bleed”. He can be contacted at:ambraja@gmail.com

Apple Remains In Dark On How FBI Hacked iPhone Without Help

BY TAMI ABDOLLAH

ASSOCIATED PRESS, MARCH 29, 2016

An Apple iPhone 6s Plus smartphone is displayed at the Apple store at The Grove in Los Angeles. The FBI said Monday, March 28, 2016, it successfully used a mysterious technique without Apple Inc.'s help to hack into the iPhone used by a gunman in a mass shooting in California, effectively ending a pitched court battle between the Obama administration and one of the world's leading technology companies.


WASHINGTON (AP) — The FBI's announcement that it mysteriously hacked into an iPhone is a public setback for Apple Inc., as consumers suddenly discover they can't keep their most personal information safe. Meanwhile, Apple remains in the dark about how to restore the security of its flagship product.

The government said it was able to break into an iPhone used by a gunman in a mass shooting in California, but it didn't say how. That puzzled Apple software engineers — and outside experts — about how the FBI broke the digital locks on the phone without Apple's help. It also complicated Apple's job repairing flaws that jeopardize its software.

The Justice Department's announcement that it was dropping a legal fight to compel Apple to help it access the phone also took away any obvious legal avenues Apple might have used to learn how the FBI did it.

Magistrate Judge Sheri Pym vacated her Feb. 16 order, which compelled Apple to help the FBI hack their phone, on Tuesday. The Justice Department declined through a spokeswoman to comment Tuesday. A few clues have emerged. A senior law enforcement official told The Associated Press that the FBI managed to defeat an Apple security feature that threatened to delete the phone's contents if the FBI failed to enter the correct passcode combination after 10 tries. That allowed the government to repeatedly and continuously test passcodes in what's known as a brute-force attack until the right code is entered and the phone is unlocked.

It wasn't clear how the FBI dealt with a related Apple security feature that introduces increasing time delays between guesses. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because this person was not authorized to discuss the technique publicly.

FBI Director James Comey has said with those features removed, the FBI could break into the phone in 26 minutes. The FBI hacked into the iPhone used by gunman Syed Farook, who died with his wife in a gun battle with police after they killed 14 people in December in San Bernardino. The iPhone, issued to Farook by his employer, the county health department, was found in a vehicle the day after the shooting.

The FBI is reviewing information from the iPhone, and it is unclear whether anything useful can be found. Apple said in a statement Monday that the legal case to force its cooperation "should never have been brought," and it promised to increase the security of its products. CEO Tim Cook has said the Cupertino-based company is constantly trying to improve security for its users.

The FBI's announcement — even without revealing precise details — that it had hacked the iPhone was at odds with the government's firm recommendations for nearly two decades that security researchers always work cooperatively and confidentially with software manufacturers before revealing that a product might be susceptible to hackers.

The aim is to ensure that American consumers stay as safe online as possible and prevent premature disclosures that might damage a U.S. company or the economy. As far back as 2002, the Homeland Security Department ran a working group that included leading industry technology industry executives to advise the president on how to keep confidential discoveries by independent researchers that a company's software could be hacked until it was already fixed. Even now, the Commerce Department has been trying to fine-tune those rules. The next meeting of a conference on the subject is April 8 in Chicago and it's unclear how the FBI's behavior in the current case might influence the government's fragile relationship with technology companies or researchers.

The industry's rules are not legally binding, but the government's top intelligence agency said in 2014 that such vulnerabilities should be reported to companies. "When federal agencies discover a new vulnerability in commercial and open source software — a so-called 'zero day' vulnerability because the developers of the vulnerable software have had zero days to fix it — it is in the national interest to responsibly disclose the vulnerability rather than to hold it for an investigative or intelligence purpose," the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said in a statement in April 2014.

The statement recommended generally divulging such flaws to manufacturers "unless there is a clear national security or law enforcement need." Last week a team from Johns Hopkins University said they had found a security bug in Apple's iMessage service that would allow hackers under certain circumstances to decrypt some text messages. The team reported its findings to Apple in November and published an academic paper after Apple fixed it.

"That's the way the research community handles the situation. And that's appropriate," said Susan Landau, professor of cybersecurity policy at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. She said it was acceptable for the government to find a way to unlock the phone but said it should reveal its method to Apple.

Mobile phones are frequently used to improve cybersecurity, for example, as a place to send a backup code to access a website or authenticate a user. The chief technologist at the Center for Democracy and Technology, Joseph Lorenzo Hall, said keeping details secret about a flaw affecting millions of iPhone users "is exactly opposite the disclosure practices of the security research community. The FBI and Apple have a common goal here: to keep people safe and secure. This is the FBI prioritizing an investigation over the interests of hundreds of millions of people worldwide."

Follow Tami Abdollah on Twitter at https://twitter.com/latams.